Yet when a man is very fond of his money it is not easy for him at all
times to be very fond of his children also. The two are like God and
Mammon. Lord Macaulay has a passage in which he contrasts the pleasures
which a man may derive from books with the inconveniences to which he may
be put by his acquaintances. "Plato," he says, "is never sullen.
Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante
never stays too long. No difference of political opinion can alienate
Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet." I dare say I might
differ from Lord Macaulay in my estimate of some of the writers he has
named, but there can be no disputing his main proposition, namely, that
we need have no more trouble from any of them than we have a mind to,
whereas our friends are not always so easily disposed of. George
Pontifex felt this as regards his children and his money. His money was
never naughty; his money never made noise or litter, and did not spill
things on the tablecloth at meal times, or leave the door open when it
went out. His dividends did not quarrel among themselves, nor was he
under any uneasiness lest his mortgages should become extravagant on
reaching manhood and run him up debts which sooner or later he should
have to pay.
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