So many simple joys missed!--so many gracious and helpful sentiments discarded!--all the best of his years given over to eager pursuit of gold,--not because he cared for gold really, but because, owing to a false social system which perverted the moral sense, it seemed necessary to happiness.

Yet he had proved it to be the very last thing that could make a man happy.

The more money, the less enjoyment of it--the greater the wealth, the less the content.

Was this according to law ?--the spiritual law of compensation, which works steadily behind every incident which we may elect to call good or evil?
He thought it must be so.

This very festival--Christmas--how thoroughly he had been accustomed by an effete and degenerate "social set" to regard it as a "bore,"-- an exploded superstition--a saturnalia of beef and pudding--a something which merely served as an excuse for throwing away good money on mere stupid sentiment.