comes with wealth; but, as he was prudent, he said:

"We will see, we will see. Let us wait till the end of the year."

The end of the year, that is to say, the striking of the balance-sheet.

The balance-sheet! That is the magic word. All through the year we go
on and on in the eddying whirl of business. Money comes and goes,
circulates, attracts other money, vanishes; and the fortune of the firm,
like a slippery, gleaming snake, always in motion, expands, contracts,
diminishes, or increases, and it is impossible to know our condition
until there comes a moment of rest. Not until the inventory shall we
know the truth, and whether the year, which seems to have been
prosperous, has really been so.

The account of stock is usually taken late in December, between Christmas
and New Year's Day. As it requires much extra labor to prepare it,
everybody works far into the night. The whole establishment is alert.
The lamps remain lighted in the offices long after the doors are closed,
and seem to share in the festal atmosphere peculiar to that last week of
the year, when so many windows are illuminated for family gatherings.
Every one, even to the least important 'employe' of the firm, is
interested in the results of the inventory. The increases of salary, the
New Year's presents, depend upon those blessed figures. And so, while
the vast interests of a wealthy house are trembling in the balance, the
wives and children and aged parents of the clerks, in their fifth-floor
tenements or poor apartments in the suburbs, talk of nothing but the
inventory, the results of which will make themselves felt either by a
greatly increased need of economy or by some purchase, long postponed,
which the New Year's gift will make possible at last.