“Very true, my son! and if you had a cart-load of money now, it wouldn’t be of any more value to you than a cart-load of those building stones. But, after you have been to school a few years longer, and trained yourself to some business, and made a man of yourself, and developed your character, then you will have tastes, and capacities, and duties that require money; and if you get it as you go along, and always have enough to satisfy them, and none in excess to encumber you, that will be the happiest fortune you can find.”
Fred took a few minutes to think of it. Then he said,—
“I believe you have told me the truth, and set me on the right track. I will go home again, and try to make a man of myself first, and a rich man afterward.”
“Before you start, perhaps you would like to come into my house and get rested, and look at some pictures.”
Fred accepted the invitation. The lady of the house gave him a delicious lunch, and he spent an hour in the clergyman’s study, looking over two or three portfolios of prints and drawings, which they explained to him. Then he bade them good-bye, shouldered his bundle, and started for home, having the good fortune to catch a long ride, and arriving just as I did.
“What I’ve learned,” said he, as he finished his story, “is, that you can get rich if you don’t care for anything else; but you’ve either got to work yourself to death for it, or else cheat somebody. You can get it out of the ground by working, or you can get it out of men by cheating. But who wants to do either? I don’t. And I believe it isn’t much use being rich, any way.”
Then I told Fred my adventures. “And what I’ve learned,” said I, “is, that you can get rich without much trouble, if you’re willing to wait all your life for forests to grow and property to rise. But what’s the use of money to an old man or an old woman that’s blind and deaf, and just ready to die? Or what good does it do a mean man, with a lot of loafers round him? It can’t make him a gentleman.”
And meditating upon this newly-acquired philosophy, Fred and I went to our homes.
“Mother,” said I, “I’ve got back.”
“Yes, my son, I expected you about this time.”