ng the twinkle in his eye.

It is very much the same thing with money. We do not notice how often it
slips into the conversation. "Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth
speaketh." Talk to an American of a painter and the charm of his work.
He will be sure to ask, "Do his pictures sell well?" and will lose all
interest if you say he can't sell them at all. As if that had anything
to do with it!

Remembering the well-known anecdote of Schopenhauer and the gold piece
which he used to put beside his plate at the _table d'hote_, where he
ate, surrounded by the young officers of the German army, and which was
to be given to the poor the first time he heard any conversation that was
not about promotion or women, I have been tempted to try the experiment
in our clubs, changing the subjects to stocks and sport, and feel
confident that my contributions to charity would not ruin me.

All this has had the result of making our men dull companions; after
dinner, or at a country house, if the subject they love is tabooed, they
talk of nothing! It is sad for a rich man (unless his mind has remained
entirely between the leaves of his ledger) to realize that money really
buys very little, and above a certain amount can give no satisfaction in
proportion to its bulk, beyond that delight which comes from a sense of
possession. Croesus often discovers as he grows old that he has
neglected to provide himself with the only thing that "is a joy for
ever"--a cultivated intellect--in order to amass a fortune that turns to
ashes, when he has time to ask of it any of the pleasures and resources
he fondly imagined it would afford him. Like Talleyrand's young man who
would not learn whist, he finds that he has prepared for himself a
dreadful old age!

No. 16--A Holy Land

Not long ago an article came under my notice descriptive of the
neighborhood around Grant's tomb and the calm that midsummer brings to
that vicinity, laughingly referred to as the "Holy Land."

As careless fingers wandering over the strings of a violin may
unintentionally strike a chord, so the writer of those lines, all
unconsciously, with a jest, set vibrating a world of tender memories and
associations; for the region spoken of is truly a holy land to me, the
playground of my youth, and connected with the sweetest ties that can
bind one's thoughts to the past.

Ernest Renan in his _Souvenirs d'Enfance_, tells of a Brittany legend,
firmly believed in t