Temptation and ruin were ready commodities on the market for purchase
by the venturesome; highwaymen walked the streets at night and
sometimes killed; snatching thieves were busy everywhere in the dusk;
while house-breakers were a common apprehension and frequent reality.
Life itself was somewhat safer from intentional destruction than it
was in medieval Rome during a faction war--though the Roman murderer
was more like to pay for his deed--but death or mutilation beneath
the wheels lay in ambush at every crossing.
The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it did
not matter much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians.
Law-making was a pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more.
Singular fermentation of their humor, they even had laws forbidding
dangerous speed. More marvelous still, they had a law forbidding
smoke! They forbade chimneys to smoke and they forbade cigarettes
to smoke. They made laws for all things and forgot them immediately;
though sometimes they would remember after a while, and hurry to make
new laws that the old laws should be enforced--and then forget both
new and old. Wherever enforcement threatened Money or Votes--or
wherever it was too much to bother--it became a joke.
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