Volume Ii Part 22 (2/2)
On commencing an examination of his son's affairs, he found that Tallman Taylor's extravagance and folly had left his widow and child worse than penniless, for he had died heavily in debt.
Returning one afternoon from Wall-Street, Mr. Taylor talked over this matter with his wife. Of all Tallman Taylor's surviving friends, his mother was the one who most deeply felt his death; she was heart-stricken, and shed bitter tears over the young man.
”There is nothing left, Hester, for the child or her mother,”
said the merchant, sitting down in a rocking-chair in his wife's room. ”All gone; all wasted; five times the capital I had to begin with. I have just made an investment, of which I shall give the profits to Tallman's lady; four lots that were offered to me last week; if that turns out well, I shall go on, and it may perhaps make up a pretty property for the child, in time.”
”Oh, husband, don't talk to me about such things now; I can't think of anything but my poor boy's death!”
”It was an unexpected calamity, Hester,” said the father, with one natural look of sorrow; ”but we cannot always escape trouble in this world.”
”I feel as if we had not done our duty by him!” said the poor mother.
”Why not?-he was very handsomely set up in business,”
remonstrated Mt. Taylor.
”I was not thinking of money,” replied his wife, shaking her head. ”But it seems as if we only took him away from my brother's, in the country, just to throw him in the way of temptation as he was growing up, and let him run wild, and do everything he took a fancy to.”
”We did no more than other parents, in taking him home with us, to give him a better education than he could have got at your brother's.”
”Husband, husband!--it is but a poor education that don't teach a child to do what is right! I feel as if we had never taught him what we ought to. I did not know he had got so many bad ways until lately; and now that I do know it, my heart is broken!”
”Tallman was not so bad as you make him out. He was no worse than a dozen other young gentlemen I could name at this very minute.”
”Oh; I would give everything we are worth to bring him back!--but it is too late--too late!”
”No use in talking now, Hester.”
”We ought to have taken more pains with him. He didn't know the danger he was in, and we did, or we ought to have known it.
Taking a young man of a sudden, from a quiet, minister's family in the country, like my brother's, and giving him all the money he wanted, and turning him out into temptation.--Oh, it's dreadful!”
”All the pains in the world, Hester, won't help a young man, unless he chooses himself. What could I do, or you either? Didn't we send him to school and to college?--didn't we give him an opportunity of beginning life with a fine property, and married to one of the handsomest girls in the country, daughter of one of the best families, too? What more can you do for a young man? He must do the rest himself; you can't expect to keep him tied to your ap.r.o.n-string all his life.”
”Oh, no; but husband, while he was young we ought to have taken more pains to teach him not to think so much about the ways of the world. There are other things besides getting money and spending money, to do; it seems to me now as if money had only helped my poor boy to his ruin!”
”Your notions are too gloomy, Mrs. Taylor. Such calamities will happen, and we should not let them weigh us down too much.”
”If I was to live a hundred years longer, I never could feel as I did before our son's death. Oh, to think what a beautiful, innocent child he was twenty years ago, this time!”
”You shouldn't let your mind run so much on him that's gone. It's unjust to the living.”
The poor woman made no answer, but wept bitterly for some time.
”It's my only comfort now,” she said, at length, ”to think that we have learned wisdom by what's pa.s.sed. As long as I live, day and night, I shall labour to teach our younger children not to set their hearts upon the world; not to think so much about riches.”
”Well, I must say, Hester, if you think all poor people are saints, I calculate you make a mistake.”
”I don't say that, husband; but it seems to me that we have never yet thought enough of the temptations of riches, more especially to young people, to young men--above all, when it comes so sudden as it did to our poor boy. What good did money ever do him?--it only brought him into trouble!”
”Because Tallman didn't make the most of his opportunities, that is no reason why another should not. If I had wasted money as he did, before I could afford it, I never should have made a fortune either. The other boys will do better, I reckon; they will look more to business than he did, and turn out rich men themselves.”
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