And it is scarcely safer to leave the money to a daughter.  For, if a young woman has a prospective inheritance so large that, when a young man calls upon her, she cannot tell whether he is calling upon her or her father, it is embarrassing—­especially so if she finds after marriage that he married the wrong member of the family.  And, I may add, that the daughters of the very rich are usually hedged about by a social environment which prevents their making the acquaintance of the best young men.  The men who, twenty-five years from now, will be the leaders in business, in society, in government, and in the Church, are not the pampered sons of the rich, but the young men who, with good health and good habits, with high ideals and strong ambition, are, under the spur of necessity, laying the foundation for future achievements, and these young men do not have a chance to become acquainted with the daughters of the very rich.  Even if they did know them they might hesitate to enter upon the scale of expenditure to which these daughters are accustomed.

I have dealt at length with these fixed limitations, although we all know of them or ought to.  The ministers tell us about these things Sunday after Sunday, or should, and yet we find men chasing the almighty dollar until they fall exhausted into the grave.  Dr. Talmage dealt with this subject; he said that a man who wore himself out getting money that he did not need, would finally drop dead, and that his pastor would tell a group of sorrowing friends that, by a mysterious dispensation of Providence, the good man had been cut off in his prime.  Dr. Talmage said that Providence had nothing to do with it, and that the minister ought to tell the truth about it, and say that the man had been kicked to death by the golden calf.

Some years ago I read a story by Tolstoy, and I did not notice until I had completed it that the title of the story was, “What shall it profit?” The great Russian graphically presented the very thought that I have been trying to impress upon your minds.  He told of a Russian who had land hunger—­who added farm to farm and land to land, but could never get enough.  After a while he heard of a place where land was cheaper and he sold his land and went and bought more land.  But he had no more than settled there until he heard of another place among a half-civilized people where land was cheaper still.  He took a servant and went into this distant country and hunted up the head man of the tribe, who offered him all the land he could walk around in a day for a thousand rubles—­told him he could put the money down on any spot and walk in any direction as far and as fast as he would, and that, if he was back by sunset, he could have all the land he had encompassed during the day.  He put the money down upon the ground and started at sunrise to get, at last, enough land.  He started leisurely, but as he looked upon the land it looked so good that he hurried a little—­and