These errors may be mostly fitly consigned to
silence. But there was one failing which cannot be passed over in this way.
This was in regard to money. His indifference to debt was perceptible in
his youth, and for many years showed no sign of growth. But in his later
years it increased with terrible rapidity. He earned twenty thousand a year
when he first came to Boston,--a very great income for those days. His
public career interfered, of course, with his law practice, but there never
was a period when he could not, with reasonable economy, have laid up
something at the end of every year, and gradually amassed a fortune. But
he not only never saved, he lived habitually beyond his means. He did not
become poor by his devotion to the public service, but by his own
extravagance. He loved to spend money and to live well. He had a fine
library and handsome plate; he bought fancy cattle; he kept open house, and
indulged in that most expensive of all luxuries, "gentleman-farming." He
never stinted himself in any way, and he gave away money with reckless
generosity and heedless profusion, often not stopping to inquire who the
recipient of his bounty might be.
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