The territory at first occupied was not larger than one or two
provinces of China, but by purchase, and in other ways,
the commonwealth has gradually grown till now it extends
from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the north where ice is perpetual
to the south where the sun is as hot as in equatorial Singapore.
This young republic has already produced many men and women
who are distinguished in the fields of literature, science, art and invention.
There hosts of men, who in their youth were as poor as church mice,
have, by dint of perseverance and business capacity,
become multi-millionaires. There you may see the richest man in the world
living a simple and abstemious life, without pomp and ostentation,
daily walking in the streets unattended even by a servant.
Many of them have so much money that they do not know what to do with it.
Many foreign counts, dukes, and even princes have been captured
by their wealthy and handsome daughters, some of whom have borne sons
who have become high officers of state in foreign lands.
There you find rich people who devote their time and wealth
to charitable works, sometimes endowing libraries not only in their own land,
but all over the world; there you will find lynching tolerated,
or impossible of prevention; there one man may kill another,
and by the wonderful process of law escape the extreme penalty of death;
there you meet the people who are most favorably disposed
toward the maintenance of peace, and who hold conferences and conventions with
that object in view almost every year; there an American multi-millionaire
devotes a great proportion of his time to the propaganda of peace,
and at his own expense has built in a foreign country a palatial building
to be used as a tribunal of peace.
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