white fellows) at a cost of 800,000 lives and wealth incalculable.
You and I are paupers in comparison with the great capitalists of that
country, where the laborers fight for bones with the Chinamen, like
dogs. Some of these great men presented me with photographs of their
yachts and palaces, not anticipating the use to which I would put them.
Here are some portraits that will not harrow your feelings. This is my
mother, a woman of good family, every inch a lady. Here is a Lancashire
lass, the daughter of a common pitman. She has exactly the same physical
characteristics as my well-born mother--the same small head, delicate
features, and so forth; they might be sisters. This villainous-looking
pair might be twin brothers, except that there is a trace of good humor
about the one to the right. The good-humored one is a bargee on the
Lyvern Canal. The other is one of the senior noblemen of the British
Peerage. They illustrate the fact that Nature, even when perverted by
generations of famine fever, ignores the distinctions we set up
between men. This group of men and women, all tolerably intelligent
and thoughtful looking, are so-called enemies of society--Nihilists,
Anarchists, Communards, members of the International, and so on. These
other poor devils, worried, stiff, strumous, awkward, vapid, and rather
coarse, with here and there a passably pretty woman, are European kings,
queens, grand-dukes, and the like. Here are ship-captains, criminals,
poets, men of science, peers, peasants, political economists, and
representatives of dozens of degrees. The object of the collection is
to illustrate the natural inequality of man, and the failure of our
artificial inequality to correspond with it."

"It seems to me a sort of infernal collection for the upsetting of
people's ideas," said Erskine. "You ought to label it 'A Portfolio of
Paradoxes.'"

"In a rational state of society they would be paradoxes; but now
the time gives them proof--like Hamlet's paradox. It is, however, a
collection of facts; and I will give no fanciful name to it. You dislike
figures, don't you?"

"Unless they are by Phidias, yes."

"Here are a few, not by Phidias. This is the balance sheet of an
attempt I made some years ago to carry out the idea of an International
Association of Laborers--commonly known as THE International--or union
of all workmen throughout the world in defence of the interests of
labor. You see the result. Expenditure, four tho