new volumes fresh from the King's lawmakers record his own decrees. The books are cunningly laid and bound like bricks into a wall, and the throne is as strong and durable as it can be made of such perishable material; but there is already a sign of decay at the bottom, and a mouldy smell now and then attracts the attention of those who are quick to note approaching decomposition. Every book that has gone into the structure of the King's throne has been indelibly stamped on its outer surface with the words, Private rights are a perpetuity, the regular repetition of these words giving the work the appearance of ornamentation. At the back of the throne, above the King's head, the same inscription is embroidered in large letters with red tape, and is surmounted by the King's arms, wrought in sealing wax, and representing a hand grasping a model of the earth, under which the word Forever is inscribed. The King's crown is a band of parchment, soiled with the lapse of time, but studded with priceless jewels that are now almost separated from the frail material which holds them in place. Across the front are wrought in diamonds the two words: Esto perpetua.

Thus according to this secret information, King Mammon's court is established, and the courtiers who swarm within its walls vociferously deny that he is a tyrant. They have not felt his displeasure. They have never suffered from his decrees. None of the terrors and torments of his reign have hitherto fallen upon their existence. And so are these courtiers satisfied with the King's reign and loudly praise his name. My lord of England, sailing idly in his yacht through Sicilian waters or dallying with the fish and game on his British estates, or perhaps inspecting his newly-acquired and extensive tracts of land in far away America, does not believe that Mammom is a despot. Neither does his wealthy and honored French neighbor, with whom he used to quarrel; for both were born princes of the realm of Mammon, and are still high in favor. Neither do the young American cousins of these nobles-the Princes of Real Estate, the Dukes of

Transportation, the Earls of Manufacture, the Barons of the Mines, and the Knights of Commerce-find aught to denounce in the decrees of Mammon. The courtier is ever subservient to the ruler while his favor is retained.

The King can rely upon the faithful allegiance of his courtiers; but in recent years, among the lowly subjects of his realm, who have seldom appeared at court, and who have never felt the delusive happiness of his favor, there have arisen portentous mutterings of discontent, and the head of Mammon has lain uneasy, like other heads that wear the crown. He remembers that among the strange old traditions of his family there is narrated a tale of an ancestor whose throne in ancient Rome was beaten down and destroyed, and the records of whose reign were almost obliterated by a sea of fire and blood that swept over his dominions. Although but little given to studying the stale and worthless legends of the past, the King's courtiers also remind him that once again the throne of his ancestors was destroyed after it was reëstablished, and the fierce Gallic blood effaced new records of kingly tyranny by the destructive methods of Robespierre and Danton. These tales of a past which has been little regarded for many years, and which is now almost forgotten by many who surround the court of Mammon, are whispered nervously by a few, and, like the story of the demons to the mind of childhood, the tales of Rome and France create a fear in the hearts of Mammon's courtiers, and they dread the threatened storm.

The plebeian subjects of King Mammon are in habits. and appearance a motley throng. Diverse in language, in religion, in learning and intellect, in manners and customs, they are alike in the one thing only, that all must pay a tribute to the King and his court.

The labor and the lot of Mammon's serfs are various. Some produce with hand and some with brain; some toil

faithfully and diligently at the task allotted to their lives, hoping some day to become courtiers; while others, indifferent alike to the praise and blame of Mammon, refuse to do his will except under severe compulsion, but still the surplus production of all-the idle and the industrious, the vicious and the moral, the stupid and the intelligent -is, by a series of gradual transformations, eventually dumped together into the storehouses which the King has established and placed in charge of his favorites, the Lords of the Realm-the wealth-peerage of the world. Under some conditions and in certain parts of Mammon's dominions, where his power has not yet become fully established, a portion of the serfs may, by prudent selfdenial and a proper subserviency to the King, approach the dignity of courtiers; and these see before them, on the one hand, the power and honor that will be theirs if they can enter Mammon's court and secure the knightly distinction. On the other hand, by contrasting their own condition with that of other subjects who have not found favor with the King, and over whom his sway has become absolute, they realize the depths of tyranny into which they may be plunged should they be supplanted in his court, deprived of their knightly emblems, and cast down to labor again in the serfdom from which they rose, and thus be compelled to resume the struggle among toiling millions who never expect to see the court of Mammon, or reach the peerage save by some unforeseen occurrence or hazardous endeavor. These fortunate serfs, who have hoped for knighthood and the favor of the King, while blinding their eyes to his tyranny and closing their ears to the complaints of their unfortunate fellow-creatures who are at the King's mercy, are debating among themselves concerning the future, and considering whether they shall assist their discontented fellow-subjects in the revolt against the tyranny of Mammon's court, which may

be turned against them if they permit it to exist, or whether they will continue to seek the King's favor and harden their hearts to the wrongs and the suffering.

Very strangely, the revolt against Mammon has not arisen among those who suffer most severely from his tyranny. There is a paralysis of life, and hope, and resistance under the extremity of oppression and childish familiarity with wrong. Some recent troubles and incipient rebellion against the King in the domains of his Dukes of Transportation arose, not because those subjects had yet suffered the full extent of Mammon's power, but because they see the conditions to which others, less fortunate, have been subjected; they note the continued extension of the King's tyranny; and they have determined to contest the further establishment of his power. Now and then other factions of the serfs revolt; and the Barons of Coal and Iron have had their share of such conspiracies, although no general rebellion has occurred against the King. But the bitter murmurs become louder ; the discontent is more boldly voiced; the King's courtiers are shown but a scanty reverence; and it is feared that the subjects of Mammon contemplate a violent resistance to the authority by which they have hitherto been. controlled. Let us arm these discontented hosts with the weapons of truth and justice, intelligence and reason, in the new warfare against tyranny, for brute force alone never yet righted a single wrong.

CHAPTER II.

THE KING'S GRANARIES.

"The Burden-Sloane wedding to-day represented an outlay of somewhere near $1,000,000. There were guests by the train load, and special trains at that. George Vanderbilt, the bride's bachelor uncle; Mr. and Mrs. F. W. Vanderbilt, Dr. Seward Webb, the whole Shepard contingent, the H. McK. Twomblys and William K. Vanderbilt were there. Leaving the Vanderbilt contingent and taking a look at the others, there were Mr. and Mrs. Orme Wilson, Mr. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mr. Moses Taylor, a young fellow worth $40,000,000 who is expected to marry into the Vanderbilt family one of these days; Robert Goelet (worth $25,000,000), Ogden Goelet, chum of the Prince of Wales; Mr. and Mrs. Elbridge Gerry, Eugene Higgins; and many others.

"The bride's trousseau represents a small fortune, or somewhere about $45,000. The wedding dress was made by Worth, or rather by his sons. It is of heavy satin, ivory colored, trimmed with point lace, thirteen inches wide, Bretonne pattern. The train is round and eleven feet long.

"Mrs. Sloane, the bride's mother and William H. Vanderbilt's daughter, is worth somewhere near $20,000,000. The bride has two uncles who have somewhere near $80,000,000 worth of this world's goods, and a half-dozen who have $15,000,000 or so. The parents of the groom are both millionaires, and besides this his grandmother left him $1,000,000 in his own right."-San Francisco Bulletin, June 6, 1895.

WEALTH centralization, unjustly controlled or entirely uncontrolled, is a danger which now threatens the government of nearly every civilized nation of the world, and which, in the minds of some thoughtful observers, even threatens to destroy civilization itself.

Even this extreme view of the danger embodied in the present condition of society is not an absurdity, when we reflect upon the evidences of ancient civilization existing in the ruins of the old world, and contemplate the barbarism of the Middle Ages which succeeded that early period of man's development. Whether the internal dissensions of a people can or cannot destroy the civilization they have developed by years of progress need not