Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
The curious little tract from which we have gleaned many of the above
particulars, gives a very different account of the miser's
burying-place. On account, it is said, of his usury, extortion, and the
general sordidness of his life, he had been excommunicated, and refused
Christian burial; but the daughter, by large sums of money, endeavored
to bribe the friars of Bermondsey Abbey to get him buried. As my lord
abbot happened to be away from home, the holy brothers took the money,
and buried him within the cloister. The abbot on his return seeing a new
grave, inquired who, in his absence, had been buried there; and on being
informed, he ordered it to be immediately disinterred, and be laid on
the back of an ass; then muttering some benediction, or, perhaps, an
anathema, he turned the beast from the abbey gates. "The ass went with a
solemn pace, unguided by any, through Kent Street, till it came to St.
Thomas-a-Watering, which was then the common execution place; and then
shook him off, just under the gallows, where a grave was instantly made,
and, without any ceremony, he was tumbled in, and covered with earth."
While we abhor the abuse, and think it well to guard others by hideous
examples of its folly and vice, we can appreciate and participate in its
general use. We look upon it as a solemn duty in men, whether regarded
as citizens or fathers of families, to practice a prudent economy; and
the man who is frugal without being avaricious--who is parsimonious
without being sordid--we regard as fulfilling one of his greatest social
duties. If economy is a virtue, wastefulness is a sin; and yet how many
weekly glory in being thought extravagant! Ruined spendthrifts will
boast of their meanless prodigality and their wasteful dissipation, as
if in their past liberal selfishness they could claim some forbearance
for their present disrepute, or some compassion for the misfortunes into
which their own heedlessness has thrown them. The learned, too, will
disdain all knowledge of the dull routine of economy, and proclaim their
ignorance of the affairs of life, as if the confession endowed them with
a virtue; but perfection is not the privilege of any order of men, and
many who ought to have been the monitors of mankind, whose talents have
made their names immortal, embittered their lives, and impaired the
vigor of their intellects by their thoughtless and wanton extravagance.
AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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