Effie Maurice | Page 9

father?'
'Oh! I see it,' exclaimed Harry; 'he is a miser.'
'Yes, Harry,' returned Mr Maurice, 'you are right, the love of money is the cause of all his misery. He came to this city a great many years ago, (he could not himself tell how many, for his memory evidently wavered,) and commenced business as a linen draper. He had one only daughter then, and he lavished all his earnings on her at first, but finally she married, and from that time he became wholly engrossed with self. He was never very fond of show, and so did not become a spendthrift, but he adopted the equally dangerous course of hoarding up all his savings, until it became a passion with him. After a while he retired from business, but the passion clung to him with all the tenacity of a long established habit, and he became a usurer. He was known to all the young profligates, the bad young men who throng our city, and became as necessary to them as the poor avaricious Jew was in former days to the spendthrifts and gamesters in London. He told me frightful stories, my children, of tyranny and fraud, of ruined young men led on by him till they committed self-murder, of old men shorn of their fortunes through his ingenious villainy--'
'O father!' exclaimed little Effie, covering her eyes with her hands.
'All this,' said Mr Maurice, solemnly, 'was the result of the indulgence of a single bad passion.'
'But the little boy?' inquired Mrs Maurice.
'The husband of the daughter proved to be a miserable, worthless fellow, and for some time the old man sent them remittances of money, but after a while his new passion triumphed over paternal love, and the prayers of the poor woman were unheeded. Two or three years ago she came to the city on foot--a weary distance, the old man said, but he could not tell how far, bringing with her the little boy that first attracted my attention to-night. Her husband was dead, and her elder children had one by one followed him to the grave, till there was only this, the youngest left. She had come to the city, hoping that her presence would be more successful than her letters had been in softening the old man's heart, but she only came to die. Her journey had worn her out, and she was to be no tax upon the old man's treasures. She died, and the miserable grandfather could not cast off her only son. The little fellow's face looks wan and melancholy; as if from suffering and want, and he seems to have passed at once from a child into an old man, without knowing anything of the intermediate stage.'
'Poor boy!' said Mrs Maurice 'you didn't leave him alone with his grandfather, I hope?'
'No, I engaged a neighbour to spend the night with them, and called at my office on my way home to write a letter to a brother, of whom the old man told me, who is now residing in the country. The little grandson will probably be wealthy now, but I do not believe the enjoyment of it will make up for his past suffering.'
'I hope he won't be a miser,' said Effie.
'I shouldn't think it very strange if he should be,' replied her brother, 'the example of his grandfather is enough to spoil him.'
'But you forget, Harry,' said Mrs Maurice, 'what a terrible example it was. I think the little fellow will be likely to avoid it.'
'Very probably,' added Mr Maurice, 'there is more danger of his going into the opposite extreme.'
'I am sure, father,' said Harry, 'that it can't be so bad to spend money foolishly, as to hoard it up the way that old man did.'
'No,' said Effie, 'for he made a god of it, and it is better to care too little about it, than too much.'
'But the man that spends his money in frivolous pursuits, or what would be called slightly criminal adventures, who lavishes the money which God has given him to do good with, upon himself, seeking only his own gratification--'
'O father!' interrupted Harry, 'he made a god of himself.'
'Such a man,' continued Mr Maurice, 'may be led on from one step to another until he becomes as guilty as the old man of whom I have told you to-night.'
'If I were a man,' said little Effie, shuddering, 'I should be afraid to do anything lest I should do wrong.'
'And why so?' asked Mrs Maurice; 'you forget, my dear, that you, too, are exposed to temptations, that none of us are exempt from trials, and our only hope is in the promise that the child of God shall not be tempted above what he is able to bear.'
'Remember,' added Mr Maurice, taking the family Bible