本书摘录:
Preface
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Preface
THE GILDED AGE
A Tale of Today
by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
1873
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PREFACE.
This book was not written for private circulation among friends; it was
not written to cheer and instruct a diseased relative of the author‘s;
it was not thrown off during intervals of wearing labor to amuse an idle
hour. It was not written for any of these reasons, and therefore it is
submitted without the usual apologies.
It will be seen that it deals with an entirely ideal state of society;
and the chief embarrassment of the writers in this realm of the
imagination has been the want of illustrative examples. In a State where
there is no fever of speculation, no inflamed desire for sudden wealth,
where the poor are all simple-minded and contented, and the rich are all
honest and generous, where society is in a condition of primitive purity
and politics is the occupation of only the capable and the patriotic,
there are necessarily no materials f
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