Points of Friction
"admire it from afar," if only we were sometimes suffered to forget. "Money talks," and, by way of encouraging its garrulity, we talk about money, and in terms of money, until it would sometimes appear as if the currency of the United States were the only thing in the country vital enough to interpret every endeavour, and illustrate every situation.
Here, for example, is an imposing picture in a Sunday paper, a picture full of dignified ecclesiastics and decorous spectators. The text reads, "Breaking ground for a three-million-dollar nave." It is a comprehensive statement, and one that conveys to the public the only circumstance which the public presumably cares to hear. But it brings a great cathedral down to the level of the million-dollar club-houses, or boat-houses, or fishing-camps which are described for us in unctuous and awe-stricken paragraphs. It is even dimly suggestive
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