A man who, after fighting through our late war, had succeeded in amassing a fortune, naturally wished his son to follow him on the only road in which it had ever occurred to him that success was of any importance. So beyond giving the boy a college education, which he had not enjoyed, his ambition rarely went; his idea being to make a practical business man of him, or a lawyer, that he could keep the estate together more intelligently. In thousands of cases, of course, individual taste and bent over-ruled this influence, and a career of science or art was chosen; but in the mass of the American people, it was firmly implanted that the pursuit of wealth was the only occupation to which a reasonable human being could devote himself. A young man who was not in some way engaged in increasing his income was looked upon as a very undesirable member of society, and sure, sooner or later, to come to harm. Millionaires declined to send their sons to college, saying they would get ideas there that would unfit them for business, to Paterfamilias the one object of life. Under such fostering influences, the ambitions in our country have gradually given way to money standards and the false start has been made! Leaving aside at once the question of money in its relation to our politics (although it would be a fruitful subject for moralizing), and confining ourselves strictly to the social side of life, we soon see the results of this mammon worship. In England (although Englishmen have been contemptuously called the shop- keepers of the world) the extension and maintenance of their vast empire is the mainspring which keeps the great machine in movement. And one sees tens of thousands of well-born and delicately-bred men cheerfully entering the many branches of public service where the hope of wealth can never come, and retiring on pensions or half-pay in the strength of their middle age, apparently without a regret or a thought beyond their country's well-being. In France, where the passionate love of their own land has made colonial extension impossible, the modern Frenchman of education is more interested in the yearly exhibition at the _Salon_ or in a successful play at the _Francais_, than in the stock markets of the world.