“Be sure you are right, and then go ahead” is a maxim so universally current in this country, that one would suppose that its practice would be more common. But no! in the rush of excitement, the go-ahead spirit takes the lead, leaving at home old father Caution to play with his thumbs, and to wonder at his relations. “Get out of the way!” “Take care!” “Clear the track!” “Off she goes!”—_whiz!_ and the young generation is cut from leading-strings, and half-way on the road to fortune before Grandfather has rubbed his eyes, and opened them to the true state of affairs around him—no, not _around_, before him, but completely out of sight. Talk of Rome not having been built in a day, old Graybeard! You are behind the times. Kingdoms shoot up in a night, and nations are born between two breakfasts. Don’t speak of the ingratitude of relations, old man; the thing is absurd. While you are hunting genealogies, the parties have belted the world, and are walking with their heads down directly beneath you, or are half-way to the Pacific on an air-line in the light that marks the horizon—skimming through the clouds in a flying machine. “Friendly ties.” “Home affection!” Poh! you are in your dotage, old fellow! We have no time to waste on silly abstractions! Good bye! Take care of _yourself_! Will write you from the other side! So we go! But are we happier for all this fiery impetuosity of disposition—this ginger-beer effervescence of intellect—this fussing, fretting, fuming wrath of haste to get on, to get off, to be going? Is _this_ the true enjoyment of LIFE! after all, to go whirling along in a state of high excitement without a moment’s pause, with a sort of insane heat and fierceness of intellect, restless, roaming, and parched up with the fever of desire for wealth—to be enslaved by the eternal, all-absorbing all-engulphing _I_—the monster self, grown Colossal, insatiate, and fiend-like. Is there nothing worth loving, that we may pause to cherish? No enjoyment worth a cool moment, in which the fevered lust of money may be forgotten? Pile up your gold, young man! Give your imagination its most boundless desire! Spread the base of your pyramid over an area of acres! Pile up!—pile high! oh, avarice and pride! Let its peak touch the skies! ay, higher still! And now we point you to that little cluster of bleached bones, whitening but a spot beside the gigantic god you worship, and to that young, pale face, sitting sighing by yonder fire-side, thousands of miles away—would the wealth that might cover the Cyclops, compensate _her_ for the chilled heart, the desolate days which are hers. Ah no! with but a crust to break with you, in a home of humbleness and peace, how that heart would bound with pride, those sad eyes sparkle with pleasure, and those pale cheeks regain their roses and bloom with health. And if all the wealth of India and Peru were hers, how poor a gift would she esteem it to clothe those bones of yours once