Other young men inherit wealth, but seldom regard it as a means of power for high and noble ends, only as the means of selfish indulgence; unneeded means to elevate yet more their self-esteem. Now and then you find a man who values wealth only as an instrument to serve mankind withal. I know some such men; their money is a blessing akin to genius, a blessing to mankind, a means of philanthropic power. But such men are rare in all countries, perhaps a little less so in Boston than in most other large trading towns; still, exceeding rare. They are sure to meet with neglect, abuse, and perhaps with scorn; if they are men of eminent ability, superior culture, and most elevated moral aims, set off, too, with a noble and heroic life, they are sure of meeting with eminent hatred. I fear the man most hated in this town would be found to be some one who had only sought to do mankind some great good, and stepped before his age too far for its sympathy. Truth, Justice, Humanity, are not thought in Boston to have come of good family; their followers are not respectable. I am not speaking to blame men, only to show the fact; we may meddle with things too high for us, but not understand nor appreciate. Now this disproportionate love of money appears in various ways. You see it in the advantage that is taken of the feeblest, the most ignorant, and the most exposed classes in the community. It is notorious that they pay the highest prices, the dearest rents, and are imposed upon in their dealings oftener than any other class of men; so the raven and the hooded crow, it is said, seek out the sickliest sheep to pounce upon. The fact that a man is ignorant, poor, and desperate, furnishes to many men an argument for defrauding the man. It is bad enough to injure any man; but to wrong an ignorant man, a poor and friendless man; to take advantage of his poverty or his ignorance, and to get his services or his money for less than a fair return--that is petty baseness under aggravated circumstances, and as cowardly as it is mean. You are now and then shocked at rich men telling of the arts by which they got their gold--sometimes of their fraud at home, sometimes abroad, and a good man almost thinks there must be a curse on money meanly got at first, though it falls to him by honest inheritance.