“Really now,” said Morton, imitating concern, “I wouldn't for the world have such sentiments escape to the ears of my club, don't y' know, for it's beastly bad form to even entertain them, but I lay the trouble you seek to relieve, old chap, to that humbug we call civilization; I do, 'pon my word!” “Do you cry out against civilization?” “Gad! why not? I say it is an artifice, a mere deceit. Take ourselves: what has it done for any of us? Here is our friend”--Morton dropped his hand upon my shoulder--“who, taking advantage of what was offered of our civilization, came to be so far victorious as to have the town for his kickball. He was a dictator; his word was law among three millions--really! To-day he has riches, and could pave his grounds with gold. He was these things, and had these things, from the hand of civilization; and now, at the end, he sits in the center of sadness waiting for death. Consider my own case: I, too, at the close of my juice-drained days, am waiting for death; only, unlike our friend, I play the cynic and while I wait I laugh.” “I was never much to laugh,” I interjected. “The more strange, too, don't y' know,” continued Morton, “since you are aware of life and the mockery of it, as much as I. I may take it that I came crying into this world, for such I understand to be the beastly practice of the human young. Had I understood the empty jest of it, I should have laughed; I should, really!” “Now with what do you charge civilization?” asked the Reverend Bronson. “It has made me rich, and I complain of that. The load of my millions begins to bend my back. A decent, wholesome savagery would have presented no such burdens.” “And do you uplift savagery?” “I don't wonder you're shocked, old chap, for from our civilized standpoint savagery is such deuced bad form. But you should consider; you should, really! Gad! you know that civilized city where we dwell; you know its civilized millions, fretting like maggots, as many as four thousand in a block; you know the good and the evil ground of those civilized mills! Wherein lieth a triumph over the red savage who abode upon the spot three centuries ago? Who has liberty as had that savage? He owned laws and respected them; he had his tribe, and was a patriot fit to talk with William Tell. He fought his foe like a Richard of England, and loved his friend like a Jonathan. He paid neither homage to power nor taxes to men, and his privileges were as wide as the world's rim. His franchises of fagot, vert, and venison had never a limit; he might kill a deer a day and burn a cord of wood to its cookery. As for his religion: the test of religion is death; and your savage met death with a fortitude, and what is fortitude but faith, which it would bother Christians to parallel. It may be said that he lived a happier life, saw more of freedom, and was more his own man, than any you are to meet in Broadway.”