I have given these minute details of the manner in which the people lived in New Jersey and adjoining States in the olden times, "when the richest were poor and the poorest had abundance," to show you how well they lived, how comfortably clad, and how content they were in the days when trusts, combines, and protective tariffs were unknown, and no great corporations existed. To-day (1895) these great combines have destroyed individual competition, and impoverished more than half the entire population of the country and reduced it to rigidity of hours and the _slavery_ of _wages_. They control legislation, corrupt the courts, subsidize the press, maintain advocates in the pulpits, and this will estrange the poor from the rich more widely than the peasant from the prince; and, continued, may implant an unkindly feeling, which, if not placated, may have to be settled by a resort to arms. What a change has sixty-five years wrought! The stagecoach has disappeared on the advent of railroads, steam will be displaced by electricity as the candle and lamp have been, and as the friction match has banished the flint and steel and tinder box, the scythe and sickle have been superseded by the mower, the magnificent sailing ships have given way to the ocean racers. Ere long we will see the wind pass by as we see the streams of water now. "The cloud of witnesses around that hold us in full survey" may themselves be seen, for we are discovering the secrets of Arcana every day; the source of life and the mystery of death will soon be discovered. When I was a boy the habitat of the Yankee did not extend south of Connecticut, as bounded by that elegant writer, Washington Irving, in his _veritable_ history of New York. In that Knickerbocker history you will find the southern limit of the Yankee. Is it possible to conceive that Wouter van Twiller, Rip van Winkle, William the Testy, or Peter the Headstrong, and the drowsy, dreamy Dutch people of New Amsterdam were Yankees? No! they dwelt farther north; yet they might have overrun and subdued New Amsterdam had not their minds been diverted by a sudden outbreak of witchcraft, that afforded these saints infinite amusement in a pious way, which saved New Amsterdam. When I was young it was not considered complimentary or prudent to call a boy of your own size a "Yankee."