114 Company and Solitude 



finally in the few being served by the many ; 

 the idle becoming the lords of the busy ; the 

 rich, the tyrants of the poor. There are 

 upturnings at times and healthful readjust- 

 ments. So ugly as all this appears, it might 

 be worse ; but the sham, the unreal, the ab- 

 solutely false, these pass too often for the 

 real, the beautiful, and the true, and the 

 world does not seem aware that it is hum- 

 bugged. The indifferent individual the in- 

 fant of mature years, so to speak accepts 

 pinchbeck for gold, rhinestones for diamonds, 

 asking only for glitter, and indifferent to the 

 source. The fools, unfortunates through 

 Nature's design or indifference, can, and not 

 infrequently, successfully pose as the favor- 

 ites of Erudition, and, stealing others' labors, 

 be credited with learning which they do not 

 possess and awarded honors to which they 

 are not entitled. The individual that by 

 chance catches the expressions of those in 

 distant lands and repeats them here as the 

 outcomings of his own brain is all too com- 

 mon. This is a diseased condition that has 

 found a nidus in the overcrowded centres of 

 the world. We have heard much of degen- 

 eration of late, and a great hue and cry against 



