To eat his bread in the sweat of his brow was man's curse in Adam's day, but is certainly man's blessing in our day. And what is eating one's bread in the sweat of one's brow but making money? Iwill believe no man who tells me that he would not sooner earn two loaves than one--and if two, then two hundred. I will believe no man who tells me that he would sooner earn one dollar a day than two--and if two, then two hundred. That is, in the very nature of the argument, caeteris paribus. When a man tells me that he would prefer one honest loaf to two that are dishonest, I will, in all possible cases, believe him. So also a man may prefer one quiet loaf to two that are unquiet. But under circumstances that are the same, and to a man who is sane, a whole loaf is better than half, and two loaves are better than one. The preachers have preached well, but on this matter they have preached in vain. Dives has never believed that he will be damned because he is Dives. He has never even believed that the temptations incident to his position have been more than a fair counterpoise, or even so much as a fair counterpoise, to his opportunities for doing good. All men who work desire to prosper by their work, and they so desire by the nature given to them from God. Wealth and progress must go on hand in hand together, let the accidents which occasionally divide them for a time happen as often as they may. The progress of the Americans has been caused by their aptitude for money-making; and that continual kneeling at the shrine of the coined goddess has carried them across from New York to San Francisco. Men who kneel at that shrine are called on to have ready wits and quick hands, and not a little aptitude for self-denial. The New Yorker has been true to his dollar because his dollar has been true to him.
But not on this account can I, nor on this account will any Englishman, reconcile himself to the savor of dollars which pervades the atmosphere of New York. The ars celare artem is wanting. The making of money is the work of man; but he need not take his work to bed with him, and have it ever by his side at table, amid his family, in church, while he disports himself, as he declares his passion to the girl of his heart, in the moments of his softest bliss, and at the periods of his most solemn ceremonies. That many do so elsewhere than in New York--in London, for instance, in Paris, among the mountains of Switzerland, and the steppes of Russia--I do not doubt. But there is generally a vail thrown over the object of the worshiper's idolatry. In New York one's ear is constantly filled with the fanatic's voice as he prays, one's eyes are always on the familiar altar. The frankincense from the temple is ever in one's nostrils. I have never walked down Fifth Avenue alone without thinking of money. Ihave never walked there with a companion without talking of it. Ifancy that every man there, in order to maintain the spirit of the place, should bear on his forehead a label stating how many dollars he is worth, and that every label should be expected to assert a falsehood.
I do not think that New York has been less generous in the use of its money than other cities, or that the men of New York generally are so. Perhaps I might go farther and say that in no city has more been achieved for humanity by the munificence of its richest citizens than in New York. Its hospitals, asylums, and institutions for the relief of all ailments to which flesh is heir, are very numerous, and beyond praise in the excellence of their arrangements. And this has been achieved in a great degree by private liberality. Men in America are not as a rule anxious to leave large fortunes to their children. The millionaire when making his will very generally gives back a considerable portion of the wealth which he has made to the city in which he made it. The rich citizen is always anxious that the poor citizen shall be relieved. It is a point of honor with him to raise the character of his municipality, and to provide that the deaf and dumb, the blind, the mad, the idiots, the old, and the incurable shall have such alleviation in their misfortune as skill and kindness can afford.
Nor is the New Yorker a hugger-mugger with his money. He does not hide up his dollars in old stockings and keep rolls of gold in hidden pots. He does not even invest it where it will not grow but only produce small though sure fruit. He builds houses, he speculates largely, he spreads himself in trade to the extent of his wings--and not seldom somewhat farther. He scatters his wealth broadcast over strange fields, trusting that it may grow with an increase of a hundredfold, but bold to bear the loss should the strange field prove itself barren. His regret at losing his money is by no means commensurate with his desire to make it. In this there is a living spirit which to me divests the dollar-worshiping idolatry of something of its ugliness. The hand when closed on the gold is instantly reopened. The idolator is anxious to get, but he is anxious also to spend. He is energetic to the last, and has no comfort with his stock unless it breeds with Transatlantic rapidity of procreation.
So much I say, being anxious to scrape off some of that daub of black paint with which I have smeared the face of my New Yorker;but not desiring to scrape it all off. For myself, I do not love to live amid the clink of gold, and never have "a good time," as the Americans say, when the price of shares and percentages come up in conversation. That state of men's minds here which I have endeavored to explain tends, I think, to make New York disagreeable. A stranger there who has no great interest in percentages soon finds himself anxious to escape. By degrees he perceives that he is out of his element, and had better go away.