"'_The world is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings_!'" said I. "What's Sylvia going to do?" "Oh, she's quite a clever little artist." He handed me some charming sketches in pencil that were lying on the table. "I think she may make an illustrator. Heaven knows we need 'em! I'll give her a course at Pratt Institute and then at the Academy of Design; and after that, if they think she is good enough, I'll send her to Paris." "I wish I'd done the same thing with my girls!" I sighed. "But the trouble is--the trouble is--You see, if I had they wouldn't have been doing what their friends were doing. They'd have been out of it." "No; they wouldn't like that, of course," agreed Hastings respectfully. "They would want to be 'in it'" I looked at him quickly to see whether his remark had a double entendre. "I don't see very much of my daughters," I continued. "They've got away from me somehow." "That's the tough part of it," he said thoughtfully. "I suppose rich people are so busy with all the things they have to do that they haven't much time for fooling round with their children. I have a good time with mine though. They're too young to get away anyhow. We read French history aloud every evening after supper. Sylvia is almost an expert on the Duke of Guise and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew." We smoked silently for some moments. Hastings' ideas interested me, but I felt that he could give me something more personal--of more value to myself. The fellow was really a philosopher in his quiet way. "After all, you haven't told me what you meant by saying you wouldn't change places with me," I said abruptly. "What did you mean by that? I want to know." "I wish you would forget I ever said it, sir," he murmured. "No," I retorted, "I can't forget it. You needn't spare me. This talk is not _ex cathedra_--it's just between ourselves. When you've told me why, then I will forget it. This is man to man." "Well," he answered slowly, "it would take me a long time to put it in just the right way. There was nothing personal in what I said this morning. I was thinking about conditions in general--the whole thing. It can't go on!" "What can't go on?" "The terrible burden of money," he said. "Terrible burden of money!" I repeated. What did he mean? "The weight of it--that's bowing people down and choking them up. It's like a ball and chain. I meant I wouldn't change places with any man in the millionaire class--I couldn't stand the complexities and responsibilities. I believe the time is coming when no citizen will be permitted to receive an income from his inherited or accumulated possessions greater than is good for him. You may say that's the wildest sort of socialism. Perhaps it is. But it's socialism looked at from a different angle from the platform orators--the angle of the individual.