Blade-O'-Grass. Golden Grain. and Bread and Cheese and Kisses.

by B. L. Farjeon

A clerk--Sydney by name--over whose head I had risen, had often invited me to visit him; I spent one Sunday with him. He lived half-a-dozen miles from the City, and his salary at the time I visited him was a hundred and seventy-five pounds a year. I was then making, with my salary and speculations, at least a thousand. He was a married man, with a pretty wife and a baby. The house in which they lived was small, and there was a garden attached to it. After dinner we sat in the garden and talked; he told his wife what a clever fellow I was, and how I had risen over all of them. I told him that he could do as well as I if he chose, although I was inwardly sure he could not, for his qualities were different from mine. 'You have only to speculate,' I said. He returned a foolish answer. 'This is my speculation,' he said, pinching his wife's cheek. 'Is it a good one?' his wife asked merrily. I do not know what there was in the look he gave her which caused her to bend towards him and kiss him; I think there were tears in her eyes too. 'Well,' I said, 'every one to his taste.' 'Just so,' he replied, with his arm round his wife's waist In the evening, your mother, then a single girl, came in with her father. They and the Sydneys were friends.

Now, to whom am I speaking? To myself or to you? Shall I go on with my confession, and go on without moral trickery, or shall I tear up these sheets, and deaden my memory with excess of some kind? It is rather late in life for me to commence this latter course. I have often been drunk with excitement, but never with wine. My life has been a steady one, and it has been my study to keep a guard over myself. Indeed, it has been necessary for success, and I have succeeded. 'When the wine is in, the wit is out'--a true proverb. Why am I debating about my course? I have already decided that I will speak plainly, and will strip myself of all reserve. When I have finished, I can destroy. I will not waver; I will go on to the end.

Even if you do read what I write, it will not matter to me. I shall have gone, and shall not know. Stop, though. You, as a clergyman, would tell me otherwise, and would doubtless, if you had the opportunity, enlighten my darkness, to use a common phrase. I have never considered it before; but I suppose I am a Christian. Is that a phrase also? To speak without reserve, as I have resolved to do, it is to me nothing more than a name. If the question, What has been your religion? were put to me, and I were compelled to answer (again without moral trickery), I should answer, Money. These reflections have come to me without foreshadowing, and I set them down. If they cause you to be sad, think for a moment. How many Christians do you know? I could argue with you now, if you were here. Christianity, as I have heard (not as I have seen), cannot mean a set belief in certain narrow doctrines; it cannot include trickery and false-dealing in worldly matters. It means, as I have heard and not seen, the practical adoption of a larger view of humanity than now obtains. Certain self-sacrifices, certain tolerations, which are not seen except in the quixotic, are included in this larger view. I repeat my question: How many Christians do you know?

A bitter mood is upon me; it may divert me from my purpose. I will lay down my pen, and look into the shadows.

What have I seen after an interval of I do not know how many minutes? Shadows in the future. Shadows from the past. Shadows all around me as I sit--in the room, in the garden, in the river. Stay. I see a light coming into the sky. The waters of the river are trembling. The moon is rising.

Andrew, I loved your mother. I never told her this, in words; but she knew it. There was a time, I have sometimes thought, when I might have won her. But I held back until, so far as she herself was concerned, it was too late. If she had not met your father--(she had not seen him when I first knew her)--and if she had not loved him, I should still have held back. For my design then was to many money, if I married at all. My master had married money. Other rich men, to whose height I had hoped to rise, had married money. I would do the same. Love was a dream to be blotted out. It stopped advancement. I strove to blot out my love for your mother, but I could not. I did the next best thing; I strove to conceal it. Even in that attempt, however, I was not successful. The Sidneys whose house I frequently visited in the hope of meeting her, saw it, and threw us much together. Mrs. Sydney said to me once, out of her ignorance, 'See how happy we are! You can be the same if you please.' I smiled, but did not reply. I could be the same, if I pleased! Why, I could have bought them up twenty times over. Sydney himself owed me money, having been duped by a friend, as foolish persons almost always are. I have never been duped by a friend in all my long life. I have lost money in the way of business, but I have never been duped by a friend. Life is an intellectual battle. Those win whose wits are the sharpest.

Your mother and I grew very intimate. I interested her in my career, although I never entered into the details of my successes. I told her only the results. Her father encouraged our intimacy. I had already lent him money. About this time I saw signs of an approaching panic. I said to myself, 'This is your chance; there will be precious pickings in the ruins. Sharpen your wits; now is your time.' I gathered in my money; I studied the signs, with a cool head. I mentioned the matter, under the seal of secrecy, to your mother. 'If all goes well,' I said, 'in six months I shall be worth so-and-so.' Your mother answered, 'But how about the people with whom all will go ill?' I said gaily, 'What is one man's meat is another man's poison. If I don't gather, others will.' The panic came and parsed, and did not leave me a mourner. England was strewn with wrecks, but I was safe; I was one of the fortunate wreckers. It was an anxious time; sharp wits were about, but few sharper than mine; and every man's hand was against his neighbour. Thousands of weak ones lost their all, and thousands more were bruised to death in rash attempts to recover what they had lost I saw them struggling all around me, and I saw here and there a foolish one holding out a helping hand, and being dragged into the whirlpool for his pains. When the storm passed, and the sky became clear, the land was filled with mourning. Among the foolish ones was Sydney. How could such a man expect to get on in the world? 'Self-preservation is the first law of nature.' What wisdom there is in many of these proverbs! There were very few smiling faces after the storm; but mine was one. I had netted thirty thousand pounds. This was the solid commencement of my fortune.

During this time I had but little leisure, and I saw scarcely anything of your mother. Now that the struggle was over, I went to her to tell her of my successes. Then I learned that her father had been ruined in the panic, and that if it had not been for a friend who sacrificed his small fortune for them, they would have been turned out of house and home. This friend was your father. He was a friend also to Sydney; and it was with his money, I believe, that Sydney discharged his debt to me; I had other security, but I was glad that there was no need to enforce it.

I held my passion in full control when I was told that your mother was engaged to be married. It was bitter to bear, but I argued with myself that it was best so; I might have done a foolish thing. A coldness sprang up between the Sydneys and me, and our intimacy weakened. It was natural, for our positions were very different from what they were a few months before. I had risen, and he had fallen. We were not upon an equality.