Again, let us see how men lose money; for the art of keeping money is of greater importance to a man than that of making it. The great house of Overend and Gurney fell, and threw all London into a panic, because the house did not know how to keep money, but went into all sorts of ruinous speculations, which ultimately brought it to the ground. “In a little room in one of the by-streets of New York, up a narrow, dingy flight of stairs, may be seen a man,” says an American writer, “doing a little brokerage which his friends put into his hands. That man at one time inherited the name and fortune of a house which America delighted to honour. That house was founded by two lads who left their homes to seek their fortunes in a great city. They owned nothing but the clothes they wore, and a small bundle tied to a stick, and thrown over their shoulders. Their clothes were home-spun, were woven under the parental roof, and cut and made by motherly skill and sisterly affection. They carried with them the rich boon of a mother’s blessing and a mother’s prayers. They were honest, industrious, truthful, and temperate. They did anything they found to do that was honest. They began a little trade, which increased in their hands, and extended till it reached all portions of the civilised world. They identified themselves with every good work. Education, humanity, and religion blessed their munificence. The founders of the house died, leaving a colossal fortune, and a name without a stain. They left their business and their reputation to the man who occupies the little chamber that we have referred to. He abandoned the principles on which the fame and honour of the house had been built up. He stained the name that for fifty years had been untarnished. He fled from his home; he wandered about the country under an assumed name. Widows and orphans who had left trust-money in their hands, lost their all. In his fall he dragged down the innocent, and spread consternation on all sides. A few years passed, and after skulking about in various cities abroad, he ventured back. Men were too kind to harm him. Those whom he had befriended in the days of his prosperity, helped him to a little brokerage to earn his bread, and so he lingered on, and died, poor and forgotten, and obscure;—a warning to the prosperous, not to forget that honesty is the best policy after all.”