“But,” said I, “suppose it was earning so many millions of kiks, I don’t see what good it did them if they never got it.” “Why you see,” he replied, “they got out of it in that shape, all they could have got if the money had been in their hands. And it was safe. It could not be stolen and nobody would be tempted to assassinate the owners in order to get it. When people have such enormous fortunes they can come into personal contact with only a small portion of them. An individual owning many millions can only use on himself a few hundreds or thousands, and the rest of it buys him nothing but the respect homage, consideration, obsequiousness and sycophancy of the crowd. For all this he does not have to pay a cent, but must own or be supposed to own millions. The funds which our Lunarians owned in canal stock made them the lions of Mars. Their personal abilities, accomplishments and graces would have done that anyway, with a certain class, but the addition of all that wealth gave them an influence and consideration amongst the mass of people who had no great appreciation of any other sort of merit. “All sorts of odd stories concerning the wealthy foreigners found circulation amongst the masses. Once it was reported that if the canal funds were not paid before the next Christmas, the Lunarians intended to fill up all the canals again. It was well known for ages that there was not enough money on Mars to pay the canal debt, or even its accumulation for one year. Not very long ago it became reported that the Lunarians had sold their claims to capitalists on the earth, and that the latter were going to get out an attachment for Mars, bid it off at sheriff’s sale and take it for another moon to the earth. The story even settled the route it was to run on—half way between the earth and the moon.” “That was a likely tale indeed!” said I. “They didn’t know our capitalists very well or they wouldn’t have imagined them going into a scheme that did not promise to pay pretty big.”