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In a certain cheapness and thinness of substance as compared with the English stoutness, never left athirst it reminds me of our own, and it is relatively dry enough and pale enough to explain the contempt of many unimaginative Britons. But it has an idle abundance and wantonness, a romantic shabbiness and dishevelment. He at least was not an unimaginative Briton.
This almost incredible cheapness of telephony is still far from being generally perceived, mainly for psychological reasons. A telephone is not impressive. It has no bulk. It is not like the Singer Building or the Lusitania. Its wires and switchboards and batteries are scattered and hidden, and few have sufficient imagination to picture them in all their complexity.
This combined result of rapidity and cheapness of transit produces a double effect upon a mercantile community: it at once enables merchants to realise the fruits of a given speculation more quickly, which is nothing else than transacting more business in a shorter period than before; and it also enables them to do this increased amount of business with a smaller amount of actual outlay that is, to extend with safety and profit the field of their operations beyond those boundaries which prudence formerly marked out as the proper limits of speculation.
A landlady with a conscience might even have gone to the length of paying people some small sum by way of compensation to them for sleeping in it. 'About what? queried Mike. Cheapness was the great consideration. He understood that his salary at the bank would be about four pounds ten a month, to begin with, and his father was allowing him five pounds a month.
But to return to Wolverhampton, the name of which recalled battles wherein so much useful money has been wasted, the town, although of rising importance in a commercial point, offers no other attraction to the curious traveller than its numerous manufactories of hardware, and machinery of various kinds, including firearms, tinned ware, locks and keys, of extraordinary cheapness, gun locks, files, screws, and japanned ware.
The tinman knowing that our plain old farmers, though extremely liberal of everything that is produced on their plantations, are, frequently, very tenacious of coin, and much averse to parting with actual money, recommended his wares more on account of their cheapness than their goodness; and, in fact, the price of most of the articles was two or three cents lower than they could be purchased for at the stores.
Miss Mason recommended a "rocker," and Mary, who had had visions of stuffed English easy chairs, acquiesced on finding in the rocker and Morris types the only available combinations of cheapness and comfort. A second smaller table of good design, two brass candlesticks, and a little looking-glass in faded greenish gilt, rejoiced Mary's heart, without unreasonably lightening her pocket.
Hence, in England, we had reason to congratulate ourselves on the certainty and cheapness of manufacture of wrought iron coils, as long as moderate charges of comparatively quick burning powder were employed, and as long as adherence to a muzzle-loading system permitted the projectiles to move away at an early period of the combustion of the charge.
Moreover, the whole family was as musical as a band of troubadours, and while that brought them into constant requisition and gave them an importance in the town, it yet caused them to be held with a certain cheapness.
The French had less money and fewer men than their enemies; their resources were infinitely inferior; nevertheless they were constantly victorious, until their adversaries chose to imitate their example. The Americans have introduced a similar system into their commercial speculations; and they do for cheapness what the French did for conquest.
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