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They were now, indeed, where they had ever foretold the certainty of being; and their state was one that the proud lover of earthly riches might comprehend with fear and trembling. Among the suffering outcasts of the town -- the sick, the aged, the half-demented, the dying -- all complaining; the hungry, ghastly, cadaverous, slatterly, profane, and selfish -- remnants of them- selves, and relics of past fortunes and events; a sorrowful pattern of what humanity may be; a memorial of past offences -- with these, in themselves a wheel of existence and of nature, whirling slowly round and on creaking axle -- with these, the feared but unchosen companions of a gloomy old age, they now had fixed their last passing stage. No, it was no chosen condition, but a feared-- to them a fated, fatal one. Pepper is disfranchised! He can not vote at the next election; he can sit on no jury; he can own no property (as a pauper). Were he a State pauper, the State would pay the town one dollar a week for his board, at the most; and were he to die, six dollars -- no more -- for his funeral charges. (31) So it is a fearful thing to play with Nature's laws -- to fancy them and fear them and forestall them. True, they may; but it is also true they may not, in the severer forms, crush down on us their invincible destruction:

"Yet Nature hath her day and power --
'Twere well to know these things;
Not risk the backward tides
That bear upon and rend life's firmest strings."
Dreams & Realities.

When the party had been over to the poor-house precincts, and seen and conversed with nearly all the inmates, the last visit being to the sick room of the aged and suffering Hicks, Mr. Rodman offered up a fervent prayer in his behalf, and for all the poor people gathered there. The visit terminated, Miss Flush that very day evening, in an interview with Lawyer Tools, protracted a little more than they were wont to practice on the night, desired to know what were the real opinions he entertained respecting the poor and wretched inmates of the poor-house. And she perfectly amazed and electrified him by saying, that she had that day fully resolved, in her own mind, hereafter to befriend them to the last of her influence with both friends and foes. "So," said she, "if you are not their friend, you must be, you will be -- I know I may say that! "And Miss Flush regarded him with a kind and winning smile. Lawyer Tools sort of nodded. "Hereafter," she continued, "I will befriend and help them, though it cost me the dearest friend that I have ever cherished." Miss Flush grew pale and trembled -- Lawyer Tools was taken. He never was so frightened in his life! He ran for a glass of water -- she regained her self-command, and Lawyer Tools, pressing her hand to his lips, swore by the love of years, he would go with her in her work of repentance and mercy! That very evening they fixed on an early day for love's consummation, so long delayed, and vowed together that through good and evil they would help each other in the path of life, a life to some of joy and gladness, to other some, of thorns and tears.

Miss Flush immediately set about a system of benevolence for the town's poor. She organized a society for that purpose. She was indefatigable, earnest, successful. Through her assistance and the labors of her associates, by-and-bye a great improvement was manifested in the condition of the paupers, and duly acknowledged by the town agent and overseers. (32)

CHAPTER XLII.
Search for Property. Writers on Political Economy represent Labor as the only source of wealth, for by 'labor all the wealth of the world,' as says Mr. Adam Smith, was originally purchased.' It is labor that gives value to all commodities and pro- ducts. At the same time, what miserable creatures we should all prove to be, were it not for CAPITAL. We have it then, 'Searching' implies Labor, and 'for property,' CAPITAL. We hope James searched a good while before he finally abandoned it.

When Mr. Rodman returned from abroad, he and James and Lawyer Ketchum were often closeted together over the subject of James' possible interest in property at the West, left by his grandfather. And it was finally agreed that James and Mr. Ketchum should go out there and make inquiries.

On the fourth day after leaving home, they found themselves in Chicago, and read in the evening papers of that day, the notice of the marriage of -------- --------, Esq., lawyer of that city, to "Miss Mary----- , daughter of the late James Sherman, Esq.," of that city.

That they were near the sources of information in respect to the object of their visit, they could not now doubt. In conversation with a gentleman of the hotel, Mr. Ketchum ascertained that the marriage to which he referred was a very splendid affair, got up in a style worthy an heiress of so great wealth, but he could not give him much further information. But the next day, both Mr. Ketchum and James called on a brother lawyer in the city, to whom they had letters of introduction, and with him they repaired at once to the office of the Judge of Probate. They asked for the record of Mr. Sherman's will, having ascertained that he left such an instrument, and owned much property in and around Chicago at his decease.