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Money

with becoming reverence, and was accompanied by such a curious medley of Bible texts, and lists of distinguished people whom the millionaire had entertained, that we hardly knew where we stood in the order of creation.

Copies of this sermon, which was printed "in deference to many importunities," are now extremely rare. Reading its yellow pages, we become aware that the rites and ceremonies with which one generation worships its golden calf differ in detail from the rites and ceremonies with which another generation performs this pious duty. The calf itself has never changed since it was first erected in the wilderness,—the original model hardly admitting of improvement. Ruskin used to point out gleefully a careless couple who, in Claude's picture of the adoration of the golden calf, are rowing in a pleasure boat on a stream which flows mysteriously through the desert. Indifferent to

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