Begin betimes, occasion's bald behind,
Stop not thine opportunity, for fear too late
Thou seek'st for much, but canst not compass it.
MARLOWE.
“Plust a Dieu que j'eusse presentement cent soixante et dixhuit millions d'or!” says a personage in Rabelais: “ho, comment je triumpherois!”
It was a good, honest, large, capacious wish; and in wishing, it is as well to wish for enough. By enough in the way of riches, a man is said to mean always something more than he has. Without exposing myself to any such censorious remark, I will like the person above quoted, limit my desires to a positive sum, and wish for just one million a year.
And what would you do with it? says Mr. Sobersides.
“Attendez encores un peu, avec demie once de patience.”
I now esteem my venerable self
As brave a fellow, as if all that pelf
Were sure mine own; and I have thought a way
Already how to spend.
And first for my private expenditure, I would either buy a house to my mind, or build one; and it should be such as a house ought to be, which I once heard a glorious agriculturist define “a house that should have in it every thing that is voluptuous, and necessary and right.” In my acceptation of that felicitous definition, I request the reader to understand that every thing which is right is intended, and nothing but what is perfectly so: that is to say I mean every possible accommodation conducive to health and comfort. It should be large enough for my friends, and not so large as to serve as an hotel for my acquaintance, and I would live in it at the rate of five thousand a year, beyond which no real and reasonable enjoyment is to be obtained by money.
I would neither keep hounds, nor hunters, nor running horses.