Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 21, 1896 - Miscellanies, Volume IV

LAY MORALS
creature of the back-stairs of Fortune. He could
no longer see without confusion one of these brave
young fellows battling up-hill against adversity.
Had he not filched that fellow's birthright? At
best was he not coldly profiting by the injustice of
society, and greedily devouring stolen goods ? The
money, indeed, belonged to his father, who had
worked, and thought, and given up his liberty to
earn it ; but by what justice could the money
belong to my friend, who had, as yet, done nothing
but help to squander it ? A more sturdy honesty,
joined to a more even and impartial temperament,
would have drawn from these considerations a new
force of industry, that this equivocal position might
be brought as swiftly as possible to an end, and
some good services to mankind justify the appropria-
tion of expense. It was not so with my friend, who
was only unsettled and discouraged, and filled full
of that trumpeting anger with which young men
regard injustices in the first blush of youth ; although
in a few years they will tamely acquiesce in their
existence, and knowingly profit by their complica-
tions. Yet all this while he suffered many indignant
pangs. And once, when he put on his boots, like
any other unripe donkey, to run away from home, it
was his best consolation that he was now, at a single
plunge, to free himself from the responsibility of
this wealth that was not his, and do battle equally
against his fellows in the warfare of life.
Some time after this, falling into ill health, he
was sent at great expense to a more favourable
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