The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1905-04-13
BY CHARLES WAGNE.

their pride In their fortune. To begin
with, 1t Is a childish confusion Of
thought to consider wealth as person
al quality. 1t would be hard to find
q more ingenious fashion Of deceiving
oneself as to the relative value Of the
container and the thing contained. l
have no wish to dwell on this question.
It is too painful. And yet one cannot
resist saying to CLOSE concerned: Take
care; do not confound what you possess
with what you are. Go learn to know
the underslde Of worldly splendor,
that you may feel Its moral misery and
Its puerility." The traps pride sets
| for US are too ridiculous. We should
distrust association with thing that
makes us hateful to our neighbors and
robs us of clearness of vision.
! He who yields TO the pride Of riches
forgets this other point. the most i'm
portant Of oil, that possession is pub
lie trust. Without doubt Individual
wealth Is as legitimate as individual
existence and liberty. These things
are lnseparable, and II Is dream
pregnant with dangers that offers bat.
tie to such fundamentals of life. But
the individual touches society at every
point, and all he does should be done
with the whole In view. Possession,
then, Is less privilege of which to be
proud than charge whose gravity
should be felt AS there is an appren-
tlceshlp, often very difficult to serve,
for the exercise Of every social Office, so
this profession we call wealth demands
an apprenticeship. To know how to
be rich is an art, and one of the least
easy Of arts to master. Most people,
rich and poor alike, imagine that In
opulence one has nothing to do but to
take life easy. That Is why 30 few
men know how to be rich. In the hands
of too many wealth, according to the
genial and redoubtable comparison OF
Luther, Is like harp In the hoofs of
an ass. They have no Idea of the man.
ner Of itg use.
SO when we encounter man at once
rich and slmple-that is to say, who
considers his wealth az means Of full
filling his mission In the world-we
should offer him our homage, for he Is
surely mark worthy. He has sur
mounted obstacles, borne trials and tri-
umphed in temptations, both gross and
subtle. He does not fail to dlscrlml-
nate between the contents of his pock-
etbook and the contents of his head or
heart, and he does not estimate his
fellow men in figures. His exceptional
position, instead of exalting him,
makes him humble, for he Is very sen
slbIe Of how far he falls short OF reach.
Ing the level of his duty. He has re-
malned man. That says 1t ALL He
Is accessible, helpful and far from
making Of his wealth a barrier to sep
arate him from other men; he makes It
a means for coming nearer and nearer
to them, Although the profession of
riches has been 50 dlshonored by the
selfish and the proud, such a man as
this always makes his worth felt by
every one not devoid Of sense Of Jus
tlce. Each of us who comes In contact
with him and sees him live ls forced to
look within and ask himself the ques-
tion, what would become of me in
such sltuation-should l keep this
modesty, this naturalness, this upright
ness which uses Its own as though II
belonged to othersT SO long as there
Is human society In the world, so long
as there are bitterly conflicting inter,
ests, 80 long as envy and egolsm exist
on the earth, nothing will be worthier
Of honor than wealth permeated by the
spirit of simplicity. And It will do
more than make Itself forgiven; II will
make Itself beloved.
More dangerous than pride inspired
by wealth is that inspired by power,
and mean by the word every preroga-
tive that one man has over another, be
II unlimited or restricted. see no
means Of preventing the existence in
the world Of men of unequal authority,
Every organism supposes a hierarchy
of powers; we shall never escape from
that law. But l fear that II the love
Of power is 30 widespread the spirit of
power Is almost impossible to find,
From wrong understanding and mis-
use of II those who keep even frac.
tiOn Of authority almost everywhere
succeed In compromising 1t.
Power exercises great influence
over him who holds It. A head must
be very well balanced not to be dis
turbed by It, The sort of dementta
which took possession of the Roman
emperors In the time of their world
wide rule is a universal malady whose
symptoms belong to all times. In ev-
cry man there sleeps tyrant, await
ing only favorable occasion for wax.
ing. Now, the tyrant is the worst en-
emy Of authority. because he furnishes
us its intolerable carlcature, whence
come multitude of social compiled
tions, collisions and hatreds. Every
man who says to those dependent on
him, "Do this because 1t is my will and
pleasure" does Ill, There is within
each one Of us something that invites
us to resist personal power, and this
something is very respectable, for at
bottom we are equal, and there is no
one who has the right to exact obedl-
ence from me because he is he and
am l. II he does so his command de.
grades me, and have no right to suf-
fer myself to be degraded.
One must have lived in schools, In
workshops, In the army, in government
offices, he must have closely followed
the relations between masters and
servants, have observed a little every
where where the supremacy Of man
exercises itself over man, to form any
idea of the injury done by those who
use power arrogantly. OF every free
soul they make a slave soul, which Is
to say the soul of rebel And It ap-
pears that this result, with its social
disaster, is most certain when he who