transportation or industrial concerns. This modern rich man, in all
probability, has nothing whatever to do with nature or with country
life. He is soft and tender in body; lives in the city; takes no
vigorous exercise, and has very little personal contact with the
elemental forces of either nature or mankind. He is not like Washington
an out-of-door man. Washington was a combination of land-owner,
magistrate, and soldier,--the best combination for a leader of men which
the feudal system produced. Our modern rich man is apt to possess no one
of these functions, any one of which, well discharged, has in times past
commanded the habitual respect of mankind. It is a grave misfortune for
our country, and especially for our rich men, that the modern forms of
property,--namely, stocks and bonds, mortgages, and city buildings--do
not carry with them any inevitable responsibilities to the state, or
involve their owner in personal risks and charges as a leader or
commander of the people. The most enviable rich man to-day is the
intelligent industrial or commercial adventurer or promoter, in the good
sense of those terms. He takes risks and assumes burdens on a large
scale, and has a chance to develop will, mind, and character, just as
Queen Elizabeth's adventurers did all over the then known world.

Again, Washington, as I have already indicated, was an economical
person, careful about little expenditures as well as great, averse to
borrowing money, and utterly impatient of waste. If a slave were
hopelessly ill, he did not call a doctor, because it would be a useless
expenditure. He insisted that the sewing woman, Carolina, who had only
made five shirts in a week, not being sick, should make nine. He entered
in his account "thread and needle, one penny," and used said thread and
needle himself. All this closeness and contempt for shiftlessness and
prodigality were perfectly consistent with a large and hospitable way of
living; for during many years of his life he kept open house at Mt.