A miser pouring out his guineas into his
palm and bathing his shrivelled and trembling hands in the yellow heaps
before him, is not the prosaic being we are in the habit of thinking him.
He is a dreamer, almost a poet. You and I read a novel or a poem to help
our imaginations to build up palaces, and transport us into the emotional
states and the felicitous conditions of the ideal characters pictured in
the book we are reading. But think of him and the significance of the
symbols he is handling as compared with the empty syllables and words we
are using to build our aerial edifices with! In this hand he holds the
smile of beauty and in that the dagger of revenge. The contents of that
old glove will buy him the willing service of many an adroit sinner, and
with what that coarse sack contains he can purchase the prayers of holy
men for all succeeding time. In this chest is a castle in Spain, a real
one, and not only in Spain, but anywhere he will choose to have it. If
he would know what is the liberality of judgment of any of the straiter
sects, he has only to hand over that box of rouleaux to the trustees of
one of its educational institutions for the endowment of two or three
professorships. If he would dream of being remembered by coming
generations, what monument so enduring as a college building that shall
bear his name, and even when its solid masonry shall crumble give place
to another still charged with the same sacred duty of perpetuating his
remembrance.
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