the entry of the United States into the war), of securities expressed in foreign gold currencies, of national securities, and also of goods, furniture, clothes and linen. In these times peasant women sold only against materials and clothes and the wardrobes of the middle classes found their way into the villages, in exchange for flour, lard, butter and milk. The peasant women bought or bartered trousseaux for their daughters during the war; in many peasant cottages not only one but two pianos were to be found; and a peasant in the neighbourhood of Pisek, who already possessed every conceivable thing, finally bought himself a coffin with his paper Kronen."
It reminds one of Tony Weller's observation when Sam, consoling him for his bereavement, said that "there's a Providence in it all." "O' course there is," replied Mr. Weller, senior, with a nod of grave approval. "Wot 'ud become of the undertakers without it, Sammy?" (Pickwick Papers, vol ii, ch. 24.)
Such a state of things sets up feverish and quite artificial activity in trade, because in the headlong flight from the Krone or the mark or whatever it may be, everybody who has marks or Kronen hurries to turn them into anything else. And so the ordinary household becomes like a museum or a ship-chandler's shop, stuffed with
