actually made
people laugh, which, as we now know, is not the purpose of humour--a
novelist who incessantly "caricatured Nature" and by these inartistic
and underhand methods created characters that are more real to us than
the folk we jostle in the street and (God knows!) far more vital and
worthy of attention than the folk who "cannot read Dickens"--you will
find, I say, a note of an idea which he never afterward developed,
running to this effect: "Full length portrait of his lordship,
surrounded by worshippers. Sensible men enough, agreeable men enough,
independent men enough in a certain way; but the moment they begin
to circle round my lord, and to shine with a borrowed light from
his lordship, heaven and earth, how mean and subservient! What a
competition and outbidding of each other in servility!"

And this, with "my lord" and "his lordship" erased to make way for the
word "money," is my moral. The folk who have just left Selwoode were
honest enough as honesty goes nowadays; kindly as any of us dare
be who have our own way to make among very stalwart and determined
rivals; generous as any man may venture to be in a world where
the first of every month finds the butcher and the baker and the
candlestick-maker rapping at the door with their little bills: but
they cringed to money. It was very wrong of them, my dear lady, and in
extenuation I can only plead that they could no more help cringing to
money than you or I can help it.

This is very crude and very cynical, but unfortunately it is true.

We always cringe to money; which is humiliating. And the sun always
rises at an hour when sensible people are abed and have not the least
need for its services; which is foolish. And what you and I, my dear
madam, are to do about rectifying either one of these vexatious
circumstances, I am sure I don't know.

We can, at least, be honest. Let us, then, console ourselves at will
with moral observations concerning the number of pockets in a shroud
and the difficulty of a rich man's entering into the kingdom of
Heaven; but with an humble and reverent heart, let us admit that, in
the world we know, money rules. Its presence awes us. And if we are
quite candid we must concede that we very unfeignedly envy and admire
the rich; we must grant that money confers a certain distinction on a
man, be he the veriest ass that ever heehawed a platitude, and that we
cannot but treat him accordingly, you and I.

You are friendly, of c