For the poison of gold has debauched and corrupted American Society, it has brought within our gates new armies of parasites, it has led to a degree of ostentation and of luxury, and even of vice and profligacy, comparable with that of the Roman Empire under Heliogabalus. I said in a former chapter that the middle class in America has almost if not quite lost its power. One of the most vital reasons for this fact is that much of that middle class has become confused with the lower fringes of the wealthy class, has learned to ape its habits and its luxuries, has come to live with ostentation and display, and has given up its traditional habits of frugality and thrift to waste its substance on a riotous form of living that is, as it were, but a faint and unworthy imitation of the habits of life of the wealthy. In the process of adjustment that is unavoidable this drunkenness must pass. The great professional class, which in all ages has produced so many thinkers, writers, and makers of a nation’s history, must come back into its own; it must learn again the lesson of thrift and providence which it has learned so well in France and Germany, and which, forty years ago, were the most striking features of its character here in this land. If, as is true, the class I represent has very much to learn, I take it to be equally true that every other class in the land also has its lessons to learn. The process of learning is not to be an easy one. It may be that we as a nation will be tried in the fiery furnace of adversity, immersed in the gloomy depths of business depression, and crushed beneath a load of debt and repudiation before we have learned the first small principles upon which the newer order of things in America must be founded. It is not my business, however, to talk to the people of America at large. I am addressing this book to Society, to the men and women whom I know, to the boys and girls who are to take our places in the social world as years go by. To them, in all sincerity, I am preaching a sermon of warning. I am calling them to gird themselves for battle--a battle the like of which has never been fought in this land before--a battle for life. My appeal, if it were merely an appeal to save ourselves, would be sordid indeed. For it is ours to think of saving others. The bugle of the assured destiny of our race should quicken us to the service of a great and holy cause. The call is the call of the future, and the cause is the cause of humanity. I covet for you, my friends and members of my class, a higher destiny than the mere panic-stricken flight to safety. I am aware not only of your views, but of your virtues. Never before has there been such an opportunity for real service to mankind. You have the means, you have the power, you have the position, you have all, save only the will. I feel confident that if you give the matter study, and do not throw away this book as mere idle talk, the will to serve will come to you.