Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OH THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

189

PUNCH'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.

LETTER XV.—WEALTH AND ITS USES. STORY OF THE SLIPPERS.
" JUST ENOUGH."

One of the best and most satisfactory uses of wealth, my dear boy,
is to dazzle with our riches the eyes of our neighbours. Your dear
mother once hit this point to a nicety. We had long expected the
payment of a small legacy bequeathed to her by a distant relation,
whose exact degree of kindred I cared not much to inquire into. It
was enough for us that your dear mother's name was down in the
will; and that the executors—two unexceptionable attorneys—pro-
mised some day or another to faithfully perform the injunctions of
the dear deceased. "And when we get this money," said your
mother to me in a moment of connubial confidence, " I'll tell you
what we'll do with it—I'll tell you, my love, what we'll do with it."
As I knew she would proceed no further until I begged to know
her intentions, I at once put the question. " What, my dearest,
what will you do with it %" " Why, my love," answered your parent,
her eyes sparkling with pleasure, " we'll take the plate out of pawn.

and give a party." Yes ; the great gratification to be gathered from
the legacy was, that we might flash our four tea-spoons and pair of
tongs in the eyes of people for whom we had not the slightest esteem ;
and to one of whom your mother had, I know, on three occasions cap-
tiously refused the loan of her bellows.

You will find, as you know more of the world, that your mother's
tea-spoons and tongs are, albeit the humble, yet the true representa-
tives of whole buffets of plate- You will possibly find yourself invited
to feast with a man who cares no little whether you have a dinner or
not • his only object is to show you your envious face in his golden
salvers, to make your mouth water with his Dutch fruit-pieces ; in a
word, not to fill your belly with his turtle and venison, but to possess
your mind with a prostrating sense of his wealth. He takes posses-
sion of your admiration, as a feudal chief receives the homage of his
vassal. And this you are to consider the true use—the real dignity
of wealth.

There are some enthusiasts—that is, the generous mob of philan-
thropists with empty pockets—who vow that wealth is only given to
the rich in trust for the poor. Whilst you remain a pauper, remain
-of this religion—when you obtain money, read your recantation before1
Midas.

Philosophers have held that the aurum potabtie, if taken into the
human system, tends to refine mortal clay of its inherent grossness,
and by degrees to assimilate the flesh of earthly man to the flesh of
the gods. Whether gold be swallowed, or a sufficient quantity of it
oe merely carried in the pocket, the grateful result is precisely the
same. Consider hundreds of the heavy-purse-bearers of the world,
and tell me if it be otherwise with them. They have the lineaments
sf men ; they are bipeds like the poorest beggar : but their moral and
physical systems are so coloured, so permeated with the precious
Ofltal, that they are creatures quite apart from the ordinary race of

mortals. Do their daily acts betray their affinity with them! Are
they not as far above the pauper who quenches his thirst at the brook,
as the pauper above the frog he disturbs.

I think I have heard you say, you love the face of Nature ; the
open sky—the fields, the trees, the shining river, all are glorious to
you. My dear boy, whatever may be your present delight in con-
templating these objects, as yet you know nothing of their vakio.
Look upon them with the eye of a proprietor, and what a bloom will
come upon the picture I Every bit of turf will be an emerald to yon ;
every grasshopper will chirrup—a very angel to your self-complacency;
every tree, moved by the wind, will bow to you as you pass by it; the
very fish in the river will

" Show to the sun their wav'd coats dropp'd with gold,"

reflecting these your wealth, and not their beauty. Nay, that portion
of the sky which rains and shines its blessings upon your land, you
will behold as yours; yea, human pride, strong in its faith of property,
will read upon the face of heaven itself—" Meum !" Every sunbeam
will be to yon as tangible as if it were an ingot. How delicious and
how entrancing must have been the feelings of Adam when he awoke
in Eden, to find himself—a landed proprietor !

If you can walk the fields and look upon the sky with these en-
nobling emotions, then, my son, you will know the real merits—the
true uses of wealth. You will then own that it is only the man of
money who can worship Nature as she ought to be worshipped ; in-
asmuch as it is only he who can truly estimate her thousand beauties;
who can feel his heart rise and glow as he surveys her charms ; and,
putting his hands in his pockets, can love her with a lover's
kindness.

This man, rejoicing on his own land, meets something in shape like
himself plodding the sod. This two-legged animal envies the squirrel
in the wood—the hare he has startled from its form : he has nothing;
his very hands are useless to him ; he is denied a spade to delve with,
a plough to guide. Poor wretch ! he is encrusted with ignorance ;
covered like a tortoise. What eyes, what thoughts has he for the
loveliness of nature ? Let the gracious gentleman who owns the soil
and the pauper cumbering it, sit them down upon two hillocks and
discourse on the loveliness of life.

Well, they have talked there three hours ; for see, the sun is

blazing in the west. What have you heard from the man of wealth ?

Has he not spoken of Nature as a benignant goddess—has he not

painted life with the bloom of Paradise still upon it I His whole

speech has been a thanksgiving ! What have you heard from the

pauper I—evidence of grossest ignorance,

" A primrose by a river's brim,
A yellow primrose is to him—
And it is nothing more,"

He looks upon the meads, pranked with a thousand flowers, with a
heavy, leaden look; they are, he says, to him, a blank—a nothing.
And for life, he feels it most when it is gnawing at his bowels.

Will you, after this, my son, say that one of the highest uses of
wealth is not to quicken our apprehension to the thousand beauties
showered about us ? Hence, my child, the inevitable intelligence and
superiority of the rich—hence, the gloom and crassitude of the poor.
If you love Nature, you must obtain wealth for the true—the lawful
enjoyment of her. You must wed her with a golden ring.

Having obtained wealth, you are only to consider your own gra-
tification in its outlay. There are foolish people who stint their
appetites of many pleasant fillips, that when the worm is wriggling
in their shrouds their thankful children may be sure of dinners.
Leave your children to shift for themselves—Destitution is a fine
whetstone to ingenuity.

In the course of my travels, I once entered a church in Amster-
dam. I was attracted to a monument by a pair of slippers, cut in
marble ; and underneath written, as I was told, in Flemish,—

" Just Enough."
I found upon inquiry that this was the monument of a wise, rich
man, who resolved to make his living appetites the tomb of his wealth ;
and so nicely adjusted his outlay, that when he died nought was left
of his magnificent fortune but his pair of old slippers. "It is just
enough," he said, and expired.

There are rich men who live and die in the spirit of the Flemish
spendthrift: for to them, this world—and this world only is—
" Just Enough."

Complaints have recently been made of a want of impartiality on the
judgment seat, but it seems that this accusation will apply in higher places,
for even the celestial bodies are amenable to it. There is to be an eclipse
of the moon on the 8th of December, 1843, which, it is announced, will W

i partial.