But a man who earns all that
he possesses has no right to pledge himself to perpetual payment
unless he is prepared to live for ever!"
Nobler thoughts, however, succeeded this outburst, and Paul threw
himself upon the bed of his Departed Friend and moaned. "Who now
will pay me an income in return for my investments? All my fortune
is sunk in this flat, though I myself pay the interest never so
regularly, it will not increase my fortune by one farthing! I shall
as I live consume a fund which will never be replenished, and within
a short time I shall be compelled to work for my living!"
Maddened by this last reflection, he dashed into the street, hurried
northward through-the-now-rapidly-gathering-darkness, and drowned
himself in the Regent's Canal, just where it runs by the Zoological
Gardens, under the bridge that leads to the cages of the larger
pachyderms.
Thus miserably perished Peter and Paul, the one in the thirtieth,
the other in the forty-seventh year of his age, both victims to
their ignorance of _Mrs. Fawcett's Political Economy for the
Young_, the _Nicomachean Ethics_, Bastiat's _Economic Harmonies, The
Fourth Council of Lateran on Unfruitful Loans and Usury, The Speeches
of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Mr.
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