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Retiring From Business or the Rich Man's Error
Retiring From Business or the Rich Man's Error Author:T. S. Arthur Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: to the community; but, he must needs retire from his useful position, in order to seek his own ease. But his mind could not rest. Inactivity was a state utterly ... more »repugnant to its nature. There being no business to call forth its energies, it turned aside for something to do, as naturally as the flower turns itself to the sun. And the first irregular work presented was an interference in the education of his children, about which he had no previously well-formed views ; about which he had no well digested plans. A mere notion that all was not right came into his idle brain, and there magnified itself into importance. The habit of his whole life had been action. He could not think without acting. It, therefore, followed, as a natural consequence, that, so soon as he got a notion into his head that all was not right in the matter of his children's education, he would promptly act in the matter. And, as it has been seen, he did act, and that not from any distinct views, but from a conceit that he saw the whole subject of education in clear light. The consequences were deplorable. His daughter received, when her character was in a state of formation, and. just as it was beginning to harden, impressions that no after culture could entirely efface. But this was not the only case where the effect of Mr. Franklin's retirement from business was felt injuriously at home. There is, about every man, a tranquilizing or disturbing sphere,, according to his state of mind. Before his retirement from business, Mr. Franklin came home to his family, with his mind prepared for repose or the quiet social pleasures of home. He met his children with delight; the close of every day being a kind of domestic re-union. They, too, had laid aside the graver duties of the day. The season of study was over, an...« less