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For four years did they remain a burden upon the father, during which time, unstimulated to exertion by pressing necessities, Charles made but little progress as a lawyer. Petty cases he despised, and generally refused to undertake, and those of more importance were not trusted to one who had yet to prove himself worthy of a high degree of legal confidence. At the end of that time both his father and mother were suddenly removed to the world of spirits, and he was again thrown entirely upon his own resources.

With no one now to check them in any thing Charles and his wife, after calculating the results of the next year’s legal efforts, felt fully justfied in renting a handsome house, and furnishing it on credit. The proceeds of the year’s practice rose but little above four hundred dollars, and at its conclusion they found themselves involved in a new debt of three thousand dollars. Then came another breaking up, with all of its harrowing consequences–consequences which to persons of their habits and mode of thinking, are so deeply mortifying,–followed by their shrinking away, with a meagre remnant of their furniture, into a couple of rooms, in an obscure part of the town.

“Adelaide,” said the husband, one morning, as he roused himself from a painful reverie.

“Well, what do you want?” she asked abstractedly, lifting her eyes with reluctant air from the pages of a novel.

“I want to talk to you for a little while; so shut your book, if you please.”

“Won’t some other time do as well? I have just got into the middle of a most interesting scene.”

“No–I wish to talk with you now.”

“Well, say on,” the wife rejoined, closing the book in her hand, with her thumb resting upon the page that still retained her thoughts, and assuming an attitude of reluctant attention.

“There is a school vacant at N—-, some twenty miles from the city. The salary is eight hundred dollars a year, with a house and garden included. I can get the situation, if I will accept of it.”

“And sink to the condition of a miserable country pedagogue?”

“And support my family comfortably and honestly,” Fenwick replied in a tone of bitterness.

“Precious little comfort will your family experience immured in an obscure country village, without a single congenial associate. What in the name of wonder has put that into your head?”

“Adelaide! I cannot succeed at the bar–at least, not for years. Of that I am fully satisfied. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that I should turn my attention to something that will supply the pressing demands of my family.”

“But surely you can get into something better than the office of schoolmaster, to the sons of clodpoles.”

“Name something.”

“I’m sure I cannot tell. That is a matter for you to think about,” and so saying, Mrs. Fenwick re-opened her book, and commenced poring again over the pages of the delightful work she held in her hand.

Irritated, and half disgusted at this, a severe reproof trembled on his tongue, but he suppressed it. In a few minutes after he arose, and left the apartment without his wife seeming to notice the movement.

“Good morning, Mr. Fenwick!” said a well known individual, coming into the lawyer’s office a few minutes after he had himself entered.

“That trial comes on this afternoon at four o’clock.”

“Well, John, I can’t help it. The debt is a just one, but I have no means of meeting it now.”

“Try, and do so if you can, Mr. Fenwick, for the plaintiff is a good deal irritated about the matter, and will push the thing to extremities.”

“I should be sorry for that. But if so, let him use his own pleasure. Take nothing from nothing, and nothing remains.”

“You had better come then with security, Mr. Fenwick, for my orders are, to have an execution issued against your person, as soon as the case is decided.”

“You are not in earnest, John?” suddenly ejaculated the lawyer, rising to his feet, and looking at the humble minister of the law with a pale cheek and quivering lip. “Surely Mr.—-is not going to push matters to so uncalled-for an extremity!”