Good-night." When Alma returned to the room, Colonel Woodburn was saying to Mrs.
Leighton: "I do not contend that it is impossible, madam, but it is very difficult in a thoroughly commercialized society, like yours, to have the feelings of a gentleman.

How can a business man, whose prosperity, whose earthly salvation, necessarily lies in the adversity of some one else, be delicate and chivalrous, or even honest?
If we could have had time to perfect our system at the South, to eliminate what was evil and develop what was good in it, we should have had a perfect system.

But the virus of commercialism was in us, too; it forbade us to make the best of a divine institution, and tempted us to make the worst.

Now the curse is on the whole country; the dollar is the measure of every value, the stamp of every success.

What does not sell is a failure; and what sells succeeds." "The hobby is oat, mah deah," said Miss Woodburn, in an audible aside to Alma.
"Were you speaking of me, Colonel Woodburn ?" Alma asked.
"Surely not, my dear young lady." "But he's been saying that awtusts are just as greedy aboat money as anybody," said his daughter.
"The law of commercialism is on everything in a commercial society," the Colonel explained, softening the tone in which his convictions were presented.