Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 261, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1918 — ALL SORTS OF AFFLUENCE [ARTICLE]

ALL SORTS OF AFFLUENCE

Great Mistake to Get the Idea That - Wealth Consists Only In Posseesion of Money.

Riches and money have been commonly but mistakenly synonyms. A mother with a group of children may consider these her jewels, albeit by a bank examiner’s rating she would bfe ' poorer than Job’s turkey. A man with houses and lands may be destitute in human affections eddying round his chair and table, and so in life’s paramount values the balancing of the account shows a deficit, .though under the dollar sign he may be able to fig-, ure a fortune. Each soul selects the sort of affluence it prefers, observes a writer in the Philadelphia Ledger. You may choose that you will gain the whole world, no matter what becomes of the spirit Years after it will be a sad thing to see the gross materialist'you have become. You may be sated with the pleasures of the senses, but you have missed the best things life has to offer. You may be the chief target for the income tax collector, but the children of the region do not love you. The man or woman is rich who has acquired sound, seasoned, lasting friendships, true through thick or thin. Any other sort of prosperity is much affected by fair weather or foul. When mere money has taken wing out of the window the attaches of the heydey of sunny prosperity abruptly decamp, even as rats flee from a sinking vessel. But the assets of character that link those we love to us enduringly, with the grappling hooks of steel, are proof against corrosion or burglary and will stand any strain that is put on them. Who dares to call me poor if I can keep the unbroken circle, on earth or inHeaven, that love has once established? What a fallacy to define riches as anything sensual! For all that is of the flesh fleshy and of the earth earthy must one day perish like weeds that are slain by the reaper In the hot sun. Only love and truth and beauty and Jhelr divine fellowships are immortal, and only these are worth the husbandry of the undying 4oul. He who has his fortune in these commodities is entitled to be called rich. Time and change and adversity have no power upon them. They are the only things a man can take with him when he goes. In the process of acquiring them they become part of him inseparably. He who has them “wears his commendation in his face,” for it may be read as he passes that his converse is with the higher and finer things, and his daily walk is on the plane where the noblest meet and greet familiarly.