in life: but, as the world goes generally, it is decidedly best for girls to be left with some moderate provision; while it is quite as well for boys to be thrown wholly upon their own resources, and with a good education to go forth to earn their own bread and make their own way. As to the amount of money that it is desirable to leave, there can be no absolute limit. The elder Astor is said to have declared that a man with half a million of dollars is as well off as if he were rich; while to most of us that sum is immense wealth, and makes a higher pile than we can form any practical conception of, since we deal with comparatively small figures, and the average income even of favored people ranges probably somewhere between five hundred and five thousand dollars; and the thirty or forty thousand dollars, yielded yearly by a fortune of half a million, takes us plain people wholly off our feet quite as much as any romantic castle in the air. Most of us, however, would like to have as much money as we honestly can, and in spite of our protestations to the contrary, it would be decidedly unsafe to tempt us by any extravagant offers of wealth. Yet there is moderation in all things, and in fortune as in stature there is a desirable limit of bulk. "Give me neither poverty nor riches," is a precept that brightens with time, and we are all ready to assent to the first part of it in our practice, and to the second part of it in our philosophy; to act as if poverty were hell, and to reason once in a while at least as if riches were not wholly heaven. of their lives. They may not be able readily to help, and probably do not wish to help it; yet quite sure it is that the end is not worth the labor and sacrifice, and a great fortune won by the sacrifice of broad culture, refined tastes, generous affections, and high humanity, is not worth the having. We all need money, and are sometimes, most of us, hard pushed for a few hundred dollars, and we envy Dives his hoards. But who would take the money if we had to take the man with it, and be Dives himself for the sake of his gold. Their money, indeed, gives the rich a certain consequence: but it is not always of a desirable kind, and there is usually an outcry of contempt when the wills of our coarser sort of millionaires are opened, and they leave little or nothing to prove that they had human hearts; and their well-stocked wine cellar is sometimes the only genial legacy that they leave-a legacy, too, that is sometimes distributed under the auctioneer's hammer, and made to inspire witticisms and mirth at the expense of the original proprietor's name. In excuse for great accumulation a man may indeed say that there is no knowing what dark days may come, and unless he saves all he can he may have nothing left or not enough to live upon. If wealth is indeed so precarious, it is not wise to leave it wholly at the mercy of circumstances or the chances of business. Why not spend wisely as we go, and so be assured of making a good will for our children by making our living will good in our day and generation, so that its power shall not die out with our waning fortunes. It is certainly impossible for a man to give the highest quality to the wealth that he is able to leave unless he has put his lifetime, and a true man's thousands tell more after him than a churlish Shylock's tens of thousands. We have certainly a considerable and powerful class of men whose ambition it is to amass and leave great wealth. We do not believe in-intelligence and virtue into his use of it during deed that this desire comes from pure affection for their children, or the wish to be remembered affectionately when they are gone. The habit of saving is all-powerful, and the purpose of hoarding that has long opened only one way, like the valve of a suction pump, seems to lose its capacity for the reverse movement. Besides, the man who lives in the market-place, and runs the race of competition, is tempted to look to a false standard of value, and regard the amount of his property as the measure of his power and dignity, or of what usually goes by the name of respectability. I have been sometimes amazed to find persons of ungenial and even reserved dispositions owning this social ambition, and excusing even shameful parsimony on the plea of their wishing to leave a round sum of money when they die. The village nabob aspires to a name on the roll of fifty-thousand-dollar men, while the city money-getter calls a hundred thousand dollars a bare competence, and a million as but just within the limits of absolute wealth. We know very well that certain men have a gift for accumulation, and even when generous in outlay they can easily accumulate riches; yet generally our rich men become such by careful saving, and by making accumulation the end We think more and more of the quality of a man's legacy than of its quantity; and to us, whether living or dying, character is the great element of capital. Money indeed is money, whether from a saint or a sinner; and precisely on that account, or because it has no character in itself, it is important to give to it character. It is like water, a vast capacity of good and of evil, and may make a deluge or a fertilizing shower, turn a mill-wheel or undermine a house. He who leaves money without giving to it any characteristic quality, or securing to it any just direction, leaves a very equivocal thing; and the wills that leave money, and nothing else, carry glad tidings that are no gospel to greedy heirs. It is far better for a man to moderate his acquisitiveness by wise and judicious expenditure than to risk all upon the use that will be made of his wealth by those who come after him. He can have no executor as judicious and faithful as he himself can be, and every act of well-principled and timely outlay does something to perpetuate the right kind of influence, and make a last will and testament on better material than parchment or paper. We know very well that parsimony is often is known he opens the door to the whole tribe excused on the ground of setting a good exam- of beggars of all grades, tongues, and countries. ple, and keeping poorer people from prodigality It would be laughable, if it were not so vexaby unwise imitation of the affluent. But does tious, to see the faces or read the letters that not our natural selfishness need more an exam- come in a single week to some of our well-known ple of liberality than of covetousness; and are men of munificence. Because a man is genernot most men far more ready to spare than to ous, and has given handsomely to any important spend in matters of the higher taste, conviction, charity, it is immediately taken for granted that and fellowship? It is certainly not well for us, he will and must give something to every claimif we have the means, to spend much in mereant under the sun, no matter what the claim may self-indulgence, without public spirit or human-be-whether to pay the liquor or tailor's bill of ity; and we have little respect for the excessive some scape-grace, set up a shiftless youth in busdressing, feasting, and ostentation that are too iness, or endow some aspiring maiden or widow characteristic of our American parvenus. They with an attractive portion. I was once waited set a bad example to the community; and more- upon by an anxious and pains-taking, but by no over they enfeeble and impoverish their families means thrifty mistress of a large boarding-house, by pampering inordinate desires, and establish- to advise her as to removing that frequent ailing a sad and perilous dependence upon uncer- ment of the craft, the cabinet-maker's mortgage tain fountains. We would have men moderate on the furniture. I had no advice to give, and their acquisitions, not by such extravagance, bluntly said that if I owed as many thousands it but by elevating pursuits, refining arts, human- would puzzle me to raise the wind to so high a izing associations, and religious aims, such as gale as to move the water-logged craft, and I leave the family with frugal habits and regulated should have to give it up. But the lady had desires, and at the same time educate them in more faith, and was confident that the princely high purposes and loyalty. man who had just given half a million of dollars to found a public institution would take pity on the sorrows of a poor, not very old woman; and in face of my protest, on the ground that one who had given so much already should not be expected to do every thing else, she persisted, and called on the Master Bountiful. He was too much used to such appeals to be vexed; and hoping that the creditor might be induced to show mercy, or at least patience, he escaped paying of money or striking of hands in suretiship by bland words. We believe more and more in a man's living like a gentleman if he can, and so carrying with him through life a gentle will. If we are asked to say what we mean by living like a gentleman, we reply that we call him a gentleman who lives not for his own self-indulgence, but in generous fellowship, and who invariably submits his own private will to the higher law of good society, or the higher will of the true and universal humanity. He may live modestly, and spend little upon his dress and his table to prove his politeness and his hospitality, and yet always have a welcome for a worthy guest and an answer to all genial hospitality. He will strive so to use his money as to express his allegiance; and whether he builds a house, lays out a farm or garden, presides over a library or college or church committee, he will make it very clear, by the use of his voice and his purse, what kind of a man he is, and means that his neighbor shall be, if he can make him. Happy is it for him if his tastes and associations are such as to enable him to be the patron of the beautiful arts and spiritualizing institutions that secure the higher education of the community, and transform money, if not into bread, into something that is bread to the soul, and akin to the Word from above, which is the highest nurture. In such exalted tastes there may be an element of frugal wisdom as well as of noble enthusiasm; and surely, if dark days come, and fortune ceases to smile as of old, he who has treasured his substance in choice works of art and true charity, and given his children elegant accomplishments and thorough culture, has more left from the wreck than he who has spent all in enfeebling luxuries, or lost all in greedy speculation, or invested all in Mammon's sinking ship. We know very well that it is a powerful if not a frequent objection to a man's being his own executor, that as soon as his liberal purpose It is very easy for a man of known benevolence to refuse unreasonable requests, because he has the excuse of prior gifts, perhaps to the amount of his spare means, besides affirming his right to use his own independent judgment in discriminating between different objects. It should be remembered, moreover, that if generous men are bored with endless applications, grasping men do not escape, and office-holders and money-lenders have their swarms of blood-suckers about them, and Dives has as much of a retinue of tormentors about him as the Good Samaritan-to say nothing of the prospect of having the torment carried into the transmundane sphere. It should be easy for a just and generous man to say No; and with that word in the right place one may defy all beggardom, though its name be legion. When we say that every man should be in a measure his own executor, we do not mean that he should give all his property away, or that giving is the only or even the chief form of beneficence. There is dry wisdom in the old story of the man who divided his estate between his heirs, and soon found himself an encumbrance to the children whom he had enriched. He got the better of them, however, by pretending to have a chest of gold, which he noisily counted every day, but which was found on his death to contain only rubbish and a mallet with this inscription: "He who gives away his money before he is dead, Take this mallet and knock him on the head." With wealth or without it, a wise and earnest man will strive, during his life, to give lasting worth to whatever he does, and leave upon his business, his home, his recreations, his social and religious fellowship, the mark of the true character and the right principle and purpose. His private life will have such generous aspirations and affinities as to leave abiding power. Like Jacob's well, which watered the patriarch's own family and flocks and herds, and refreshed travelers for coming ages, and gave its sparkling drops to the Blessed One who conversed with the Samaritan woman at noonday, his daily life will be an open fountain of living water, which does not die with him, but continues as a transmitted power in his household and neighborhood. Do we not all know wells of living water that ought to bear the hallowed names of departed friends? All the great masters of truth and consolation, whose thoughts and affections survive in their gifted pages, are such precious wells; and we can all recall humbler, though equally blessed, names of good men and women, whose dearly-treasured graces are continual springs of comfort, and who help us to the living water from day to day. I surely remember a few blessed souls whose best and most expressive monument would be, not an empty stone, but a beautiful fountain—a well to drink from, and a cross over the curb. The cross and well: It is a poetical old symbol, and may be as true as it is poetical. We call every man the executor of his own will who uses his money and influence in such a way as to impart lasting lessons and motives to kindred, friends, and to the community. He who gives a thorough education, with a brave, indomitable strength of will, to his children, leaves a better legacy than mere property; and, in fact, he may leave to each of them thus his whole life, while no last will and testament can give more than a part of the testator's living to each; and the estate, by division, must needs be broken up, unless the eldest son or favored heir have the whole or nearly the whole. The true man thus, in a certain sense, makes matter of fact of the startling paradox that one may keep the whole, and at the same time give it all away to each worthy heir. A coronet or castle can go to but one heir; but the heir-loom of truly gentle breeding, the solid respectability that ennobles all who have it by giving them broad and generous ideas, practical energy, and good fellowship, may be transmitted to each of the family, so that the father's personal spirit becomes the animating will of the family, and does not wait for the notary's seal to give it validity. Our good old yeomanry understood this very well; and we all know families who hold from generation to generation a sense of respectability, and make it good by their intelligence, enterprise, and virtue, long after the pet heirs of untold wealth have sunk by prodigality and indolence into the dust. We who have come of that stock may sometimes think it a little hard that our patrimony was so small; but, on the whole, the longer we live the less we are disposed to complain, when we compare our little with the much of some of our rich school-fellows. Taking pluck and thrift into the account, we are as well off as they; and if we do not begin as rich as they we may die richer; and if poorer, we can get as much real good out of a thousand or two a year as they can get out of ten or twenty. The crowning point in a good legacy is its perpetuity; and it is more important, surely, that a bequest should be lasting than that it should be large or precious. Cleopatra's pearl was no more than vinegar as soon as it was dissolved to make sauce for her dainty ladyship; and all great gifts are as fluid and evanescent, if not as acid, if they are as quickly wasted away. How to make a lasting will is no small art; and it is hard, in the usual way, to dispose of property for a long time after we are gone. Our laws forbid entails, and he is a bold man who means to secure his fortune to his children's children, or to give his will validity in the third generation. Most fortunes vanish far earlier, and the father's stately house, if occupied by his children after his decease, rarely descends to his grandchildren, unless they enter the old mansion as boarders, or in search of strawberries and cream, oysters and Champagne. He is a lucky man who can command his posterity by the posthumous power of his character and principles, and compel them to keep sacred the legacy of his genius or his name. Few men can expect such distinction, and hope, by rare original force, to command future generations, and make even the self-love of posterity a motive of filial reverence and fidelity, as is the case with the great families of history, whether ennobled by courts or by the republic of letters. All men, however, can so ally themselves with the master minds of the races as to win and transmit the dignity of loyal service; and we claim it to be one of the essentials of true manhood that we should all subdue or elevate our private or individual will to that public spirit or universal will which, under God's Providence and grace, is always present in mankind, and seeking to work out the higher destiny of the race. If we are not ourselves in the line of personal succession to the thrones of the earth, we are, or ought to be, workers in the true line of succession, and bound to strive and contend for all the principles and practices, the arts and sciences, the liberty and order, the humanity and religion that secure to nations and men their true place in civilization, and enthrone the rightful powers. stand this position in our common practice of business, and why not own it in the highest sphere of faith and loyalty? If we build a ship, or lay out a farm, or charter a bank, we expect to do it in the line of succession, or by beginning where the present generation leaves off, and improving as much as we can upon their method, instead of foolishly going upon our own hook, as if nothing had been known or done be We under fore us, and all wisdom were born with our poor | with fitting symbols or inscriptions, would be little cranium. He is a wise man who studies more to me than to win any posthumous honors the highest range of this law of succession, and in life and death makes his personal will serve and carry forward the universal and blessed will, which is God's spirit, in the march of our militant humanity. Many a lowly life attains to this dignity by devotion to principles and institutions greater than it can hope to originate, and by thus allying itself with the great masters of history. Ich dien, I serve, is the motto of the true hero; and he who serves a good cause well carries its power with him in life and death, and whether written or unwritten, leaves it as a rich legacy to them that come after him. Whatever guards or exalts the great interests of society and blesses and enriches the hearth, the flag, or the altar, blesses and enriches him and his heirs forever. His will lives in all the great loyalties that he has defended, and has the will of humanity and of God for its safeguard. If I envy any man, it is he who lives to the future in the generous and ennobling arts that win immortality by the vitality of their inspiration and the charm of their beauty. Architecture, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, the Drama, Music, Eloquence, all move in those lines of beauty which, like the stars in their rounded courses, express eternity in their very form, and develop forces that are self-renewing, like the orbs that perpetuate their momentum in recurrent cycles, instead of exhausting it by running off in wearisome and prosy straight lines. I could envy any master of high art who can leave to posterity a beautiful work that is immortalized by its own blessed life, were it not that I too am partner in his genius by partaking of its fruits and becoming the happy legatee of his more than imperial will. We may all thus be the favored heirs of the ages; and if we do our part to give the master minds of humanity wider scope and deeper influence, we enter into their wealth and are brothers of their fellowship. Happy is he who can prove this allegiance, and do something to recognize and perpetuate the inspirations of genius, and to make them tell with power on the new life of his time. One man, I am ready to say without conditions, I do envy, and that too without aspiring to any exceptional or impossible gifts. I envy the man who can build with his money, if not with his taste, a beautiful and commodious edifice that shall embody the art and science of the race, and win men to God by all that is true and good and lovely in thought, deed, and affection Call the building what you will, I choose to call it a church, and am sure that so moderate a sum as a hundred thousand dollars would, if well spent, afford us a specimen of church architecture better than any thing now in the land, and capable of being enriched to any extent by the paintings and sculptures that might be made to adorn it, and by the music and eloquence that could consecrate it. Even to leave a lovely little chapel for our children, or a pretty drinking fountain from the admirers of fat fortunes, whose bulk is the measure of the worldliness and tastelessness of their owners. Great is the wonder and the pity that so many men, rich as well as poor, die and leave no honorable sign, or make no good or lasting mark on their age-not even so much as anoint the feet or head of the true Master, like her who gave the box of spikenard for the anointing of the Lord, and the fragrance filled the house. Most large fortunes spread but never rise, and mere bulk gives them no more dignity than an extra rod of length gives dignity to a whale, or a foot's extra girth to a dropsical patient, whose water, as the type of superfluous wealth, has the swollen look of the whale's blubber without its luminous properties. We are amazed at the utter absence of the higher faith and humanity in the use generally made of large property, and do not see how it is that so many men, as a matter even of self-respect, do not connect their name and means with the arts that beautify, and the institutions that ennoble life. We must not, indeed, expect miracles, nor ask men to be princely benefactors who have been accustomed, by small and painful accumulation, to regard the grace of saving as the saving grace. It may be, and probably is, a Providential fact, that old people are frugal for the good of the young; and we ought to be glad that our old merchants are careful of their money instead of spending it in rioting, as if because they have but a short time to live they may as well get the most of what remains. We will not quarrel with frugal men who hoard what they can, if they will at last make a good confession; and while not defrauding kindred of reasonable dues, will remember the high loyalties of humanity and religion, and give something that will unite the private will and testament with the blessed will of God and the everlasting testament of His Son. Personally we believe in a man's spending wisely as he goes, and we prefer Great Heart to Save All. But we will give Save All a fair chance to save himself, even at the eleventh hour, by giving a good round portion of his hoards to people wiser and better than himself, and to institutions of knowledge, piety, and charity, that will perpetuate his sobriety and industry, and correct his selfishness and materialism. Honor to every man who does good to God's people, and when a kind hand pens its legacy the last will and testament does not shame the blessed chant of the angels of the Nativity, who sang "Good will to men" as part of the bright promise of the coming kingdom of heaven. Not long since, an intelligent, just, and kind, but a very acquisitive, and, in some respects, parsimonious man died and left a large property mainly to women, young and old, whom he had learned to respect, as if to honor the sex that his bachelorship seemed to slight. Among them was one whose deformity, combined with very small means, made his bounty a perfect godsend; and the blessing which a thousand or two dollars won from this daughter of affliction upon the benefactor's name will go as far as any priestly intercession to smooth his way toward the better land. If we can not say that the "end justifies the means," we can say that "All's well that ends well," and advise our men of abounding goods to visit the notary after devoutly saying their prayers, and to make a good will before it is too late. "A 3 OUR CONTRABAND. DVISABLE, Mrs. Winthrop!" I exclaimed-"advisable! Why, it is a clear case of duty. If no one else can be induced to take the poor girl I will assume the responsibility myself, though I have three servants already." Mrs. Winthrop, a Bostonian, of Mayflower descent, who had only lately entered our New York set, and was considerate and deferential accordingly, gave an admiring start, and suggested her fear that "The creature would drive me wild." 66 "I have no such apprehension," was my lofty reply; "kindness and firmness must inevitably overcome the most refractory nature. Besides, I do not believe the child is half as bad as Mrs. Grimmons imagines." Mrs. Winthrop inclined her head slightly toward her left shoulder, and, as if yielding to an irresistible internal flood of argument, ejaculated (for the twentieth time during our morning's conversation), "Yes-s!?" And here allow me to relieve myself concerning this inexplicable Boston "Yes." It can not be written, and I defy the most skillful printer, by means of any complication of italics, dashes, or notes of interrogation or exclamation, to express it in all its fullness, its provokingness. It is yielding, defiant, coaxing, snubbing, conciliatory, and threatening, all in a breath. It is susceptible of every shade of meaning, of almost every slang reply that one can hear from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It says, "Just so," and "You can't come it over me!" "Go it, my hearty!" and "A leetle tough!" "What a whopper!" and "Them's my sentiments!" "Go it blind!" "Ain't you stretching it ?" "Bully for you!" "Hit 'em again!" "No, yer don't!" and "Sartain now!" And all the time it is so Bostonianly elegant that one must wince under it with folded hands, and take its meaning as one best can. Mrs. Winthrop's "Yes-s!?" meant a great deal, and I knew it. In the first place, it meant, "You think so, do you?" Second, "I hardly think you can succeed where the intellectual Mrs. Grimmons failed, but who can tell?" Third, "What a conceited woman you are if you only knew it!" Fourth, "You are entirely wrong, but you must find it out in the regular way." And, Fifth, "Well, we're fortunate, at least, in getting the girl temporarily off our hands." Taking in all this with my usual acumen, I cut the matter short with "You will please inform the ladies of my resolve, Mrs. Winthrop, as I can not attend the sewing meeting to-day, and that they may send the girl to me on Monday morning if she is not otherwise disposed of by that time." "I shall do so," rejoined my visitor, rising gracefully from the sofa. "And now, my dear friend, when may we hope to see you and your good husband at No. 69 ?" "Very soon, thank you," I answered, throwing aside my business air; "the first evening, in fact, that I can succeed in enticing Mr. Smith from his library chair. Is your little Everett quite strong again, Mrs. Winthrop ?" "Oh! nicely, thank you. He and Annie are attending school now. Do allow your little ones to visit them on Saturdays. Your Julie is so charming and well-behaved that I would really admire to have Annie become intimate with her." I assured Mrs. Winthrop, who, whatever may be her peculiarities, has certainly fine instincts where children are concerned, that I considered Julie quite too young to leave "mother" yet. "Yes-s!?" returned Mrs. Winthrop, musingly, adding, in a more sprightly tone, "but can not mother' come also?" By this time the door was reached, and, after many a pleasant smile and nod and half-heard sentence on both sides, we parted-the lady's elegant skirts sweeping down the stone steps, while I mounted slowly and thoughtfully to the nursery, feeling morally sure that "the creature" would make her appearance on Monday. Yes, morally sure. All the rest of that day I kept asking myself, à la Bulwer, "What will I do with her?" And next, the married woman's watchword, "What will He say?" came forcibly to mind. Poor Theophilus! my faultless, ease-loving, propriety - worshiping master of the house! What would he say, indeed? I trembled to think of it. Why, even our Ann, the most peerless of cooks, had narrowly escaped being "dismissed" by him the day before, just because she had put the ragout in an unsuitable dish; and Bettys and Biddys innumerable had been banished from our domicile for the most petty offenses against his fastidious taste. Probably, at the date of which I am writing, we would not have had a servant in the house, had I not, a few weeks before, “put my foot down" in rather a decided manner. How I put my foot down, or what I put it on, is not for me to say; enough to assert that I did it; and every married man whose wife deserves the name of woman will shudder as he reads the words. Yes, the "small failings" question had been then and there settled between us for all time. Thenceforth no girl who suited me should share the fate of my sainted "highly respectable" ones of the past. But could my new girl, my contraband, take shelter under the statute? I had seen her, and knew, or fancied I knew, what was before me. But Theophilus ! |