We indeed consider it the age of "big things." Dynasties fall and republics spring up. When war breaks out it is a World War involving twenty-four nations and causing 7,781,806 deaths (Nelson's Encyclopedia, V. iv, p. 519) and costing $200,000,000,000. In the first year in which we were at war, our country spent more than had been the cost of conducting the government for 124 years, including the expenses of the Civil and the Spanish-American Wars. Yes, it is an age of "big things." The Allies in the Champagne offensive of September, 1915, threw 50,000,000 shells into the German lines in three days. Was it one out of sympathy with "big things," one intent on the quiet of the higher life as contrasted with the din of the day, who said that "modern civilization is noise and the more civilization progresses, the greater will be the noise?" In any event the muses who inspired Dante, are almost dumb. Now the captains of industry are the commanding figures of the day and the student, the poet, the philosopher, the statesman have gone into innocuous desuetude. Amy Lowell is preferred to Longfellow: Charlie Chaplin draws bigger crowds than Shakespeare can interest. Trainmen get wages higher than are the salaries of some of our governors. Unskilled labor is paid more than the teachers of our youth receive. The cost of living was never higher in the history of mankind. How illuminating to turn from this picture to that of Dante's age. Then in Florence, a bushel of wheat cost about fifteen cents, a carpenter could buy a broad ax for five cents, a saw for three cents, a plane for four cents, a chisel for one cent. The average daily wage of a woolworker was about thirty-six cents. In view of the high purchasing power of money in Dante's age, the fact that he borrowed at least seven hundred and fifty seven and a half golden florins, a debt that was not paid until after his death, leads one to think that he must have been regarded by his contemporaries as prodigal in the use of money. His financial difficulties must have given him an uneasy conscience for he insists repeatedly on the wickedness of prodigality. In fact he makes the abuse of money on the part either of a miser or of a spendthrift a sin against the social order punishable according to the gravity of the offence in Hell or Purgatory.