your heart, friend; there are better days ahead"; and with the voice a
hand slipping into yours a coin, and with both a kind smile, a cheery
"Good-bye," and a tall, broad-shouldered figure, striding with long, so
to say, kindly legs up the street--gone almost before you knew he was
there. I think it would hardly matter to you whether the coin were a
quarter or a dime; but what would matter would be your amazement that
there still was any kindness left on the earth; and perhaps you might
almost be tempted to believe in God again. And then--well, what would it
matter to any one what you did with your miraculous coin? This is my
friend's favourite way of spending his money. To the extent of his poor
means he has constituted himself the Haroun Al Raschid of the sandwich
men.

After all, I suppose that most of us, if put into the possession of
great wealth, would find our greatest satisfaction in the spending of it
much after the fashion of my poor lawyer friend--that is, in the
artistic distribution of human happiness. I do not, of course, for a
moment include in that phrase those soulless systems of philanthropy by
which a solid block of money on the one side is applied to the relief of
a solid block of human misery on the other, useful and much to be
appreciated as such mechanical charity of course is. It is not, indeed,
the pious use of money that is my theme, but rather how to get the most
fun, the most personal and original fun, out of it.

The mention of the great caliph suggests a rôle which is open to any
rich man to play, the rôle of the Haroun Al Raschid of New York. What a
wonderful part to play! Instead of loitering away one's evenings at the
club, to doff one's magnificence and lose oneself in the great nightly
multitude of the great city, wandering hither and thither, watching and
listening, and, with one's cheque-book for a wand, play the magician of