The profligacy of private ostentation extends in this country to public life, as was scandalously displayed in the twenty million State House job at Albany (which our arithmetic makes equivalent to twenty thousand lives) and renders all governmental affairs needlessly expensive[13] (except in that admirable republic Switzerland), nor is it arrested by the solemnity of death, for a prodigal funeral and a hundred thousand dollar tomb for an individual eminent only by wealth is but a fashionable matter of course to-day. Against this my moral sense revolts. Had I the wealth of Croesus, or the power of Napoleon, I could not consent to the evil record that my last act in life, in ordering a funeral and monument, was the effort to destroy as much as possible, and take from the resources of benevolence that which might gladden a thousand lives. To look back from the enlightened upper world upon such, a monument of base selfishness, would be the hell of conscience; but a simple rose or hawthorn over the couch of the abandoned form would harmonize well with the sentiments of heaven. [13] The salary that was sufficient for the commanding dignity and ability of Washington is not sufficient for the third-rate politician who occupies the White House to-day. The numerous allowances which are added to his $50,000 salary raise it to $114,865. But why should he have any salary at all? Would any man require the bribe of salary to induce him to accept the Presidency? The honor of the office would be more than sufficient pay for the third-rate men that are accidentally chosen to a far higher rank than nature gave them. We have too many ideas and fashions inherited from old-world kingdoms, and the ridiculous rules and etiquette of precedence and punctilio are as carefully enforced in the court circle of Washington as in the old world which still rules our fashions. But far worse than they, we have the criminal ostentation of a funeral for a Congressman, costing from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars, which is simply an unconstitutional and shameful robbery of the people to imitate the style of royalty.