We must not be too
sagacious in judging people by the little excrescences of their
character. Ex pede Herculem may often prove safe enough, but ex verruca
Tullium is liable to mislead a hasty judge of his fellow-men.
I have studied the people called misers and thought a good deal about
them. In former years I used to keep a little gold by me in order to
ascertain for myself exactly the amount of pleasure to be got out of
handling it; this being the traditional delight of the old-fashioned
miser. It is by no means to be despised. Three or four hundred dollars
in double-eagles will do very well to experiment on. There is something
very agreeable in the yellow gleam, very musical in the metallic clink,
very satisfying in the singular weight, and very stimulating in the
feeling that all the world over these same yellow disks are the
master-keys that let one in wherever he wants to go, the servants that
bring him pretty nearly everything he wants, except virtue,--and a good
deal of what passes for that. I confess, then, to an honest liking for
the splendors and the specific gravity and the manifold potentiality of
the royal metal, and I understand, after a certain imperfect fashion, the
delight that an old ragged wretch, starving himself in a crazy hovel,
takes in stuffing guineas into old stockings and filling earthen pots
with sovereigns, and every now and then visiting his hoards and fingering
the fat pieces, and thinking ever all that they represent of earthly and
angelic and diabolic energy.
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