“Who, sir? tell me.”
“Well, for a few—‘Plum’ Turner, ‘Vulture’ Hopkins, Elwes, Jones, Betty Bolaine——”
“Oh! I cry you mercy, as the books say. These were the best of their kind; yet not one of ’em but would give in charity occasionally. And each would have its vanity, if you came to look. Mrs. Bolaine boasted her coach; and even Jones must have a new brim to his hat. No, sir. Two orders of misers there be—your Joneses and Dancers for one; and of the other every third man in the tale of humanity.”
“Tut-tut!”
“Oh! I mean it—the host of those who give a half-heart to gathering, but a whole one against dissipating. Now, did you ever hear of a miser who killed himself to save expense?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Nor I. Yet that should be the right moral of parsimony.”
“No, no, my friend. Possession is the disease.”
“Then how better to minister to it than by realizing one’s property, hoisting the metal into a sack, tying oneself thereto, and tilting all into the deep sea?”
“There would be the hire of the boat; but never mind. You give thought to things, I see.”