e was announced,
in consequence of some extravagant risks on 'Change, and eventually I
received but three shillings and fourpence in the pound for my bond of
sixty-three thousand.

When the money was paid I could not help exclaiming mentally, "Property
is in danger!"

The following morning Sir Joseph Job balanced his account with the world
by cutting his throat.

CHAPTER V. ABOUT THE SOCIAL-STAKE SYSTEM, THE DANGERS OF CONCENTRATION,
AND OTHER MORAL AND IMMORAL CURIOSITIES.

The affairs of my father were almost as easy of settlement as those of a
pauper. In twenty-four hours I was completely master of them, and found
myself if not the richest, certainly one of the richest subjects
of Europe. I say subjects, for sovereigns frequently have a way of
appropriating the effects of others that would render a pretension to
rivalry ridiculous. Debts there were none: and if there had been, ready
money was not wanting; the balance in cash in my favor at the bank
amounted in itself to a fortune.

The reader may now suppose that I was perfectly happy. Without a
solitary claim on either my time or my estate, I was in the enjoyment
of an income that materially exceeded the revenues of many reigning
princes. I had not an ex-pensive nor a vicious habit of any sort. Of
houses, horses, hounds, packs, and menials, there were none to vex or
perplex me. In every particular save one I was completely my own master.
That one was the near, dear, cherished sentiment that rendered Anna in
my eyes an angel (and truly she was little short of it in those of other
people), and made her the polar star to which every wish pointed. How
gladly would I have paid half a million just then to be the grandson of
a baronet with precedency from the seventeenth century!

There was, however, another and a present cause for un-easiness that
gave me even more concern than the fact that my family reached the dark
ages with so much embarrassing facility. In witnessing the dying agony
of my ancestor I had got a dread lesson on the vanity, the hopeless
character, the dangers, and the delusions of wealth that time can never
eradicate. The history of its accumulation was ever present to mar the
pleasure of its possession. I do not mean that I suspected what by
the world's convention is deemed dishonesty--of that there had been no
necessity--but simply that the heartless and estranged existence,
the waste of energies, the blunted charities, and the isolated