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The safe rule, and the only safe rule, is to decide such questions with the knee-joint bent, and the door shut, and the spirit willing. A strong will played upon by the Holy Spirit, mellowed by emotions that have been moved by the need, and held steady by a disciplined judgment must attend to loosening the purse-strings.
You would then see the ardent reformers at their wits' ends; while, the honourable person who keeps the purse-strings of the ministry would be down on his marrow bones entreating the ill-used and recalcitrant seceders to return to their employment, when "all would be forgiven;" and begging them, at the same time, to accept the increase to their salaries which they had demanded, as a token of his sincere regard and esteem!
He intends to be, if not their master, at least the chief among them. He intends to lead and to have followers; he intends to hold the purse-strings of the diocese and draw round him an obedient herd of his poor and hungry brethren.
Ham, whose heartstrings and purse-strings were oddly intertwined, had stipulated that they were to occupy the old Durrett mansion; but when Nancy had made it "livable," as she expressed it, he is said to have remarked that he might as well have built a new house and been done with it.
"Yes, she is able," interrupted Martialis, with a tone of pride, as though it were some credit to himself. "But how many have even more, and keep their purse-strings tight! I have known her since she was a child, and she is the best of all that is good. What does not the town owe to her!
The promise he had given to Trautvetter he should construe after his own views; he would be careful to keep within bounds, under all circumstances. It happened, nevertheless, that he lost at times; and to meet such little reverses he was obliged to borrow from the battery cash-box, for Ida kept a tight hand on the purse-strings, and he could not bring himself to cut down her housekeeping money.
But what she would not do openly she would do secretly. What she would not do herself she let her subjects do. Thousands of English volunteers fought in Flanders for the States, and in France for the Huguenots. When the English Treasury was shut to the entreaties of Coligny or William of Orange the London citizens untied their purse-strings. Her friends in Scotland fared ill.
The approaching war offered to the party of authority temptations from which the colonies might have saved it by opening their purse-strings without waiting to be told. The Home Government, on its part, was but half-hearted in the wish that they should unite in opposition to the common enemy.
To be this man's plaything, to submit to his moods, to his jealousies, to his caprices to be his to fumble and caress, his to have the fury of his passion wreak itself upon her with no response from her but only repulsion and loathing and the long dreary hours and days and years alone with him, listening to his commonplaces, often so tedious, forced to try to amuse him and to keep him in a good humor because he held the purse-strings
Once within the club he may have supposed himself perpetually safe, not only because of his hold on Ruthven, but also because, back of his unflagging persistence, back of his determination to shoulder and push deep into the gilded, perfumed crush where purse-strings and morals were loosened with every heave and twist in the panting struggle around the raw gold altar back of the sordid past, back of all the resentment, and the sinister memory of wrongs and grievances, still unbalanced, lay an enormous vanity.
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