"Nancy," said he, "I never was worthy of such a wife. But neither look on me, nor speak to me with kindness. I have brought you to beggary--I have brought my family to beggary--and I have brought myself to everlasting misery and despair!" "O my dear!" said she, "dinna talk in such a heathen-like manner. If it be the case that we have lost all that we had, there is no help for it now; but I trust, and am assured, that ye will not have lost it in such a way as to make your family hang their head among folk, in remembrance of their faither's transaction. I am certain, already, that it is your foolish disposition to be everybody's friend, that has brought this upon ye. A thousand times have I warned ye of what, some day or other, would be the upshot; but ye would take no admonition from me." "Oh!" added he, "I have misery enough, and more than enough, without your aggravating it by your dagger-drawing reflections." He sat groaning, throughout the night, with his hand upon his brow; but the real cause of his misery he would not explain, farther than that he had brought himself and his family to ruin. But, with sunrise, the tale of our undoing was on every tongue; and all its particulars, and more than all, were not long in being conveyed to us. For a tale of distress hath the power of taking unto itself wings, and every wind of heaven will echo it, let it come whence it may, and let it go where it may. I beheld, and I heard my mother doomed to receive the doleful _congratulations_ of her friends--the prompt expression of their sympathy for her calamities. It was the first time, and it was the last, that many of them ever felt for human wo. But there are people in this world, who delight to go abroad with the tidings of tribulation on their tongue, and whose chief pleasure is to act the part of Job's comforters, or, I might say, of his messengers. We learned that my father's bosom friend, the professedly wealthy and pious manufacturer, had been declared a bankrupt, and that my father had become liable on his account to the amount of two thousand pounds. His unguided generosity had previously compelled him to mortgage his property, and this calamity swallowed it up. Never will I forget the calmness, I might call it the philosophy, with which my mother received the tidings. "I am glad," said she to the individual who first communicated to her the tidings, "that my children will have no cause to blush for their father's misfortunes; and I would rather endure the privations which those misfortunes may bring upon us, than feel the pangs of his conscience who has brought them upon his friend."