E BEN PYNCHOT was sad,
Eben Pynchot was gloomy,
While it might be a trifle too much to assume he
Was ready to vacate this vortex of strife,
There was no denying he didn't like life.
He had tried it both ways, tried it just as it came.
And gone out of his way to make of it a game
Of elaborate methods and definite plan,
With ends fit to serve as the chief ends of man.
Either way it seemed now he'd been chasing a bubble,
And the fun he had had hardly paid for the trouble.

First trying it poor, with his living to work for,
He had used as much strength as he had to exert for
That purpose and stopped there; not that he was lazy,
But going without to him always came easy,
And he greatly preferred to have less and economize,
With a mind free to meditate, read, or astronomize,
Than to hustle, with due acquisition of dross,
But with no mind for aught except profit or loss.
" In his work, " said his boss, " he's a youth to be counted on
Very much as you'd trust to a clever automaton,
But for all that he cares for commercial adventure, he
Would go through the same daily round for a century. "

For a while once he did show some symptoms of go
That promised in time into " business " to grow;
He worked overtime, and his questions betrayed
Such a wish to discover how money was made
That his increase of zeal by his owners was noted
And he stood on the sharp edge of being promoted,
When his eagerness all of a sudden dispersed
And he lapsed into just what he had been at first.
It was never explained, but it seemed to come pat
That Miss Blake married Rogers the June after that.

'Twas the following spring that his great-uncle Eben,
Whose toil in " the Swamp " long had lucrative proven,
Caught a cold riding home insufficiently clad
And promptly developed the prevalent fad.
" Pneumonia, age much against him, " 'twas whispered.
His life had been frugal and leather had prospered.
The will spattered off at the start with bequests
To cousins, and colleges, hospitals, rests
For the wayworn, old servants, familiars, and clerks,
Till it showed a round sum gone for love and good works.
" All of which, " it ran on, " being paid with due care,
Being still of sound mind, I appoint and declare
Eben Pynchot, my nephew and namesake, to be
Of the whole of the residue sole legatee. "

" His nephew! Don't know him, " Executor Willing said.
" Never heard of him! " echoed Executor Hollingshed.
" Was here at the funeral, " said Executor Prince,
" I saw him, but haven't laid eyes on him since.
Never mind, he'll turn up. " But all three of them guessed
That his share would be small after paying the rest.

Then came the post-mortem. The trio selected to
Operate found what they hadn't expected to.
The autopsy dazed them. A simple tin box,
Excised from behind a Trust Company's locks,
Developed securities in lots and varieties
So ample and with such regard for proprieties
In the matter of dividends, that those worthy men
Sat speechless till, getting their wind back again,
An admission each gasped in such voice as he could
Of how old Eben's worth had been misunderstood.
" That young man is well off, " said Executor Willing;
" Eight millions in pocket as sure as a shilling. "
Mused Executor Prince: " Nearer twelve, I should say,
And he'd better be sent for without more delay. "

He took it all calmly, incredulous first,
Then wonder-eyed, lastly resigned to the worst.
Being quit of the need to beg, labor, or rob,
He made sure of the facts and then threw up his job,
Bought a sharp, shining shears fit his coupons to sever,
And regarding himself done with labor forever,
Set out with serene disposition to measure
What profit might lie in existence at leisure.

Five years passed, they left him well on in his twenties,
But still to his new trade a willing apprentice;
Deliberate still in his manner, and spare
In his frame, fitly dressed and with not too much care.
Eating all things and drinking all freely, and yet with
The sort of instinctive discretion that's met with
In monkeys, and men who from testing it find
That less fun with the gullet means more with the mind.
For he realized young that though houses may burn
And be built again finer, and jewels return
That were lost, and a fortune misused be replaced
By a windfall in spite of inordinate waste,
And a man's very ancestors sometimes may be
Swapped off, a job lot, for a fresh pedigree,
Though his babes he may shift too, and even his wife,
The stomach he starts with stays by him through life;
And too much or too little care what he shall put in it
Is likely to leave him at last with his foot in it.

Five years he had travelled, by gradual stages
Finding out what a million a year in this age is,
And inuring himself to the startling effects
Wrought by gold on deposit responsive to checks.
Circumventing the globe on a track loosely planned,
He had got some idea of the lay of the land,
Supplementing the same with deliberate diligence
By study of people and human intelligence.
Wise men and wise virgins and fools of all statuses,
Promoters, scamps, anarchists, young Fortunatuses,
Russian princes, dukes, beggars, lords, common Cook's tourists,
Diplomatists, gamblers, mind-readers, faith-curists,
Grooms, couriers, mandarins, pachas, bagmen, colonels,
Professors, cads, spendthrifts, correspondents of journals,
He had rubbed against all of them and hundreds more too,
Getting aspects of life from diverse points of view.
Pall Mall, Piccadilly, Bois, Boulevard, Corso
Had gown trite to his eye as Fourteenth Street, or more so.
The famed bank of Neva, each Ringstrasse mart,
The paths Unter Linden, he knew all by heart.
Duly vouched for in letters of forceful variety,
He had dabbled two seasons in London society.
A house in Park Lane had disputed his stay
With a suite that he kept in the Rue de la Paix.
The Derby those years 'twas worth doing, to see
The swells on his drag: ditto more at Grand Prix.
On a stem-winder yacht in the Mediterranean
He had cruised in such guise as Jove visited Danai in,
Putting in at his whim where they chanced to appear a
Fête worthy to share in the bright Riviera;
Waking up Monte Carlo by way of a prank,
By testing new methods of breaking the bank;
Storing Venice, her stones and canals, in his memory,
The Bosporus cleaving, romantic and glamoury;
Then the Nile, thence Suez, by his craft percolated,
Let him in on the East with a mind not yet sated:
Bombay and Colombo, Calcutta and Delhi,
Simla, Bangkok and Singapore, Canton and Shanghai,
Tientsin and Pekin, and flowery Japan
Had all fitted into his nebulous plan.
Seeing all that he might and inferring the rest,
He had drifted on, gaining, with modified zest,
Much lore of carved ivory, lacquers and pottery,
Theosophy, Buddhism, jade, gems, and tottery
Shrines, flavored all by things mentioned or written
By the all-supervising, ubiquitous Briton.

Nor had he neglected that signally filling
Device known as " sport, " euphemistic for killing.
Constrained by the vogue that that pastime secures,
He had bagged countless pheasants, stalked deer on Scotch moors.
Chased foxes on horseback, tracked Muscovite bears,
Met tigers at home in their Bengalese lairs.
And capped African beasts with assorted quietuses,
From lions and elephants down to mosquitoeses.
Discerning how great and how cheap is the credit
Accorded to blood, he continued to shed it,
Till his mentors admitted he couldn't do more,
And Phil Armour himself wasn't deeper in gore.

So, too, horse. Though his globe-trotting didn't permit
Him to feel for that beast the concern he is fit
To awaken in man, he became with his looks
Well acquainted enough to know withers from hocks;
And if all of his good points he couldn't detect,
He acquired at the least an unstinted respect
For a brute in whose structure one great end in view 'tis
To help idle men to exist without duties.

Exhausting at last the incentives to roam,
Eben gathered his trophies and turned towards home.
Despatching his yacht her own passage to work,
He sailed on a " liner " himself for New York,
And arrived, duly sanctioned that town to possess
By that title unchallenged, a London success.

In due time joining clubs and his birthright renewing
He got some idea what his fellows were doing,
And ventured to make his desire understood
To share their proceedings as far as he could.
Obtaining a villa not too far away
He put himself up there, not meaning to stay
By himself, but desiring some haven to fly to
When he wanted to think, or had reason to try to.
On the Hudson it stood, on whose fresh-water tide
His boat lay prepared to vex waters untried
Any moment her owner whim-prompted might happen
To step on her deck with his wishing (sea) cap on.

In a couple more years by more long-distance gadding,
Whenever one place or one crowd got too madding,
He'd conversant become with this land's superficies
And the palpable traits of American species.
Playing polo at Newport and coaching at Lenox,
Mount Desert's hazards daring unshattered, and then oc-
Cidentally threading the fresh-water seas,
Thence off to the land of hot springs and big trees,
Adding big-horns and elk to the list of his slaughtered,
Back to bow to she-Patriarchs, bejewelled, bedaughtered,
Watching Congress dispute through a Washington winter,
Leading germans the pace of a misapplied sprinter —
It was fun, but for all it diverted and pleased
Eben Pynchot, it left in him, all unappeased,
A gnawing distrust of how long to beguile
Life by dodging its problems was really worth while.
So back to that villa he had on the brink
Of the Hudson he drifted and paused there to think.

He took time to it; building a little and planting,
Assorting the fruits of his wide gallivanting,
Disposing his porcelains, pictures, and bric-a-brac
(Hitherto jumbled out helter-skelter and pick-a-back).
So that other collectors, inspecting his plunder,
Might covet his bits with due envy and wonder;
That his Japanese swords, when his rivals should call on 'em;
Might stir in them desperate longings to fall on 'em;
That his peachblows and sang-de-baeufs, and various glazes
Might rouse into violent mania the crazes
Of persons whose cherished and costly insanity
Makes them suitable objects of man's inhumanity.

Some orchids he got too, not many but curious,
And a notable lot of chrysanthemums glorious.
Also horses enough for his uses vehicular,
And to make spavins, ringbones, diseases navicular,
Splints, curbs, and most species of equine affection
Familiar enough to him soon for detection.
Yet with all of these manifold means of distraction
He still found time for thought, for the blues, for maction.
The newspapers came with the world's motley annals,
And into his mind through unfortified channels
Ran the story of enterprise, effort, success,
Mishap, want, and failure that reels from the press,
And stuck there, corroding his lights, and his liver's
Performance so marring it gave him the shivers,
Because with no authorized permit to shirk,
He was living as quit of humanity's work
As a grasshopper is, in a June meadow playing,
Of the trite agricultural duty of haying.
It was then that his spirits began to succumb
To that duly hereinbefore hinted at gloom,
Week by week, month by month, grew his dissatisfaction
Till at last came the climax that foreshadowed action.

" What is it, " he mused, " that makes life worth the living?
Is it endless receiving and spending, or giving?
Is it lollipops, flapdoodle, horses, and yachts;
Having pennies to drop in all possible slots?
Is it hustle and get-there, the genius for trade
And commercial combines, by which fortunes are made?
I never liked that. Was it luck or mishap
That a fortune without it fell into my lap?
A bowlder of size has been rolled to the crown
Of a hill: I can start it and let it roll down.
If you set a great trap and within my reach bring it.
No doubt I can jump on the bait-plate and spring it.
But the question keeps pressing what fellow gets caught —
Whose legs the trap shuts on — who is it that's bought?
I'm not sure, but at old times I won I opine
That the limbs that I see held so firmly are mine!

" Must I keep to the end of the chapter, I wonder,
This purposeless r├┤le of idealized rounder!
It is really a good gift that snatches away
The motives for labor and substitutes play!
The fellows that do things and are things attain
Their lead by hard discipline seasoned with pain.
Their characters grow by the sort of endeavor
That seizes on time as a slice of forever.
It begins just a little to get through my head
What the grave Seer of Galilee meant when He said
To that opulent youth who disliked His advice
And went off disconcerted to pause and think twice.
If the spirit's the man, what in thunder's the use
Of indulging the senses with pains so profuse,
If the more you indulge them the harder it is
For the spirit to get what is lawfully his!
Not the best behorsed drag can keep up very far
With a tuppenny cart that is hitched to a star.
Having fun with one's money's a good thing to do,
But how about letting it have fun with you!
Mine shall serve, not possess; and unless I can keep
My place soul end upward, on top of my heap,
I vow that by way my defeat to acknowledge
I'll dump the whole pile on a Methodist college. "

Eben Pynchot's become a laborious man.
He went back to work with more purpose than plan,
And his purpose was no more than this, that he would
With himself and his pile do the best that he could.
But he followed the rule, both in person and pelf,
That who does best for others does best for himself.
He's occupied now with an office and clerks,
Deep in politics, business concerns, and good works.
Much he gives, but how much, or to whom, or to what,
Are things that this rhyming deponent learns not.
Of a dozen great charities yearly one sees
His name lettered out in the list of trustees.
He owns model tenements, too, and I know
Of his trying experiments not long ago
To see whether a system of loan-shops could thrive
Where borrowers needn't be quite skinned alive.
As for politics, knowing that folks can make shift
To do without help if so be they have thrift,
But good government's something they can't thrive without,
He does his best efforts to bring that about.
And he sticks to it so, with such dogged persistence,
Such energy here, and again such resistance,
That I own there are times when I almost prepare
To see some hall or other run Eben for mayor.

His liver works better now, thanks to this whirl
Of industry, and — oh! besides, there's a girl!
Such a dear! such a heart! and such wits! such a head!
Such a hang to her gown! such a poise of her tread!
She has stock in that loan-office scheme I was speak-
Ing of. Eben consults with her four times a week.
And so arch is her smile and so cheerful his scoff
That I own I think sometimes they will hit it off.
'Twould be great luck for Eben if those two should pair,
For who needs so much help as an arch-millionaire!