He
proceeded by degrees to undertake larger transactions, until at
length he became rich. The result was, that he more than recovered
his possessions, and died an inveterate miser. When he was buried,
mere earth went to earth. With a nobler spirit, the same
determination might have enabled such a man to be a benefactor to
others as well as to himself. But the life and its end in this
case were alike sordid.
To provide for others and for our own comfort and independence in
old age, is honourable, and greatly to be commended; but to hoard
for mere wealth's sake is the characteristic of the narrow-souled
and the miserly. It is against the growth of this habit of
inordinate saving that the wise man needs most carefully to guard
himself: else, what in youth was simple economy, may in old age
grow into avarice, and what was a duty in the one case, may become
a vice in the other. It is the LOVE of money--not money itself--
which is "the root of evil,"--a love which narrows and contracts
the soul, and closes it against generous life and action. Hence,
Sir Walter Scott makes one of his characters declare that "the
penny siller slew more souls than the naked sword slew bodies." It
is one of the defects of business too exclusively followed, that it
insensibly tends to a mechanism of character.
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