Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1872-08-26
Gbs aap spp: daluest aonoan aornng auaust g. 1892

M1sERs-I have studied the people called
msers and thought good deal about them. In
formers years | used to keep a little gold bv me
in order 70 ascertain for myself exactly the
amount of pleasure TO be got out Of handling it:
this being the traditional delight of the old
fashioned miser. Ii is by no means to be de
spised. Three or four hundred dollars in dou-
BILE eagles will do very well 10 experiment on
There is something very agreeable in the yellow
CLEAN, very musical in the metallic clink, very
satisfying in the singular weight, and very slim
ulating in the feeling that all the world over
these same yellow disks are the master KEYS that
let one in wherever he wants to 90, the servants
that bring him pretty nearly everything he
wants, except Yirtue-and q good deal of what
passes for that. | confess, then, to an honest
liking for the spleudors and the specific gravity
and the manifold potentiality of the royal metal,
and understand, after Il certain imperfect fash
ion, the deliehtthat an old ragged wretch, starry
ing himself in a crazy hOyel, takes in stuffing
guineaS into old stockings and filing earthen
pots with soYereigns, and every now and then
visiting his boards and lingering the fat pieces,
and thinking over all that they represent OF
earthly and angelic and diabOlic energy. A
miSer pouring out his guineas into his palm and
bathing his Shriyeled and trembling hands in
the yellow heaps before him, Is not the proSaic
being we are in the habit of cons ldering him.
He is dreamer almost poet. You and read
novel or a poem TO help our imaginations to
build up palaces, and transport us into the emo
tOnal states and felicitOus conditions of the
ideal characters pictured in the book we are
reading. But think Of him and the significance
of the symbols he is handling as compared with
the empty syilabes and words we are using to
build our aerial edifceS with In this hand he
holds smile of beauty and in that the dagger
OF revenge. The contents of that old glove will
buy him the willing service of many an adroit
sinner, and with what that coarse sack contains
he can purchase the prayers of holy men for all
succeeding time. In this chest is Il castle in
Spain, a real one, and not only in Spain but
anywhere he will choose to have it, If he
would know what is the liberaity of judgment
of any of the Strater sects, he has only TO hand
over that chest of rouleauX to the trustees of
one of its educational institutions for the endow-
ment of two or three proiesSOrships. Ii he would
dream of being remembered by coming genera
TONS what monument SO enduring ms a college
building that shall bear his name, and even
when its solid masonry shall crumble, give
place to another still charged with the same
sacred duty of perpetuating his remembrance.
Who was Sir Matthew Holworthy, that his name
is Il household word on the lips of thousands OF
scholars, and will be centuries hence, as that of
Walter de Merton dead six hundred years ago,
is to-day at Oxford? Who was Mistress Holden,
that she should be blessed among women by hay
Ing her name spoken gratefully and the little
editice she caused to be erected preserved as her
monument from generation to generations All
these possibilities, the lust of the eye, the lust
Of the hesh the pride of life; the tears OF CRATE
ln orphans by the gallon; the prayers OF West
minister aSSemblY'S catechism dlYines by the
thousand; the masses of priests by the century;
all these things, and more if more there be, that
the imagination OF lover OF gold is like TO range
over, the miSer hears and sees and feels and
hugs and ENJOYS, as he paddles with his lean
hands among the sliding, shining, ringing, in
nOcent looking bits of yellow metal, toying with
them as the lion tanner handles the great carny-
i