in our time.'

'Dreadful things! What were they, Winnie?'

'She told me how insatiable is the greed for pleasure at this time.
She told me that the passion of vanity--"the greatest of all the
human passions," as she used to say--has taken the form of
money-worship in our time, sapping all the noblest instincts of men
and women, and in rich people poisoning even parental affection,
making the mother thirst for the pleasures which in old days she
would only have tried to win for her child. She told me
stories--dreadful stories--about children with expectations of great
wealth who watched the poor grey hairs of those who gave them birth,
and counted the years and months and days that kept them from the
gold which modern society finds to be more precious than honour,
family, heroism, genius, and all that was held precious in less
materialised times. She told me a thousand other things of this kind,
and when I grew older she put into my hand what has been written on
the subject.'

'Good God! Has the narrow-minded tomfoolery got a literature?'

Winnie went on with her eloquent account of her aunt's doctrines, and
to my surprise I found that there actually _was_ a literature of the
subject.

Winnie's bright eyes had actually pored over old and long Chartist
tracts translated into Welsh, and books on the Christian Socialism of
Charles Kingsley, and pamphlets on more' recent kinds of Socialism.