“It would be well if the twentieth century had a Lycurgus,” commented Plutarch. “For the purpose of sapping the foundation of avarice, he called in all the nefarious nuggets and decreed that iron should be used as current coin. If modern millionaires had to drive a yoke of oxen to carry home each $88 in dividends, the iron would enter their souls far more readily than into their pocketbooks.”
“The profits of plunder ought to be checked.”
“So they are. A check is drawn for each man who has his price, to stop him from branding his neighbor a thief. Never analyze the gold given as a gift. Does it matter which cow gave the skimmed milk if we get the cream? If our pocketbook is made corpulent enough to choke our scruples, shall we inquire if our benefactor has cobwebs on his conscience? A man’s criminality ought not to be based on the size of his bank account.”
“Greed and graft have always been blood money relations,” I said. “In the dawn of history Adam owned the whole world except one little tree and he wouldn’t be happy till he got that.”
“But I never became a millionaire,” muttered the first man, disconsolately.
“You would have been a multi-billionaire if you had held onto all your real estate. But perhaps, like Ann Drew Karnagee, you thought it a sin to die rich after living in the tainted atmosphere of affluence.”
“Then there was Cæsar. He ran up a supper bill of twenty-five million in four months. My authority? Never mind; it’s all down somewhere.”
“You are right,” agreed Plutarch. “The turning of tarnished tin into trust treasure isn’t confined to any one decade. Even Prometheus was guilty of petty larceny, for he stole fire from heaven and—”
“If you grasp the burning ploughshare of ill-gotten gains, do not complain if it sears your palms and scorches your brain and petrifies your heart.” Thus spoke Judas and departed.
“Mortals say that money cannot be carried beyond the grave,” explained Tweed; “but there is spirit money as well as spirit men. Grafter Judas hanged himself to get rid of thirty pieces of silver—foolish man! How little fitted he would have been for life in New York; on the board of aldermen, for instance, or as a district boss. We New Yorkers are frequently afflicted with itching palms, but money never burns our fingers as it does that of Judas in Hades. He throws it away, but it always returns to his grasp. If I had been empowered with the same necromancy on earth, I could have been president of the United States. Possessing Judas’ faculty, I could have paid each man his price and yet the money would always have returned!”