depositors who were scared. Then the country gets flat on its back
with a panic. A friend said to me, during the great depression: "Don't
you think it will be over soon?" I replied: "Let a man have typhoid
fever until reduced to a skeleton; let the doctor call some morning
toward the close of the long siege and say, 'The fever is broken, get
up and go to work.' Can the man obey the doctor? No; he must have
chicken-broth and gruel, and slowly regain his strength." So when a
panic comes we must creep out, and we were so deep in the nineties it
took a long time to recover.

When a panic comes however, the extravagance ceases; everybody gets
stingy. A man with five thousand dollars doesn't buy a five thousand
dollar lot. He doesn't buy anything; his wife must wear the old
bonnet, and his church assessment is reduced. Then the tide turns and
the country recovers from its extravagance. But when times get good,
crops are fine and money plentiful, the people begin again; women
spending their money for dry goods, men for wet goods; another era of
extravagance is on and another panic coming.

Mr. Whitney said: "Too much silver and too much tariff." All the gold
and all the silver money in this country would not pay the old man's
drink and tobacco bill for five years. We drink, smoke and chew up all
the money in this country, gold, silver, and paper, every seven years.
Last year we spent about six millions for missions; one hundred and
fifty millions for churches; two hundred and seventy-five millions for
schools; and eighteen hundred millions for intoxicating liquors and
tobacco. Awake, O Conscience! and pour out thy saving influence for
the healing of the nation.

We live in a marvelous country. What this republic has accomplished in
one hundred and thirty-eight years, is the wonder of the world. At the
close of the Revolutionary War those who survived were poor, wounded,
bleeding people, occupying only the eastern rim of a wilderness waste,
while wild beast and wilder Indians roamed the mighty expanse to the
western ocean. From the penniless poverty of then, has come the
wonderful wealth of now. Where the tangled wilderness choked the
earth, now fields of golden grain dot the plains, carpets of clover
cover the hillsides, cities hum with the music of commerce, while
rivers and railroads carry rich harvests to the harbors of every land.
Emerson wrote better than he knew when he wrote:

"So I uncover the land, which of old