Many people envy the possessions of the rich, but will not pass through the risks, the fatigues, or the dangers of acquiring them.  It is related of the Duke of Dantzic that an old comrade, whom he had not seen for many years, called upon him at his hotel in Paris, and seemed amazed at the luxury of his apartments, the richness of his furniture, and the magnificence of his gardens.  The Duke, supposing that he saw in his old comrade’s face a feeling of jealousy, said to him bluntly, “You may have all that you see before you, on one condition.”  “What is that?” said his friend.  “It is that you will place yourself twenty paces off, and let me fire at you with a musket a hundred times.”  “I will certainly not accept your offer at that price.”  “Well,” replied the Marshal, “to gain all that you see before you, I have faced more than a thousand gunshots, fired at not move than ten paces off.”

The Duke of Marlborough often faced death.  He became rich, and left a million and a half to his descendants to squander.  The Duke was a penurious man.  He is said to have scolded his servant for lighting four candles in his tent, when Prince Eugene called upon him to hold a conference before the battle of Blenheim.  Swift said of the Duke, “I dare hold a wager that in all his compaigns he was never known to lose his baggage.”  But this merely showed his consummate generalship.  When ill and feeble at Bath, he is said to have walked home from the rooms to his lodgings, to save sixpence.  And yet this may be excused, for he may have walked home for exercise.  He is certainly known to have given a thousand pounds to a young and deserving soldier who wished to purchase a commission.  When Bolingbroke was reminded of one of the weaknesses of Marlborough, he observed, “He was so great a man, that I forgot that he had that defect.”

It is no disgrace to be poor.  The praise of honest poverty has often been sung.  When a man will not stoop to do wrong, when he will not sell himself for money, when he will not do a dishonest act, then his poverty is most honourable.  But the man is not poor who can pay his way, and save something besides.  He who pays cash for all that he purchases, is not poor but well off.  He is in a happier condition than the idle gentleman who runs into debt, and is clothed, shod, and fed at the expense of his tailor, shoemaker, and butcher.  Montesquieu says, that a man is not poor because he has nothing, but he is poor when he will not or cannot work.  The man who is able and willing to work, is better off than the man who possesses a thousand crowns without the necessity for working.