"Why, Powers," he continued to his counsel, "do you know that if I had been a tithe part as base and conscienceless as they are _now_, Perkins & Ball would be beggars, if not inmates of this prison! Yes, sir, my casting vote, of all the rest, would have done it. But no matter; I had hoped to find, in a community where I had been useful, generous and just, friends enough for all practical purposes, without carrying my business difficulties to the fireside of my parents and other relations. But that I must do now; if, _if they fail me, then---- I cave!_" Two days after that conference of the lawyer and the merchant, "honest John" learned, with sorrow, that his father was dead; estate involved, and his friends at home in no favorable mood in reference to what they heard of John Jenks and his "bad management" in the city. John Jenks--heard no more--he "caved!" as he agreed to. We pass over Jenks' _Smithsonian_ difficulty, which a prudent lawyer and discerning jury brought out all right. We come to 1850--some fifteen or eighteen years after John Jenks "caved." The John Jenks of 183- had been ruined by his good nature, set adrift moneyless, in a manner, with even a spotted reputation to begin with; he "profited by his reverses," he was now a man of family--fifty, fat, and wealthy, and altogether the meanest and most selfish man you ever saw! Jenks freely admits his originality is entirely--"_used up!_" The reader may affix the _moral_ of my sketch--at leisure. The Greatest Moral Engine. Say what you will, it's no use talking, poverty is more potent and powerful, as a moral engine, than all the "sermons and soda water," law, logic, and prison discipline, ever started. All a man wants, while he _has_ a chance to be honest, and to get along smoothly, is a good situation and two dollars a day; give him five dollars a day, and he gets lazy and careless; while at ten, or a hundred a day, he is sure to cultivate beastly feeling, eat and sleep to stupefaction, become a _roue_, or a rotten politician. A poor man, in misery, applies to God for consolation, while a rich man applies to his banker, and tries on a "bender," or goes on a tour to Europe, and studies foreign folly and French license. Poverty is great; in a Christian community, or a thriving village, it is equal to "martial law," in suppressing moral rebellion and keeping down the "dander!" And how faithful, too, is poverty, says Dr. Litterage, for it sticks to a man after all his friends and the rest of mankind have deserted him! The Story of Capt. Paul.