funded-properties, temporary (very temporary)
landed properties of the world, at one swoop, it would avail you
nothing. Henceforth for you no harvests in the Seedfield of this
Universe, which reserves its salutary bounties, and noble heaven-sent
gifts, for quite other than you; and I would not give a pin's value for
all YOU will ever reap there. Mere imaginary harvests, sacks of nuggets
and the like; empty as the east-wind;--with all the Demons laughing at
you! Do you consider that Nature too is a swollen flunky, hungry for
veils; and can be taken in with your sublime airs of sumptuosity,
and the large balance you actually have in Lombard Street? Go to
the--General Cesspool, with your nuggets and your ducats!"

The flunky world, much stript of its plush and fat perquisites, accuses
Friedrich Wilhelm bitterly of avarice and the cognate vices. But it is
not so; intrinsically, in the main, his procedure is to be defined as
honorable thrift,--verging towards avarice here and there; as poor human
virtues usually lean to one side or the other! He can be magnificent
enough too, and grudges no expense, when the occasion seems worthy. If
the occasion is inevitable, and yet not quite worthy, I have known him
have recourse to strange shifts. The Czar Peter, for example, used to be
rather often in the Prussian Dominions, oftenest on business of his own:
such a man is to be royally defrayed while with us; yet one would
wish it done cheap. Posthorses, "two hundred and eighty-seven at every
station," he has from the Community; but the rest of his expenses, from
Memel all the way to Wesel? Friedrich Wilhelm's marginal response to his
FINANZ-DIRECTORIUM, requiring orders once on that subject, runs in the
following strange tenor: "Yes, all the way (except Berlin, which I take
upon myself); and observe, you contrive to do it for 6,000 thalers (900
pounds),--which is uncommonly cheap, about 1 pound per mile;--won't
allow you one other penny (_nit einen Pfennig gebe mehr dazu_); but you
are (_sollen Sie_)," this is the remarkable point, "to give out in the
world that it costs me from Thirty to Forty Thousand!" [1717: Forster,
i. 213.] So that here is the Majesty of Prussia, who beyond all men
abhors lies, giving orders to tell one? Alas, yes; a kind of lie, or fib
(white fib, or even GRAY), the pinch of Thrift compelling! But what
a window into the artless inner-man of his Majesty, even that GRAY
fib;--not done by oneself, but ordered to be