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 chaplain 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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