“Behold, earthshaking inventions which are obsolete within the same century – the steamboat, the railroads; yet do you know what these meant after six thousand years of galley slaves and men on horseback? And now the dancehall girl buys a chemical to kill the seed of her lovers, and lives to be seventy-five in a room full of gadgets which cool the air and veritable eat the dust.

And yet for all the costume movies and the paperbacks thrown at you in every drugstore, the public has no accurate memory of anything; every social problem is observed in relation to ‘norms’ which in fact never existed, people fancy themselves ‘deprived’ of luxuries and peace and quiet which in fact were never common to any people, anywhere at all.”