In excavating Pompeii a skeleton was found with the fingers clenched round a quantity of gold. A man of business in the town of Hull, England, when dying, pulled a bag of money from under his pillow, which he held between his clenched fingers with a grasp so firm as scarcely to relax under the agonies of death.
"Oh! blind and wanting wit to choose,
Who house the chaff and burn the grain;
Who hug the wealth ye cannot use,
And lack the riches all may gain."
Poverty is the want of much, avarice the want of everything.
A poor man while scoffing at the wealthy for not enjoying themselves was met by a stranger who gave him a purse, in which he was always to find a ducat. As fast as he took one out another was to drop in, but he was not to begin to spend his fortune until he had thrown away the purse. He took ducat after ducat out, but continually procrastinated and put off the hour of enjoyment until he had got "a little more," and died at last counting his millions.
A beggar was once met by Fortune, who promised to fill his wallet with gold, as much as he might desire, on condition that whatever touched the ground should turn at once to dust. The beggar opened his wallet, asked for more and yet more, until the bag burst. The gold fell to the ground, and all was lost.
When the steamer Central America was about to sink, the stewardess, having collected all the gold she could from the staterooms, and tied it in her apron, jumped for the last boat leaving the steamer. She missed her aim, fell into the water and the gold carried her down head first.
Franklin said money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. A great bank account can never make a man rich. It is the mind that makes the body rich. No man is rich, however much money or land he may possess, who has a poor heart. If that is poor, he is poor indeed, though he own and rule kingdoms. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Some men are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial temperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a shipload of ordinary men. Others are rich in disposition, family, and friends. There are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; so cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about them.
The human body is packed full of marvelous devices, of wonderful contrivances, of infinite possibilities for the happiness and enrichment of the individual. No physiologist, inventor, nor scientist has ever been able to point out a single improvement, even in the minutest detail, in the mechanism of the human body. No chemist has ever been able to suggest a superior combination in any one of the elements which make up the human structure.