me; but we could be
happy anywhere so long as we had ourselves and our health and a few
books. However, I wasn't thinking of myself. I've got a friend in the
brokering business who says it's the millionaires that do most of the
worrying anyhow. Naturally a man with a pile of money has to look after
it; but what puzzles me is why anybody should want it in the first
place."

He searched along a well-filled and disordered shelf of shabby books.

"Here's what William James says about it:

"'We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who
elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. We have
lost the power of even imagining what the ancient idealization of
poverty could have meant--the liberation from material attachments; the
unbribed soul; the manlier indifference; the paying our way by what we
are or do, and not by what we have; the right to fling away our life at
any moment irresponsibly--the more athletic trim, in short the moral
fighting shape.... It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty
among the educated class is the worst moral disease from which our
civilization suffers.'"

"I guess he's about right," I agreed.

"That's my idea exactly," answered Hastings. "As I look at it the curse
of most of the people living on Fifth Avenue is that they're perfectly
safe. You could take away nine-tenths of what they've got and they'd
still have about a hundred times more money than they needed to be
comfortable. They're like a whole lot of fat animals in an
inclosure--they're fed three or four times a day, but the wire fence
that protects them from harm deprives them of any real liberty. Or
they're like goldfish swimming round and round in a big bowl. They can
look through sort of dimly; but they can't get out! If they really knew,
they'd trade their security for their freedom any time.

"Perfect safety isn't an unmixed blessing by any means. Look at the
photographs of the wild Indians--the ones that carried their lives in
their hands every minute--and there's something stern and noble about
their faces. Put an Indian on a reservation and he takes to drinking
whisky. It was the same way with the chaps that lived in the Middle Ages
and had to wear shirts of chainmail. It kept 'em guessing. That's merely
one phase of it.

"The real thing to put the bite into life is having a Cause. People
forget how to make sacrifices--or become afraid to. After all, even
dying isn't such a trem