A young man in our college yonder asked me to formulate for him what I thought was the happiest hour in a man’s history, and I studied it long and came back convinced that the happiest hour that any man ever sees in any earthly matter is when a young man takes his bride over the threshold of the door, for the first time, of the house he himself has earned and built, when he turns to his bride and with an eloquence greater than any language of mine, he sayeth to his wife, “My loved one, I earned this home myself; I earned it all.  It is all mine, and I divide it with thee.”  That is the grandest moment a human heart may ever see.  But a rich man’s son cannot know that.  He goes into a finer mansion, it may be, but he is obliged to go through the house and say, “Mother gave me this, mother gave me that, my mother gave me that, my mother gave me that,” until his wife wishes she had married his mother.  Oh, I pity a rich man’s son.  I do.  Until he gets so far along in his dudeism that he gets his arms up like that and can’t get them down.  Didn’t you ever see any of them astray at Atlantic City?  I saw one of these scarecrows once and I never tire thinking about it.  I was at Niagara Falls lecturing, and after the lecture I went to the hotel, and when I went up to the desk there stood there a millionaire’s son from New York.  He was an indescribable specimen of anthropologic potency.  He carried a gold-headed cane under his arm—­more in its head than he had in his.  I do not believe I could describe the young man if I should try.  But still I must say that he wore an eye-glass he could not see through; patent leather shoes he could not walk in, and pants he could not sit down in—­dressed like a grasshopper!  Well, this human cricket came up to the clerk’s desk just as I came in.  He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it’s “Hinglish, you know,” to lisp:  “Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome papah and thome envelopehs!” The clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast them across the counter and turned away to his books.  You should have seen that specimen of humanity when the paper and envelopes came across the counter—­he whose wants had always been anticipated by servants.  He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass and he yelled after that clerk:  “Come back here, thir, come right back here.  Now, thir, will you order a thervant to take that papah and thothe envelopes and carry them to yondah dethk.”  Oh, the poor miserable, contemptible American monkey!  He couldn’t carry paper and envelopes twenty feet.  I suppose he could not get his arms down.  I have no pity for such travesties of human nature.  If you have no capital, I am glad of it.  You don’t need capital; you need common sense, not copper cents.

A.T.  Stewart, the great princely merchant of New York, the richest man in America in his time, was a poor boy; he had a dollar and a half and went into the mercantile business.  But he lost eighty-seven and a half cents of his first dollar and a half because he bought some needles and thread and buttons to sell, which people didn’t want.