The whole of this
modern mercantile investing civilisation is indeed such stuff as dreams
are made of. A mass of people swelters and toils, great railway systems
grow, cities arise to the skies and spread wide and far, mines are
opened, factories hum, foundries roar, ships plough the seas, countries
are settled; about this busy striving world the rich owners go,
controlling all, enjoying all, confident and creating the confidence
that draws us all together into a reluctant, nearly unconscious
brotherhood. I wonder and plan my engines. The flags flutter, the crowds
cheer, the legislatures meet. Yet it seems to me indeed at times that
all this present commercial civilisation is no more than my poor uncle's
career writ large, a swelling, thinning bubble of assurances; that
its arithmetic is just as unsound, its dividends as ill-advised, its
ultimate aim as vague and forgotten; that it all drifts on perhaps to
some tremendous parallel to his individual disaster...
Well, so it was we Boomed, and for four years and a half we lived a life
of mingled substance and moonshine.
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