Sterling Price

“ Your book shows that a fellow can get a good deal of glory with very little profit. You are now famous—at least on the Pacific Coast; but I fancy you are not any "for'arder" in the matter of wealth than you were before. I too have some reputation—a little wider, as yet, than yours. Well, my work sells tremendously—in Mr. Hearst's newspapers, at the price of a small fraction of one cent! Offered by itself, in one-dollar and two-dollar lots, it tempts nobody to fall over his own feet in the rush to buy. ”

“ The Marechal proposed that this quantity, when at the lowest price, should be sold for 18 livres, or 1l. 6s. 11⁄2d. sterling; and when at the highest, at 30 livres, 2l. 3s. 61⁄2d. from which we may judge of the exorbitancy of the gabelle, even after all the diminution he thought proper to make upon it. The French money mentioned in the Marechal’s Dixieme royale, is here converted into 521⁄4d. sterling, for the French crown of three livres: because the silver coin in France, at the time he wrote, was 30 livres 10 sols the marc (Dutot, chap. 1. art. 6.) ”

“ Were the pound sterling preserved at its present value, it would, no doubt, be a plain adulteration of the former standard, and yet I do not know if it would be a more unpopular measure than another which might restore it, and at the same time do justice to every interest within the state; because I apprehend that the greatest hurt done to most people, with regard to their pecuniary interest, consists in the change. Every one feels a sudden change, but those only who reflect and who combine, perceive the consequences of a gradual one. ”

“ And all its gulfs gape eager as the grave,
Sure of your flesh at last,
O human hearts! stand fast!
And though untested nerve and sinew shrink,
Trapped and astounded at the final brink—
Tho’ hostile guns the march to silence toll,
Beyond it lies the goal,
And past the moment’s tremor smiles the soul.{103}
O brother hearts and brave,
We know you strong to save,
And strong to serve the Star
That past the dusk of war
Imperishable gleams.
And O! how little seems
The price of death men wait so glad to pay
To hold undesecrated every ray! ”

“ How are poor mortals whirled hither and thither in the tumultuous chaos of our era; and, under the thick smoke-canopy which has eclipsed all stars, how do they fly now after this poor meteor, now after that!—Sterling abandoned his clerical office in February, 1835; having held it, and ardently followed it, so long as we say,—eight calendar months in all.
It was on this his February expedition to London that I first saw Sterling,—at the India House incidentally, one afternoon, where I found him in company with John Mill, whom I happened like himself to be visiting for a few minutes. ”

“ The owner of it all, Mr. Charles R. Sterling, stood before an open grate fire smoking a cigar. He had made his money in grain speculation and railroad ventures, and was reputed to be worth something over two millions. ”

“ What proportion of the total of exchange dealt in in the New York market consists of sterling it is impossible to determine, but that it is as great as the volume of all the other kinds of exchange put together can safely be said. Many big dealers, indeed, make a specialty of sterling, and if they handle any other bills at all, do so only on a very small scale. ”

“ In the Club our hero revelled awhile under the protection of Sir Charles Sterling, and the petting of peers, Members of Parliament, and loungers who swarm therein. Certain gentlemen of Stock Exchange mannerism and dressiness gave the protege the go-by, and even sneered at those who noticed him with kindness. But then these are of the men with whom every question is checked by money, and is balanced on the pivot of profit and loss. ”

“ Here clearly, struggling amid the tumults, was a lovable young fellow-soul; who had by no means yet got to land; but of whom much might be hoped, if he ever did. Some of the delineations are highly pictorial, flooded with a deep ruddy effulgence; betokening much wealth, in the crude or the ripe state. The hope of perhaps, one day, knowing Sterling, was welcome and interesting to me. Arthur Coningsby, struggling imperfectly in a sphere high above circulating-library novels, gained no notice whatever in that quarter ”

“ So we go right ahead, and nothing is to be said to any one, not even to William Rockefeller. I have always argued that it is fool business to go to a lawyer with a scheme that depends entirely on how it is carried through as to whether it is perilous or not. I could have told Sterling there is apt to be more danger in a deal in which one makes thirty-five to forty million dollars without turning a hair, than in furnishing staid advice from an office-chair for a fixed sum per diem. ”

“ That will be the fate of Edwin Markham if he does not come out o' that, and it will be the fate of George Sterling if he will not be warned.
You think that "the main product of that system" (the "competitive") "is the love of money." What a case of the cart before the horse! The love of money is not the product, but the root, of the system—not the effect, but the cause. When one man desires to be better off than another he competes with him. You can abolish the system when you can abolish the desire—when you can make man as Nature did not make him, content to be as poor as the poorest. ”

“ In a series of proposals drawn in the autumn of 1697 for submission to the House of Burgesses by leading citizens of Accomac, it was asserted emphatically that money sterling was the most convenient agency in carrying on trade and commerce, and that its absence discouraged men in every walls of life because it compelled them to wait or sell upon credit, which frequently terminated in a total loss. ”

“ Philip Sterling used to say that if he should seriously set himself for ten years to any one of the dozen projects that were in his brain, he felt that he could be a rich man. He wanted to be rich, he had a sincere desire for a fortune, but for some unaccountable reason he hesitated about addressing himself to the narrow work of getting it. He never walked Broadway, a part of its tide of abundant shifting life, without feeling something of the flush of wealth, and unconsciously taking the elastic step of one well-to-do in this prosperous world. ”

“ Several of the inconveniences we have here enumerated, may appear trifling, and so they are found to be in countries where commerce is little known; but the operations of trade surpass in nicety the conceptions of any man but a merchant; and as a proof of this, it may be affirmed with truth, that one shilling can hardly lose a 542grain of its weight, either by fraud or circulation, without contributing by that circumstance, towards the diminution of the standard value of the money-unit, or pound sterling, over all England, as I hope to be able to shew both by reason and facts. ”

“ Sterling. Oh, come, you're joking! [Warden makes an angry exclamation.] Why're you telling me all this now?
Warden. Because I want you to be careful. I want you to know some one is watching you! Some one who knows what you've come to! Some one who knows you can't resist temptation! Some one who knows money not yours has stuck to your fingers!
Sterling. You mind your own business.
Warden. I'll mind yours if it's necessary to protect people who are dear to me!
[Sterling looks at him with a sudden suspicion.
Sterling. [Insinuatingly.] I didn't know you were particularly attached to Mrs. Hunter. ”

“ Mawes landward to left, and the mining world and the farming world open boundlessly to the rear:—all this made a pleasant outlook and environment. And in all this, as in the other new elements of his position, Sterling, open beyond most men to the worth of things about him, took his frank share. From the first, he had liked the general aspect of the population, and their healthy, lively ways; not to speak of the special friendships he had formed there, which shed a charm over them all. "Men of strong character, clear heads and genuine goodness," writes he, "are by no means wanting." ”

“ He is a very intelligent, accomplished person. We had also there the Dean; a certain Dr. —— of Corpus College, Cambridge (a booby) ; and a clever fellow, a Mr. Fisher, one of the Tutors of Trinity in my days. We had a very pleasant evening."—
At London we were in the habit of expecting Sterling pretty often; his presence, in this house as in others, was looked for, once in the month or two, and came always as sunshine in the gray weather to me and mine. ”

“ For the old Act of 51 H. III., called Compositio Mensurarum, tells us that Denarius Anglice Sterlingus dicitur; and because this was the root of the measure, especially of Silver Coin, therefore all our Coin of the same allay was also called Sterling, as five Shillings Sterling, five Pounds Sterling.
"When this name of Sterling came first in is uncertain, only we are certain it was a denomination in use in the time of H. III. or Ed. I. and after ages. ”

“ Neither in September 1939, nor eight years earlier when sterling had separated itself from gold, was the sterling area a new creation: all that happened on both occasions was that a trading and financial partnership already long established took a shape that was more visible to outsiders. The sterling area had grown naturally from the London-centred international market of the nineteenth century, when overseas producers were always able to sell their products for sterling which they could use either to finance their imports from the United Kingdom or to clear their accounts with third parties. ”

“ During those ten years which might be defined as the culminating period of Edward Sterling's life, his house at South Place, Knights bridge, had worn a gay and solid aspect, as if built at last on the high table-land of sunshine and success, the region of storms and dark weather now all victoriously traversed and lying safe below. Health, work, wages, whatever is needful to a man, he had, in rich measure ”

“ A good judge of men's talents has been heard to say of Edward Sterling: "There is not a faculty of improvising equal to this in all my circle. Sterling rushes out into the clubs, into London society, rolls about all day, copiously talking modish nonsense or sense, and listening to the like, with the multifarious miscellany of men; comes home at night; redacts it into a Times Leader,—and is found to have hit the essential purport of the world's immeasurable babblement that day, with an accuracy beyond all other men. ”

“ Impetuous in attack, but deficient in steady resistance. He was shot by Clorinda with an arrow (bk. xi.) .--Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered (1575) .
Sterling (Mr.) , a vulgar, rich City merchant, who wishes to see his two daughters married to titles. Lord Ogleby calls him “a very abstract of ’Change;” and he himself says, “What signifies birth, education, titles, and so forth? Money, I say--money’s the stuff that makes a man great in this country.”
Miss Sterling, whose Christian name is Elizabeth or Betty; a spiteful, jealous, purse-proud damsel, engaged to Sir John Melvil. ”

“ Alas, and he had to live all the rest of his days, as in continual flight for his very existence; "ducking under like a poor unfledged partridge-bird," as one described it, "before the mower; darting continually from nook to nook, and there crouching, to escape the scythe of Death." For Literature Proper there was but little left in such a life. Only the smallest broken fractions of his last and heaviest-laden years can poor Sterling be said to have completely lived. His purpose had risen before him slowly in noble clearness ”

“ A pound sterling is always a pound sterling, no doubt; but the grains of silver which compose one pound sterling are not the same in number with those which compose every pound sterling. Now, the moment money is realized in the metals, and that the standard measure of value is affixed to them, let them be worn or not, it is very evident that nothing but the grains of the metal in the several pieces can represent the scale by which the coin becomes a measure of value. ”

“ Mint claims the same etymology, being a contraction of the Latin moneta, brought about through the Anglo-Saxon mynet. By Sterling Money is meant the standard coin of Great Britain, and for this reason:—During the reign of King John the merchants of the Hansa Towns, of which the inhabitants were commonly described as Esterlings, because they resided in the eastern portions of Germany, having long been noted for the purity of their coinage, the king invited a number of them over to this country for the purpose of reforming and perfecting our coinage. ”

“ Even as it is, the annoyance is much more than the pleasure; but I suppose I must go to see her in every character in which she acts. If Charlotte cares for plays, let me know, and I will write in more detail about this new Melpomene. I fear there are very few subjects on which I can say anything that will in the least interest her.
"Ever affectionately yours, "J. STERLING."
Sterling and his circle, as their ardent speculation and activity fermented along, were in all things clear for progress, liberalism; their politics, and view of the Universe, decisively of the Radical sort. ”

“ There had been so many sudden failings and happy risings again in our poor Sterling's late course of health, we had grown so accustomed to mingle blame of his impetuosity with pity for his sad overthrows, we did not for many weeks quite realize to ourselves the stern fact that here at length had the peculiar fall come upon us,—the last of all these falls! This brittle life, which had so often held together and victoriously rallied under pressures and collisions, could not rally always, and must one time be shivered. ”