AN OUTLOOK UPON LIFE 



I look upon this craze for wealth that possesses 

 nearly all classes in our time as one of the most 

 lamentable spectacles the world has ever seen. 

 The old prayer, "Give me neither poverty nor 

 riches," is the only sane one. The grand mistake 

 we make is in supposing that because a little money 

 is a good thing, unlimited means is the sum of all 

 good, or that our happiness will keep pace with the 

 increase of our possessions. But such is not the 

 case, because the number of things we can reaUy 

 make our own is limited. We cannot drink the ocean 

 be we ever so thirsty. A cup of water from the 

 spring is all we need. A friend of mine once said 

 that if he outlived his wife, he should put upon her 

 tombstone, " Died of Things " — killed by the mul- 

 titude of her possessions. The number of people 

 who are thus killed is no doubt very great. When 

 Thoreau found that the specimens and curiosi- 

 ties that had accumulated upon his mantel-piece 

 needed dusting, he pitched them out of the window. 



The massing of a great fortune is a perilous enter- 

 prise. The giving away of a great fortune is equally 

 a perilous enterprise, not to the man who gives it — 

 it ought to be salutary to him — but to his bene- 

 ficiaries. 



Very many of the great fortunes of our time have 



been accumulated by a process like that of turning 



all the streams into your private reservoir : they have 



caused a great many people somewhere to be short 



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