Among the causes of worry let us mention an over-emphasis of
things, an undue estimate of wealth, equipage and luxury.
When men are once bitten with the desire for abundance, worry
inevitably follows. It is a truism that the most beautiful
things are the simplest things. Witness a Doric column. One
substance, marble, and a fluted line, giving form--no more. But,
oh, how beautiful! The lily has two colors, white with a tiny
stamen of gold, and then for contrast a black mud-puddle in
which it grows. The two lovers have their happiest days in the
little cottage, with a tiny vine over the front window, three
or four great authors, one big chair before the open fire, two
or three old familiar songs, a few friends--heaven lies round
about this little house. Twenty years pass by. The man and woman
are bitten now with the love of many things. Forgetting the few
books that once he digested, the man buys 5,000 volumes--many
people are under the delusion that they have read a book because
they have bought it. Now also the man and woman buy twenty or
thirty chairs, and one sits in one chair in one room, and the
other in another chair in another room. There used to be one
chair. They begin to collect things for things’ sake; curios and
clothes and rare editions, until the house becomes a museum, and
the palace is as cold as a storage-plant, where love chilled
to death twenty years ago. And the man and woman are mere
care-takers of the things they have collected, mere drudges,
hirelings; in fact, this man and his wife are the only servants
in the house that work for nothing.--N. D. HILLIS.
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