Once upon a time there was a Miser who used to hide his gold at the
foot of a tree in his garden; but every week he used to go and dig it
up and gloat over his gains. A robber, who had noticed this, went and
dug up the gold and decamped with it. When the Miser next came to gloat
over his treasures, he found nothing but the empty hole. He tore his
hair, and raised such an outcry that all the neighbours came around
him, and he told them how he used to come and visit his gold. “Did you
ever take any of it out?” asked one of them.
“Nay,” said he, “I only came to look at it.”
“Then come again and look at the hole,” said a neighbour; “it will do
you just as much good.”
Wealth unused might as well not exist.