because he was poor. In that great mustering-ground beyond the grave, who would not rather occupy the place of that sufferer than stand ranged amid the ranks of those who have thus neglected her? Contrast her deportment with that of the young man at the end of the desk; his fists are clenched, the nails of his fingers are embedded in the palms of his hands, his teeth set, his eyebrows knit; he strikes his hat as he places it on his head, closes the door with a loud slam, and curses the memory of a dead man, because he has left a reckless spendthrift just enough to live on all his life without working, yet so bequeathed it that he can but draw a given sum monthly. He is savage because he cannot have the whole legacy at once in his possession. If he could, he would be likely enough to squander it all away in a single night at some notorious gambling-house.
On another countenance you behold utter amazement slowly changing into the expression of contempt, disgust; and at last it settles down into black and sullen hatred. She, whose features have in a few moments undergone so many sudden alterations, finds that all her deeply-laid schemes and subtle plans have been of no avail, but that the poor relative, whose character she was ever disparaging in the eyes of the old man, and whom she kept from his bedside by the falsehoods she uttered to both, is now the possessor of all his riches. She is gnawing the end of her glove through sheer vexation: all he has left her is a book, an old volume, entitled, The Value of true Sincerity. The hypocrite is justly rebuked in his last will and testament. She departs burning red through shame and anger, and would give the world could she but leave her conscience behind her.
Watch that old man tottering on the very verge of the grave, and with hardly strength enough to lift the volume which he so eagerly scans: although he could already bury himself in gold, and leave the yellow lucre piled high above his narrow bed, he still covets more. He who has neither appetite nor taste for any rational enjoyment, who is compelled to sit up half the night because he cannot rest, is still eager to increase his riches. For what? the love of money alone. If he lends it, he never considers for what object; it may be good or evil, that concerns him not; all he looks to is the security, and the interest he is to receive on his capital: it may be to bring waste lands into cultivation, to aid a poor and industrious people; but one per cent more, and he would supply any armed tyrant with funds to destroy the whole peaceful populace, to leave their homes a mass of burning ruins, and the furrows of their fields running red with blood.
Here is the last Will and Testament of the immortal Shakspeare; the very handwriting of the mighty bard “who was not for an age, but for all time.” On that document his far-seeing eyes looked, on that page his hand rested; the same hand which obeyed the influence of his high-piled thoughts while he drew Hamlet, and Lear, and Macbeth, Desdemona, Ophelia, Perdita, and Imogen, held the pen which traced the very lines we now look upon. But for such old home-touches as these, we should almost doubt whether that god-like spirit ever descended to the common duties of this hard work-a-day world. But here we find him
“Not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food.”