aggregation of goods a skein of silk of a specified shade, and having
found it bring it safely home. Now, I am not fitted for such an
adventure. Left to my own devices I should be helpless.

But the way is made easy for me. The floorwalker meets me graciously,
and without chiding me for not buying the things I do not want, directs
me to the one thing which would gratify my modest desire. I find myself
in a little place devoted to silk thread, and with no other articles to
molest me or make me afraid. The world of commodities is simplified to
fit my understanding. I feel all the gratitude of the shorn lamb for the
tempered wind.

At the silken shrine stands a Minerva who imparts her wisdom and guides
my choice. The silk thread she tells me is equivalent to five cents.
Now, I have not five cents, but only a five-dollar bill. She does not
act on the principle of taking all that the traffic will bear. She sends
the five-dollar bill through space, and in a minute or two she gives me
the skein and four dollars and ninety-five cents, and I go out of the
store a free man. I have no misgivings and no remorse because I did not
buy all the things I might have bought. No one reproached me because I
did not buy a four-hundred-dollar pianola. Thanks to the great
invention, the transaction was complete in itself. Five cents
represented one choice, and I had in my pocket ninety-nine choices which
I might reserve for other occasions.

But there are some things which, as we say, money cannot buy. In all
these things of the higher life we have no recognized medium of
exchange. We are still in the stage of primitive barter. We must bring
all our moral goods with us, and every transaction involves endless
dickering. If we express an appreciation for one good thing, we are at