ermanent pleasure, commend me to Avarice! Yes, O
my Bobus, I, who was once, as to money, "still in motion of raging
waste," and, like Timon, "senseless of expense,"--I, who have many a
time borrowed cash of you with amiable recklessness, and have never
asked you to take it back again,--I, who have had many a race with the
constable, and have sometimes been overtaken,--I, who have in my callow
days spoken disrespectfully of Mammon in several charming copies of
verses,--I am waxing sordid. I am for the King of Lydia against Solon.
How do I know that the insolent Cyras was not blandished out of his
bloodthirsty intention of roasting his deposed brother by a little cash
which the son of Gyges had saved out of the wide, weltering wreck of
his wealth, and had concealed in his boots? Royal palms were not wholly
free from _pruritus_ even then. Why has this silly world still
persisted in putting long ears upon Midas? I do not know whether he
sang better or worse than Apollo; and I am sure it is much better, and
bespeaks more sense, to play the flute ill than to play it well. Depend
upon it, his Majesty of Phrygia has been very much abused by the
mythologists. With that particular skill of his, during an epidemic of
the _brevitas pecuniaria_, (_Angl._ shorts,) he would have been just
the person to coax into one's house of accompt, at five minutes before
two o'clock in the afternoon, to work a little involuntary
transmutation,--to change the coal-scuttle into ingots, and the ruler
into a great, gorged, glittering _rouleau_. So little would his
auricular eccentricity have hindered his welcome, that I verily believe
he would have been heartily received, if he had come with ensanguined
chaps straight from the pillory, and had left both ears nailed to the
post.

Don't talk to me about filthy lucre! Pray, when would Sheikh Tahar,
that eminent Koordish saint, have become convinced that he was a great
sinner, if they had not carried about the contribution-boxes in the
little New England churches? Do you think it has cost nothing to
demonstrate to the widows of Scindiah the folly of _suttee_? Don't you
know that it has been an expensive work to persuade the Khonds of
Goomsoor to give up roasting each other in the name of Heaven? Very
fine is Epictetus,--but wilt he be your bail? Will Diogenes bring home
legs of mutton? Can you breakfast upon the simple fact that riches have
wings and use them? Can you lunch upon _vanitas vanitatum_? Are l