"Port"--that is the name of my boy--saw not a glimmer of gold for days and days after Lucy had her saffronian vision. He toiled on like Bunyan's fellow with the muck-rake at his calling, nor saw the angel, golden even as a sunflower, that floated overhead. It seemed a pity to wrong him out of his inheritance, and so I told him. I said, "Port, we are a rich family," and showed him the strip of paper. He ticked off the figures slowly, like a clock just running down, 1-0-4-1-6-3, and said--nothing. I thought he lacked gratitude, and so I made a plunge into the dark ages for something to punish him with, and came up with the brand-new fact that ingratitude is a crime so base the ancients never thought it worth while to make a law against it, as nobody, probably, would ever be guilty of it. "Port" went out, and I at once set about erasing the last cypher of the bequest I had made the boy, so that what had read $10,000 became $1,000, and I devised all the rest for the cultivation of gratitude in the human family.
Meanwhile the days grew shorter and shorter, like the strings of David's harp, and October was about done, and the drawing was at hand. But what mattered it all? We had entered into possession already. We had invested one hundred thousand of the prize in the best of securities, and we were receiving eight thousand dollars a year, for you see it was $100,000 in gold, to-wit: $113,000 in greenbacks. We owed no man anything. We had traveled all over the broad domain of Columbus' magnificent "find." We had given two thousand dollars a year to objects of benevolence. We had bought exquisite works of art, and sent a dozen poor painters of good pictures abroad. We had imported rare old English books and strewn them upon our tables and given them to our neighbors. We presented an illustrated copy of "Paradise Lost" to our wood-sawyer one day, a copy reinforced like his breeches, with leather, and he was very grateful, and sat down upon it when he ate his bread and cheese and said it was "good," and we were gratified. We purchased a sober horse and a modest carriage, and propped up the line fence and shingled the kitchen. In a word, the gaunt wolf I had been trying for years to keep away from the door, had been brained at last with a golden club, and his skin lay upon the carriage floor for a foot-robe.