In every society, and especially in a country like our own, there are those who derive their chief characteristic from what they _have_; who are always spoken of in terms of revenue; and of whom you would not be likely to think much, but for the large account that stands on the world’s ledger in their name. In themselves, detached from their favorite sphere, you would notice nothing wise or winning. At home, possibly, a dry and withered heart; among associates a selfish and mistrustful talk; in the council, a style of low ignoble sentiments; at church, a formal, perhaps an irreverent, dullness betray a barren nature, and offer you only points of repulsion, so far as humanities are concerned; and you are amazed to think that you are looking on the idols of the exchange. Their greatness comes out in the affairs of bargain and sale, to which their faculties seem fairly apprenticed for life. If they speak of the past, it is in memory of its losses and its gains; if of the future, it is to anticipate its incomings and investments. The whole chronology of their life is divided according to the stages of their fortunes, and the progress of their dignities. Their children are interesting to them principally as their heirs; and the making of their will fulfils their main conception of being ready for their death. And so completely do they paint the grand idea of their life on the imagination of all who know them, that when they die, the mammon-image can not be removed, and it is the fate of the money, not of the man, of which we are most apt to think. Having put vast prizes in the funds, but only unprofitable blanks in the admiration and the hearts of us, they leave behind nothing but their _property_; or, as is expressively termed, their “_effects_,”—the thing which they caused, the main result of their having been alive. How plain is it that we regard them merely as _instruments of acquisition_; centers of attraction for the drifting of capital; that they are important only as indications of commodities; and that their human personality hangs as a mere label upon a mass of treasure! Every one must have met with a few instances in which this character is realized, and with many in which, notwithstanding the relief of some redeeming and delightful features, it is at least approached. In proportion as this aim, of possession, is taken to be paramount in life, length of days must, no doubt, be deemed indispensable to the human destination. The longer a man lies out at interest, the greater must be the accumulation. If he is unexpectedly recalled, every end which he suggested is disappointed; the only thing he seemed fit for can not go on; he is a power lost from this sphere, and incapacity thrust upon the other; missed from the markets here, thrown away among sainted spirits there. For himself, and for both worlds, the event seems deplorable enough; and it is difficult to make anything but confusion out of it. An imagination tacitly filled