and lack of style, the most persuasive of examples?

Indifferent to style, we do indulge in longings--longings pitifully
weak--longings for the preservation of independence toilfully purchased
during the poisonous years of the past. Beside all wishes for books and
pictures and means for music and the thousands of small things which make
for divine discontent, stands a spectre--not grim and abhorrent and
forbidding, but unlovely and stern, indicating that the least excess of
exotic pleasures would so strain our resources that independence would be
threatened. If we were to buy anything beyond necessities, we might not
be certain of gratifying wants, frugal as they are, without once more
being compelled to fight with the beasts at some Australian Ephesus.
Rather than clog our minds with the thought of such conflict and of
fighting with flaccid muscles, dispirited and almost surely ingloriously,
we choose to laugh and be glad of our liberty, to put summary checks upon
arrogant desires for the possession of hosts of things which would
materially add to comforts without infringing upon pleasures, and find in
all serene satisfaction.

We have not yet pawned our future. No sort of tyranny, save that which is
primal, physical, and of the common lot, puts his dirty foot on our
haughty, sun-favoured necks.


"It is still the use of fortune
To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,
To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow
An age of poverty."