the opera, do you and your family occupy as good seats as
Richard and his family in the same way that you and he used to occupy
"quarter seats" in the gallery? Are your children and Richard's
children dressed equally well? Your fourteen-year-old girl is working
as a cash-girl in a store and your fifteen-year-old boy is working in
a factory. What about Richard's children? They are about the same age
you know: is his girl working in a store, his boy in a factory?
Richard's youngest child has a nurse to take care of her. You saw her
the other day, you remember: how about your youngest child--has she a
nurse to care for her?

Ah, Jonathan! I know very well how you must answer these questions as
they flash before your mind in rapid succession. You and Richard are
no longer chums; your wives don't know each other; your children don't
play together, but are strangers to one another; you have no friends
in common now. Richard lives in a mansion, while you live in a hovel;
Richard's wife is a fine "lady" in silks and satins, attended by
flunkeys, while your wife is a poor, sickly, anaemic, overworked
drudge. You still live in the same city, yet not in the same world.
You would not know how to act in Richard's home, before all the
servants; you would be embarrassed if you sat down at his dinner
table. Your children would be awkward and shy in the presence of his
children, while they would scorn to introduce your children to their
friends.

You have drifted far apart, you two, my friend. Somehow there yawns
between you a great, impassable gulf. You are as far apart in your
lives as prince and pauper, lord and serf, king and peasant ever were
in the world's history. It is wonderful, this chasm that yawns between
you. As Shakespeare has it:

Strange it is that bloods
Alike of colour, weight and heat, pour'd out together,
Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off
In differences so mighty.

I am not going to say anything against your one-time friend who is now
a stranger to you and the lord of your life. I have not one word to
say against him. But I want you to consider very seriously if the
changes we have noted are the only changes that have taken place in
him since the days when you were chums together. Have you forgotten
the Great Strike, when you and your fellow workers went out on strike,
demanding better conditions of labor and higher wages? Of course you
have not forgotten it, for that was