he has made the world better for having been a part of its experience; he put more into the common stock of our truest wealth 30 than he took out of it; he made that rarest of all gifts to his time, the gift of a noble nature nobly dedicated to the highest tasks. When there shall be gathered into more accessible form the political widsom which he had for forty years contributed to a better knowledge of the people, and that store of gentle satire and sweet 35 persuasion, which he spoke as he sat in the Easy Chair, shall have become a part of our literature, then we will find ourselves wondering at the fertility of resource, the lightness of a strong touch, the varied culture which our friend possessed.

THOMAS R. SLICER.

He is the direct descendant of Addison, whose style is over- 40 rated, of Steele, whose morality is humorous, of Goldsmith, whose writing was angelic, and of Irving, whose taste was pretty. Mr. Curtis recalls all of these, yet he is like none of them. Humorous as they are and charming, he is somewhat sturdier, of a more robust fiber, with a stronger respect for plain living and high 45 thinking, with a firmer grasp on the duties of life.

THE NOBLE NATURE

BEN JONSON

It is not growing like a tree

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

In bulk, doth make Man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:

WEALTH

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

As soon as a stranger is introduced into any company, one of the first questions which all wish to have answered is, How does that man get his living? And with reason. He is no whole man until he knows how to earn a blameless livelihood. Society is 5 barbarous until every industrious man can get his living without dishonest customs.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He fails to make his place good in the world unless he not only pays his debt, but also adds something to the common wealth. Nor 10 can he do justice to his genius without making some larger demand on the world than a bare subsistence. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

Wealth has its source in application of the mind to nature, from the rudest strokes of ax or spade up to the last secrets of 15 art. Intimate ties subsist between thought and all production; because a better order is equivalent to vast amounts of brute labor. The forces and the resistances are Nature's, but the mind acts in bringing things from where they abound to where they are wanted; in wise combining; in directing the practice of the useful arts, 20 and in the creation of finer values, by fine art, by eloquence, by song or by the reproduction of memory. Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot. One man has stronger arms, or longer 25 legs; another sees by the course of streams and growth of markets where land will be wanted, makes a clearing to the river, goes to sleep, and wakes up rich. Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago; but it is put to better use. A clever fellow was acquainted with the expansive force of steam; he also saw 30 the wealth of wheat and grass rotting in Michigan. Then he cunningly screws on the steam pipe to the wheat crop. Puff now, O Steam! The steam puffs and expands as before, but this time

it is dragging all Michigan at its back to hungry New York and hungry England. Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the sur- 35 face. We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their 40 secret, that a half ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal by rail and by boat to make Canada as warm as Calcutta; and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

When the farmer's peaches are taken from under the tree and carried into town, they have a new look and a hundred- 45 fold value over the fruit which grew on the same bough and lies fulsomely on the ground. The craft of the merchant is this bringing a thing from where it abounds, to where it is costly.

Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and wind out; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet water; in two suits 50 of clothes, so to change your dress when you are wet; in dry sticks to burn; in a good double-wick lamp; and three meals; in a horse, or a locomotive to cross the land; in a boat to cross the sea; in tools to work with; in books to read; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tools and auxiliaries, the greatest possible extension to our powers, 55 as if it added feet and hands and eyes and blood, length to the day, and knowledge and good will.

Wealth begins with these articles of necessity. And here we must recite the iron law which Nature thunders in these northern climates. First, she requires that each man should feed himself. 60 If, happily, his fathers have left him no inheritance, he must go to work, and by making his wants less, or his gains more, he must draw himself out of that state of pain and insult in which she forces the beggar to lie. She gives him no rest until this is done; she starves, taunts, and torments him, takes away warmth, laughter, 65 sleep, friends, and daylight, until he has fought his own way to his own loaf. Then less peremptorily, but still with sting enough,

she urges him to the acquisition of such things as belong to him. Every warehouse and shop window, every fruit tree, every thought 70 of every hour, opens a new want to him, which it concerns his power and his dignity to gratify. It is of no use to argue the wants down: the philosophers have laid the greatness of man in making his wants few; but will a man content himself with a hut and a handful of dried peas? He is born to be rich. He is thor75 oughly related; and is tempted out of his appetites and fancies to the conquest of this and that piece of nature, until he finds his well-being in the use of his planet, and of more planets than his own. Wealth requires-besides the crust of bread and the roof-the freedom of the city, the freedom of the earth, travel80 ing, machinery, the benefits of science, music, fine arts, the best culture and the best company. He is the rich man who can avail himself of all men's faculties.

He is the richest man who knows

how to draw a benefit from the labors of the greatest number of men, of men in distant countries, and in past times. The same 85 correspondence that is between thirst in the stomach and water in the spring, exists between the whole of man and the whole of nature. The world is his tool chest, and he is successful, or his education is carried on just so far, as is the marriage of his faculties with nature, or the degree in which he takes up things 90 into himself. . .

Whilst it is each man's interest, that, not only ease and convenience of living, but also wealth or surplus product should exist somewhere, it need not be in his hands. Often it is very undesirable to him. Goethe said well, "Nobody should be rich 95 but those who can understand it." Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character; they seem to steal their own dividends. They should own who can administer, not they who hoard and conceal; not they who, the 100 greater proprietors they are, are only the greater beggars, but they whose work carves out work for more, opens a path for all. For he is a rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the