She is engaged at a stationer's shop."
"What is a fellow to do to get money?" Waymark exclaimed, when his
pipe was well alight. "I'm growing sick of this hand-to-mouth
existence. Now if one had a bare competency, what glorious
possibilities would open out. The vulgar saying has it that 'time is
money;' like most vulgar sayings putting the thing just the wrong
way about. 'Money is time,' I prefer to say; it means leisure, and
all that follows. Why don't you write a poem on Money, Casti? I
almost feel capable of it myself. what can claim precedence, in all
this world, over hard cash? It is the fruitful soil wherein is
nourished the root of the tree of life; it is the vivifying
principle of human activity. Upon it luxuriate art, letters,
science; rob them of its sustenance, and they droop like withering
leaves. Money means virtue; the lack of it is vice. The devil loves
no lurking-place like an empty purse. Give me a thousand pounds
to-morrow, and I become the most virtuous man in England. I satisfy
all my instincts freely, openly, with no petty makeshifts and vile
hypocrisies. To scorn and revile wealth is the mere resource of
splenetic poverty. What cannot be purchased with coin of the realm?
First and foremost, freedom.
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