HERBERT. I wish I could believe it. The spirit of this age is
expressed by the Calliope.
THE PARSON. Yes, it remained for us to add church-bells and cannon
to the orchestra.
OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a melancholy thought to me that we can no longer
express ourselves with the bass-drum; there used to be the whole of
the Fourth of July in its patriotic throbs.
MANDEVILLE. We certainly have made great progress in one art,--that
of war.
THE YOUNG LADY. And in the humane alleviations of the miseries of
war.
THE FIRE-TENDER. The most discouraging symptom to me in our
undoubted advance in the comforts and refinements of society is the
facility with which men slip back into barbarism, if the artificial
and external accidents of their lives are changed. We have always
kept a fringe of barbarism on our shifting western frontier; and I
think there never was a worse society than that in California and
Nevada in their early days.
THE YOUNG LADY. That is because women were absent.
THE FIRE-TENDER. But women are not absent in London and New York,
and they are conspicuous in the most exceptionable demonstrations of
social anarchy. Certainly they were not wanting in Paris. Yes,
there was a city widely accepted as the summit of our material
civilization.
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