oston merchants of the olden time, William Gray, when asked what would
satisfy him, replied, 'A little more;' while the Indian to whom the same
inquiry was made, replied with aboriginal simplicity: 'All the whisky
and all the tobacco in the world.' 'Nothing else?' added the inquirer.
'Yes,' replied the Indian in an anxious tone, 'a little more whisky.'
The same insatiable craving is shown in poor Isaac K----, the
half-witted boy, whose droll sayings of a half-century ago are still
remembered about Boston. 'Father,' he one day exclaimed, 'I wish every
body was dead but you and me.' 'Why so, my son?' 'Why, then, father, you
and I would go out and buy all the world.'

The power of gold to inflict pain on its possessor suggests deep
philosophical inquiry. Even at a superficial view, one can not but be
struck by the fatal facility which it affords to vice on the one hand,
while on the other, how many suffer untold distress from the miser's
self-inflicted poverty? There are multitudes of ruined youth, who, had
they been bound to labor instead of being reared to a life of affluent
ease, would have become useful men. Indeed, by merely changing the
costume of Hogarth's _Rake's Progress_, we may see it enacted by scores
of young men in any of our leading cities. The writer once knew a
worn-out debauchee of thirty, who, even at that early age, had got rid
of an inheritance of a half-million.

The miseries of poverty are severe, and such men as Johnson and De
Quincey have painted them in colors drawn from their own experience; but
what scenes vastly more terrible might they not have sketched had they
held that master-key which unlocks the abodes of pleasure and summons
the dreadful crew of temptation?

One can not but pity the former of these, as he thinks of his wandering
the live-long night through the streets of London, unable to buy a
lodging, and eating each occasional meal, not knowing when he would get
another. Yet, had as this might have been, how vastly more pitiable
would his case have been, had he fulfilled the infernal career of some
of his rich cotemporaries, such as Lord Lyttelton or Lord Euston, whose
dying horrors Young has so thrillingly described in his _Altamont_.
Horace, who had so thoroughly studied the philosophy of life, could
refer to his lowly condition:

'Saeva paupertas et avitus apto
Cum lare fundus:'

and then cite the race reared in poverty as those who saved the
commonwealth, by defeating Ha