While I was making these virtuous resolutions, the faithful Abel Snipe came to my bedside, and told me there were divers suffering creatures, widows with nine small children, widowers with fourteen, sick old women, and starving old men, in great need of relief; and so affecting was the picture he drew of their griefs, that the tears rolled from my eyes, and I bade him, if there was any money he could honestly lay his hands on, carry comfort to them all. "Verily," said he, "I have just collected the quarter's rent of the house in Market-street; and it will be enough, and more." "Relieve the poor afflicted creatures, then.. And hark thee, Abel Snipe, does thee consider me a rich man? If so, let me know where I can find twenty thousand dollars to set up the young man Jonathan in business, and marry him to the maiden Ellen Wild." "Alas!" said Abel Snipe; "of a verity, the young man is in a hurry; and alas! for, of a verity, if thee takes away at this time such a great sum from thee possessions, thee will cut off the right hand of thee charity." And thereupon the benevolent creature, after showing me, which it was easy to do, that, with the mere revenue of the sum demanded, if kept in our own hands, we could carry smiles and rejoicing into at least a hundred families every year, exhorted me not to forget that I was the friend of the afflicted, nor to faint in the good work of philanthropy. Jonathan was a very young man, he said--only twenty-five--happy in his youth, happy in his affections, happy in the certain prospect he enjoyed of sooner or later arriving at the fullest felicity. Why should he not then consent, like us, to forego for a while his selfish desires, contribute his portion to the wants of the poor, and, by labouring a few years in their cause, approve himself worthy of fortune? How much better that he should endure a fancied ill, than that a hundred afflicted families should be given up to actual want? He contended that the young man's request was untimely and selfish, and that I would only harden his heart, while breaking a thousand others, if I granted it. In short, he said so many things, and painted so many affecting pictures of the miseries of my fellow-creatures, and the beauties of charity, that my mind was quite changed on the subject, and I perceived it was my duty to resist the young man's wishes.