“And caught more fish with our bamboo poles and angleworm bait than we appear likely to capture to-day with this fancy tackle,” remarked the doctor. “Everything about this lovely little lake seems unchanged,” resumed the professor, “but elsewhere the great world has indeed rolled on. Then there were less than one hundred millionaires in this republic—now, doctor, there are more than eight thousand.” “And then,” said the doctor, “we came here in a rickety old stage wagon, and we were ten hours in making the same journey which to-day we achieved in an hour while seated in a parlor car. Then the telegraph was in its infancy, the electric light was unknown, the great manufacturing cities were unconstructed, the petroleum of Pennsylvania and the gold of California and Australia were undiscovered, the great Western railroad lines were unbuilt, and the web of complex industries with which the land is now laced was unspun. The victim of a raging tooth or a crushed limb was compelled to suffer without relief from chloroform or ether, and it was a crime punishable with social ostracism to question the righteousness of human slavery, the curative virtues of calomel, or the beneficence of infant damnation. I never could think, John, that the good old times, whose loss you are always bemoaning, were nearly so comfortable times to live in as those amid which we now dwell.” “Dr. Eustace,” said the professor, “you attach undue importance to a few physical comforts and conveniences. If our fathers lacked the advantages of our later civilization, they were also without its vices. In the good old times which you deride, wrecking railroads, stealing railroads, and watering stocks were unknown. Senatorships and subsidies were not procured by bribery; the legislator who sold his vote made arrangements to leave the country, and bank burglars and bank defaulters kept, in the public estimation, the lock step of fellow-criminals.” “And what, in your opinion was the cause of our descent from this high estate of public virtue and whale-oil lamps?” “The main cause, Dr., of the corruption of the human race everywhere,—gold. It was the gold of California that revolutionized the finances, the business methods, and the morals of the nation. After the year 1849 the advance of values, the aggregation of wealth, the increase of population, and the magical growth of the West, made additional facilities for inland travel and transportation a necessity. This necessity caused the rapid construction of new lines of railroad. The differences and difficulties of local management suggested the advantages of consolidation—and then the reign of the centripetal forces commenced.” “But all the millionaires of the country are not railroad men, John.”