The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1894-01-13
THE POVERTY OF RICH MEN.
Perhaps Hungry People DO Not After A
Feel Worse Than Many Others.

Perhaps Hungry People DO Not After All
Feel Worse Than Many Others.
The editor of Scribner's Magazine, who
probably enjoys a moderate income of his
own, expatates on the disadvantages of
much riches and the lack of any. Like the
philosopher who wanted merely enough, he
seems to believe that the middle condition
Is best, and this he fixes at somewhere about
5000 a year. This is good deal more than
most men yet. 1t is more than most of
them can earn legitimately, or gain specu-
latively, or acquire in the form of legacy.
They must therefore be content with less.
In fact, the sum mentioned puts its recipient
in a way to acquire tastes that are so eX-
pensve ms to exhaust that income and keep
| him as poor as the laborer who is satisfied
! with his clothes, his food, his fire and his
beer. That man ought to be happy who is
well supplied with funds, but has no tastes,
| because he is assured against want, but
! that man who is born with a champagne
! appetite and achieves only beer income
| must ever be an object of commiseration to
himself and to those who know him.
In days of doubt and financial strngeucy
many families resort to economies that no
doubt cause distress. One man sold one or
two of his ha,i dozen horses; another rented
his summer cottoge; third put his steam
yacht out of commission, and fourth I'M
willingly desisted from increasing his col
lection of japanese bronzcs. These re
straints are as distasteful and oppressive as
the compulsion of the laborer to refrain
moderately from tenderlon steaks and the
necessity that his wife should postpone the
purchase of bright calico dress because
no two men have the same standards of
life, the same desires and tastes, nor the
same aptitude in the application of wealth
to comfort, knowledge and pleasure.
Poverty is n relative term, and there is no
unkempt vagrant who does not believe that
there are several tramps more ragged, more
hungry, more populous than he. There are
some vagabonds who never realize that
they are poor while their stomachs and to-
bacco pouches are full Then there are
young bloods in New York who try to live
on beggnrly $4,000 year and can't do it,
They are always in trouble, always being
sued by inconsderate tradesmen, always
chased by race track blacklegs, always the
prey of ballet girls, always sponged upon
by parasites, always ostracised by rich I'M
ces, always losing at cards. always sore
enough in mind and sometimes in body to
cry and always laughed at by the public
and these gentry are in truth the poorest of
us ALL When they shift into barroom
leeches and red nOsed wanderers, they are
the most worthless of their species
The Prince of Wales, who also sets the
fashion in the color of gloves and the way
of carrying the cane-usually by accident
is the model that these young persons have
for their inner as well as their obvious
lives, and they even try to improve on the
pattern. When man takes money be
longing to another, he is thief. When
he takes its equivalent, the work, time and
stock of a tailor and refuses to refund, he
is called a man Of the world, and his eX-
plot is accounted as rather clever The
Prince of Wales is a man of the world and
is clever, and his imitators here want to be
clever too.
1t is the sorest disadvantage Of riches
when it makes their possessor poor in spir-
it. Nobody claims that this is true in the
great majority of cases. Nobody denies its
truth in conspicuous and offensive in
stances. The poor man has the advantage
of the rich one, if he so modifies his ideas
that he can not only reach them but de
/ rive that content, and compass that moral
and intellectual expansion that seem in
| the human comedy to be denied to thost
whose aims are toward wholly material
n prosperity and sensuous pleasures. 1t Il
l the adaptation of the end to the means that
suffices. Few of us need be poor-Brook
lyn Eagle