XXVIII. ILLUSIONS IN RESPECT TO RICHES

1. The Egyptian king who, swollen with grandeur, ordered a colossal staircase built to his new palace, discovered, to his chagrin, when it was completed, that he required a ladder to get from one step to another. He had forgotten that a king's legs, after all, are as short as a beggar's. Accumulate wealth as we may, the limits of our senses check us miserably every moment.

2. You call yourself proprietor, but houses and pictures outlive your mortal body, and after taking your will of them for a short time, that body is carried out of your own door, feet foremost, never again to enter it. Proprietor you were, perhaps, of farms and castles, estates and villages, but now you do not own even that hole in the ground, six feet by two, where your dust lies mingling with the soil.

3. "Proprietor!"

The artist who visits your picture gallery enjoys it more than you, and is, in a better sense, the proprietor. You are rich enough, to dine twenty-four times a day, but you must eat sparingly to enjoy dining even once, and the probability is you will not, that once, relish your sumptuous viands so keenly as the poorest of your day laborers will his boiled beef and cabbage.

4. To help you use your store, you are obliged to call around you friends, relatives, parasites—a little world of attendants who live upon your substance, and many of whom, instead of gratitude, are likelier to make you a return in envy. You have thirty horses in your stable; you can mount but one, ride after but two to six.

5. To be truly rich, one should have stomachs in proportion to the number of dinners he could afford; senses multiplied according to the amount of his stock in bank.

At the close of his life the richest man has hardly spent more upon his own positive enjoyment than the poor man. He has eaten and slept, and the poor man can do as much and the proprietor scarcely more.

6. Rothschild is forced to content himself with the same sky as the poor newspaper writer. The most opulent banker cannot order a private sunset or add one ray to the magnificence of the starlight. The same air swells all lungs. The same kind of blood fills all veins. Each one possesses really only his own thoughts and his own senses. Soul and body - these are all the property which a man owns; nay, he does not own even these, for he merely has them on trust from the Creator.

7. All that is valuable in this world is to be had for nothing. Genius, beauty, health, piety, love, are not bought and sold. You may buy a rich bracelet, but not a well-turned arm on which to wear it; a pearl necklace, but not a pearly throat with which it shall vie. The richest man on earth would vainly offer a fortune to be qualified to write a verse like Milton, to paint a picture like Landseer, or to compose a melody like Mozart. You may summon all your physicians, but they cannot procure for you the sweet, healthful sleep which the tired laborer gets without price. Let no man, then, call himself a proprietor.

Write a composition on "Real Wealth."

Character is stronger than intellect. be strong to live as well as to think.

Selected.

A great soul will

- EMERSON.

XXIX. DIMES AND DOLLARS

I. "Dimes and dollars! dollars and dimes!"
Thus an old miser rang the chimes,

As he knelt by the side of an open box
With its ironed angles and massive locks.
And he heaped the glittering coin on high,
And cried in delirious ecstasy,

"Dimes and dollars! dollars and dimes!
Ye are the ladders by which man climbs
Over his fellows. Musical chimes!

Dimes and dollars! dollars and dimes!"

2. A ring at the door, and the miser rose,
Quickly his laden coffer to close.

He locked it securely: "These are the times
For a man to look after his dollars and dimes.
A letter, ha! from my prodigal son?

The old tale - poverty! Pshaw, begone!
Why did he marry when I forbade ?

Marry for love the ridiculous lad!

As he has sown so must he reap;

But I my dollars secure will keep.

'A sickly wife and starving times'?

He should have wed with dollars and dimes."

3. Thickly the hour of midnight fell;

Doors and windows were bolted well.
"Ha!" cried the miser, "glory to trade!
A thousand guineas to-day I've made.
Money makes money; these are the times
To double and treble the dollars and dimes.

Now to sleep, and to-morrow to plan;
Rest is sweet to a wearied man."

And he fell asleep to the midnight chimes,
Dreaming of glittering dollars and dimes.

4. The sun rose high, and its beaming ray Into the miser's room found way.

It moved from the foot till it lit the head

Of the miser's low uncurtained bed;

And it seemed to say to him, "Sluggard, awake!
Thou hast a thousand dollars to make.

Up, man, up!" How still was the place,
As the bright ray fell on the miser's face!
Ha! the old miser at last is dead!
Dreaming of gold, his spirit fled,
And he left behind but an earthly clod,
Akin to the dross that he made his god.

5. What now avail the clinking chimes

Of dimes and dollars! dollars and dimes!
Men of the times! men of the times!
Content may not rest with dollars and dimes.
Use them well, and their use sublimes
The mineral dross of the dollars and dimes.
Use them ill, and a thousand crimes.
Spring from a coffer of dollars and dimes.
Men of the times! men of the times!

Let charity dwell with your dollars and dimes.

HENRY WILLIS.

"I count this thing to be grandly true:

That a noble deed is a step toward God, Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a broader view."