148 HEREDITY. 



down. In the long course we must pay what things 

 are worth. It is by the merciless law of the survival 

 of the fittest, after ages of experience, that gold re- 

 tains its place in most modern nations as a monetary 

 standard. 



If you want two standards, as many do ; if you 

 think it essential to the progress of civilization that 

 there should be a silver dollar as well as a gold dol- 

 lar, let the nations agree. Have an international 

 congress called ; let Berlin and London and Paris 

 unite with New York and Boston in determining 

 that there shall be a double standard. Until you 

 can rule the whole circuit of the atmosphere, do not 

 think you can prevent the winds from flowing down 

 the hollows. [Applause.] 



THE LECTURE. 



When the ice breaks up in the St. Lawrence in 

 the spring, it does not move all at once, but is first 

 honeycombed by the approach of the sun from the 

 south. In the middle of the mighty river an open- 

 ing appears where the currents are swiftest ; and, 

 Little by little, they shoulder the masses of ice against 

 the shore, piling them sometimes to the height of 

 thirty and forty feet, with a noise of crushing, upon 

 each other. At last the river carries to the ocean 

 not a sheet of haughty solidified water, but of obedi- 

 ent aqueous fluid, reduced to pliability, forgetting 

 that it ever was locked up by the winter, filling itself 

 with mirrored reflections of earth and sky, and glid- 

 ing meekly into the sea as a part of the shoulder- 



