Sir Titus paused again; and once more swept the faces of his hearers with a keen glance. The room was as still as a tired church. The toast-master now shared the interest of the guests. June sat on the epergne smiling. Bim noiselessly snored.
"It is trebly a curse when, its creator dead, it passes to the children. Think of those victims of fortune, and pity them. In the beginning they are glad because they own so much. They plan the enjoyment of an infinity of pleasures, and wonder how they can spend the hoard their fathers have left them. They are victims caught in the toils. The great machine goes on. Still the wheels of its production are moving; the labourers are toiling, aching, and wanting. But the brain which has guided their operations has become cold. The new controllers of the machinery are comparatively effete. The old genius is gone. Hired managers do their best, no doubt; but the master, the head of the enterprise, is dead, and his place cannot be filled."
"Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Hear, hear!"
Agreement came in a rumble, followed with appeals to hush.
"There are dislocations in the machinery, labour troubles, angers, strikes. I need not detail to you the consequences of swollen industrial organizations, or the infinite troubles which come to enterprises over-capitalized or run by incompetence. Let me, at present, be content to remind you of the effects upon the fortune-ridden, unfortunate children. The worldly folly of the fathers is visited on them. All their lives they have been preserved from experience. They have not been allowed to learn from contact with the roughnesses of the world. They have been spoiled babes, pampered children, gilded youths; and so grow up to responsibilities which they cannot realize, and are perpetually blind to facts, victims to the rapacity of rascals, puppets of fashion, tools and fools--wasting, extravagant, weak, morally ruined. The greatest evil a man can do is to leave his sons so much money that they need not work. The only occupation left them is play; and so they spend their lives, pitting excitement against ennui. Better far be poor with brains and character than rich with the fortune of Dives and Croesus. Is it not so?"
"It is!" agreed the Archdeacon, looking down his nose. He had a fine voice, kept in condition with constant lozenges, so that his approval was heard all over the room.
"Hear, hear!" cried others.
"The useless children of the over-rich are with rare exceptions prodigal, spendthrift, the gulls of unscrupulous rogues--no curse can be greater than the glaring and manifold inequities which come from undue wealth. I need not further remind you of these facts, for you are thoughtful men and sympathetic. But this counsel I venture to give, and this counsel henceforth I pledge myself to keep. When you have secured your sufficiency for comfort, for legitimate industrial enterprise, and for the proper training and equipment of those dependent on you, don't you think it better, instead of accumulating and still accumulating loads of unrequired wealth, to use the surplus for the communal good, for the improvement of the locality, and the betterment of your neighbours and fellows? I shall do this, I pledge my word to it. To-morrow I go to my office, and will ensure that every one of my employés has a fair wage and a secure prospect, provided he does his duty."
Such applause of approval went up, breaking the Lord Mayor's speech, that Bim awoke with a start. He sat up and looked around affrighted; but seeing June sitting among her flowers, laughing, he became the courageous gnome again.
He picked up the wand, and went for a stroll down the table, wantonly touching men's hands as he went by, impelling them to clap and thump the louder. He was delighted to be wielding such powers. It was a comedy out of Fairyland, a farce with an effective ending.