The town of Bath, where Starbucks-sipping tourists swarm over ancient Roman ruins, is an especially advantageous place to consider time’s layeredness.

Earlier families ensured that proper lists and accounts were prepared and the groom's family was made to sign on the list of things they received while the dowry itself was put on display for all the relatives […] Today, no lists are signed and most of the giving and receiving is shrouded in secrecy and made known only through whisper networks within the social circle.

And it's lucky for the rest that they can't git it. I see three spears o ' yaller corn once tryin' to occoopy an acre lot. But they could n't seem to make no good use on't, an' growed yallerer an' yallerer, an' spindlin'er an' spindlin'er,[…]

That wealth and splendour have not the charms that you ascribe to them with the bulk of mankind, is evident even from the history of Monachism, one of the corruptions of christianity.