ill let any unselfish consideration
stand between him and its attainment is a weakling, a dupe and a
predestined slave. If I could convince our impecunious mobs of this, the
world would be reformed before the end of the week; for the sluggards
who are content to be wealthy without working and the dastards who are
content to work without being wealthy, together with all the
pseudo-moralists and ethicists and cowardice mongers generally, would be
exterminated without shrift, to the unutterable enlargement of life and
ennoblement of humanity. We might even make some beginnings of
civilization under such happy circumstances.

In the days of The Irrational Knot I had not learnt this lesson;
consequently I did not understand the British peerage, just as I did not
understand that glorious and beautiful phenomenon, the "heartless" rich
American woman, who so thoroughly and admirably understands that
conscience is a luxury, and should be indulged in only when the vital
needs of life have been abundantly satisfied. The instinct which has led
the British peerage to fortify itself by American alliances is healthy
and well inspired. Thanks to it, we shall still have a few people to
maintain the tradition of a handsome, free, proud, costly life, whilst
the craven mass of us are keeping up our starveling pretence that it is
more important to be good than to be rich, and piously cheating,
robbing, and murdering one another by doing our duty as policemen,
soldiers, bailiffs, jurymen, turnkeys, hangmen, tradesmen, and curates,
at the command of those who know that the golden grapes are _not_ sour.
Why, good heavens! we shall all pretend that this straightforward truth
of mine is mere Swiftian satire, because it would require a little
courage to take it seriously and either act on it or make me drink the
hemlock for uttering it.

There was the less excuse for my blindness because I was at that very
moment laying the foundations of my high fortune by the most ruthless
disregard of all the quack duties which lead the peasant lad of fiction
to the White House, and harness the real peasant boy to the plough until
he is finally swept, as rubbish, into the workhouse. I was an ablebodied
and ableminded young man in the strength of my youth; and my family,
then heavily embarrassed, needed my help urgently. That I should have
chosen to be a burden to them instead was, according to all the
conventions of peasant lad fiction, monstrous. Well, witho