It opened with...
"It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this volume, and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor: the first series of New Arabian Nights. The loss is yours- and mine; or to be more exact, my publishers'."
And then it continued to say some very profound things, all which were highly modern in thought...
"It depends," replied the salesman, withdrawing his cheroot. "The power of money is an article of faith in which I profess myself a sceptic. A hundred pounds would definitely support you for a year; with somewhat more difficulty you may spend it in a night; and without any difficulty at all you may lose it in five minutes on the Stock Exchange. If you are that stamp of a man that rises, a penny would be as useful; if you belong to those that fall, a penny would be no more useless. When I was myself thrown unexpectedly on the world, it was my fortune to possess an art; I knew a good cigar..."
"Fall to be a working man?" echoed Mr Godall. "Suppose a rural dean to be unfrocked, does he fail to be a major? Suppose a captain were cashiered, would he fall to be a puisne judge? The ignorance of your middle class surprises me. Outside itself, it thinks the world to lie quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation; but to the eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in ordered hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular aptitudes and knowledge. By the defects of your education, you are more disqualified to be a working man than to be a ruler of an empire. The gulf, sir, is below; and the true learned arts - those which alone are safe from the competition of insurgent laymen - are those which give his title to the artisan."
- The Dynamiter, Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson
I think this Mr Godall is more than he seems.
- xx
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