The fact is, my dear fellow, you have far too much
money. I have more than I know how to use, and mine is like a drop in
that pond compared with yours. If you leave a great deal to the girl,
you doom her to a life of anxiety and misery and cynicism; she will be
worse off than a female cashier in a draper's shop. If she marries
young, she will he picked up by some embarrassed peer; if she waits till
she is middle-aged, some boy will take her fancy and your money will be
fooled away on all kinds of things that you wouldn't like. This idea, so
far as it has gone in my mind, seems very reasonable. I'm not thinking
of the fishermen at all; that isn't my business at present. I am
thinking of you, and I fancy that you may do a great deal of good, and,
at the same time, raise your position in the eyes of your countrymen.
The most modest of us are not averse to that. Then, again, some
plutocrats buy honours by lavishing coins in stinking, rotten boroughs.
Your honours if they should come to you, will be clean. At any rate, let
us both give these men a fair hearing, and perhaps our worldly
experience may aid them. An enthusiast is sometimes rather a
fiddle-headed chap when it comes to business."
"I don't want my money to be fought over, and I won't have it. If I
thought that people were going to screech and babble over my money, I'd
leave the whole lot to the Dogs' Home."
"We'll lay our heads together about that, and I reckon if we two can't
settle the matter, there is no likelihood of its ever being settled at
all.
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