t good does it do to heap up such a lot of money
jest to think you own it and hide it from the tax collector? And bring
up your daughters to luxury and foolish display, their gole being to
give you a titled son-in-law who will bend down toward you from his
eminence jest fur enough to reach your pockets, and if you refuse to
have them emptied too many times you will anon or oftener have your
daughter returned to you, her beauty eat up by sorrow, her ears
tinglin' and heart burnin' with experiences a poor girl would never
know. And bring up your sons to idleness and temptation, when you
know, Mr. Astofeller, that it is Earnest Toil, wise-headed,
hard-handed step-ma, that goads her sons on to labor and success. And
it is not, as a rule, the sons of millionaires who are our great men.
It is the sons of Labor and Privation that hold the prizes of life
to-day and will to-morrow."

And sez I, reasonable: "What is the use, Mr. Astofeller, of so much
money, anyway? You can't ride in but one buggy at a time, or wear more
than one coat and vest, or sleep on more than one bed and three
pillers at the outside, or eat more than three meals a day with any
comfort, so why not let poorer folks have a chance to eat one meal a
day--lots of 'em would be tickled to death to.

"Our Lord said: 'Take no thought for the morrow what ye shall eat or
what ye shall drink;' and He must have meant that the time wuz comin'
when juster laws should prevail, when Mammon should yield to Mercy and
plunder changed to plenty for all and no burden of riches for any. The
Bible sez that in those days when the pure influence of Jesus still
rested on his disciples that they had everything in common."

Sez Mr. Astofeller, "Start ten men out rich Monday morning, and nine
of them would be poor Saturday night, and the tenth one would own the
money of all the rest."

And I sez: "I presoom so, if they had their own way, and that is a big
argument to prove that there ought to be a wise head and a merciful
hand at the hellum to look out for the hull on 'em. A good father and
mother with a big family of children takes care of the hull on 'em.
And if one is miserly and one a spendthrift and one a dissipator and
one over-ambitious they watch over 'em and curb these different traits
of theirn and adjust 'em to the good of all and the honor of their pa
and ma. They spur on the indolent and improvident, hold back the
greedy and ambitious, watch and see that the careless an