Under these sudden changes of fortune it is seldom that the
sufferer remains amid the ruins of past prosperity. The human
instinct is to fly and hide. The wound heals more readily amongst
strangers. The material evils of life are never so intolerable as
the public loss of caste. It may be said that it is people, not
things, which cause most of the world's unhappiness. Mrs. Raymond
came to New York, where she had not a friend except the son she
brought with her, there to set herself with an undaunted heart to
earn the seventeen hundred dollars she had voluntarily taken on
her shoulders to repay.
George Raymond, her son, was then a boy of fifteen. High-strung,
high-spirited, with all the seriousness of a youngster who had
prematurely learned to think for himself, he had arrived at the
age when ineffaceable impressions are made and the tendencies of a
lifetime decided. Passionately attached to his father, he had lost
him in a way that would have made death seem preferable. He saw
his mother, so shortly before the great lady of a little town,
working out like a servant in other people's houses. The tragedy
of it all ate into his soul and overcame him with a sense of
hopelessness and despair. It would not have been so hard could he
have helped, even in a small way, towards the recovery of their
fortunes; but his mother, faithful even in direst poverty to her
New England blood, sent him to school, determined that at any
sacrifice he should finish his education.
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