THERE IS NO HURRY. 187

fashionable Dr. Adams had shared the fate of
all dependents—worn out the benevolence, or
patience, or whatever it really is, of their “best
friends.” Nor was this the only consequence
of the physician’s neglect of a duty due alike
to God and society ; his brother had really done
so much for the bereaved family, as to give
what the world called ‘just grounds” to Mrs.
Charles Adams’s repeated complaints, ‘ that
now her husband was ruining his industrious
family to keep the lazy widow of his spend-
thrift brother and her favourite children in idle-
ness. Why could she not live upon the ‘fine
folk’? she was always throwing in her face %”
The daughter, too, of whose approaching union
the fond father had been so proud, was now,
like her cousin whom she had wronged by her
mean suspicions, deserted ; the match broken
off after much bickering; one quarrel having
brought on another, until they separated by
mutual consent. Her temper and her health
were both materially impaired ; and her beauty
was converted into hardness and acidity.

Oh! how utterly groundless is the idea, that
in our social state, where one human being
must so much depend upon another, any man,
neglecting his positive duties, can be called
only “his own enemy.” What misery had not
Dr. Adams’s neglect entailed, not alone on his
immediate family, but on that of his brother.
Besides, there were ramifications of distress ;