He spoke
quietly and firmly, in his usually stern and tyrannical style, as if
severe upon himself, for being what?--a man of blood, a thief, a
perjured false accuser? No, no; lower in the scale of Mammon's judgment,
worse in the estimate of him whose god is gold; he was now a pauper, a
mere moneyless forked animal; a beggared, emptied, worthless, penniless
creature: therefore was he stern against his ill-starred soul, and took
vengeance on himself for being poor.
It was a consistent feeling, and common with the mercantile of this
world; to whom the accidents of fortune are every thing, and the
qualities of mind nothing; whose affections ebb and flow towards
friends, relations--yea, their own flesh and blood, with the varying
tide of wealth: whom a luckless speculation in cotton makes an enemy,
and gambling gains in corn restore a friend; men who fall down mentally
before the golden calf, and offer up their souls to Nebuchadnezzar's
idol: men who never saw harm nor shame in the craftiest usurer or
meanest pimp, provided he has thousands in the three per cents.
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