Then there are the good, kind somnambulists who don’t prize-fight, who don’t play the commercial game, who don’t teach and preach somnambulism, who don’t do anything except live on the dividends that are coined out of the wan, white fluid that runs in the veins of little children, out of mothers’ tears, the blood of strong men, and the groans and sighs of the old.  The receiver is as bad as the thief—­ay, and the thief is finer than the receiver; he at least has the courage to run the risk.  But the good, kind people who don’t do anything won’t believe this, and the assertion will make them angry—­ for a moment.  They possess several magic phrases, which are like the incantations of a voodoo doctor driving devils away.  The phrases that the good, kind people repeat to themselves and to one another sound like “abstinence,” “temperance,” “thrift,” “virtue.”  Sometimes they say them backward, when they sound like “prodigality,” “drunkenness,” “wastefulness,” and “immorality.”  They do not really know the meaning of these phrases, but they think they do, and that is all that is necessary for somnambulists.  The calm repetition of such phrases invariably drives away the waking devils and lulls to slumber.

Our statesmen sell themselves and their country for gold.  Our municipal servants and state legislators commit countless treasons.  The world of graft!  The world of betrayal!  The world of somnambulism, whose exalted and sensitive citizens are outraged by the knockouts of the prize-ring, and who annually not merely knock out, but kill, thousands of babies and children by means of child labour and adulterated food.  Far better to have the front of one’s face pushed in by the fist of an honest prize-fighter than to have the lining of one’s stomach corroded by the embalmed beef of a dishonest manufacturer.

In a prize-fight men are classed.  A lightweight fights with a light-weight; he never fights with a heavy-weight, and foul blows are not allowed.  Yet in the world of the somnambulists, where soar the sublimated spirits, there are no classes, and foul blows are continually struck and never disallowed.  Only they are not called foul blows.  The world of claw and fang and fist and club has passed away—­so say the somnambulists.  A rebate is not an elongated claw.  A Wall Street raid is not a fang slash.  Dummy boards of directors and fake accountings are not foul blows of the fist under the belt.  A present of coal stock by a mine operator to a railroad official is not a claw rip to the bowels of a rival mine operator.  The hundred million dollars with which a combination beats down to his knees a man with a million dollars is not a club.  The man who walks in his sleep says it is not a club.  So say all of his kind with which he herds.  They gather together and solemnly and gloatingly make and repeat certain noises that sound like “discretion,” “acumen,” “initiative,” “enterprise.”  These noises are especially gratifying when they are made backward.  They mean the same things, but they sound different.  And in either case, forward or backward, the spirit of the dream is not disturbed.