10.  This is much; but it is yet more, when you have fully achieved the superiority which is due to you, and acquired the wealth which is the fitting reward of your sagacity, if you solemnly accept the responsibility of it, as it is the helm and guide of labor far and near.  For you who have it in your hands, are in reality the pilots of the power and effort of the State.  It is entrusted to you as an authority to be used for good or evil, just as completely as kingly authority was ever given to a prince, or military command to a captain.  And according to the quantity of it you have in your hands, you are arbiters of the will and work of the nation; and the whole issue, whether the work of the State shall suffice for the State or not, depends upon you.

11.  You may stretch out your sceptre over the heads of the laborers, and say to them, as they stoop to its waving, “Subdue this obstacle that has baffled our fathers; put away this plague that consumes our children; water these dry places, plough these desert ones, carry this food to those who are in hunger; carry this light to those who are in darkness; carry this life to those who are in death;” or on the other side you may say:  “Here am I; this power is in my hand; come, build a mound here for me to be throned upon, high and wide; come, make crowns for my head, that men may see them shine from far away; come, weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly on the silk and purple; come, dance before me, that I may slumber; so shall I live in joy, and die in honor.”  And better than such an honorable death it were, that the day had perished wherein we were born.

12.  I trust that in a little while there will be few of our rich men, who, through carelessness or covetousness, thus forfeit the glorious office which is intended for their hands.  I said, just now, that wealth ill-used was as the net of the spider, entangling and destroying; but wealth well-used, is as the net of the sacred Fisher who gathers souls of men out of the deep.  A time will come—­I do not think it is far from us—­when this golden net of the world’s wealth will be spread abroad as the flaming meshes of morning cloud over the sky; bearing with them the joy of the light and the dew of the morning, as well as the summons to honorable and peaceful toil.

JOHN RUSKIN.

* * * * *

LIFE AND SONG.

[This poem is taken from “The Poems of Sidney Lanier,” copyrighted 1891, and published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.]

If life were caught by a clarionet,
  And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,
Should thrill its joy and trill its fret,
  And utter its heart in every deed,

“Then would this breathing clarionet
  Type what the poet fain would be;
For none o’ the singers ever yet
  Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,

“Or clearly sung his true, true thought,
  Or utterly bodied forth his life,
Or out of life and song has wrought
  The perfect one of man and wife;