"You are doubtless surprised, my dear fellow," I began, "at my turning myself into a hermit at this most inopportune season of the year; but the fact is, that shortly after you left Dickiefield, I became so deeply impressed with the responsibility of the great work I had undertaken, that I perceived that a period of retirement and repose was absolutely necessary with a view to the elaboration of some system which should enable me to grapple with the great moral and social questions upon which I am engaged. "Diverting my anxious gaze from Christendom generally, I concentrated it upon my own country, in the hope that I might discover the root of its disease. Morbid activity of the national brain, utterly deranged action of the national heart. Those were the symptoms--unmistakable. Proximate cause also not difficult to arrive at. Due to the noxious influence of tall chimneys upon broad acres, whereby the commercial effluvium of the Plutocracy has impregnated the upper atmosphere, and overpowered the enfeebled and enervated faculties of the aristocracy; lust of gain has supervened upon love of ease. Hence the utter absence of those noble and generous impulses which are the true indications of healthy national life. Expediency has taken the place of principle; conscience has been crushed out of the system by calculation. The life-blood of the country, instead of bounding along its veins, creeps sluggishly through them, till it threatens to stagnate altogether, and congestion becomes imminent.