STOCK EXCHANGE AND AMERICAN BUSINESS 497
Life in the Middle Ages.—The Baron bathed rarely and
without soap. Even as late as the days of “good Queen Bess”
it was deemed advisable when presenting a masque to the
noble ladies and gentlemen at court, to have a perfumer walk
up and down through the audience, lest the odor of the un-
washed flower of England's lords and ladies overcome the
pleasant fancies of the dramatist. Glass windows were un-
known in the castles of the Middle Ages, and the dark castle
halls were hung with flapping arras behind which the assassin
often lurked. Carpets were luxuries and had to be imported
from the East; among the rotting rushes which covered the
floors, dogs growled over half-consumed bits of food cast tc
them from their master’s table. Owing largely to the prevail
ing ideas of a “fair price” and the punishment prescribed for
charging interest or speculating, starvation among the common
people was common and hunger among the nobility not
unknown.
There were no sewers, no drains, no medicines except the
superstitious concoctions of the age, no surgical instruments
except the axe and the dagger. A constant menace from
plague and disease shadowed lord and vassal without
partiality. Pigs were depended upon to clear the narrow city
streets of refuse, and also to feed the inhabitants. When the
baron traveled, he went on horseback and in armor which, if
like Banquo he rode unattended at night, did not always save
him from being murdered. His wealth consisted mainly of
real estate, his income of rents paid in kind—a pig here, a
bushel of wheat there—and his daily work of fighting his ten-
ants to collect the one and his enemies in protecting the other.
His only entertainment, apart from these not altogether pleas-
urable diversions, was furnished by wandering jugglers, the
songs of the occasional minstrel, or the reiterated jests of a
court fool. Such an existence, romantically as it has been
described by Sir Walter Scott, scarcely appeals in a practical
way to the modern American. And vet the baron was the
