y. I pity a rich man's son. A rich man's son in these
days of ours occupies a very difficult position. They are to be pitied.
A rich man's son cannot know the very best things in human life. He
cannot. The statistics of Massachusetts show us that not one out of
seventeen rich men's sons ever die rich. They are raised in luxury, they
die in poverty. Even if a rich man's son retains his father's money even
then he cannot know the best things of life.

A young man in our college yonder asked me to formulate for him what I
thought was the happiest hour in a man's history, and I studied it long
and came back convinced that the happiest hour that any man ever sees in
any earthly matter is when a young man takes his bride over the
threshold of the door, for the first time, of the house he himself has
earned and built, when he turns to his bride and with an eloquence
greater than any language of mine, he sayeth to his wife, "My loved one,
I earned this home myself; I earned it all. It is all mine, and I divide
it with thee." That is the grandest moment a human heart may ever see.
But a rich man's son cannot know that. He goes into a finer mansion, it
may be, but he is obliged to go through the house and say, "Mother gave
me this, mother gave me that, my mother gave me that, my mother gave me
that," until his wife wishes she had married his mother. Oh, I pity a
rich man's son. I do. Until he gets so far along in his dudeism that he
gets his arms up like that and can't get them down. Didn't you ever see
any of them astray at Atlantic City? I saw one of these scarecrows once
and I never tire thinking about it. I was at Niagara Falls lecturing,
and after the lecture I went to the hotel, and when I went up to the
desk there stood there a millionaire's son from New York. He was an
indescribable specimen of anthropologic potency. He carried a
gold-headed cane under his arm--more in its head than he had in his. I
do not believe I could describe the young man if I should try. But still
I must say that he wore an eye-glass he could not see through; patent
leather shoes he could not walk in, and pants he could not sit down
in--dressed like a grasshopper! Well, this human cricket came up to the
clerk's desk just as I came in. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in
this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it's "Hinglish, you know," to
lisp: "Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome
papah and thome envelopehs!" The cle