his tact, and so are greatly wanting in pity and
discretion. Are they not unreasonable to complain of envy, after having
done everything to provoke it?

But the greatest lack is that want of discernment which leads men to
ground their pride in their fortune. To begin with, it is a childish
confusion of thought to consider wealth as a personal quality; it would
be hard to find a more ingenuous fashion of deceiving one's self as to
the relative value of the container and the thing contained. I have no
wish to dwell on this question: it is too painful. And yet one cannot
resist saying to those concerned: "Take care, do not confound what you
possess with what you are. Go learn to know the under side of worldly
splendor, that you may feel its moral misery and its puerility." The
traps pride sets for us are too ridiculous. We should distrust
association with a thing that make us hateful to our neighbors and robs
us of clearness of vision.

He who yields to the pride of riches, forgets this other point, the most
important of all--that possession is a public trust. Without doubt,
individual wealth is as legitimate as individual existence and liberty.
These things are inseparable, and it is a dream pregnant with dangers
that offers battle to such fundamentals of life. But the individual
touches society at every point, and all he does should be done with the
whole in view. Possession, then, is less a privilege of which to be
proud than a charge whose gravity should be felt. As there is an
apprenticeship, often very difficult to serve, for the exercise of every
social office, so this profession we call wealth demands an
apprenticeship. To know how to be rich is an art, and one of the least
easy of arts to master. Most people, rich and poor alike, imagine that
in opulence one has nothing to do but to take life easy. That is why so
few men know how to be rich. In the hands of too many, wealth, according
to the genial and redoubtable comparison of Luther, is like a harp in
the hoofs of an ass. They have no idea of the manner of its use.

So when we encounter a man at once rich and simple, that is to say, who
considers his wealth as a means of fulfilling his mission in the world,
we should offer him our homage, for he is surely mark-worthy. He has
surmounted obstacles, borne trials, and triumphed in temptations both
gross and subtle. He does not fail to discriminate between the contents
of his pocketbook and the contents of his head