A Rift in the Loot.

Business is a game of give-and-take or a quest for the “quid pro quo,” but too often the “quid” gives the k.o. to the “pro quo” thereby causing a rift in the loot and reducing the lilt of life to a broken malady; for the most flagrant form of monomania is money-mania, and it is better to work to live than live to work. When business is pleasure the pleasure of business should be diluted with the business of pleasure lest the day dawn when the clash of cash no longer registers as a beatific broadcast, and the buzz of the gold-bug begets static in the attic. For “the years that the locusts have eaten” are nought to the yearns that the gold-bugs have beaten, and the past is a pasture which, if not watered by the rains of relaxation, becomes as arid as an Arab's antecedents. With the advent of age the optics are opened to the years that are closed, and the enfeebled faculties grope in vain for the jettisoned gems of jocundity ‘midst the mudheaps of Mammon.