Washington telegraph., 1853-04-13
The Dollar.
BY GEORGE LIPPARD.

Would that George Li2pard had always
written as powerfully and unexceptionably
as in the following sketch:
They brought him dollar
He took it, clutched it in his long skinny
fingers, tried IFS sound against the bed-post,
and then gazed at it long and intently with
his dull laden eyes
That day in the hurry of business, death
had struck him, even in the street. He
was hurrying to collect the last months rent,
and was on the verge of the miserable court
where his tenants herded like beasts. in
their kennels-he was there with bank book
in his hand, when death laid hands upon
him.
He was carried home to his splendid man
sion, He was laid upon bed with a cov-
erlet. The lawyer, the relations, and the
preacher was sent for. All day long he lay
without speech, moving only his right
hand, as though in the act of counting mo-
ney.
At midnight he spoke
He asked for dollar, and they brought
one to him, and lean and gaunt he sat up
in his death-bed, and clutched it with the
grip of death.
A shaded lamp stood on the table near
the silken bed, Its light fell family around
the splendid room, where chairs, and car
pets, and mirrors, silken bed and lofty cell
ing, all, said Gold, as plainly as human lips
can say it.
His hair and eyebrows were white. His
cheeks sunken, and his lips thin and sur
rounded by wrinkles that indicated the pat
tern of Avarice. As he sat up in bed with
his neck barred and the silken coverlet
wrapped about his lean frame, his white
hair and eyebrows cOntrasted with his vast
ed and wrinkled face; he looked like ghost.
And there was life in his laden eye-all that
life was censured on the Dollar which he
gripped in his clenched fist.
His wife, a pleasant-faced matronly wo-
man, was seated at the foot of the bed. His
son, young man of twenty-one, dressed in
the last touch of fashion, sat by the lawyer
The lawyer sat before the table pen in hand,
and gold spectacles on his nose There was
huge parchment spread before him.
"Do you think he II make a will ?" asked
his son.
Hardly con1pos mentas vet" was the
whispered reply. "Wait He'll be lucid
after a while
"My dear" said the wife, chad not bet
ter send for a preacher!!"
She rose and took her dying husband by
the hand, but he did not mind His eve
was upon the Dollar.
lie was a rich man. He owned palaces
IN Walnut and Chestnut streets. and novels
and courts on the outskirts. He had iron
mines in this State; copper mines on the
Lakes somewhere; he had golden interests
IN California. His name was bright upon
the records, Of twenty banks; he owned
stock of all kinds, and had dozen papers
in his pay.
He knew but one crime-to be in debt
uithout the poacer to pay.
He knew but one virtue-to get nzoney.
That crime he had never forgotten-tbis
virtue he had never forgotten, in the long
way of thirty-fve years
To hunt down debter to distress a ten
ant, to turn few additional thousands bv
sharp speculation-these were the main
achievements of his life.
lie was good man-his name was on a
silver plate upon the pew door of velvet
cushioned church
He was a benevolent man-for every
thousand dollars which he wrune from the
debtors who writhed beneath his heels he
gave ten dollars to some benevolent institu-
tion.
He was just man-the Gallows and tbe
Jail always found in him faithful and nm.
swerving advocate.
Ard now he is dying man-see. AS he
sits upon his bed of death, with the Dollar in
his clenched hand.
Oh holy Dollar, object of his lifelong
pursuit, what comfort hast thou for him now
in pain of death,
! At length the dying man revived and die
tated his will. 1t was strange to see the
mother and son and lawyer muttering, and
sometimes wrangling, beside the bed of death.
All the while the Testator clutched the dol
lar in his right hand.
While the will was being made, the
preacher came-even he who held the pas
torial charge of the great church, whose Dew
doors bore sanity names on silver plates.