No. 4.] PLEASURES OF FARMING. 373 



that some only son may inherit and add to the thousands 

 left him. This heir no sooner inherits his father's property, 

 saved at so much sacrifice of comfort, than he looks al)Out 

 for what are to him pleasant ways of dissipating it. What 

 is one man's cure is another man's bane. 



While it is generally conceded that every one is in pursuit 

 of happiness, we have reason to fear that comparatively few 

 arrive at a result that completely satisfies them. Do you 

 know of any one who wants for nothing more ? In these 

 times of great individual or corporate wealth it would seem 

 that some might be beyond all wants, but it is not so. Rich 

 men occasionally retire from business on their wealth, but do 

 you happen to know of any who ever retires from a desire 

 to increase his wealth? Take the late A. T. Stewart, a man 

 who began his business life by peddling Irish linens from a 

 pack, and died childless, leaving millions to be fought tor in 

 endless courts. He was the only merchant in New York 

 that I ever heard of who under any and all circumstances 

 absolutely refused to compromise a debt, and I have reason 

 to think he was an unhappy man. The present Astors, 

 whose grandparents bought and sold pelts and shook out and 

 aired them, almost within my memory, on the ground now 

 covered by the great hotel bearing their name, are on the 

 rack morning, noon and night for more real estate that will 

 net them a, fair interest on a new investment, and the same 

 generation of Vanderbilts are at starvation point in pursuit 

 of more miles of railroad that they can absorb. Transpor- 

 tation is their desire, and it is legitimate, as the founder of 

 their great wealth, the " old commodore," was a stage drivei-. 

 This is not said in derision, for the present Vanderbilts are 

 large-hearted gentlemen ; but what it is to some of us to buy 

 or sell a yoke of oxen at a high or low figure, it is to them 

 to secure an extension of their lines of railroad ; the same in 

 kind, only dilierent in degree. A few years before Mr. 

 Stewart's death, he built for himself a marble palace on Fifih 

 Avenue. It was the wonder of New York and the envy of 

 all architects ; but some of our homes, even on the highest 

 hills of Massachusetts, entertain more guests annually than 

 did this one, and as })leasantly. The Vanderbilts have rival 

 and more jolly establishments on the same avenue, and ex- 



