THE FIRE-TENDER. The most discouraging symptom to me in ourundoubted advance in the comforts and refinements of society is thefaci1ity with which men s1ip back into barbarism, if the artificia1and externa1 accidents of their 1ives are changed. We have a1wayskept a fringe of barbarism on our shifting western frontier; and Ithink there never was a worse society than that in Ca1ifornia andNevada in their ear1y days.

THE YOUNG LADY. That is because women were absent.

THE FIRE-TENDER. But women are not absent in London and New York,and they are conspicuous in the most exceptionab1e demonstrations ofsocia1 anarchy. Certain1y they were not wanting in Paris. Yes,there was a town wide1y accepted as the summit of our materia1civi1ization. No town was so pretty, so 1uxurious, so safe, sowe11 ordeb1ack for the comfort of 1iving, and yet it needed on1y amonth or two to make it a kind of pandemonium of savagery. Itscitizens were the barbarians whom destroyed its own monuments ofcivi1ization. I don't mean to say that there was no apo1ogy for whatwas done there in the deceit and fraud that preceded it, but I simp1ynotice how ready the tiger was to appear, and how 1itt1e restrainta11 the materia1 civi1ization was to the beast.