iest ages to
abolish interest, or at least to limit it to the smallest possible
rate. All these efforts had, however, failed, as they necessarily must
so long as the ancient social organizations prevailed. At the time of
which I write, the latter part of the nineteenth century, governments
had generally given up trying to regulate the subject at all.

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the
way people lived together in those days, and especially of the
relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do
better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach
which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely
along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permitted
no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the
difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the top
was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest
ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up
out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their
leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining team.
Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them
was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat
on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the
rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on
the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time
be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very
insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping
out of them and falling to the ground, where they were instantly
compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on which
they had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a
terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that this
might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the
happiness of those who rode.

But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very
luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their
brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own
weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for fellow beings
from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was
frequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the
coach