"
Marlow shook his head.
"He was a mere sign, a portent. There was nothing in him. Just about
that time the word Thrift was to the fore. You know the power of words.
We pass through periods dominated by this or that word--it may be
development, or it may be competition, or education, or purity or
efficiency or even sanctity. It is the word of the time. Well just then
it was the word Thrift which was out in the streets walking arm in arm
with righteousness, the inseparable companion and backer up of all such
national catch-words, looking everybody in the eye as it were. The very
drabs of the pavement, poor things, didn't escape the fascination . . .
However! . . . Well the greatest portion of the press were screeching in
all possible tones, like a confounded company of parrots instructed by
some devil with a taste for practical jokes, that the financier de Barral
was helping the great moral evolution of our character towards the newly-
discovered virtue of Thrift. He was helping it by all these great
establishments of his, which made the moral merits of Thrift manifest to
the most callous hearts, simply by promising to pay ten per cent.
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