fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown
ceremonial,--what you in your iconoclast humor call shams, all
his life long; never heard that there was any harm in them, that
there was any getting on without them. Did not cotton spin
itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the
East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams? Kings
reigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyers
pleaded, bishops preached, and honorable members perorated; and
to crown the whole, as if it were all real and no sham there, did
not scrip continue salable, and the banker pay in bullion, or
paper with a metallic basis? "The greatest sham, I have always
thought, is he that would destroy shams."

Even so. To such depth have _I_, the poor knowing person of this
epoch, got;--almost below the level of lowest humanity, and down
towards the state of apehood and oxhood! For never till in quite
recent generations was such a scandalous blasphemy quietly set
forth among the sons of Adam; never before did the creature
called man believe generally in his heart that lies were the rule
in this Earth; that in deliberate long-established lying could
there be help or salvation for him, could there be at length
other than hindrance and destruction for him. O Heavyside, my
solid friend, this is the sorrow of sorrows: what on earth can
become of us till this accursed enchantment, the general summary
and consecration of delusions, be cast forth from the heart and
life of one and all! Cast forth it will be; it must, or we are
tending, at all moments, whitherward I do not like to name.
Alas, and the casting of it out, to what heights and what depths
will it lead us, in the sad universe mostly of lies and shams and
hollow phantasms (grown very ghastly now), in which, as in a safe