The Gilded Man: A Romance of the AndesSmyth, Clifford
Science
The Gilded Man: A Romance of the Andes
Smyth, Clifford
Andes Region -- Fiction; El Dorado -- Fiction; Science fiction
A case of this kind, indeed, had been recently operated on in this way.
The patient had accumulated such vast wealth that he had grown to be a
public inconvenience. As his business dealings, however, did not come
within reach of the criminal law, and as his wealth was thus due to
his natural bent for finance, the courts could not touch him. He was,
therefore, placed--not by way of punishment, but as a mark of public
esteem--in a bath of yellow light. The effect was extraordinary and
bore out all the claims of the originators of the Color Theory. He had
not been in this yellow bath more than a few hours before he began to
part with his wealth. On the second day he became more reckless in his
benefactions, and this frenzy for giving away what he had before so
jealously guarded from his neighbors, increased at so rapid a rate that
by the end of a week his entire fortune had passed, through his own
voluntary act, into the hands of the government and various benevolent
institutions. When he had nothing more to give, it was decided that he
had had enough of the yellow treatment. He was then released from the
honors the State had showered upon him, and passed the rest of his life
rejoicing in his penniless condition.
Then, there was the case of a man who had grown tired of his wife, and
who had outraged the sense of the community by leaving her. He was
captured and placed in a bath of green light. In a very short time
he got over his roving propensities and became so persistent in his
attentions to his wife that, in order to give her some peace, he was put
into another bath having a slightly neutralizing effect on the first, or
green, bath. Thus, the marital troubles of this couple were completely
and finally straightened out and they lived amicably together without
the tiresome intervention of mutual friends, or of the law courts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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