Poverty is so relative. I have lived to be thirty-two now, and am just beginning to find that out. Hitherto, in no vague way, poverty to me seemed to be indivisibly united with the lack of money. And this in the face of a long series of experiences which should have proved to any sane¹ person that this was only relatively² true. Without money, or at times with so little that an ordinary day laborer³ would have scoffed⁴ at my supply, I still found myself meditating⁵ gloomily and with much show of reason upon the poverty of others. But what I was really complaining of, if I had only known, was not poverty of material equipment (many of those whom I pitied were materially as well if not better supplied than I was) but poverty of mind, the most dreadful and inhibiting⁶ and destroying of all forms of poverty. There are others, of course: Poverty of strength, of courage, of skill. And in respect to no one of these have I been rich, but poverty of mind, of the understanding, of taste, of imagination—therein lies the true misery⁷, the freezing degradation⁸ of life.