The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-05-27
AT THE ROOT on TT

We must premise by saying that
wealth and poverty are relative terms,
and that happiness is a creature of
physical and mental conditions. The
Indian squaw, with &. red cotton blouse
and a red handkerchief and a string of
glass beads is as rich in her own mind
as one of New York's four hundred,
with 81, 900 dress and a $4,000 necklace
and is as much the envy Of her COM
panions.
Wealth is powerless to create happi-
ness beyond a limited supply of ply
steal and mental comforts, or necessi-
ties: hence the possession of great
wealth, which is usually the grave of all
ambition, generally leads its possessor.
either into reckless prof1igacy, or
an insane desire to hoard his
possessions The former condi-
ton is the result of suddenly
acquired, or accidental wealth. while
the misery tendency springs from - ex-
IRENE poverty, in the first instance.
and the acquisition of wealth by slow
accretons later. The miser's happiness
consists in counting and not in using
his wealth, while the happiness of the
enormously wealthy, as with jay
Gould, come from the love and the art
of accumulation, rather than the eniov-
ment OF those Injuries that wealth
may produce. The majority of people
are poor from lack of ability to save,
and the tendency to enjoy the fruits of
/ labor today rather than to POSTPONE un-
til tomorrow.
To be rich in New York, Boston, or
Chicago, one must needs have several
millions of dollars, while to be rich in
Philadelphia, Washington or ST Louis.
a few hundred thousand dollars will
suff1ce; but some person might be a
leading man in a western or a southern
town, and enjoy an enviable distinc-
ton, with fortune only summing I'D
ten or fifteen thousand dollars. The
wealth Of a Comanche depends on the
number of his squaws and his ponies.
and their ability to administer to his
necessities.
Man is progressive animal, and
therefore happiness results from pro-
erosion, as a rule. 1 am persuaded
that the greatest good to society and
therefore the greatest happiness, re-
suits from a reasonable incentive to
activity, laudable ambition, in which
daily toll or effort produces manifold
results, without AFFECT poverty on the
one side, or even a competency on the
other, which might take away the in
centive to toll altogether, and thus re-
tard both physical and mental devel-
opment.
There is usually an intense desire in
the human mind to create something
L
in the mind of the young child, and it
| is from this very impulse, which must
encounter
DEFEATS AND DISASTERS.
that knowledge and strength-that
mechanism comes.
The builder gazes with folded arms
upon the structure, which brick nv
brick he has reared, The architect. in
his well-lighted room, plods over con
struction in which grace and beauty
and utility shall be combined, and is
happy when the useful and the aesthet-
lic have been tremendously blended. The
sculptor dreams over his model. forms
an ideal picture, and embodies his con-
cepuon in the marble slab before him.
and often in his intense admiration for,
the result Of his own conception. en-
dues it in his fond imagination, not on
~ with spiritual, but with physical ife.
SO well illustrated in Pygmalion and
Galatea. The musician is in costa cies
over q. newly discovered symphony. or
a combination of musical rythm not be-
fore invented. The poor painter. who
has studied and toiled in poverty. per-
haps, is now in rapturous joy, because
one of his many paintings has been &C
cepted by the academy.
The wife of a noted author saws that
her husband always falls in love with
---1
a creative genius produces its own hap
piness, without special reference to the
wealth or poverty of its surroundings.
1 suppose that the inventive faculty of
Edison, which has so often taken the
shape of divine inspiration, has been
to him source Of greater joy than all
the money that his wonderful inyen-
tons have brought him
But all of these are educated Joys
the result of culture and civilization,
more or less. But look through the
homes and sit by the firesides of the
farming population of this country.
where you rarely find pinehing want or
great wealth, and you will find happy
mothers and fathers, rosy-cheeked chill
dren with good oxygenated blood, en-
joying home comforts, pastoral lows.
hunknown to the denizens of the great
cities. The great men and women of
this country, as a rule, have sprung
from the middle, or farming classes of