sent home. Some days afterward, I was showing it to a friend.

"What did you pay for it?" he asked.

"Forty dollars," I replied.

The friend smiled strangely.

"What's the matter?" said I.

"He offered it to me for twenty-five."

"That picture?"

"Yes."

"He asked me eighty for this and another, and said he had refused a
hundred for the pair."

"He lied though. He thought, as you were well off, that he must ask you
a good stiff price, or you wouldn't buy."

"The scoundrel!"

"He got ahead of you, certainly."

"But it's the last time," said I, angrily.

And so things went on. Scarcely a day passed in which my fame as a
wealthy citizen did not subject me to some kind of experiment from
people in want of money. If I employed a porter for any service and
asked what was to pay, after the work was done, ten chances to one that
he didn't touch his hat and reply,

"Anything that you please, sir," in the hope that I, being a rich man,
would be ashamed to offer him less than about four times his regular
price. Poor people in abundance called upon me for aid; and all sorts of
applications to give or lend money met me at every turn. And when I, in
self-defence, begged off as politely as possible, hints gentle or broad,
according to the characters or feelings of those who came, touching the
hardening and perverting influence of wealth, were thrown out for my
especial edification.

And still the annoyance continues. Nobody but myself doubts the fact
that I am worth from seventy to a hundred thousand dollars, and I
am, therefore, considered allowable game for all who are too idle or
prodigal to succeed in the world; or as Nature's almoner to all who are
suffering from misfortunes.

Soon after the publication to which I have alluded was foisted upon our
community as a veritable document, I found myself a secular dignitary
in the church militant. Previously I had been only a pew-holder, and an
unambitious attendant upon the Sabbath ministrations of the Rev. Mr----.
But a new field suddenly opened before me; I was a man of weight and
influence, and must be used for what I was worth. It is no joke, I can
assure the reader, when I tell them that the way my pocket suffered was
truly alarming. I don't know, but I have seriously thought, sometimes,
that if I hadn't kicked loose from my dignity, I would have been
gazetted as a bankrupt long before this time.

Soon after sending in my resignation as vestryman or deacon,