PREFACE.

This book was not written for private circulation among friends; it was

not written to cheer and instruct a diseased relative of the author's;

it was not thrown off during intervals of wearing labor to amuse an idle

hour. It was not written for any of these reasons, and therefore it is

submitted without the usual apologies.

It will be seen that it deals with an entirely ideal state of society;

and the chief embarrassment of the writers in this realm of the

imagination has been the want of illustrative examples. In a State where

there is no fever of speculation, no inflamed desire for sudden wealth,

where the poor are all simple-minded and contented, and the rich are all

honest and generous, where society is in a condition of primitive purity

and politics is the occupation of only the capable and the patriotic,

there are necessarily no materials for such a history as we have

constructed out of an ideal commonwealth.

No apology is needed for following the learned custom of placing

attractive scraps of literature at the heads of our chapters. It has

been truly observed by Wagner that such headings, with their vague

suggestions of the matter which is to follow them, pleasantly inflame the

reader's interest without wholly satisfying his curiosity, and we will

hope that it may be found to be so in the present case.

Our quotations are set in a vast number of tongues; this is done for the

The Gilded Age