his
day, what are his needs, where do his amusements lie? There is a country
for you--every man a soldier, every worker an intellect. In England
nowadays our young fellows seem to try and find out how little they can
do. We live for minimums. We are only happy when we have struck a bat
with a ball and it has gone far. We reserve our greatest honors for
those who thus excel."

Alban ventured to say that beer seemed to be the recreation of the
average German and insolence his amusement. He confessed that the
Germans beat his own people by hard work; but he asked, is it really a
good thing that work should be the beginning and the end of all things?
He had been taught at school that the supreme beauty of life lay in
things apart and chiefly in a man's own soul. To which Gessner himself
retorted that a woman's soul was what the writer probably meant.

"We have let civilization make us what we are," the banker said
shrewdly, "and now we complain of her handiwork. Write what you like
about it, money and love are the only two things left in the world
to-day. The story has always been the same, but people did not read it
so often formerly. There have always been ambition, strife, struggle,
suffering--why should the historians trouble to tell of them? You
yourself, Alban, would be a worker if the opportunity came to you. I
have foreseen that from the first moment I met you. If you were
interested, you would outdo the Germans and beat them both with your
head and your hands. But it will be very difficult to interest you. You
would need some great stimulus, and in your case it would be ambition
rather than its rewards."

Alban replied that a love of power was probably the strongest influence
in the world.

"We all hate work," he said, repeating his favorite dictum, "I don't
suppose there is one man in a thousand who would do another day's work
unless he were compelled. The success of Socialism in our time is the
belief that it will glorify idleness and make it real. The agitators
themselves never work. They have learned the rich men's secret--I have
heard them preaching the dignity of labor a hundred times, but I never
yet saw one wheeling a barrow. The poor fellows who listen to them think
that you have only got to pass a few acts of Parliament to be happy
forever after. I pity them, but how are you to teach them that the
present state of things is just--and if it is not just, why should you
wish it to last?"

Gessner coul