n; both depend more upon fortune than skill; they have a
common distaste for labor; with each, right and wrong are only the
accidents of a game; neither would scruple in any hour to set his whole
being on the edge of ruin, and going over, to pull down, if possible, a
hundred others.

The wreck of such men leaves them with a drunkard's appetite, and a
fiend's desperation. The revulsion from extravagant hopes, to a certainty
of midnight darkness; the sensations of poverty, to him who was in fancy
just stepping upon a princely estate; the humiliation of gleaning for
cents, where he has been profuse of dollars; the chagrin of seeing old
competitors now above him, grinning down upon his poverty a malignant
triumph; the pity of pitiful men, and the neglect of such as should have
been his friends,--and who were, while the sunshine lay upon his
path,--all these things, like so many strong winds, sweep across the soul
so that it cannot rest in the cheerless tranquility of honesty, but _casts
up mire and dirt_. How stately the balloon rises and sails over
continents, as over petty landscapes! The slightest slit in its frail
covering sends it tumbling down, swaying widely, whirling and pitching
hither and thither, until it plunges into some dark glen, out of the path
of honest men, and too shattered to tempt even a robber. So have we seen a
thousand men pitched down; so now, in a thousand places may their wrecks
be seen. But still other balloons are framing, and the air is full of
victim-venturers.

If our young men are introduced to life with distaste for safe ways,
because the sure profits are slow; if the opinion becomes prevalent that
all business is great, only as it tends to the uncertain, the extravagant,
and the romantic; then we may stay our hand at once, nor waste labor in
absurd expostulations of honesty. I had as lief preach humanity to a
battle of eagles, as to urge honesty and integrity upon those who have
_determined_ to be rich, and to gain it by gambling stakes, and madmen's
ventures.

All the bankruptcies of commerce are harmless compared with a bankruptcy
of public morals. Should the Atlantic ocean break over our shores, and
roll sheer across to the Pacific, sweeping every vestige of cultivation,
and burying our wealth, it would be a mercy, compared to that ocean-deluge
of dishonesty and crime, which, sweeping over the whole land, has spared
our wealth and taken our virtue. What are cornfields and vineyards, w