In the meantime I received a formal official document saying that my
letter had been received and would be communicated to the prisoner in due
course; I believe it was simply through a mistake on the part of a clerk
that I was not informed of Ernest's illness, but I heard nothing of it
till I saw him by his own desire a few days after the chaplin had broken
to him the substance of what I had written.
Ernest was terribly shocked when he heard of the loss of his money, but
his ignorance of the world prevented him from seeing the full extent of
the mischief. He had never been in serious want of money yet, and did
not know what it meant. In reality, money losses are the hardest to bear
of any by those who are old enough to comprehend them.
A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical
operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or
that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as
such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greater number
of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the
strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the
more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.
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