Yet producers often think it no wrong to snatch away
from the trader; and they say to the bargain-maker, "You get your
money easy." Do they get it easy? Let those who in the quiet field and
barn get their living exchange places with those who stand to-day amid
the excitements of commercial life, and see if they find it so very
easy. While the farmer goes to sleep with the assurance that his corn
and barley will be growing all the night, moment by moment adding to
his revenue, the merchant tries to go to sleep, conscious that that
moment his cargo may be broken on the rocks, or damaged by the wave
that sweeps clear across the hurricane deck; or that the gold gamblers
may, that very hour, be plotting some monetary revolution, or the
burglars be prying open his safe, or his debtors fleeing the town, or
his landlord raising the rent, or the fires kindling on the block that
contains all his estate. _Easy!_ is it? God help the merchants! It is
hard to have the palms of the hand blistered with out-door work; but a
more dreadful process when, through mercantile anxieties, the brain is
consumed!
In the next place we notice _mercantile_ lies, those before the
counter and behind the counter.
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