But Mildred certainly did seem somewhat disconcerted when she learned that the ten-thousand-dollar loan which had been asked for was less than half of General Lawrence’s indebtedness. He confessed, she told me afterward, that his expenses last year were over five thousand dollars, while his receipts from his literary work, his sole income, were only twenty-eight hundred. “We were obliged, actually obliged, to go into society more or less on account of the General’s position,” said his wife, apologetically. “General Lawrence is continually meeting important people in the literary and political world, and can’t you see, my dear Miss Brewster, how essential this is for his writing? And, of course, if we are always well entertained ourselves, we have to treat people decently when they come to see us. I have been my own seamstress, and have economized in every way, but it is absolutely impossible for us to live on three thousand a year. My husband’s writings would bring us three times that if he could get what he deserves. But it is always so with men of genius; their own generation never appreciates them,” she added bitterly, while her husband fidgeted and took a turn around the room. “Well, and what did you say to such rubbish as that?” I inquired of Mildred. “I said,” answered she, “that Emerson and many others had found ‘plain living and high thinking’ quite compatible, and that I thought a residence in some suburban town would obviate the burdens of society, and allow them to live within their income. At all events,” I said, “although I stood ready to offer, as a gift, their entire immunity from debt, this could not be done except by a strict construction of the conditions which I had laid down. However, I offered General Lawrence an opportunity to lay up a little money, telling him that I had various projects in view, and should need the assistance of the pen of a ready writer in carrying out many of them. I told him that I would put to his credit in the bank ten dollars for every newspaper column which he would write on subjects that I should give him: at the end of three years this amount should be turned over to him, and meanwhile he must ‘cut his coat according to his cloth,’ and manage in some way to live strictly within his income.” “And what did Madam say to that?” I asked. “Oh, her pride kept the tears back; they both said nothing and signed the papers; but I know that she must think me a hateful, close-fisted Yankee, with no conception of granting a favor graciously and without cruelly wounding the recipient’s feelings.”