he fact that a
woman is unreasonable. Thus, again, the very pious poet, celebrating his
Creator, takes pleasure in saying that God moves in a mysterious way.
Now, the writer of the paragraph which I have quoted does not seem to
have had anything to do with a god, and I should not think (judging by
his extreme unpracticality) that he had ever been really in love with a
woman. But the thing he does worship--Vanderbilt--he treats in exactly
this mystical manner. He really revels in the fact his deity Vanderbilt
is keeping a secret from him. And it fills his soul with a sort of
transport of cunning, an ecstasy of priestcraft, that he should pretend
to be telling to the multitude that terrible secret which he does not
know.

Speaking about the instinct that makes people rich, the same writer
remarks---

"In olden days its existence was fully understood. The Greeks enshrined
it in the story of Midas, of the 'Golden Touch.' Here was a man who
turned everything he laid his hands upon into gold. His life was a
progress amidst riches. Out of everything that came in his way he
created the precious metal. 'A foolish legend,' said the wiseacres of
the Victorian age. 'A truth,' say we of to-day. We all know of such men.
We are ever meeting or reading about such persons who turn everything
they touch into gold. Success dogs their very footsteps. Their life's
pathway leads unerringly upwards. They cannot fail."

Unfortunately, however, Midas could fail; he did. His path did not lead
unerringly upward. He starved because whenever he touched a biscuit or a
ham sandwich it turned to gold. That was the whole point of the story,
though the writer has to suppress it delicately, writing so near to a
portrait of Lord Rothschild. The old fables of mankind are, indeed,
unfathomably wise; but we must not have them expurgated in the interests
of Mr. Vanderbilt. We must not have King Midas represented as an example
of success; he was a failure of an unusually painful kind. Also, he had
the ears of an ass. Also (like most other prominent and wealthy persons)
he endeavoured to conceal the fact. It was his barber (if I remember
right) who had to be treated on a confidential footing with regard to
this peculiarity; and his barber, instead of behaving like a go-ahead
person of the Succeed-at-all-costs school and trying to blackmail King
Midas, went away and whispered this splendid piece of society scandal to
the reeds, who enjoyed it enormously. It i