 was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was
cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with countenance respectfully
lowered, this chap's nose was in the air - he couldn't even see him. Well, there
are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.
    Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of half naked boys and girls
came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking. The eldest among them were
not more than twelve or fourteen years old. They implored help, but they were so
beside themselves that we couldn't make out what the matter was. However, we
plunged into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was quickly
revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, and he was kicking
and struggling, in the process of choking to death. We rescued him, and fetched
him around. It was some more human nature; the admiring little folk imitating
their elders; they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised
to be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for.
    It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to put in the time very well.
I made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask
as many questions as I wanted to. A thing which naturally interested me, as a
statesman, was the matter of wages. I picked up what I could under that head
during the afternoon. A man who hasn't had much experience, and doesn't think,
is apt to measure a nation's prosperity or lack of prosperity by the mere size
of the prevailing wages: if the wages be high, the nation is prosperous; if low,
it isn't. Which is an error. It isn't what sum you get, it's how much you can
buy with it that's the important thing; and it's that that tells whether your
wages are high in fact or only high in name. I could remember how it was in the
time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century. In the North, a carpenter
got three dollars a day, gold valuation; in the South he got fifty - payable in
Confederate shin-plasters worth a dollar a bushel. In the North, a suit of
overalls cost three dollars - a day's wages; in the South it cost seventy-five -
which was two days' wages. Other things were in proportion. Consequently, wages
