s gotten a curse. It is
no help to a young man or woman to inherit money. It is no help to your
children to leave them money, but if you leave them education, if you
leave them Christian and noble character, if you leave them a wide
circle of friends, if you leave them an honorable name, it is far better
than that they should have money. It would be worse for them, worse for
the nation, that they should have any money at all. Oh, young man, if
you have inherited money, don't regard it as a help. It will curse you
through your years, and deprive you of the very best things of
human life. There is no class of people to be pitied so much as the
inexperienced sons and daughters of the rich of our generation. I pity
the rich man's son. He can never know the best things in life.

One of the best things in our life is when a young man has earned his
own living, and when he becomes engaged to some lovely young woman, and
makes up his mind to have a home of his own. Then with that same love
comes also that divine inspiration toward better things, and he begins
to save his money. He begins to leave off his bad habits and put money
in the bank. When he has a few hundred dollars he goes out in the
suburbs to look for a home. He goes to the savings-bank, perhaps, for
half of the value, and then goes for his wife, and when he takes his
bride over the threshold of that door for the first time he says in
words of eloquence my voice can never touch: "I have earned this home
myself. It is all mine, and I divide with thee." That is the grandest
moment a human heart may ever know.

But a rich man's son can never know that. He takes his bride into a
finer mansion, it may be, but he is obliged to go all the way through
it and say to his wife, "My mother gave me that, my mother gave me that,
and my mother gave me this," until his wife wishes she had married his
mother. I pity the rich man's son.

The statistics of Massachusetts showed that not one rich man's son out
of seventeen ever dies rich. I pity the rich man's sons unless they have
the good sense of the elder Vanderbilt, which sometimes happens. He went
to his father and said, "Did you earn all your money?" "I did, my son. I
began to work on a ferry-boat for twenty-five cents a day." "Then," said
his son, "I will have none of your money," and he, too, tried to get
employment on a ferry-boat that Saturday night. He could not get one
there, but he did get a place for three dollars a wee