a king, than be
a king and spend my money like a beggar. If it has got to go, let it
go. And this is my advice to the poor. For you can never be so poor
that whatever you do you can't do in a grand and manly way. I hate a
cross man. What right has a man to assassinate the joy of life? When
you go home you ought to go like a ray of light--so that it will, even
in the night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the
darkness. Some men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil;
they have been thinking about who will be Alderman from the Fifth Ward;
they have been thinking about politics, great and mighty questions have
been engaging their minds, they have bought calico at five cents or
six, and want to sell it for seven. Think of the intellectual strain
that must have been upon that man, and when he gets home everybody else
in the house must look out for his comfort. A woman who has only taken
care of five or six children, and one or two of them sick, has been
nursing them and singing to them, and trying to make one yard of cloth
do the work of two, she, of course, is fresh and fine and ready to wait
upon this gentleman--the head of the family--the boss. I was reading
the other day of an apparatus invented for the ejecting of gentlemen
who subsist upon free lunches. It is so arranged that when the fellow
gets both hands into the victuals, a large hand descends upon him, jams
his hat over his eyes--he is seized, turned toward the door, and just
in the nick of time an immense boot comes from the other side, kicks
him in italics, sends him out over the sidewalk and lands him rolling
in the gutter. I never hear of such a man--a boss--that I don't feel
as though that machine ought to be brought into requisition for his
benefit.

Love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent of interest on the
outlay. Love is the only thing in which the height of extravagance is
the last degree of economy. It is the only thing, I tell you. Joy is
wealth. Love is the legal tender of the soul--and you need not be rich
to be happy. We have all been raised on success in this country.
Always been talked with about being successful, and have never thought
ourselves very rich unless we were the possessors of some magnificent
mansion, and unless our names have been between the putrid lips of
rumor we could not be happy. Every little boy is striving to be this
and be that. I tell you the happy man is the successful