The Itch of Gold

So long as a man feels, "I am labouring for wealth as a means of doing good," he may labour with comparative safety ; but the moment he has an ambition to be rich he has passed the line of safety — he has crossed the equator, into a region where fierce tornadoes sweep over him, all unbidden and unheralded. The moment a man feels that money is to breed money; the moment he sees behind one dollar the shadow of another; the moment he hears in the sound of gold and silver, not "good deed," not "kindness," not "troubles assuaged," not "works of beneficence," but "dollar, dollar, dollar "—that moment he may be sure that he is in the snare of the devil, in that intoxication which is least perceived among men and latest cured. When a man comes to have this itch for gold, this insanity of rolling over and increasing wealth, there are no bounds to his desire to accumulate. Though he were to roll his pile as fast as the globe rolls, he would not be satisfied. There is a fever in his brain that cannot be allayed under such circumstances.— Ward Beecher