The fact is, if a young man is naturally indolent, the spur of necessity will drive him but a very little way, while the having enough to live upon is often the means of preserving his self-respect.  One constantly hears what humiliating things men will do for money, whereas the truth is that they do them for the want of it.  It is not the temptation which induces them, but the pinch.  ’Give me neither poverty nor riches,’ was Agur’s prayer; ’feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal.’  And there are many things—­flatteries, disgraceful humiliations, hypocrisies—­which are almost as bad as stealing.  One of the sharpest pinches of poverty to some minds must be their inability (because of their dependency on him and that of others upon them) to tell a man what they think of him.

Riches and poverty are of course but relative terms; but the happiest material position in which a man can be placed is that of ’means with a margin.’  Then, however small his income may be, however it may behove him to ‘cut and contrive,’ as the housekeepers call it, he does not feel the pinch of poverty.  I have known a rich man say to an acquaintance of this class, ’My good friend, if you only knew how very small are the pleasures my money gives me which you yourself cannot purchase!’ And for once it was not one of those cheap and empty consolations which the wealthy are so ready to bestow upon their less fortunate fellow-creatures.  Dives was, in that instance, quite right in his remark; only we must remember he was not speaking to Lazarus.  ’A dinner of herbs where love is,’ is doubtless quite sufficient for us; only there must be enough of it, and the herbs should be nicely cooked in an omelette.

THE LITERARY CALLING AND ITS FUTURE.

One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there would be no difficulty in finding a title for one’s essay, or that any embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material.  I find this, however, far from being the case.  ‘Men of Letters,’ for example, is a heading too classical and pretentious.  I do indeed remember its being used in these modern days by the sub-editor of a country paper, who, having quarrelled with his proprietor, and reduced him to silence by a violent kick in the abdomen, thus addressed him:  ’I leave you and your dirty work for ever, and start to-night for London, to take up my proper position as a Man of Letters.’  But this gentleman’s case (and I hope that of his proprietor) was an exceptional one.  The term in general is too ambitious and suggestive of the author of ‘Cato,’ for my humble purpose.  ‘Literature as a Profession,’ again, is open to objection on the question of fact.  The professions do not admit literature into their brotherhood.  ‘Literature, Science, and Art’ are all spoken of in the lump, and rather contemptuously (like ’reading, writing, and arithmetic’),