18 - The beginning of the new life

Summary

‘Well,’ said I, ‘so you got clear out of all your trouble. Were people satisfied with the new order of things when it came?’

‘People?’ he said. ‘Well, surely all must have been glad of peace when it came; especially when they found, as they must have found, that after all, they – even the once rich – were not living very badly. As to those who had been poor, all through the war, which lasted about two years, their condition had been bettering, in spite of the struggle; and when peace came at last, in a very short time they made great strides towards a decent life. The great difficulty was that the once-poor had such a feeble conception of the real pleasure of life: so to say, they did not ask enough, did not know how to ask enough, from the new state of things. It was perhaps rather a good than an evil thing that the necessity for restoring the wealth destroyed during the war forced them into working at first ahnost as hard as they had been used to before the Revolution. For all historians are agreed that there never was a war in which there was so much destruction of wares, and instruments for making them as in this civil war.’

‘I am rather surprised at that,’ said I.

‘Are you? I don't see why,’ said Hammond.