the value of the precious boon of civilization.  We know how bare and barren, and wretched and torpid, and utterly debased is soulless barbarism.  I see enough to convince me that the ramifications of your society are like a net-work of wires, all over the earth, penetrating everywhere, and at every point touching the most deadly explosives of human passions and hates; and that it needs but the pressure of your finger upon the pedal to blow up the world.  The folly of centuries has culminated in the most terrible organization that ever grew out of the wretchedness of mankind.  But oh, my friend—­you have a broad mind and a benevolent soul—­tell me, is there no remedy?  Cannot the day of wrath be averted?”

The tears flowed down my face as I spoke, and Maximilian placed his hand gently upon my arm, and said in the kindliest manner: 

“My dear Gabriel, I have thought such thoughts as these many times; not with the fervor and vehemence of your more imaginative nature, but because I shrank, at first, from what you call ’a world-cataclysm.’  But facts are stronger than the opinions of man.  There is in every conflagration a time when a few pails of water would extinguish it; then there comes a time when the whole fire-department, with tons of water, can alone save what is left of the property; but sometimes a point is reached where even the boldest firemen are forced to recoil and give up the building to the devouring element.  Two hundred years ago a little wise statesmanship might have averted the evils from which the world now suffers.  One hundred years ago a gigantic effort, of all the good men of the world, might have saved society.  Now the fire pours through every door, and window and crevice; the roof crackles; the walls totter; the heat of hell rages within the edifice; it is doomed; there is no power on earth that can save it; it must go down into ashes.  What can you or I do?  What will it avail the world if we rush into the flames and perish?  No; we witness the working-out of great causes which we did not create.  When man permits the establishment of self-generating evil he must submit to the effect.  Our ancestors were blind, indifferent, heartless.  We live in the culmination of their misdeeds.  They have crawled into their graves and drawn the earth over them, and the flowers bloom on their last resting-places, and we are the inheritors of the hurricane which they invoked.  Moreover,” he continued, “how can reformation come?  You have seen that audience to-night.  Do you think they are capable of the delicate task of readjusting the disarranged conditions of the world?  That workman was right.  In the aggregate they are honest—­most honest and honorable; but is there one of them whose cramped mind and starved stomach could resist the temptation of a ten-dollar bill?  Think what a ten-dollar bill is to them!  It represents all they crave:  food, clothes, comfort, joy.  It opens the gate of heaven to them; it is paradise, for a few hours