s ownership of some worldly goods.

"What do you call having money?" observed the latter, clearly in the
trap. "Fifty thousand?"

"Whew!" went the farmer, as at a big draught of powerful stuff.

"Ten thousand?"

Mr. Fleming took this second gulp almost contemptuously, but still
kindly.

"Come," quoth Anthony, "ten thousand's not so mean, you know. You're a
gentleman on ten thousand. So, on five. I'll tell ye, many a gentleman'd
be glad to own it. Lor' bless you! But, you know nothing of the world,
brother William John. Some of 'em haven't one--ain't so rich as you!"

"Or you, brother Tony?" The farmer made a grasp at his will-o'-the-wisp.

"Oh! me!" Anthony sniggered. "I'm a scraper of odds and ends. I pick up
things in the gutter. Mind you, those Jews ain't such fools, though a
curse is on 'em, to wander forth. They know the meaning of the
multiplication table. They can turn fractions into whole numbers. No; I'm
not to be compared to gentlemen. My property's my respectability. I said
that at the beginning, and I say it now. But, I'll tell you what, brother
William John, it's an emotion when you've got bags of thousands of pounds
in your arms."

Ordinarily, the farmer was a sensible man, as straight on the level of
dull intelligence as other men; but so credulous was he in regard to the
riches possessed by his wife's brother, that a very little tempted him to
childish exaggeration of the probable amount. Now that Anthony himself
furnished the incitement, he was quite lifted from the earth. He had,
besides, taken more of the strong mixture than he was ever accustomed to
take in the middle of the day; and as it seemed to him that Anthony was
really about to be seduced into a particular statement of the extent of
the property which formed his respectability (as Anthony had chosen to
put it), he got up a little game in his head by guessing how much the
amount might positively be, so that he could subsequently compare his
shrewd reckoning with the avowed fact. He tamed his wild ideas as much as
possible; thought over what his wife used to say of Anthony's saving ways
from boyhood, thought of the dark hints of the Funds, of many bold
strokes for money made by sagacious persons; of Anthony's close style of
living, and of the lives of celebrated misers; this done, he resolved to
make a sure guess, and therefore aimed below the mark.

Money, when the imagination deals with it thus, has no substantial
relation to mortal