Explore "The Money Moon" by Jeffery Farnol on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In those benighted days when men went abroad cased in steel, and, upon very slight provocation, were wont to smite each other with axes, and clubs, to buffet and skewer each other with spears, lances, swords, and divers other barbarous engines, yet, in that dark, and doughty age, ignorant though they were of all those smug maxims, and excellent moralities with which we are so happily blessed, -- even in that unhallowed day, when the solemn tread of the policeman's foot was all unknown, -- they had evolved for themselves a code of rules whereby to govern their life, and conduct. Amongst these, it was tacitly agreed upon, and understood, that a spoken promise was a pledge, and held to be a very sacred thing, and he who broke faith, committed all the cardinal sins. Indeed their laws were very few, and simple, easily understood, and well calculated to govern man's conduct to his fellow. In this day of ours, ablaze with learning, and culture, -- veneered with a fine civilization, our laws are complex beyond all knowing and expression; man regulates his conduct -- to them, -- and is as virtuous, and honest as the law compels him to be.
This is the age of Money, and, therefore, an irreverent age; it is also the age of Respectability (with a very large R), -- and the policeman's bludgeon.