The flow of wasted wealth is no longer like the equable
gliding of the full Thames; it is like the long deadly flurry of the
waters that bears toward Niagara. These newly-enriched people cause
the rise of the usual crop of parasites, and it is the study of the
parasites which forces on the mind hundreds of reflections concerning
the values of different kinds of labour. A little while ago, for
example, an exquisitely comic paragraph was printed with all innocence
in many journals. It appeared that two of the revived species of
parasites known as professional pugilists were unable to dress
properly before they began knocking each other about, "because their
valets were not on the spot." I hope that the foul old days of the
villainous "ring" may never be recalled by anything seen in our day,
for there never were any "palmy days," though there were some ruffians
who could not be bought. Yet the worst things that happened in the
bygone times were not so much fitted to make a man think solemnly as
that one delicious phrase--"their valets were not on the spot." In the
noble days, when England was so very merry, it often happened that a
man who has been battered out of all resemblance to humanity was left
to dress himself as best he could on a bleak marsh, and his chivalrous
friends made the best of their way home, while the defeated gladiator
was reckoned at a dog's value.
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