periods when his fortune hung in the balance, and his financial
salvation was achieved as by fire. When he sat silent for a moment,
strange things were written on his face. Haggard lines ran across the
brow; the hollows underneath the eyes grew deep; and one could see that
black care sat upon his shoulders. There was a listening posture of
the head, as of one apprehensive of the footfall of disaster, and
though he was barely forty, his hair was white. What happened to him
finally I do not know. I missed him for a year or two; inquired at the
hotel where he had lived and found him gone; and I thought I read in
the sarcastic smile of the hotel-manager more knowledge than he was
willing to communicate. I imagine that he went down in some financial
storm, like ships at sea that are heard of no more; the Napoleon of
finance had somewhere found his Waterloo. The reflection is
inevitable; what had he got out of life after all? He had won neither
peace nor honour; he had known nothing of the finer joys or tastes; he
had enjoyed no satisfying pleasures; such triumph as he had known had
been the brief triumph of the gambler. Upon the whole I thought the
narrow tedious life of Arrowsmith the worthier.

Reflections of this nature are usually attributed to mere envy or
contempt of wealth, which is a temper not less sordid than a love of
wealth. For my part I can but profess that I feel for wealth neither
envy nor contempt. On the contrary, I love to imagine myself wealthy,
and I flatter myself--as most poor men do--that I am a person
peculiarly fitted by nature to afford a conspicuous example of how
wealth should be employed. I like to dramatise my fancies, and the
more impossible these fancies are, the more convincing is the drama
that can be educed from them. Thus I have several times built palaces
which have rivalled the splendours of the Medici; I have administered
great estates to the entire satisfaction of my tenants; I have