tions (at any rate, before the war), that the only thing in the
world for which we as a people care is success as measured by money. A
walk about any day will give this ridiculous idea a black eye. Any one
with ears to his head will perceive that we scorn things which are to
be had for money. Money! What is that? Phew! Everybody has it. It
is mine, it is yours, it is nothing--trash. Any one with a brain-pan
under his hat will recognise inside of half an hour that we are
anything but a nation of shopkeepers spiritually. It is as plain as a
pike-staff that we are a nation of perfectly rabid idealists. It is
sounded on every side that the things which we most fervently prize,
inordinately covet, envy possession of, and hold most proudly, are
precisely those things which the wealth of the Indies would not
procure. To wit:

Jimmy was a waiter, humble, but celebrated--as a waiter--among a
circle. An admirer of Jimmy's, a journalist continually on the lookout
for copy, wrote him up for the paper at space rates. Thence till the
day Broadway suffered his loss by untimely death did Jimmy fold and
unfold his worn clipping to exhibit with a full heart this tribute to
him which was of a kind (as he never failed to say) which "money could
not buy." It is reported upon reasonably reliable authority that
Jimmy's last words, in a faint whisper, were: "Money could not have
bought------" And then he went on his way.

So it was, too, with a tobacconist whom I knew--who had an article
framed which referred to his shop. "In such a paper, too!" he
exclaimed a hundred times a day, "money could not have bought it."

Your aunt has a lot of old spavined furniture which would bring about
tu'pence at public sale. Some of it was your great-aunt's. All of it
has been in the family from time immemorial; and its peculiar and
considerable value, your aunt and her neighbours are agreed, resides in
the esoteric fact that it is the kind of thing which "money couldn't
buy."

Health is a great blessing, and, we are repeatedly told, we should
prize it beyond measure,--as it is a thing that money will not buy.

His money, it is commonly said of a rich man in bereavement, will not
bring his son back to life. The impotency of money in the life of the
spirit is notorious among us. Of a deceased miser we declare with
satisfaction: "Well, he can't take his money with him." And money--the
righteous well know--will get none into heaven.

W