“IT is vain, to urge, Brother Robert. Out into the world I must go. The
impulse is on me. I should die of inaction here.”
“You need not be inactive. There is work to do. I shall never be idle.”
“And such work! Delving in, and grovelling close to the ground. And for
what? Oh no Robert. My ambition soars beyond your 'quiet cottage in a
sheltered vale.' My appetite craves something more than simple herbs,
and water from the brook. I have set my heart on attaining wealth; and
where there is a will there is always a way.”
“Contentment is better than wealth.”
“A proverb for drones.”
“No, William, it is a proverb for the wise.”
“Be it for the wise or simple, as commonly, understood, it is no proverb
for me. As poor plodder along the way of life, it were impossible for
me to know content. So urge no farther, Robert. I am going out into the
world a wealth-seeker, and not until wealth is gained do I purpose to
return.”
“What of Ellen, Robert?”
The young man turned quickly towards his brother, visibly disturbed, and
fixed his eyes upon him with an earnest expression.
“I love her as my life,” he said, with a strong emphasis on his words.
“Do you love wealth more than life, William?”
“Robert!”
“If you love Ellen as your life, and leave her for the sake of getting
riches, then you must love money more than life.”
“Don't talk to me after this fashion. I love her tenderly and truly. I
am going forth as well for her sake as my own. In all the good fortune
that comes as a meed of effort, she will be the sharer.”
“You will see her before you leave us?”
“No; I will neither pain her nor myself by a parting interview. Send her
this letter and this ring.”
A few hours later, and there brothers stood with tightly-grasped hands,
gazing into each other's faces.
“Farewell, Robert.”
“Farewell, William. Think of the old homestead as still your home.
Though it is mine, in the division of our patrimony, let your heart come
back to it as yours. Think of it as home; and, should Fortune cheat you
with the apples of Sodom, return to it again. Its doors will ever be
open, and its hearth-fire bright for you as of old. Farewell!”
And they turned from each other, one going out into the restless world,
an eager seeker for its wealth and honours; the other to linger among
the pleasant places dear to him by every association of childhood, there
to fill up the measure of his days--not idly, for he was no drone in the
social hive.
On the evening of that day two maidens sat alone, each in the sanctuary
of her own chamber. There was a warm glow on the cheeks of one, and a
glad light in her eyes. Pale was the other's face, and wet her drooping
lashes. And she that sorrowed held an open letter in her hand. It was
full of tender words; but the writer loved wealth more than the maiden,
and had gone forth to seek the mistress of his soul. He would “come
back,” but when? Ah, what a veil of uncertainty was upon the future!
Poor, stricken heart! The other maiden--she of the glowing cheeks and
dancing eyes--held also a letter in her hand. It was from the brother
of the wealth-seeker; and it was also full of loving words; and it
said that, on the morrow, he would come to bear her as his bride to his
pleasant home. Happy maiden!
Ten years have passed. And what of the wealth-seeker? Has he won the
glittering prize? What of the pale-faced maiden he left in tears? Has he
returned to her? Does she share now his wealth and honour? Not since
the day he went forth from the home of his childhood has a word of
intelligence from the wanderer been received; and to those he left
behind him he is as one who has passed the final bourne. Yet he still
dwells among the living.
In a far-away, sunny clime stands a stately mansion. We will not
linger to describe the elegant interior, to hold up before the reader's
imagination a picture of rural beauty, exquisitely heightened by art,
but enter its spacious hall, and pass up to one of its most luxurious
chambers. How hushed and solemn the pervading atmosphere! The inmates,
few in number, are grouped around one on whose white forehead Time's
trembling finger has written the word “Death!” Over her bends a
manly form. There--his face is towards you. Ah! you recognise the
wanderer--the wealth-seeker. What does he here? What to him is the dying
one? His wife! And has he, then, forgotten the maiden whose dark lashes
lay wet on her pale cheeks for many hours after she read his parting
words? He has not forgotten, but been false to her. Eagerly sought he
the prize, to contend for which he went forth. Years came and departed;
yet still hope mocked him with ever-attractive and ever-fading
illusions. To-day he stood with his hand just ready to seize the object
of his wishes, to-morrow a shadow mocked him. At last, in an evil hour,
he bowed down his manhood prostrate even to the dust in woman worship,
and took to himself a bride, rich in golden, attractions, but poorer as
a woman than ever the beggar at her father's gate. What a thorn in his
side she proved! A thorn ever sharp and ever piercing. The closer he
attempted to draw her to his bosom, the deeper went the points into his
own, until, in the anguish of his soul, again and again he flung her
passionately from him.
Five years of such a life! Oh, what is there of earthly good to
compensate therefor? But in this last desperate throw did the worldling
gain the wealth, station, and honour he coveted? He had wedded the only
child of a man whose treasure might be counted by hundreds of thousands;
but, in doing so, he had failed to secure the father's approval or
confidence. The stern old man regarded him as a mercenary interloper,
and ever treated him as such. For five years, therefore, he fretted and
chafed in the narrow prison whose gilded bars his own hands had forged.
How often, during that time, had his heart wandered back to the dear old
home, and the beloved ones with whom he had passed his early years!
And, ah! how many, many times came between him and the almost hated
countenance of his wife the gentle, the loving face of that one to whom
he had been false! How often her soft blue eyes rested on his own How
often he started and looked up suddenly, as if her sweet voice came
floating on the air!
And so the years moved on, the chain galling more deeply, and a bitter
sense of humiliation as well as bondage robbing him of all pleasure in
his life.
Thus it is with him when, after ten years, we find him waiting, in the
chamber of death, for the stroke that is to break the fetters that so
long have bound him. It has fallen. He is free again. In dying, the
sufferer made no sign. Suddenly she plunged into the dark profound, so
impenetrable to mortal eyes, and as the turbid waves closed, sighing
over her, he who had called her wife turned from the couch on which her
frail body remained, with an inward “Thank God! I am a man again!”
One more bitter dreg yet remained for his cup. Not a week had gone by
ere the father of his dead wife spoke to him these cutting words:--
“You were nothing to me while my daughter lived--you are less than
nothing to me now. It was my wealth, not my child you loved. She has
passed away. What affection would have given to her, dislike will never
bestow on you. Henceforth we are strangers.”
When the next sun went down on that stately mansion, which the
wealth-seeker had coveted, he was a wanderer again--poor, humiliated,
broken in spirit.
How bitter had been the mockery of all his early hopes! How terrible the
punishment he had suffered!
One more eager, almost fierce struggle with alluring fortune, with which
the worldling came near steeping his soul in crime, and then fruitless
ambition died in his bosom.
“My brother said well,” he murmured, as a ray of light fell suddenly on
the darkness of his spirit; “'contentment is better than wealth.' Dear
brother! Dear old home! Sweet Ellen! Ah, why did I leave you? Too late!
too late! A cup, full of the wine of life, was at my lips; but, I turned
my head away, asking for a more fiery and exciting draught. How vividly
comes before me now that parting scene! I am looking into my brother's
face. I feel the tight grasp of his hand. His voice is in my ears. Dear
brother! And his parting words, I hear them now, even more earnestly
than when they were first spoken. 'Should fortune cheat you with the
apples of Sodom, return to your home again. Its doors will ever be open,
and its hearth-fires bright for you as of old.' Ah, do the fires still
burn? How many years have passed since I went forth! And Ellen? Even
if she be living and unchanged in her affections, I can never lay this
false heart at her feet. Her look of love would smite me as with a whip
of scorpions.”
The step of time has fallen so lightly on the flowery path of those to
whom contentment was a higher boon than wealth, but few footmarks were
visible. Yet there had been changes in the old homestead. As the smiling
years went by, each, as it looked in at the cottage window, saw the
home circle widening, or new beauty crowning the angel brows of happy
children. No thorn to his side had Robert's gentle wife proved. As time
passed on, closer and closer was she drawn to his bosom; yet never a
point had pierced him. Their home was a type of Paradise.
It is near the close of a summer day. The evening meal is spread, and
they are about gathering round the table, when a stranger enters.
His words are vague and brief, his manner singular, his air slightly
mysterious. Furtive, yet eager glances go from face to face.
“Are these all your children?” he asks, surprise and admiration mingling
in his tones.
“All ours, and, thank God, the little flock is yet unbroken.”
The stranger averts his face. He is disturbed by emotions that it is
impossible to conceal.
“Contentment is better than wealth,” he murmurs. “Oh that I had
comprehended the truth.”
The words were not meant for others; but the utterance had been too
distinct. They have reached the ears of Robert, who instantly recognises
in the stranger his long-wandering, long-mourned brother.
“William!”
The stranger is on his feet. A moment or two the brothers stand gazing
at each other, then tenderly embrace.
“William!”
How the stranger starts and trembles! He had not seen, in the quiet
maiden, moving among and ministering to the children so unobtrusively,
the one he had parted from years before--the one to whom he had been so
false. But her voice has startled his ears with the familiar tones of
yesterday.
“Ellen!” Here is an instant oblivion of all the intervening years. He
has leaped back over the gulf, and stands now as he stood ere ambition
and lust for gold lured him away from the side of his first and only
love. It is well both for him and the faithful maiden that he cannot so
forget the past as to take her in his arms and clasp her almost wildly
to his heart. But for this, conscious shame would have betrayed his
deeply-repented perfidy.
And here we leave them, reader. “Contentment is better than wealth.”
So the worldling proved, after a bitter experience, which may you be
spared! It is far better to realize a truth perceptibly, and thence make
it a rule of action, than to prove its verity in a life of sharp agony.
But how few are able to rise into such a realization!