of Mammon. I bow before the Idol, and taste the unhallowed
ecstasy.

How many Altars have been overthrown, and how many Theologies
and heavenly Dreams have had their bottoms knocked out of them,
while He has sat there, a great God, golden and adorned, and
secure on His unmoved throne?




_I See the World_


"But you go nowhere, see nothing of the world," my cousins said.
Now though I do go sometimes to the parties to which I am now
and then invited, I find, as a matter of fact, that I get really
much more pleasure by looking in at windows, and have a way of
my own of seeing the World. And of summer evenings, when motors
hurry through the late twilight, and the great houses take on
airs of inscrutable expectation, I go owling out through the
dusk; and wandering toward the West, lose my way in unknown
streets--an unknown City of revels. And when a door opens and a
bediamonded Lady moves to her motor over carpets unrolled by
powdered footmen, I can easily think her some great Courtezan,
or some half-believed Duchess, hurrying to card-tables and lit
candles and strange scenes of joy. I like to see that there are
still splendid people on this flat earth; and at dances,
standing in the street with the crowd, and stirred by the music,
the lights, the rushing sound of voices, I think the Ladies as