"Starting from the city of Charleston, West Virginia, he drove in a
buggy into the region where his plantation was located. He traced the
boundaries of his property and found that hundreds of families had
settled on it without any right to it, but were living as if secure in
the possession of their separate little patches of territory. He found
that beneath the surface of this land there was almost limitless wealth,
but the multitudes who had built themselves humble homes on the surface
did not know of it, and had been living thus in undisturbed possession
for a number of years. He quietly walked about at night and looked
through the windows at the parents and children living on his estate.
Great lawyers were ready to inaugurate legal proceedings that would have
made him a millionaire, and such legal proceedings would doubtless have
been instituted if the heir in person had not visited the scene of his
great estate. As he dreamed in the nighttime about dispossessing such a
multitude of people of their humble homes, he began to feel that,
instead of such a fortune being a blessing, an estate received at such
an expense would be a burden.
"After earnest prayer and sleepless hours in the midst of his vast
acres, he was seized with the conviction that each member of this
multitude of families living on his property needed it more than did the
heir, and there and then he made up his mind that he would leave them in
quiet possession of his estate."
The reporter who related the story said that the man had been called a
fool, and commented, "He was God's fool."
Then he said that the incident he had related would have been
unbelievable if it had not been so well attested. But why unbelievable?
Is it because of the common idea that "every man has his price," that it
is unthinkable that a sane man would let a fortune that he could claim
honestly slip through his fingers?
Perhaps it is true that every man has his price. However, if this snarl
of the pessimist is to have universal application, the price must be
understood to be--in many instances--not selfish gratification, but the
opportunity for courageous service. There are men and women who can be
won by such an opportunity who cannot be reached by any argument of mere
private advantage. Such people silence the complaints of the croaker and
command the confidence of those who are struggling to help their
fellows.
Louis Agassiz, the naturalist, was such a man. "I have no time to make
money," was his remark when urged by a friend to turn aside from the
important work of the moment to an easy, lucrative task. His reason was
thus explained at another time: "I have made it the rule of my life to
abandon any intellectual pursuit the moment it becomes commercially
valuable." It was his idea that there were many who would then be
willing to carry on work he had begun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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