contrary, lay hold upon it, seize it, rescue it from hands which in all
probability would work ruin with it, and resolutely refuse, when it is once
got, to let it go out of your grasp. Let no absurd talk about quittance,
discharge, remuneration, payment, induce the holder to relax from his
inflexible purpose of palm. Pay, like party, is the madness of many for the
gain of a few.

Unhappily, vile gold, or its representation or equivalent, has been, during
many centuries, the sole medium through which the majority of mankind have
supplied their wants, or ministered to their luxuries. It is high time that
a sage should arise to expound how the discerning few--those who have the
wit and the will (both must concur to the great end) may live--LIVE--not
like him who buys and balances himself by the book of the groveller who
wrote "How to _Live_ upon Fifty Pounds a Year"--(O shame to manhood!)--but
live, I say--"be free and merry"--"laugh and grow fat"--exchange the
courtesies of life--be a pattern of the "minor morals"--and yet: all this
without a doit in bank, bureau, or breeches' pocket.

I am that sage. Let none deride. Haply, I shall only remind some, but I may
teach many. Those that come to scoff, may perchance go home to prey.

Let no gentleman of the old school (for whom, indeed, my brief treatise is
not designed) be startled when I advance this proposition: That more
discreditable methods are daily practised by those who live to get money,
than are resorted to by those who without money are nevertheless under the
necessity of living. If this proposition be assented to--as, in truth, I
know not how it can be gainsaid,--nothing need be urged in vindication of
my art of _free_ living. Proceed I then at once.

Here is a youth of promise--born, like Jaffier, with "elegant desires"--one