THE MAN WHO NEVER HAD ENOUGH.

The hero of my sketch, Jasper Leech, was, to use the stereotyped expression, born of poor but honest parents; his infancy exhibited no remarkable diagnostics, by which to illustrate or establish any peculiarity of character, saving, perhaps, the simple fact, that with him the process of weaning was protracted to a curious extent, any attempt to cut off or diminish the maternal supply being met with obstinate resistance, in spite of all the ingenious artifices usually resorted to on such occasions to induce a distaste, still he sucked and sucked, until the female visiters, one and all, noted it; shameful in a great fellow like that.

At school, young Jasper was famous for the steady snail-pace at which he crawled through the rudiments, and also for the extraordinary penchant he evinced for any thing in his proximity which was, or appeared to be, unattainable at the moment; say that one of his school-mates was in possession of a new toy, Jasper would first envy him, then covet it, cunningly waiting the moment when, the novelty being past, the boy was open to negotiation, then would he chaffer and diplomatize, almost invariably gaining his desired end. Thus he went on steadily accumulating, until what with a natural appetite for trading, and a calculating eye to the profitable side of a bargain, he managed to shut up the market altogether by exhaustion. The very springtime of life, which generally passes by in gleesome sport, was to him a period of anxiety and care; for while his mates were rioting in boisterous play, he would sit apart, his whole brain wrapped in the maze of speculation—a swop is in progression, and he must have the advantage.

Thus passed his boyhood; his schooling over, with his strong common sense undulled by too much book-lore, he was duly inducted into the mystery of shoe-craft. He served out his time with exemplary diligence, working leisurely of days that he might keep reserve of strength to spend the nights for his own profit, thereby saving a considerable sum from the employment of his over-hours.

Once his own master, he deliberated long what road he should travel in the pursuit of the blind goddess, invisible as well as blind—that intangible phantasma which men wear out life and energy in the seeking, only when found to confess with tears of bitterness how misspent was time in the attainment.

At last our ambitious friend ventured humbly into trade on his own account, declaring that should any thing approaching to success crown his efforts, and that at the end of five or six years he could command a thousand dollars, he would be the most contented, the happiest fellow on earth.

He was lucky, curiously lucky; it seemed as though, Midas-like, all he touched turned to gold; money swept in, so that before he had been three years in business, instead of the limited one thousand, he was master of five. “Now,” said he to himself, “if I could but make that five ten, I might not only be enabled to enlarge my stock, and thereby increase my returns, but I think I might even venture to look about for a helpmate with an equal sum;” for Jasper would just as soon have thought of investing the best part of his capital in the establishment of a lunatic asylum, as of marrying a portionless woman.

The sun shone on—in less time than he could possibly have anticipated—ten thousand was at his command. Very good, thought he; this, with ten or fifteen thousand more, as a premium for encumbering myself with a comforter of the snarling sex—for the ungallant Jasper had a thoroughly mercantile business man’s opinion of the angelic species—will be sufficient. I must investigate.

So he set out on a tour of the watering-places, and such like wife-markets, where Cupid, the most wide-awake of auctioneers—it’s a libel to say he’s blind—knocks the little darlings down to the highest bidder. Of course, Jasper stopped at the first-class hotels, where he scrutinized the habituÉs of the ladies ordinary with uncommon interest. There’s no use in disguising the fact, he sought not a wife, but a fortune; in extenuation, allow me to say, he was not at all singular, there are plenty of those individuals extant, young, tolerably good-looking fellows, bien gante, and redolent of whisker, who linger about the ladies’ drawing-room, in the faint hope of fascinating something available, (prudent maternity avoids this class with pious horror,) middle aged beaux, who dress sedulously, and toady chaperons, carry fans, are always so attentive and so obliging, dine regularly, and affect a Burgundy decanter, which looks easy circumstanced, but which the poor waiter is tired of carrying backward and forward, ticketed some hundred and something.

These animals are generally great scandal-mongers, and always dangerous, sweet-voiced but adder-tongued, their modus operandi is to poison the ear of the person addressed, against any other individual, hoping thereby to elevate their own characters upon the slaughtered heap. Let no woman suffer such pestilent breath to be a second time breathed within her hearing.

Jasper, though indefatigable as you may well suppose, met with strange adventure during his wife-hunt. Pretty women, after short experience, he avoided utterly, for he found that they were usually too extravagant in their expectations with regard to personnel, and as Jasper could not, by any stretch of his imagination, fancy that he ranked in the category of Fredericks and Augustuses, he endeavored to make up the deficiency by a liberal display of wealth-prefiguring ornament, a kind of strong-box index, which he shrewdly suspected might tempt some ambitious innocent to investigate the contents thereof.

Perhaps it would be as well, at this period, as our hero is gotten up at no small expense, to give a rough pen-and-ink outline of his appearance. In the first place, he was twenty-eight years old, by his own account; as he could scarcely be expected to know exactly himself, it’s not to be wondered at that he and the parish register differed a few years; but that was of little consequence, for he had an accommodating peasant-colored complexion, which, as it made him look at least forty, will no doubt return the compliment by making him look no more at sixty; his hair was about as indefinite, being a factitious auburn, a dry, wiry red, something like the end of a fox’s brush in hot weather, crisp and tangible, like fine copper-shavings; one could not help fancying that if he shook his head, each individual hair would jar audibly against the other. The whole arrangement gave one an idea of intense heat, and an involuntary hope that the poor fellow had but a sprinkle of hydrocephalus, he was of undecided height also, varying from five feet four-and-a-half to five feet four-and-three-quarters, at the option of his boot-maker; but the most remarkable features, if we may use the expression, in his conformation, were his hands, which were gaunt and bony, of a tanned-leathery consistence, and of a streaky, mottled, castile-soap color, covered with a straggling crop of light, sandy hair, and ornamented with several wedding-rings—evidences of broken-hearts, which some men are fond of displaying as certificates of gallantry. Dressed in irreproachable black, and capped and jeweled in the most orthodox style, it may be imagined that Jasper was an object of no small solicitude to the “anxious mothers of slenderly-portioned daughters;” he certainly had an air bien riche, if not distinguÉ—and that’s the marketable materiel after all.

Months were unprofitably spent, and Jasper was beginning to think the time irretrievably lost, when an occurrence of some little interest varied the cateraceous-drinkability of hotel monotony. The Blodgerses arrived, en route to the fashionable ruralities.

Now the Blodgerses were extensive people in their way. They were originated somewhere in Pennsylvania, and affected the tone of the far south; traveled with huge trunks, two lap-dogs, a parrot, and a liveried African. The head of the family was a pursy, important, chairman-of-an-election-committee-looking man, with a superabundance of excessively white shirt-frill, and a great deal too much watch-chain; the latter appendage he invariably swung round as he conversed, its momentum indicating the state of his temper during an argument; let him speak upon uninteresting topics—literature, for instance, or any of the useless arts—you notice but a gentle apathetic oscillation, but let him get upon the tariff; let him hurl denunciations against his political enemies, or eulogize his particular presidential candidate, and round it goes with astonishing velocity.

Blodgers had been a grocer, or something of the kind, and having, during a life of assiduous saving and scraping, accumulated a very large sum, now flung himself with extraordinary abandon upon the full stream of gentility—and, to say the truth, most uncomfortable he found it; for many a time would he acknowledge to his wife that “This flying about from steam-car to steamboat, was far more fatiguing, and not quite so profitable as quietly serving out lump sugar.” Then would Mrs. B. indignantly check such compromising thoughts, for she was a person of great pretension, had had a slight acquaintance with Mrs. Judge Pinning, and once visited by accident Mrs. General Jollikins, so felt herself bound to talk of “society.” “They don’t do this in our set;” or, “it’s not the etiquette in society;” and such like sidewinded hints of her position, formed the staple of her conversations. As for the heiress to the wealthy grocer’s store, there was an indescribable something in her air and manner which plainly indicated, “I am worth looking after!” She talked loudly, stared mutely through a magnificent Parisian double-glass, and in fact broke through all the recognized rules of good breeding with that insolent familiarity which but poorly imitates the nonchalant ease of the really distinguÉ.

No description of deportment could have made so great an impression on Jasper. She looked ingots, she spoke specie, and her prestige was altogether redolent of roleaux. He was struck, but the stricken deer took the precaution to investigate realities before he advanced a step toward acquaintanceship. Now, thought he, if she but happen to have some ten or fifteen thousand, she’d be just the wife for me. The result was satisfactory. He discovered that a larger sum was settled to be her marriage-portion—and so laid vigorous siege instanter.

Now Araminta Blodgers, although decidedly unqualified to grace the pages of the book of beauty, had a strange predilection for “nice young men;” so that at first Jasper met with decided, and not over-delicately expressed, opposition. But he was not a man to retire from the first repulse; he persevered, and finally so deceived the sympathetic Araminta into the belief of his ardent affection, that, one fine summer evening, she sighed forth an avowal that she and her expectations were at his disposal.

Fresh from this successful attack upon the heiress’ susceptibilities, with a feathery heart, Jasper snapped his fingers at love, and danced down the corridor of the hotel, to the infinite wonderment of the waiters. Either from force of habit, or as a means of tempering the exuberance of his spirits, he plunged into the mysteries of the guest-book, where, alas! for Araminta Blodgers, and for true love! the first name he saw was that of Mrs. Skinnington, the rich widow from his own immediate neighborhood; she whom he had sedulously church-ogled from the opposite pew every Sunday, astonished at the vastness of his presumption; she, the bona fide and sole possessor of nearly half his native town. Here was the shadow of a shade of opportunity. She was alone. Jasper hesitated. Araminta’s fortune was ample, but when there was a chance of more, it wasn’t enough! Finally, he determined to wait the first interview with the widow, and be regulated by her manner.

They met at dinner, and she was singularly gracious. The fact is, those eye-assaults had told a little; and I’m sorry to say, for the character of the sex, that the widow, in case the siege should be renewed, had predetermined on capitulation.

The result may be anticipated. The endurable Araminta was thrown over for the intolerable widow and her superior wealth. They were married in a curiously short space of time; and when Jasper found himself master of the widow’s hoards, “Now,” thought he, with a glowing heart, “a few thousand dollars more, and I shall be content. One hundred thousand is the acme of my desire; let me but achieve that, and I shall then retire and spend the remainder of my days in quiet comfort.”

In process of time he did realize the coveted amount; but did he keep his word and retire. No! he had enough of that. Home was to him the worst of all miseries, a sort of domestic Tartarus; the presiding fury, his elderly wife, who, incapable of inspiring a sentiment of affection herself, yet assumed all the caprice of a girl. Jealous to very lunacy, she gave vent to the agonizing sensations of her soul by scribbling heart-rending sonnets for the Fiddle-Faddle Magazine. Thin, withered, romantic and exacting, you may suppose that to the unfortunately lucky Jasper, home was no dulce domum.

The consequence was, that he, dreading the tÊte-À-tÊte domestic, confined his attention to his monetary affairs. Retirement with an unlovable and moreover intolerably suspicious companion as Mrs. L., or, as she signed herself, Sappho, was out of the question; so he determined to stick to the counting-house. And now a great idea filled his brain almost to monomania, which was, to make his one hundred thousand two. Once conceived, every thought and action was merged in that one absorbing idea. Heedless of the domestic tornadoes that ever and anon swept over his devoted head, he slaved, fretted, lied, I think I may venture to say, cheated, but honorably, and in the way of business, until after a few years of health-destroying worry, he beheld himself within sight of the desired haven. But five thousand more, and the sum would be accomplished; one stroke of luck—one piece of indifferent fortune, and he would then be really content.

Worn out by constant exertion, he fell dangerously sick. During his illness, news arrived which brought him within a few hundreds of his desired maximum. Notwithstanding his bad health, and in opposition to all remonstrance, he called for his books, and with weak hand, and weaker brain, attempted to calculate. After many hours labor, altogether unaware that he was thus unprofitably expending his last flickering of life, he gave a long sorrowful sigh, and gasping forth, “Not enough! not enough!” expired.

Not many days after, a few feet of earth were sufficient for THE MAN WHO NEVER HAD ENOUGH.

B.