Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/116

104 at the same time it redeems a nation from the reproach of mere material vulgarity; it has been the source of refinement, and has warmed into life much of the wisdom and beauty which have thence spread over all the world. In America there is no such class. Young men inheriting wealth very rarely turn to anything noble; they either convert their talents into gold, or their gold into furniture, wines, and confectionary. A young man of wealth does not know what to do with himself or it ; a rich young woman seems to have no resource but marriage ! Yet it must be confessed, that at least in one part of the United States wealth flows freely for the support of public institutions of education.

Here it is difficult for a man of science to live by his thought. Was Bowditch one of the first mathematicians of his age? He must be at the head of an annuity office. If Socrates should set up as a dealer in money, and outwit the brokers as formerly the Sophists, and shave notes as skilfully as of old, we should think him a great man. But if he adopted his old plan, what should we say of him?

Manliness is postponed and wealth preferred. "What a fine house is this," one often says: "what furniture; what feasting. But the master of the house!—why, every stone out of the wall laughs at him. He spent all of himself in getting this pretty show together, and now it is empty, and mocks its owner. He is the emblematic coffin at the Egyptian feast." "Oh, man!" says the looker-on," why not furnish thyself with a mind, and conscience, a heart and a soul, before getting all this brass and mahogany together; this beef and these wines?" The poor wight would answer,— "Why, sir, there were none such in the market!" The young man does not say, "I will first of all things be a man, and so being, will have this thing and the other," putting the agreeable after the essential. But he says, "First of all, by hook or by crook, I will have money, the manhood may take care of itself." He has it,—for tough and hard as the old world is, it is somewhat fluid before a strong man who resolutely grapples with difficulty and will swim through; it can be made to serve his turn. He has money, but the man has evaporated in the process; when you look he is not there. True, other