uld be cheap at the price of the few unmissed thousands which
the millionaire would pay for it. To such an experiment I would be
willing to submit, if it were only to ascertain whether I have been
right or wrong in my supposition that I am better qualified by nature
than my fellows for the right administration of wealth; but there is
one thing I would never do, I would never undertake that laborious
quest of wealth, which robs men of the power to enjoy it when it is
obtained.

It is there that the pinch comes; granted that some degree of
competence is needed for a free and various use of life, is it worth
while to destroy the power of living in attaining the means to live?
What is a man better for his wealth if he does not know how to use it?
A fool may steal a ship, but it takes a wise man to navigate her
towards the islands of the Blest. I am told sometimes that there is a
romance in business; no doubt there is, but it is pretty often the
romance of piracy; and the pleasures of the rich man are very often
nothing better than the pleasures of the pirate: a barbaric wading in
gold, a reckless piling up of treasure, which he has not the sense to
use. As long as there are shouting crews upon the sea and flaming
ships, he is happy; but give him at last the gold which he has striven
to win, and he knows nothing better than to sit like the successful
pirate in a common ale-house, and make his boast to boon companions. I
believe that the dullest men in all the world are very rich men; and I
have sometimes thought that it cannot need a very high order of
intelligence to acquire wealth, since some of the meanest of mankind
appear to prosper at the business. A certain vulpine shrewdness of
intelligence seems the thing most needed, and this may coexist with a
general dulness of mind which would disgrace a savage.

The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in
money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who
can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker,
values nothing that he buys. There is a subtle pleasure in the
extravagance that contests with prudence; in the anxious debates which
we hold with ourselves whether we can or cannot afford a certain thing;
in our attempts to justify our wisdom; in the risk and recklessness of
our operations; in the long deferred and final joy of our possession;
but this is a kind of pleasure which the man of boundless me