Rockefeller is a hero,
a false standard of morals is set up. For many years he has preached a
practical sermon upon the text, "The end justifies the means." How great
are the means! How small the end! He has defended his harshest dealings
on the ground that "it is business," and so doing has thrown a slur
upon the commerce of his country. And, worse than this, the wonder and
curiosity which cling about the dollar have created a new measure of
life and character. A man is judged not by his attainments, his courage,
his energy, but by his wealth. It is a simple test, and easily applied.
It is also the poorest encouragement for the civic virtues. In England
we help to correct the vulgarity of wealth by the distribution of
titles, and a better aid than this could not be devised. Though the
champions of democracy, who believe in equality of names as devoutly
as in inequality of wealth, deem this old-fashioned artifice a shameful
crime, it is not without its uses. It suggests that public service is
worth a higher distinction than a mass of money. And, titles apart, it
is happily not in accord with the traditions of our life to regard the
rich man and the poor man as beings of a different clay and a different
destiny. We may still echo without hypocrisy the words of Ben Jonson,
"Money never made any man rich, but his mind."

THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.

To the English traveller in America the language which he hears spoken
about him is at once a puzzle and a surprise. It is his own, yet not his
own. It seems to him a caricature of English, a phantom speech, ghostly
but familiar, such as he might hear in a land of dreams. He recognises
its broad lineaments; its lesser details evade, or confuse, him. He
acknowledges that the two tongues have a common basis. Their grammatical
framework is identical. The small change of language--the adverbs and
prepositions,--though sometimes strangely used in America, are not
strange to an English ear. And there the precise resemblance ends.
Accent, idiom, vocabulary give a new turn to the ancient speech. The
traveller feels as though he were confronted with an old friend, tricked
out in an odd suit of clothes, and master of a new pose and unaccustomed
gesture.

The Americans are commonly reputed to speak through their nose. A more
intimate acquaintance with their manner belies this reputation. It is
rather a drawl that afflicts the ear than a nasal twang. You notice in
every sentence a curi