“Ah, John, money is so necessary, and it is so hard to turn one’s back upon it! This way lies comfort, ease, luxury—that way deprivation and sacrifice. This way ‘the primrose path of dalliance trends’—that way ‘the steep and thorny road.’ This way the wife and children beckon and sue for safety and peace—that way only rocks, and bruises, and hunger, and loneliness summon. What wonder that the Christ, voicing the cry of the human to the infinite Father, placed as the central thought of the Lord’s prayer the words, ‘Lead us not into temptation’! But, John, honestly now, do you think the eight thousand millionaires you rave about are such an utterly bad lot as you make them out to be?” “Individually I dare say they are good husbands, fathers, and neighbors,” replied the professor, “but they conceal their selfishness and rapacity, and exercise their despotism from behind the shields of corporations which they create and govern, and tyranny is none the less tyranny because it is decreed not by kings, but by entities which fear neither the assassination of man nor the judgment of God.” “Professor, pardon me, but you generalize a good deal, and I fear somewhat loosely. It would make a difference to me, in my feelings, at least, whether I was knocked down by a ruffian, or by an electrical machine.” “Doctor, your simile was not considered as carefully as are your prescriptions. If the machine be guided by the ruffian, what matters it whether you be struck by his hand, or with an electric current directed by his hand? If our great newspapers, which are influential, which claim to be independent, and which ought to be free, are restrained from publishing articles advocating postal telegraphy, or criticising the management of a news corporation, what matters it that the freedom of the press is choked by a board of directors rather than a government censor? If the citizen dare not give voice to his views on public affairs, what matters it whether his utterances be choked by the knuckles of a king, or the polite menaces of an employer? If the voter cast his ballot against his own convictions, and in accordance with the will of another, what matters it whether he be coerced by a soldier with a musket or a station agent with a freight bill? If the settler lose his land, what matter whether the despoiler be a personal bandit armed with a rifle, or a corporate robber equipped with a land-office decision? If capital exempt itself from taxation, and place the burden of sustaining government upon the broad back of labor, will it alleviate the pain of the load to know that it is not the law of feudal vassalage but of modern politics which accomplishes the exaction? “Hallo! I have a bite! Ah! ha! my boy, your eagerness to swallow that minnow has brought you to grief!” And the speaker lifted a twenty-ounce pickerel from the placid waters of Nine Mile Pond, and deposited it, struggling and shining, upon the green turf at his feet.