No. As I said, I want to talk to you about something far more germane to the world we all share of the four-color funnies.

Tulips.

Picture the scene: seventeenth-century Holland. Imagine the screen going all wavy at this point, and a hasty montage of wooden clogs, windmills, dykes with fingers in them, and red-wax-wrapped cheeses that taste more or less like yellow rubber.

However, one thing is missing: tulips.

The first tulips in Western Europe arrived from the east in the late sixteenth century, and became very popular in Holland.

In 1634 the rage among the Dutch to possess them was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected, and the population, even to the lowest dregs, embarked on the tulip trade. As the mania increased, prices augmented, until, in the year 1635 . . . it became necessary to sell them by their weight in perits, a small weight less than a grain.

One tulip bulb sold for twelve acres of prime building land in Haarlem. Another sold for 4,600 florins—about $10,000 in modern money—plus a new carriage, two gray horses and a complete set of harnesses for the horses.

A wealthy merchant once received a sailor, who came with news, and was rewarded with a gift of a smoked herring for his breakfast.

The sailor, who knew nothing of tulips, also took with him something he thought to be an onion, which, when he returned to his ship, he sliced and ate.

He had eaten a 3,000-florin tulip bulb, and spent some time in prison.

By 1636 there were tulip exchanges in every major town in Holland. These functioned as stock exchanges.

You had . . . but I’ll quote from Mackay’s book:

The tulip-jobbers speculated in the rise and fall of the tulip stocks, and made large profits by buying when prices fell, and selling out when they rose. Many individuals grew suddenly rich. A golden bait hung temptingly out before the people, and one after the other, they rushed to the tulip-marts, like flies around a honey-pot. Every one imagined that the passion for tulips would last for ever, and that the wealthy from every part of the world would send to Holland, and pay whatever prices were asked for them. The riches of Europe would be concentrated on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, and poverty banished from the favoured clime of Holland. Nobles, citizens, farmers, mechanics, sea-men, footmen, maid-servants, even chimney-sweeps and old clothes-women, dabbled in tulips. People of all grades converted their property into cash, and invested it in flowers. Houses and lands were offered for sale at ruinously low prices. . . . . .

You had an entire country here, obsessed with getting rich, and convinced that it was impossible that tulips could ever be less than the ultimate, perfect investment object.

After all, when the rest of the world caught up with the Dutch, they’d have all the tulips and would be even richer than they were already.