Page:The Poor Rich Man, and the Rich Poor Man.djvu/27

Rh a few hundred dollars) would have ensured independence to most of his countrymen; but Philip lacked their characteristics—energy and sound judgment, and all the prospering go-ahead qualities that abound with them. But, lacking these, a most kind Providence had given him a disposition that made him content without them, and quite independent of their results. His horizon was bounded by the present hour—he literally took no thought for the morrow. He married early, and in this turning point of life Heaven seemed to have taken special care of him. Never was a wife better calculated by vigour, firmness, and industry, to counteract the destructive tendencies of a shiftless husband. Nor was she, like some driving wives, thorn in her quiet, loving husband's side. While she cured all the evils that could be cured in her condition, she endured the incurable with cheerfulness—a marvellous lightener of the burdens of life!

Before his marriage Philip built a house, the cost of which far exceeding his means, he finished but one end of it, and the rest was left for the rains to enter, and the winds to whistle through, till he took his wife's counsel, sold his house, paid his debts, and bought a snug little dwelling far more comfortable than their "shingle palace" in its best state.

But, before they arrived at this stage in the journey of life, both good and evil had chanced to them. Their firstborn, Ellen, ran into an open cistern, the surface of which was just on a level with the platform before the house: so it had remained a year after the active child began to run