Back The Metropolis
Chapters (24)
  1. Feature
  2. CHAPTER I
  3. CHAPTER II
  4. CHAPTER III
  5. CHAPTER IV
  6. CHAPTER V
  7. CHAPTER VI
  8. CHAPTER VII
  9. CHAPTER VIII
  10. CHAPTER IX
  11. CHAPTER X
  12. CHAPTER XI
  13. CHAPTER XII
  14. CHAPTER XIII
  15. CHAPTER XIV
  16. CHAPTER XV
  17. CHAPTER XVI
  18. CHAPTER XVII
  19. CHAPTER XVIII
  20. CHAPTER XIX
  21. CHAPTER XX
  22. CHAPTER XXI
  23. You are reading a Deluxe Edition:
  24. Copyright

One saw the meaning of this madness most clearly in the young men of Society. Some were killing themselves and other people in automobile races at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Some went in for auto-boats, mere shells of things, shaped like a knife-blade, that tore through the water at forty miles an hour. Some would hire professional pugilists to knock them out; others would get up dog-fights and bear-fights, and boxing matches with kangaroos. Montague was taken to the home of one young man who had given his life to hunting wild gajne in every corner of the globe, and would travel round the world for a new species to add to his museum of trophies. He had heard that Baron Rothschild had offered a thousand pounds for a "bongo," a huge grass-eating animal, which no white man had ever seen; and he had taken a year's trip into the interior, with a train of a hundred and thtiry natives, and had brought out the heads of forty different species, including a bongo - which the Baron did not get! He met another who had helped to organize a balloon club, and two twenty-four-hour trips in the clouds. (This, by the way, was the latest sport - at Tuxedo they had races between balloons and automobiles; and Montague met one young lady who boasted that she had been up five times.) There was another young millionaire who sat and patiently taught Sunday School, in the presence of a host of reporters; there was another who set up a chain of newspapers all over the country and made war upon his class. There were others who went in for settlement work and Russian revolutionists - there were even some who called themselves Socialists! Montague thought that this was the strangest fad of all; and when he met one of these young men at an afternoon tea, he gazed at him with wonder and perplexity - thinking of the man he had heard ranting on the street-corner.

This was the "second generation." Appalling as it was to think of, there was a third growing up, and getting ready to take the stage. And with wealth accumulating faster than ever, who could guess what they might do? There were still in Society a few men and women who had earned their money, and had some idea of the toil and suffering that it stood for; but when the third generation had taken possession, these would all be dead or forgotten, and there would no longer be any link to connect them with reality!