Literary Cadet And Rhode Island Statesman

ROMEO.

AVARICE.

There is hardly a vice more opposite to good sense than this; for the avaricious man prostitutes his honor, his life, and even his soul, merely to hoard up treasures, from which he derives no other advantage than the pain of taking care of it, the uneasy fears of losing it, and the injustice he makes use of to increase it. The miser thinks himself master of his riches, but does not perceive that he is the slave to them. He bears them so high a respect, that he presumes only to touch them; he loves nobody and nobody loves him, nor does he even love himself. In proportion as he sells his clothes, his poverty increases, so that, like a second Tantalus, while in the arms of opulence, he experiences all the horrors of poverty.

It is without doubt the evident effects of the Divine justice against this vice, that the avaricious man condemns himself not to make use of his riches, and is a prey to the devouring idea, that he must leave all his riches to his heirs, who ardently desire to see him in his grave. I remember to have read, that a certain bishop was so avaricious, that he went by night to rob his own horses of their oats; and that this prelate of so exemplary a life, was one night seized by his groom who, under cover of the dark, worked hard with a cudgel on the shoulders of his master, supposing him to be some needy thief.

Avarice is a vice, from which the demon himself is not exempt. It must give pleasure to the evil spirit, to see how man abandons his God for so vile a thing as gold, and disregards his salvation to become a slave to that yellow earth, which he must leave behind him.