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He passed his hand over his face, then leaned forward in his chair and spoke slowly:

“Why are the seven-year locusts? Why do men have seasons of madness? Who knows?”

After a pause, his thoughts absorbing him, he continued in a tone of soliloquy.

The country was bewitched. The conglomerate American mind was foolishly persuaded to a variety of wistful and unverified economic notions,—that was to say, heresies, about such important matters as money, capital, prices, debts. People were minding things they knew nothing about and could never settle, and were neglecting meanwhile to be industrious. This had happened before in the world. In the Middle Ages Europe might have advanced, with consequences in this day not easily to be imagined, but for the time and the energy of mind and body which were utterly wasted in quest of holy grails and dialectical forms of truth. So now in this magnificent New World, the resources of which were unlimited, human progress had been arrested by silly Utopians who distracted the mind with thoughts of unattainable things.