most people would expend on reading a book, I shall be perfectly
satisfied if any or all my critics will do so, and judge the system by
the result.



INTRODUCTION.

"Unto many Fortune comes while sleeping."--_Latin
Proverb_.

"Few know what is really going on in the world."--
_American Proverb_.

It is but a few years since it suddenly struck the gay world of comic
dramatists and other literary wits, that the Nineteenth Century was
drawing to an end, and regarding it as an event they began to make
merry over it, at first in Paris, and then in London and New York, as
the _fin-de-siècle_. Unto them it was the going-out of old fashions in
small things, such as changes in dress, the growth of wealth, or "the
mighty bicycle," with a very prevalent idea that things "are getting
mixed" or "checquered," or the old conditions of life becoming
strangely confused. And then men of more thought or intelligence,
looking more deeply into it, began to consider that the phrase did in
very truth express far more serious facts. As in an old Norman tale,
he who had entered as a jester or minstrel in comic garb, laid aside
his disguise, and appeared as a wise counsellor or brave champion who
had come to free the imprisoned emperor.

For it began to be seen that this _fin-de-siècle_ was developing with