ice thus to him and
to me. He was the man with power to buy, to build, to choose, to endow,
to sit on committees and adjudicate upon designs, to make his own terms
for placing anything on a sound business footing. He was hated, envied,
sneered at for his low origin, reproached for his ignorance, yet nothing
would pay unless he liked or pretended to like it. I look round at
our buildings, our statues, our pictures, our newspapers, our domestic
interiors, our books, our vehicles, our morals, our manners, our
statutes, and our religion, and I see his hand everywhere, for they
were all made or modified to please him. Those which did not please him
failed commercially: he would not buy them, or sell them, or countenance
them; and except through him, as "master of the industrial situation,"
nothing could be bought, or sold, or countenanced. The landlord could
do nothing with his acres except let them to him; the capitalist's hoard
rotted and dwindled until it was lent to him; the worker's muscles
and brain were impotent until sold to him. What king's son would not
exchange with me--the son of the Great Employer--the Merchant Prince?
No wonder they proposed to imprison me for treason when, by applying my
inherited business talent, I put forward a plan for securing his full
services to society for a few hundred a year. But pending the adoption
of my plan, do not describe him contemptuously as a vulgar tradesman.
Industrial kingship, the only real kingship of our century, was his by
divine right of his turn for business; and I, his son, bid you respect
the crown whose revenues I inherit. If you don't, my friend, your book
won't pay.

I hear, with some surprise, that the kindness of my conduct to Henrietta
(my first wife, you recollect) has been called in question; why, I do
not exactly know. Undoubtedly I should not have married her, but it is
waste of time to criticise the judgment of a young man in love. Since
I do not approve of the usual plan of neglecting and avoiding a spouse
without ceasing to keep up appearances, I cannot for the life of me see
what else I could have done than vanish when I found out my mistake. It
is but a short-sighted policy to wait for the mending of matters that
are bound to get worse. The notion that her death was my fault is sheer
unreason on the face of it; and I need no exculpation on that score; but
I must disclaim the credit of having borne her death like a philosopher.
I ought to have done so