Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/323

310 it. Many more I know, who break down their conscience, their affections, their higher manhood. Mechanics sicken of their craft; painters have the lead-colic; tailors and shoemakers are pale and dyspeptic-looking; printers go, off in consumption, which they have caught from breathing ink and type metal. Is that the worst? I know men whose ambition, whose vanity, whose covetousness, has wrought them worse mischief—a consumption of the mind, a numb -palsy of the affections, gout in the conscience, a general dyspepsia of their humanities.

When Mr Successful first came to Boston, "with nothing but his hands," he was a sufficiently generous young man. When he began his housekeeping, a little string of money, only one hundred and fifty dollars long, went clean round his annual expenses; the ends met and tied, and he had still a penny for the poor. When he was comfortably rich, his heart was still human and needed small prompting for kind deeds. He lit the fire on a poor widow's hearth, and the blessing of such as were ready to perish came, the sweetest benediction on his modest daily meal, or the annual sumptuous feast of thanksgiving, when his grateful eye fell on the unbroken ring of domestic jewels gradually twined by his own and his fond partner's hands. Now Mr Successful is very rich, awfully rich, wealthy beyond hope; he talks in a "high prosperous voice" at the bank; in the council of hard faces you turn off from his; law is his only conscience now. It would take his right hand a great while to find any alms which his left hand ever does. So great is the load of gold on his shoulders, he cannot lift either hand to his lowliest pocket ; once charity was wont to come, he heard her gently tapping at his wooden door; now all day she shall vainly beat against his gate of gold, and he will not hear that dear angel of humanity. His ears are full of money, he hears but one sound, chink, chink, chink. Theology tells us of stony hearts ; they may be broken and managed then. But God save us from a heart of gold, which only beats like the mint-hammer to make coin, and circulates nothing but money, sending it out arterial, and faking it back dark-coloured and venous. In Bunyan's wonderful poem, as the pilgrim draws nigh the end, his burden lightens, and at length falls off, leaving him to