ght

"Shaped the world,
And laid it in the sunbeams."

Flint's God is Gold.--

"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammered and rolled;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold;
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled;
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the church-yard mould;
Price of many a crime untold:
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!"

Flint is about fifty-three years of age; but if you could forget his gray
hair, and look only at those small, piercing black eyes, you would hardly
think him forty. His black dress-coat is buttoned around his somewhat
attenuated form, and he wears a stiff white cravat because it looks
religious. In this respect, and perhaps in others, you will find Flint's
prototype on every corner--people who look religious, if religion can be
associated with the aspect of an undertaker.

It is Monday morning.

Mr. Flint sits in his private office reading the letters. There is a window
cut in the wall, and he glances through it now and then, eyeing the
book-keeper as if the poor careworn fellow were making false entries. On a
high consumptive-looking stool sits the office boy, filing away answered
letters and sundry bills paid. The stool seems so high and the boy so
small, that he at once suggests some one occupying a dangerous position--at
a mast-head or on the golden ball of a church-steeple. For thus risking his
life, he receives "thirty dollars per year, _and_ clothing." We like to
have forgotten that. The said clothing consists of one white cravat full of
hinges, and a dilapidated coat, twelve sizes too large for him, his widowed
mother supplying the deficiency.

Save the monotonous ticking of a thick-set, croupy clock, and the nervous
scratching of pens, not a sound is heard.

Mr. Flint in deep thought, with his thumbs lost in the arm-holes of a white
vest, paces up and down his limited sanctum, just as a thoughtful-eyed,
velvet-mouthed leopard walks its confined cage, only waiting for a chance
to put its paws on somebody. The stool on which the boy is sitting is a
rickety concern, and its creakings annoy Mr. Flint, who comes out, and
looks over the orphan's shoulder. If his lynx eyes discover a document
incorrectly filed, he pinches the delinquent's ears, till he (the orphan)
is as red in the face as an August sunset. Mr. Flint chuckles when he