rts of the world have often laughed at our
fondness for revelling in the marvellous accounts of our material
dimensions, but they should remember that people who do not have a taste
for poetry may yet have a taste for romance, and that big figures do
appeal to the imagination.

It is true that there may be something portentous in bigness. "Tom" Reed,
as he was affectionately called, said many wise things in a jesting way.
At a certain crisis in our history he exclaimed: "I don't want Cuba and
Hawaii; I've got more country now than I can love." A foreigner might
suppose that our politicians had similarly become terror-stricken at the
extent of our wealth and the rate at which it was growing. They may well
give the impression that there has been created in the "money power," a
Frankenstein monster, the control of whose murderous propensities has put
them at their wit's end.

Figures are notorious liars; they may arouse emotion if looked at in any
light, but they must be looked at in many lights if we would get an
emotional effect that is truly worth while. Some very large figures
relating to Savings Banks have lately been published. The deposits in
these banks amount to over four and two-thirds billions of dollars, and
the number of separate accounts is about ten and two-thirds millions.
Savings deposits in all banks are about $7,000,000,000, the number of
accounts being 17,600,000. Probably the interest paid on the savings banks
deposits is 160 millions of dollars a year. I confess that these figures
give me much pleasure. I like to think that so many men have taken pains
to guard their wives and children against miserable want; that so many
women have to some extent made sure of their independence. It would not be
surprising to find that twelve millions of families, possibly half the
people of the country, were in this way protected against extreme penury.
Viewed in this light, the growth of wealth does not seem so terrible. One
might paraphrase Burke and say that such wealth as this loses half its
evil through losing all its grossness. Indeed one might go further and say
that if there were twice as much of this wealth, and every person in the
country had an interest in it, it would lose all of its evil.

To young people, this is all dry enough. They like to think of spending
money, not of saving it. But it is not at all dry to their elders. It is
what St. Beuve said of literary enjoyment, a "pure delice du gout et du