ans never
knows. The buying of pictures affords us an excellent illustration on
this point. Men of the type of Balzac's _Cousin Pons_ attain to
rapture in the process because they are poor. They have to walk weary
miles and wait long weeks to get upon the track of their treasure; to
use all their knowledge of art and men to circumvent the malignity of
dealers; to experience the extremes of trepidation and of hope; to deny
themselves comforts, and perhaps food, that they may pay the price
which has at last, after infinite dispute, reached an irreducible
minimum; and the pleasure of their possession is in the ratio of their
pains. But the man who enters a sale-room with the knowledge that he
can have everything he wishes by the signing of a cheque feels none of
these emotions. It seems to me that money has lost more than half its
value since cheques became common. When men kept their gold in iron
coffers, lock-fast cupboards, or a pot buried in an orchard, there was
something tangible in wealth. When it came to counting out gold pieces
in a bag, men remembered by what sweat of mind or body wealth was won,
and they had a sense of parting with something which was really theirs.
But a cheque has never yet impressed me with the least sense of its
intrinsic value. It is a thing so trivial and fragile that the mind
refuses to regard it as the equivalent of lands and houses and solid
bullion. It is a thing incredible to reason that with a stroke of the
pen a man may sign away his thousands. If cheques were prohibited by
law, and all payments made in good coin of the realm, I believe we
should all be much more careful in our expenditure, for we should have
at least some true symbol of what expenditure implies.

In an ideal state all incomes beyond 10,000 pounds per year should be
prohibited. Almost all the real luxuries of life may be enjoyed on
half that sum; and even this is an excessive estimate. Such a
regulation would be of vast advantage to the rich, simply because it
would impose some limit at which economy commenced. They would then
begin to enjoy their wealth. Avarice would decline, for obviously it
would not be worth while to accumulate a larger fortune than the State
permitted. We might also expect some improvement in manners, for there
would be no room for that vulgar ostentation in which excessive wealth
delights. If a man chose to exceed the limit which the law prescribed
he would do so as a public