There existed only a narrow margin
of advantage in favour of the rich man. He could eat and
drink a little more and a little better than the poor man;
he could have better clothes, and lie abed later in the morning,
and take life easier all round--but only within hard
and fast bounds. There was an ascertained limit beyond
which the millionaire could no more stuff himself with food
and wine than could the beggar. It might be pleasant
to take an added hour or two in bed in the morning,
but to lie in bed all day would be an infliction.
So it ran indefinitely--this thin selvedge of advantage
which money could buy--with deprivation on the one side,
and surfeit on the other. Candidly, was it not true that
more happiness lay in winning the way out of deprivation,
than in inventing safeguards against satiety? The poor
man succeeding in making himself rich--at numerous stages
of the operation there might be made a moral snap-shot
of the truly happy man. But not after he had reached
the top. Then disintegration began at once. The contrast
between what he supposed he could do, and what he finds
it possible to do, is too vast to be accepted with equanimity.
It must be said that after breakfast--a meal which he
found in an Italian restaurant of no great cleanliness
or opulence of pretension, and ate with an almost
novel relish--Thorpe took somewhat less gloomy views
of his position.
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