and above the ruins of his fortune, his eye, delighted, sees
“The primal virtues shine aloft as stars.”
Nay, gratitude gives its blessing now on his cheap and daily bread. “We had been lost if we had not been ruined,” quoth the real woman to the husband now freed from the worldly devil.
In soils too rich, the grain runs all to stalk, and there is no corn; the Egyptian farmer must mingle sand with the surface of his ground, which else the Nile enriches overmuch. The fat greyhound, housed in parlours, the girl's plaything, loses alike his power of scent and speed. It is so with men. Honour too easily or early got is a curse. “More than a fortune is misfortune,” says a wise man.
There are exceptions—men whom prosperity does not injure; whose gratitude greatens with their success, and their charity enlarges with each increase of means. They are the rarest of men, uncommonly well born, or bred with such painstaking as few mortals find. Yet I have known such.
There are others whom adversity itself does not teach. The full horror of avarice and lust are not commonly seen in the summer of life, when leaves and flowers and youthful fruit hide the ugly naked limbs; but when autumn has shaken down the fruit and torn the leaves away, and winter gibbets the vice in all its grim anatomy, it is then you know the hatefulness of avarice and lust. So the full baseness of mean men is not seen in their success but in their sorrow. Their tears are melted iron. I have known those whom prosperity maddened, but whom adversity did not sober. They fell, but fell only bruised and broken, never softened nor mellowed by the fall. These also are rare men. They must “wait the great teacher Death,” before they can adore their God. There are grapes of so poor a stock that the summer's sun but sours them, and the autumnal frost, which beautifies their leaves, only embitters the fruit; and when the winter's wind brings them to the ground, the all-devouring swine devours not them, but therefrom turns in disgust away. Sad sight, which the dear, motherly God must needs pity, and so should loving men.
