chicago husks and winnows her wheat by the million bushels,a hundred banks lend hundreds of millions of dollars in the year,and scores of factories turn out plow-gear and machinery by steam.scores of daily papers do work which hukm chund and the barber and the midwife perform,with due regard for public opinion,in the village of isser jang.so far as manufactories go,the difference between chicago on the lake,and isser jang on the montgomery road,is one of degree only,and not of kind.as far as the understanding of the uses of life goes,isser jang,for all its seasonal cholers,has the advantage over chicago.
jowala singh knows and takes care to avoid the three or four ghoul-haunted fields on the outskirts of the village;but he is not urged by millions of devils to run about all day in the sun and swear that his plowshares are the best in the punjab;nor does purun dass fly forth in an ekka more than once or twice a year,and he knows,on a pinch,how to use the railway and the telegraph as well as any son of israel in chicago.but this is absurd.
the east is not the west,and these men must continue to deal with the machinery of life,and to call it progress.their very preachers dare not rebuke them.they gloss over the hunting for money and the thrice-sharpened bitterness of adam's curse,by saying that such things dower a man with a larger range of thoughts and higher aspirations.they do not say,"free yourselves from your own slavery,"but rather,"if you can possibly manage it,do not set quite so much store on the things of this world."and they do not know what the things of this world are!