The Days of a Man 



of state or city is not to make money, nor help anybody make 

 money, but to see that all have a fair chance. If, however, the 

 state be rich as a whole, what matter if the people be mostly 

 poor? For the luster of wealth is reflected from the faces of 

 all. It creates, as it were, an atmosphere of affluence, and 

 where affluence is the other charms of life soon gather. 



In an appreciative review the Manchester Guar- 

 dian, fearing that all this raillery might be taken 

 literally, observed: 



Sad experience shows that the ironic method needs, in our 

 grave and literal country, to be marked in very plain letters. 



The rece P tion in l8 97 of "The Sympsychograph," ' 

 another bit of purposeful fooling on my part, at- 

 tests the truth of this remark. But it is also worth 

 noting that the imaginary events surplus, defi- 

 cits, trusts, strikes, rebates, ground floors, lockouts, 

 and freeze-outs - - related of Issoire actually oc- 

 curred in the United States as features of forced 

 industrial prosperity, after the original article was 

 written. Such events I attributed to 



the improvidence of the workingman forestalling the pros- 

 perity sure to be his in time, but which normally filters to him 

 through overflow from the hands of others. 



3 



Of all our adventures on the road, the most mem- 

 orable was an ascent of the Matterhorn 2 on August 

 10, i88i--an experience which I permit myself to 



1 See Chapter xxm, page 599. 



2 Among the good books dealing with the Matterhorn (in French, Mont 

 Cerym) are: "Scrambles among the Alps" by Edward Whymper, "Hours 

 of Exercise in the Alps" by John Tyndall, "My Climbs in the Alps and Cau- 

 casus" by A. F. Mommery, and (especially) "The Matterhorn" by Guido 

 Key. 



