Page:The Battle for Bread (1875).pdf/49

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OW few are Mammon-proof. How few are superior to the seductive influences of riches. Wealth, when put in the scale with humanity, integrity, truth, love, goodness, magnanimity, justice—alas! how often outweighs them all! Millions are drunk on the wine of the world!—"the love of money" the cupidity of riches, the trappings and gew-gaws of gain. Over what fatal falls, arc those being carried, who give themselves up to this never to-be satisfied, bottomless, quenchless thirst for gold. A million does not satisfy nor would a thousand millions more.

This avarice may be pertinently likened unto a moral dyspepsia. A dyspeptic disease is often accompanied with a ravenous and insatiable appetite; and no matter how much the dyspeptic may cat, he rises from the table, as hungry as when he sat down. So with these money-mongers or victims of avarice—no matter how much they get, they want more and more. Their whole being is absorbed in the greed of accumulation, and were their minds as constantly running on any other subject as that of money, so that they thought and talked of little else, they would be considered downright lunatics.