You cannot feed on gold. “Gold is a medium of exchange.” When it is merely hoarded it has lost its relation to life. A miser nation is a sadder subject for contemplation than a miser man, with his long claws and his gloating eyes. He may think, the miser man, to secure himself from the dangers of the future by amassing gold for its own sake. A miser nation may think that by amassing gold for its own sake it can save itself from the financial dangers threatening the world after these years of war. But the miser, known as such, is in danger of being robbed and murdered. And the miser nation is in danger of being attacked and looted by other nations. You Americans want to be generous to the homeless and foodless people of Europe; but your generosity has not yet deprived of one square meal the hundred-million-headed being that is America. I do not care so much what you do with your gold. But I care much what you do with your food. You are not alchemists that you can make gold potable. You are humans with delicate stomachs. Even a hen will not lay eggs for you unless she is well fed. If she protests, you can punish her by eating her; but the luckiest break of her wish-bone will not produce for you another hen. Better conserve her labor power by gifts of grain, and have your eggs for breakfast and for hatching. She has periods of laziness when she wants to sit still; but put a few of her own eggs under her, and watch for results. Later I shall tell you of other but no less practical ways of ensuring a supply of breakfasts. LETTER V CONTINGENT FEES _March 10, 1917._ TO-DAY I heard that a certain rich man (unmindful of the camel and the needle’s eye), supposing that the letters from this Living Dead Man had been profitable to you, that there was “money in them,” was considering the question of whether he should financially back a medium who stood ready to declare that she was in communication with me, that I repudiated the books written through you, and stood sponsor for certain manuscripts written “through” her, as my only genuine messenger to the world. I join in your laughter, at your supposed “profitable” investment in the securities of the other world, and at the eagerness to get aboard a sea-of-ether-worthy ship exhibited by people who have not paid their fare. I may as well tell you now that this country and some others are scattered over with supposed “communications” from me. It would seem that my writing arms are as numerous as the feet of a centipede. It would also seem by the style of some of these supposed communications, by their contents and their contradictions, that I have as many minds as Indra has eyes. Even the elementals of the ouija board do not contradict themselves so frequently as these amanuenses make me contradict myself. I think you will have to trademark me.