Page:The Poor Rich Man, and the Rich Poor Man.djvu/35

Rh health for you, Charlotte? Your suffering is the only thing that ever makes me unhappy; and so, after all, it is selfishness in me."

Happy would it be for our race if there were more such selfishness as Harry Aikin's. The benevolent principle is, after all, the true alchymy that converts the lead to gold.

The preceding fall, and shortly before the scene described at the bridge, an acquaintance and very good friend of Harry's, a bookseller in the shire town of their county, had applied to Harry to be his agent in peddling books, and had offered him a tempting per centage on his sales. Harry, then but fourteen, was rather young for such a business; but the good bookseller had good reason to rely on his fidelity and discretion, and hoped much from his modest and very pleasing address. Harry communicated the offer to his parents. They told him to decide for himself; that whatever money he earned should be his; but that, as he was to go to a trade the following spring, and the intervening winter being the only time he had for further school education, they advised him to forego the bookseller's offer. Harry could think of plenty of eligible appropriations for any sum he might earn; but, after a little reflection, nothing that even fifty dollars could buy weighed in the scales against six months' good instruction; and, thanking his parents for their liberality to him, he decided on the school. This decision occurred on the very day of poor Jock's untimely death, and was reversed by that event, and the consequent overthrow of Charlotte May's project. He immediately conceived the design of effecting her journey to