his
life race. His chase after the material has left him so little time to
cultivate the ideal, that he has prepared himself a sad and aimless old
age; unless he can find pleasure in doing as did a man I have been told
about, who, receiving half a dozen millions from his father's estate,
conceived the noble idea of increasing them so that he might leave to
each of his four children as much as he had himself received. With the
strictest economy, and by suppressing out of his life and that of his
children all amusements and superfluous outlay, he has succeeded now for
many years in living on the income of his income. Time will never hang
heavy on this Harpagon's hands. He is a perfectly happy individual, but
his conversation is hardly of a kind to attract, and it may be doubted if
the rest of the family are as much to be envied.

An artist who had lived many years of his life in Paris and London was
speaking the other day of a curious phase he had remarked in our American
life. He had been accustomed over there to have his studio the meeting-
place of friends, who would drop in to smoke and lounge away an hour,
chatting as he worked. To his astonishment, he tells me that since he
has been in New York not one of the many men he knows has ever passed an
hour in his rooms. Is not that a significant fact? Another remark which
points its own moral was repeated to me recently. A foreigner visiting
here, to whom American friends were showing the sights of our city,
exclaimed at last: "You have not pointed out to me any celebrities except
millionaires. 'Do you see that man? he is worth ten millions. Look at
that house! it cost one million dollars, and there are pictures in it
worth over three million dollars. That trotter cost one hundred thousand
dollars,' etc." Was he not right? And does it not give my reader a
shudder to see in black and white the phrases that are, nevertheless, so
often on our lips?

This levelling of everything to its cash value is so ingrained in us that
we are unconscious of it, as we are of using slang or local expressions
until our attention is called to them. I was present once at a farce
played in a London theatre, where the audience went into roars of
laughter every time the stage American said, "Why, certainly." I was
indignant, and began explaining to my English friend that we never used
such an absurd phrase. "Are you sure?" he asked. "Why, certainly," I
said, and stopped, catchi