Don't talk to me about filthy lucre! Pray, when would Sheikh Tahar,
that eminent Koordish saint, have become convinced that he was a great
sinner, if they had not carried about the contribution-boxes in the
little New England churches? Do you think it has cost nothing to
demonstrate to the widows of Scindiah the folly of _suttee_? Don't you
know that it has been an expensive work to persuade the Khonds of
Goomsoor to give up roasting each other in the name of Heaven? Very
fine is Epictetus,--but wilt he be your bail? Will Diogenes bring home
legs of mutton? Can you breakfast upon the simple fact that riches have
wings and use them? Can you lunch upon _vanitas vanitatum_? Are loaves
and fishes intrinsically wicked? As for Virtue, we have the opinion of
Horace himself, that it is viler than the vilest weed, without fortune
to support it. Poets, of all men, are supposed to live most easily upon
air; and yet, Don Bob, is not a fat poet, like Jamie Thomson, quite
likely, although plumper than beseems a bard, to be ten thousand times
healthier in his singing than my Lord Byron thinning himself upon cold
potatoes and vinegar? Do you think that Ovid cuts a very respectable
figure, blubbering on the Euxine shore and sending penitential letters
to Augustus and afterward to Tiberius? He was a poor puppy, and as well
deserved to have three wives as any sinner I ever heard of.
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