, and Graces--go to bloom in
other spheres--but when Benevolence would bless, and bless for ages,
his blessing is vain, but for money--when Wisdom would teach, and teach
for ages, the teacher must be fed, and the school built, and the scholar
helped upon his way by money--righteous money. There is a righteous
money as there is unrighteous mammon; but both have their ministrations
here limited to earth and time; the one, a fruit of heaven--the other, a
fungus from below: yet the fruit will bring no blessing, if the Grower
be forgotten; neither shall the fungus yield a poison, if warmed awhile
beneath the better sun. Like all other gifts, given to us sweet, but
spoilt in the using, gold may turn to good or ill: Health may kick, like
fat Jeshurun in his wantonness; Power may change from beneficence to
tyranny; Learning may grow critical in motes until it overlooks the
sunbeam; Love may be degraded to an instinct; Zaccheus may turn
Pharisee; Religion may cant into the hypocrite, or dogmatize to
theologic hate. Even so it is with money: its power of doing good has no
other equivalent in this world than its power of doing evil: it is like
fire--used for hospitable warmth, or wide-wasting ravages; like air--the
gentle zephyr, or the destroying hurricane. Nevertheless, all is for
this world--this world only; a matter extraneous to the spirit, always
foreign, often-times adversary: let a man beware of lading himself with
that thick clay.

I see a cygnet on the broad Pactolus, stemming the waters with its downy
breast; and anon, it would rise upon the wing, and soar to other skies;
so, taking down that snow-white sail, it seeks for a moment to rest its
foot on shore, and thence take flight: alas, poor bird! thou art sinking
in those golden sands, the heavy morsels clog thy flapping wing--in
vain--in vain thou triest to rise--Pactolus chains thee down.

Even such is wealth unto the wisest; wealth at its purest source,
exponent of labour and of mind. But, to the frequent fool, heaped with
foulest dross--for the cygnet of Pactolus and those golden sands,
read--the hippopotamus wallowing in the Niger, and smothered in a bay of
mud.

CHAPTER L.

THE CROCK A BLESSING.

THERE was no will found: it is likely Mrs. Quarles had never made one;
she feared death too much, and all that put her in mind of it. So the
next of kin, the only one to have the crock of gold, was Susan Scott, a
good, honest, hard-working woman, whom Jenni