The Ghosts, and Other LecturesIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Ghosts, and Other Lectures
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
When you go home you ought to go like a ray of light--so that it will,
even in the night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate
the darkness. Some men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil;
they have been thinking about who will be alderman from the fifth ward;
they have been thinking about politics; great and mighty questions have
been engaging their minds; they have bought calico at five cents or six,
and want to sell it for seven. Think of the intellectual strain that
must have been upon that man, and when he gets home everybody else in
the house must look out for his comfort. A woman who has only taken care
of five or six children, and one or two of them sick, has been nursing
them and singing to them, and trying to make one yard of cloth do the
work of two, she, of course, is fresh and fine and ready to wait upon
this gentleman--the head of the family--the boss!
Do you know another thing? I despise a stingy man. I do not see how
it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten
million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every
day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man
can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or
thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he
can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep
a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were
drowning in the sea.
Do you know that I have known men who would trust their wives with their
hearts and their honor but not with their pocketbook; not with a dollar.
When I see a man of that kind, I always think he knows which of these
articles is the most valuable. Think of making your wife a beggar! Think
of her having to ask you every day for a dollar, or for two dollars or
fifty cents! "What did you do with that dollar I gave you last week?"
Think of having a wife that is afraid of you! What kind of children do
you expect to have with a beggar and a coward for their mother? Oh,
I tell you if you have but a dollar in the world, and you have got to
spend it, spend it like a king; spend it as though it were a dry leaf
and you the owner of unbounded forests! That's the way to spend it! I
had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like a king, than be a
king and spend my money like a beggar! If it has got to go, let it go!
Get the best you can for your family--try to look as well as you can
yourself. When you used to go courting, how elegantly you looked! Ah,
your eye was bright, your step was light, and you looked like a prince.
Do you know that it is insufferable egotism in you to suppose a woman
is going to love you always looking as slovenly as you can! Think of
it! Any good woman on earth will be true to you forever when you do your
level best.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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