Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

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440 CONCLUSIONS.

the heavens. If fire sweeps away my houses, the insurance company reimburses me ; if mobs destroy them, the government pays me ; if civil war comes, I can convert them into bonds and move away until the storm is over ; if sickness comes, I have the highest skill at my call to fight it back; if death comes, Iam again insured, and my estate makes money by the transaction ; and if there is another world than this, still am I insured: I have taken out a policy in the church, and pay my premiums semiannually to the minister.”

And Dives has an unexpressed belief that heaven is only a larger Wall Street, where the millionaires occupy the front benches, while those who never had a bank account on earth sing in the chorus,

Speak to Dives of lifting up the plane of all the mnderfed, under-paid, benighted millions of the earth—his fellow-men—to higher levels of comfort, and joy, and intelligence—not tearing down any but building up all—and Dives can not understand you.

Ah, Dives! consider, if there is no other life than this, the fate of these uncounted millions of yourrace! What does existence give to them? What do they get out of all this abundant and beautiful world ?

To look down the vista of such a life as theirs is like gazing into one of the corridors of the Catacombs: an alley filled with reeking bones of dead men; while from the cross-arches, waiting for the poor man’s coming on, ghastly shapes look out :—sickness and want and sin and grim despair and red-eyed suicide.

Put yourself in his place, Dives, locked up in such a cavern as that, and the key thrown away!

Do not count too much, Dives, on your lands and houses and parchments ; your guns and cannon and laws ; your insurance companies and your governments. There