Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/306

284 without, a mere stranger to the house, one that is a sycophant or very tyrant, who shall cut off this keeper of that great stock and treasure, and when he hath dispatched and made a hand of him, drive and turn the course of all this wealth and riches out of the usual channel another way; or at leastwise until it fall into the hands (as commonly men say it doth) of the most wicked and ungracious imp of that race, who will disperse and scatter that which others have gathered, who will consume and devour all unthriftily which his predecessors have gotten and spared wickedly: for not only as Euripides saith:

but also covetous carls and pinching penny-fathers leave children behind them that be loose and riotous and spendthrifts; like as Diogenes by way of mockery said upon a time: That it were better to be a Megarian's ram than his son: for wherein they would seem to instruct and inform their children, they spoil and mar them clean, ingrafting into their hearts a desire and love of money, teaching them to be covetous and base-minded pinch-pennies, laying the foundation (as it were) in their heirs of some strong place or fort, wherein they may surely guard and keep their inheritance.

And what good lessons and precepts be these which they teach them: Gain and spare, my son, get and save; think with thyself and make thine account that thou shalt be esteemed in the world according to thy wealth and not otherwise. But surely this not to instruct a child, but rather to knit up fast or sew up the mouth of a purse that it may hold and keep the better whatsoever is put into it. This only is the difference, that a purse or money-bag becometh foul, sullied and ill-savouring after that silver is put into it; but the children of covetous persons, before they receive their patrimonies or attain to any riches, are filled already even by their fathers with avarice, and a hungry desire after their substance: and verily such children thus nurtured, reward their parents again for their schooling with a condign salary and recompense, in that they love them not because they shall receive much one day by them, but hate them rather for that they have nothing from them in present possession already, for having learned this lesson of them; To esteem nothing in the world in comparison of wealth and riches, and to aim at nought else in the whole course of their life, but to gather a deal of goods together, they repute the lives of their