James G. Kiernan, M.D.

“ The best scene is that in which four or five stern nonconformists, clad in full Puritan costume, after discussing the prospects of the Mousetrap Company and the Fleakilling Company, examine the question whether the godly may lawfully hold stock in a company for bringing over Chinese rope dancers. "Considerable men have shares," says one austere person in cropped hair and bands, "but verily I question whether it be lawful or not." ”

“ Often, as in the case of a great financier in the East, the line cannot be drawn between purely speculative schemes and paretic dementia schemes. The disorder is so comparatively frequent among commercial men that it is natural for an alienist to suspect something of the kind when a hitherto blameless, trusted official suddenly goes wrong. ”

“ Indeed, this is so emphatic that life insurance companies have accepted paretic dements as good risks. An alienist was called on by two brothers. One went along into the private office of the physician and said that while there appeared to be nothing the matter with his brother, he seemed no longer himself. After a long examination of the patient the physician told the brother that the patient was suffering from paretic dementia and would die in three or four years. The brother immediately placed an insurance of $20,000 on his brother's head. ”

“ The new form which covetousness had taken furnished the comic poets and satirists with an excellent subject, nor was that subject the less welcome to them because some of the most unscrupulous and most successful of the new race of gamesters were men in sad colored clothes and lank hair, men who called cards the devil's books, men who thought it a sin and a scandal to win or lose two pence over a backgammon board. ”

“ The speculator has had his part, however, in all ages, and forestalling or monopoly has been a crime against which the fanatic lawmaker has always launched his legal bolts in vain. Even the corporation of the swindling variety is old. Of the close of the seventh century Macaulay draws the following picture: "An impatience to be rich, a contempt for those slow but sure gains which are the proper reward of industry, patience, and thrift spread through society. ”