The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-12-04

To those who have millions, millions are wanting; to those who have thou sands, thousands. Others lack a twen- ty franc piece or hundred sous. When they have a chicken in the pot they ask for a goose; when they have the goose they wish it were a turkey, and so on. We shall never learn how fatal this tendency is. There are too many humble people who wish to initiate the great, too many poor workingmen who ape the well to do middle classes, too many shopgirls who play at being la dies, too many clerks who act the club
 man or sportsman, and among those 1T
 easy circumstances and the rich arS too many people who forget that wha' they possess could serve q better pur
 pose than procuring pleasure for them
 selves, only to find in the end that ont never has enough. Our needs, in place of the servants that they should be have become q turbulent and seditious crowd, legion of tyrants In miniature. 4 man enslaved to his needs may best be compared to a bear with ring in its nose, that is led about and made to dance at will. The likeness is not fiat tering, but you will grant that it is true. It Is in the train of their own needs that so many of those men are dragged along who rant for liberty, progress and I don't know what else. They cannot take a step without ask s.,r. 4k mi frrifo fo their masters. How many men and women have gone on and on, even to dishonesty, for the sole reason that they had too many needs and could not resign themselves to simple living! There are many guests in the cham bers of Mazas who could give us much light on the subject of too exigent needs.
 Let me tell you the story of an ex- cellent man whom I knew. He ten derly loved his wife and children, and they all lived together, in France, in comfort and plenty, but with little of the luxury the wife coveted. Always short of money, though with Q little he might have been at ease, he ended by exiling himself to a distant colony, leaving his wife and children in the mother country. don't know how the poor man can feel off there, but his family has a finer apartment, more beautiful toilets and what passes for an equipage. At pres ent they are perfectly contented, but soon they will be used to this luxury rudimentary after all: Then madam will find her furniture common and her equipage mean. If this man loves his wife, and that cannot be doubted, he will migrate to the moon if there is hope of a larger stipend. In other cases the roles are reversed and the wife and children are sacrificed to the ravenous needs of the head of the family, whom an irregular life, play and countless other costly follies have robbed of all dignity. Between his ap- petites and his role of father he has decided for the former, and he slowly drifts toward the most abject egoism.
 This forgetfulness of all responsibil- ity, this gradual benumbing of noble feeling, is not alone to be found among pleasure seekers of the upper classes the people also are infected. I know more than one little household which ought to be happy, where the mother has only pain and heartache day and night the children are barefoot, and there is great ado for bread. Why Because too much money is needed by the father. To speak only of the ex- pendlture for alcohol. everybody knows the proportions that has reached in the last twenty years. The sums swallow ed up in this gulf are fabulous-twi the indemnity of the war of 1870. How many legitimate needs could have been satisfied with that which has been thrown away on these artificial ones The reign of wants is by no means the reign of brotherhood. The more things man desires for himself, the less he can do for his nelghbor, and even for those attached to him by ties of blood
 The destruction of happiness, inde- pendence. moral fineness, even of the sentiment of common interests-such is the result of the reign of needs. A multitude of other unfortunate things might be added, of which not the least is the disturbance of the public wei fare. When society has too great needs 1t is absorbed with the present, sacrifices to it the conquests of the past, immolates to 1t the future. After us the delugel To rage the forests in order to get gold to squander your pat rimony in youth, destroying in a day the fruit of long years; to warm your house by burning your furniture; to burden the future with debts for the sake of present pleasure; to live by ex- pedients and SOW for the morrow trou- ble, sickness, ruin. envy and hate-the enumeration of all the misdeeds of this fatal regime has no end.
 On the other hand, if we hold to sim pie needs we avoid all these evils and replace them by measureless good. That temperance and sobriety are the best guardians of health is an old sto- ". They spare him who observes them many a misery that saddens existence. They insure him health, love of action, mental poise Whether 1t be ques- ton of food, dress or dwelling. simplic- ity of taste is also a source of inde- pendence and safety. The more sim ply you live the more secure is your flu ture. You are less at the mercy of surprises and reverses. An illness or a period of idleness does not suffice to dispossess you; change of position, even considerable, does not put you