“I was going to say that when it happens to you, as now to me, that you wish to exchange the corn that you grow for something that our prairies do not produce, you will feel the want of such a bridge as much as I do now; though I hope through a less disagreeable experience. In self- defence, I must tell you, however, how little able I have been till lately to provide any but the barest necessaries for myself and my men. This will show you that I cannot now pay you for the work you propose to do.” He was interrupted by assurances that nobody wanted to be paid; that they would have a bridging frolic, as they had before had a raising frolic to build the surgeon’s tavern, and a rolling frolic to clear Brawn’s patch of ground, and as they meant to have a reaping frolic when the corn should be ripe. It should be a pic-nic. Nobody supposed that Arthur had yet meat, bread, and whisky to spare. “I own that I have not,” said he. “You know that when I began to till my ground, I had no more capital than was barely sufficient to fence and break up my fields, and feed me and my two labourers while my first crop was growing. Just before it ripened, I had nothing left; but what I had spent was well spent. It proved a productive consumption indeed; for my harvest brought back all I had spent, with increase. This increase was not idly consumed by me. I began to pay attention to my cattle, improved my farm buildings, set up a kiln, and employed a labourer in making bricks. The fruits of my harvest were thus all consumed; but they were again restored with increase. Then I thought I might begin to indulge myself with the enjoyment for which I had toiled so long and so hard. I did not labour merely to have so much corn in my barns, but to enjoy the corn, and whatever else it would bring me,—as we all do,—producing, distributing, and exchanging, that we may afterwards enjoy.” “Not quite all, Mr. Arthur,” said Johnson, the lawyer. “There is your brother-in-law, Mr. Temple, who seems disposed to enjoy everything, without so much as soiling his fingers with gathering a peach. And there is a certain friend of ours, settled farther east, who toils like a horse, and lives like a beggar, that he may hoard a roomful of dollars.” “Temple produces by means of the hoarded industry of his fathers,—by means of his capital,” replied Arthur. “And the miser you speak of enjoys his dollars, I suppose, or he would change them away for something else. Well, friends, there is little temptation for us to hoard up our wealth. We have corn instead of dollars, and corn will not keep like dollars.” “Why should it?” asked Dods the brickmaker. “Who would take the trouble to raise more corn than he wants to eat, if he did not hope to exchange it for something desirable?”