The Man Who Lived in a Shoe

by Henry James Forman

"Isn't it a love?" I nod again.

"What a history that book has had—and you know every detail of it, I suppose. All the princes and kings who owned it—all the romance it has accumulated in nearly five hundred years—don't you?"

"Don't I what?"

"Know about it?"

"Oh, yes."

"Look here," cries Alicia with mock anger, "don't you go and become a blatant materialist thinking only of money and profits—like all the rest of the world. That would be horrible, Uncle Ranny—when I've been adoring you so abjectly because even your business is lovely and intellectual and romantic!"

And that girl is betrothed to my nephew Randolph! flashes through my mind. Aloud I say with a faint grin meant to exasperate her:

"Who on earth cares for anything but money?"

That she very properly ignores and in a softer, more serious tone, she murmurs:

"I came across a little rhyme of Goethe's—'Kophtisches Lied.' Do you remember it?—'Upon Fortune's great scale the index never rests. You must either rise or sink, rule and win, or serve and lose; suffer or triumph, be anvil or hammer.' Isn't it lovely?"