initial commit of ebook 3261HEADmain

1 files changed, 8133 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/3261.txt b/3261.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5996d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/3261.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8133 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, News from Nowhere, by William Morris
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: News from Nowhere
+       or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance
+
+
+Author: William Morris
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 8, 2007  [eBook #3261]
+Last Updated: November 21, 2015
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEWS FROM NOWHERE***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1908 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+NEWS FROM NOWHERE
+OR
+AN EPOCH OF REST
+BEING SOME CHAPTERS FROM
+A UTOPIAN ROMANCE
+
+
+BY
+WILLIAM MORRIS,
+AUTHOR OF 'THE EARTHLY PARADISE.'
+
+_TENTH IMPRESSION_
+
+LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
+NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
+1908
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+_First printed serially in the_ Commonweal, 1890.
+
+_Thence reprinted at Boston_, _Mass._, 1890.
+
+_First English Edition_, _revised_, _Reeves & Turner_, 1891.
+
+_Reprinted April_, _June_ 1891; _March_ 1892.
+
+_Kelmscott Press Edition_, 1892.
+
+_Since reprinted March_ 1895; _January_ 1897; _November_ 1899; _August_
+1902; _July_ 1905; _January_ 1907; _and January_ 1908.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I: DISCUSSION AND BED
+
+
+Up at the League, says a friend, there had been one night a brisk
+conversational discussion, as to what would happen on the Morrow of the
+Revolution, finally shading off into a vigorous statement by various
+friends of their views on the future of the fully-developed new society.
+
+Says our friend: Considering the subject, the discussion was
+good-tempered; for those present being used to public meetings and after-
+lecture debates, if they did not listen to each others' opinions (which
+could scarcely be expected of them), at all events did not always attempt
+to speak all together, as is the custom of people in ordinary polite
+society when conversing on a subject which interests them.  For the rest,
+there were six persons present, and consequently six sections of the
+party were represented, four of which had strong but divergent Anarchist
+opinions.  One of the sections, says our friend, a man whom he knows very
+well indeed, sat almost silent at the beginning of the discussion, but at
+last got drawn into it, and finished by roaring out very loud, and
+damning all the rest for fools; after which befel a period of noise, and
+then a lull, during which the aforesaid section, having said good-night
+very amicably, took his way home by himself to a western suburb, using
+the means of travelling which civilisation has forced upon us like a
+habit.  As he sat in that vapour-bath of hurried and discontented
+humanity, a carriage of the underground railway, he, like others, stewed
+discontentedly, while in self-reproachful mood he turned over the many
+excellent and conclusive arguments which, though they lay at his fingers'
+ends, he had forgotten in the just past discussion.  But this frame of
+mind he was so used to, that it didn't last him long, and after a brief
+discomfort, caused by disgust with himself for having lost his temper
+(which he was also well used to), he found himself musing on the subject-
+matter of discussion, but still discontentedly and unhappily.  "If I
+could but see a day of it," he said to himself; "if I could but see it!"
+
+As he formed the words, the train stopped at his station, five minutes'
+walk from his own house, which stood on the banks of the Thames, a little
+way above an ugly suspension bridge.  He went out of the station, still
+discontented and unhappy, muttering "If I could but see it! if I could
+but see it!" but had not gone many steps towards the river before (says
+our friend who tells the story) all that discontent and trouble seemed to
+slip off him.
+
+It was a beautiful night of early winter, the air just sharp enough to be
+refreshing after the hot room and the stinking railway carriage.  The
+wind, which had lately turned a point or two north of west, had blown the
+sky clear of all cloud save a light fleck or two which went swiftly down
+the heavens.  There was a young moon halfway up the sky, and as the home-
+farer caught sight of it, tangled in the branches of a tall old elm, he
+could scarce bring to his mind the shabby London suburb where he was, and
+he felt as if he were in a pleasant country place--pleasanter, indeed,
+than the deep country was as he had known it.
+
+He came right down to the river-side, and lingered a little, looking over
+the low wall to note the moonlit river, near upon high water, go swirling
+and glittering up to Chiswick Eyot: as for the ugly bridge below, he did
+not notice it or think of it, except when for a moment (says our friend)
+it struck him that he missed the row of lights down stream.  Then he
+turned to his house door and let himself in; and even as he shut the door
+to, disappeared all remembrance of that brilliant logic and foresight
+which had so illuminated the recent discussion; and of the discussion
+itself there remained no trace, save a vague hope, that was now become a
+pleasure, for days of peace and rest, and cleanness and smiling goodwill.
+
+In this mood he tumbled into bed, and fell asleep after his wont, in two
+minutes' time; but (contrary to his wont) woke up again not long after in
+that curiously wide-awake condition which sometimes surprises even good
+sleepers; a condition under which we feel all our wits preternaturally
+sharpened, while all the miserable muddles we have ever got into, all the
+disgraces and losses of our lives, will insist on thrusting themselves
+forward for the consideration of those sharpened wits.
+
+In this state he lay (says our friend) till he had almost begun to enjoy
+it: till the tale of his stupidities amused him, and the entanglements
+before him, which he saw so clearly, began to shape themselves into an
+amusing story for him.
+
+He heard one o'clock strike, then two and then three; after which he fell
+asleep again.  Our friend says that from that sleep he awoke once more,
+and afterwards went through such surprising adventures that he thinks
+that they should be told to our comrades, and indeed the public in
+general, and therefore proposes to tell them now.  But, says he, I think
+it would be better if I told them in the first person, as if it were
+myself who had gone through them; which, indeed, will be the easier and
+more natural to me, since I understand the feelings and desires of the
+comrade of whom I am telling better than any one else in the world does.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II: A MORNING BATH
+
+
+Well, I awoke, and found that I had kicked my bedclothes off; and no
+wonder, for it was hot and the sun shining brightly.  I jumped up and
+washed and hurried on my clothes, but in a hazy and half-awake condition,
+as if I had slept for a long, long while, and could not shake off the
+weight of slumber.  In fact, I rather took it for granted that I was at
+home in my own room than saw that it was so.
+
+When I was dressed, I felt the place so hot that I made haste to get out
+of the room and out of the house; and my first feeling was a delicious
+relief caused by the fresh air and pleasant breeze; my second, as I began
+to gather my wits together, mere measureless wonder: for it was winter
+when I went to bed the last night, and now, by witness of the river-side
+trees, it was summer, a beautiful bright morning seemingly of early June.
+However, there was still the Thames sparkling under the sun, and near
+high water, as last night I had seen it gleaming under the moon.
+
+I had by no means shaken off the feeling of oppression, and wherever I
+might have been should scarce have been quite conscious of the place; so
+it was no wonder that I felt rather puzzled in despite of the familiar
+face of the Thames.  Withal I felt dizzy and queer; and remembering that
+people often got a boat and had a swim in mid-stream, I thought I would
+do no less.  It seems very early, quoth I to myself, but I daresay I
+shall find someone at Biffin's to take me.  However, I didn't get as far
+as Biffin's, or even turn to my left thitherward, because just then I
+began to see that there was a landing-stage right before me in front of
+my house: in fact, on the place where my next-door neighbour had rigged
+one up, though somehow it didn't look like that either.  Down I went on
+to it, and sure enough among the empty boats moored to it lay a man on
+his sculls in a solid-looking tub of a boat clearly meant for bathers.  He
+nodded to me, and bade me good-morning as if he expected me, so I jumped
+in without any words, and he paddled away quietly as I peeled for my
+swim.  As we went, I looked down on the water, and couldn't help saying--
+
+"How clear the water is this morning!"
+
+"Is it?" said he; "I didn't notice it.  You know the flood-tide always
+thickens it a bit."
+
+"H'm," said I, "I have seen it pretty muddy even at half-ebb."
+
+He said nothing in answer, but seemed rather astonished; and as he now
+lay just stemming the tide, and I had my clothes off, I jumped in without
+more ado.  Of course when I had my head above water again I turned
+towards the tide, and my eyes naturally sought for the bridge, and so
+utterly astonished was I by what I saw, that I forgot to strike out, and
+went spluttering under water again, and when I came up made straight for
+the boat; for I felt that I must ask some questions of my waterman, so
+bewildering had been the half-sight I had seen from the face of the river
+with the water hardly out of my eyes; though by this time I was quit of
+the slumbrous and dizzy feeling, and was wide-awake and clear-headed.
+
+As I got in up the steps which he had lowered, and he held out his hand
+to help me, we went drifting speedily up towards Chiswick; but now he
+caught up the sculls and brought her head round again, and said--"A short
+swim, neighbour; but perhaps you find the water cold this morning, after
+your journey.  Shall I put you ashore at once, or would you like to go
+down to Putney before breakfast?"
+
+He spoke in a way so unlike what I should have expected from a
+Hammersmith waterman, that I stared at him, as I answered, "Please to
+hold her a little; I want to look about me a bit."
+
+"All right," he said; "it's no less pretty in its way here than it is off
+Barn Elms; it's jolly everywhere this time in the morning.  I'm glad you
+got up early; it's barely five o'clock yet."
+
+If I was astonished with my sight of the river banks, I was no less
+astonished at my waterman, now that I had time to look at him and see him
+with my head and eyes clear.
+
+He was a handsome young fellow, with a peculiarly pleasant and friendly
+look about his eyes,--an expression which was quite new to me then,
+though I soon became familiar with it.  For the rest, he was dark-haired
+and berry-brown of skin, well-knit and strong, and obviously used to
+exercising his muscles, but with nothing rough or coarse about him, and
+clean as might be.  His dress was not like any modern work-a-day clothes
+I had seen, but would have served very well as a costume for a picture of
+fourteenth century life: it was of dark blue cloth, simple enough, but of
+fine web, and without a stain on it.  He had a brown leather belt round
+his waist, and I noticed that its clasp was of damascened steel
+beautifully wrought.  In short, he seemed to be like some specially manly
+and refined young gentleman, playing waterman for a spree, and I
+concluded that this was the case.
+
+I felt that I must make some conversation; so I pointed to the Surrey
+bank, where I noticed some light plank stages running down the foreshore,
+with windlasses at the landward end of them, and said, "What are they
+doing with those things here?  If we were on the Tay, I should have said
+that they were for drawing the salmon nets; but here--"
+
+"Well," said he, smiling, "of course that is what they _are_ for.  Where
+there are salmon, there are likely to be salmon-nets, Tay or Thames; but
+of course they are not always in use; we don't want salmon _every_ day of
+the season."
+
+I was going to say, "But is this the Thames?" but held my peace in my
+wonder, and turned my bewildered eyes eastward to look at the bridge
+again, and thence to the shores of the London river; and surely there was
+enough to astonish me.  For though there was a bridge across the stream
+and houses on its banks, how all was changed from last night!  The soap-
+works with their smoke-vomiting chimneys were gone; the engineer's works
+gone; the lead-works gone; and no sound of rivetting and hammering came
+down the west wind from Thorneycroft's.  Then the bridge!  I had perhaps
+dreamed of such a bridge, but never seen such an one out of an
+illuminated manuscript; for not even the Ponte Vecchio at Florence came
+anywhere near it.  It was of stone arches, splendidly solid, and as
+graceful as they were strong; high enough also to let ordinary river
+traffic through easily.  Over the parapet showed quaint and fanciful
+little buildings, which I supposed to be booths or shops, beset with
+painted and gilded vanes and spirelets.  The stone was a little
+weathered, but showed no marks of the grimy sootiness which I was used to
+on every London building more than a year old.  In short, to me a wonder
+of a bridge.
+
+The sculler noted my eager astonished look, and said, as if in answer to
+my thoughts--
+
+"Yes, it _is_ a pretty bridge, isn't it?  Even the up-stream bridges,
+which are so much smaller, are scarcely daintier, and the down-stream
+ones are scarcely more dignified and stately."
+
+I found myself saying, almost against my will, "How old is it?"
+
+"Oh, not very old," he said; "it was built or at least opened, in 2003.
+There used to be a rather plain timber bridge before then."
+
+The date shut my mouth as if a key had been turned in a padlock fixed to
+my lips; for I saw that something inexplicable had happened, and that if
+I said much, I should be mixed up in a game of cross questions and
+crooked answers.  So I tried to look unconcerned, and to glance in a
+matter-of-course way at the banks of the river, though this is what I saw
+up to the bridge and a little beyond; say as far as the site of the soap-
+works.  Both shores had a line of very pretty houses, low and not large,
+standing back a little way from the river; they were mostly built of red
+brick and roofed with tiles, and looked, above all, comfortable, and as
+if they were, so to say, alive, and sympathetic with the life of the
+dwellers in them.  There was a continuous garden in front of them, going
+down to the water's edge, in which the flowers were now blooming
+luxuriantly, and sending delicious waves of summer scent over the eddying
+stream.  Behind the houses, I could see great trees rising, mostly
+planes, and looking down the water there were the reaches towards Putney
+almost as if they were a lake with a forest shore, so thick were the big
+trees; and I said aloud, but as if to myself--
+
+"Well, I'm glad that they have not built over Barn Elms."
+
+I blushed for my fatuity as the words slipped out of my mouth, and my
+companion looked at me with a half smile which I thought I understood; so
+to hide my confusion I said, "Please take me ashore now: I want to get my
+breakfast."
+
+He nodded, and brought her head round with a sharp stroke, and in a trice
+we were at the landing-stage again.  He jumped out and I followed him;
+and of course I was not surprised to see him wait, as if for the
+inevitable after-piece that follows the doing of a service to a fellow-
+citizen.  So I put my hand into my waistcoat-pocket, and said, "How
+much?" though still with the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps I was
+offering money to a gentleman.
+
+He looked puzzled, and said, "How much?  I don't quite understand what
+you are asking about.  Do you mean the tide?  If so, it is close on the
+turn now."
+
+I blushed, and said, stammering, "Please don't take it amiss if I ask
+you; I mean no offence: but what ought I to pay you?  You see I am a
+stranger, and don't know your customs--or your coins."
+
+And therewith I took a handful of money out of my pocket, as one does in
+a foreign country.  And by the way, I saw that the silver had oxydised,
+and was like a blackleaded stove in colour.
+
+He still seemed puzzled, but not at all offended; and he looked at the
+coins with some curiosity.  I thought, Well after all, he _is_ a
+waterman, and is considering what he may venture to take.  He seems such
+a nice fellow that I'm sure I don't grudge him a little over-payment.  I
+wonder, by the way, whether I couldn't hire him as a guide for a day or
+two, since he is so intelligent.
+
+Therewith my new friend said thoughtfully:
+
+"I think I know what you mean.  You think that I have done you a service;
+so you feel yourself bound to give me something which I am not to give to
+a neighbour, unless he has done something special for me.  I have heard
+of this kind of thing; but pardon me for saying, that it seems to us a
+troublesome and roundabout custom; and we don't know how to manage it.
+And you see this ferrying and giving people casts about the water is my
+_business_, which I would do for anybody; so to take gifts in connection
+with it would look very queer.  Besides, if one person gave me something,
+then another might, and another, and so on; and I hope you won't think me
+rude if I say that I shouldn't know where to stow away so many mementos
+of friendship."
+
+And he laughed loud and merrily, as if the idea of being paid for his
+work was a very funny joke.  I confess I began to be afraid that the man
+was mad, though he looked sane enough; and I was rather glad to think
+that I was a good swimmer, since we were so close to a deep swift stream.
+However, he went on by no means like a madman:
+
+"As to your coins, they are curious, but not very old; they seem to be
+all of the reign of Victoria; you might give them to some
+scantily-furnished museum.  Ours has enough of such coins, besides a fair
+number of earlier ones, many of which are beautiful, whereas these
+nineteenth century ones are so beastly ugly, ain't they?  We have a piece
+of Edward III., with the king in a ship, and little leopards and fleurs-
+de-lys all along the gunwale, so delicately worked.  You see," he said,
+with something of a smirk, "I am fond of working in gold and fine metals;
+this buckle here is an early piece of mine."
+
+No doubt I looked a little shy of him under the influence of that doubt
+as to his sanity.  So he broke off short, and said in a kind voice:
+
+"But I see that I am boring you, and I ask your pardon.  For, not to
+mince matters, I can tell that you _are_ a stranger, and must come from a
+place very unlike England.  But also it is clear that it won't do to
+overdose you with information about this place, and that you had best
+suck it in little by little.  Further, I should take it as very kind in
+you if you would allow me to be the showman of our new world to you,
+since you have stumbled on me first.  Though indeed it will be a mere
+kindness on your part, for almost anybody would make as good a guide, and
+many much better."
+
+There certainly seemed no flavour in him of Colney Hatch; and besides I
+thought I could easily shake him off if it turned out that he really was
+mad; so I said:
+
+"It is a very kind offer, but it is difficult for me to accept it,
+unless--"  I was going to say, Unless you will let me pay you properly;
+but fearing to stir up Colney Hatch again, I changed the sentence into,
+"I fear I shall be taking you away from your work--or your amusement."
+
+"O," he said, "don't trouble about that, because it will give me an
+opportunity of doing a good turn to a friend of mine, who wants to take
+my work here.  He is a weaver from Yorkshire, who has rather overdone
+himself between his weaving and his mathematics, both indoor work, you
+see; and being a great friend of mine, he naturally came to me to get him
+some outdoor work.  If you think you can put up with me, pray take me as
+your guide."
+
+He added presently: "It is true that I have promised to go up-stream to
+some special friends of mine, for the hay-harvest; but they won't be
+ready for us for more than a week: and besides, you might go with me, you
+know, and see some very nice people, besides making notes of our ways in
+Oxfordshire.  You could hardly do better if you want to see the country."
+
+I felt myself obliged to thank him, whatever might come of it; and he
+added eagerly:
+
+"Well, then, that's settled.  I will give my friend a call; he is living in
+the Guest House like you, and if he isn't up yet, he ought to be this
+fine summer morning."
+
+Therewith he took a little silver bugle-horn from his girdle and blew two
+or three sharp but agreeable notes on it; and presently from the house
+which stood on the site of my old dwelling (of which more hereafter)
+another young man came sauntering towards us.  He was not so well-looking
+or so strongly made as my sculler friend, being sandy-haired, rather
+pale, and not stout-built; but his face was not wanting in that happy and
+friendly expression which I had noticed in his friend.  As he came up
+smiling towards us, I saw with pleasure that I must give up the Colney
+Hatch theory as to the waterman, for no two madmen ever behaved as they
+did before a sane man.  His dress also was of the same cut as the first
+man's, though somewhat gayer, the surcoat being light green with a golden
+spray embroidered on the breast, and his belt being of filagree silver-
+work.
+
+He gave me good-day very civilly, and greeting his friend joyously, said:
+
+"Well, Dick, what is it this morning?  Am I to have my work, or rather
+your work?  I dreamed last night that we were off up the river fishing."
+
+"All right, Bob," said my sculler; "you will drop into my place, and if
+you find it too much, there is George Brightling on the look out for a
+stroke of work, and he lives close handy to you.  But see, here is a
+stranger who is willing to amuse me to-day by taking me as his guide
+about our country-side, and you may imagine I don't want to lose the
+opportunity; so you had better take to the boat at once.  But in any case
+I shouldn't have kept you out of it for long, since I am due in the hay-
+fields in a few days."
+
+The newcomer rubbed his hands with glee, but turning to me, said in a
+friendly voice:
+
+"Neighbour, both you and friend Dick are lucky, and will have a good time
+to-day, as indeed I shall too.  But you had better both come in with me
+at once and get something to eat, lest you should forget your dinner in
+your amusement.  I suppose you came into the Guest House after I had gone
+to bed last night?"
+
+I nodded, not caring to enter into a long explanation which would have
+led to nothing, and which in truth by this time I should have begun to
+doubt myself.  And we all three turned toward the door of the Guest
+House.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III: THE GUEST HOUSE AND BREAKFAST THEREIN
+
+
+I lingered a little behind the others to have a stare at this house,
+which, as I have told you, stood on the site of my old dwelling.
+
+It was a longish building with its gable ends turned away from the road,
+and long traceried windows coming rather low down set in the wall that
+faced us.  It was very handsomely built of red brick with a lead roof;
+and high up above the windows there ran a frieze of figure subjects in
+baked clay, very well executed, and designed with a force and directness
+which I had never noticed in modern work before.  The subjects I
+recognised at once, and indeed was very particularly familiar with them.
+
+However, all this I took in in a minute; for we were presently within
+doors, and standing in a hall with a floor of marble mosaic and an open
+timber roof.  There were no windows on the side opposite to the river,
+but arches below leading into chambers, one of which showed a glimpse of
+a garden beyond, and above them a long space of wall gaily painted (in
+fresco, I thought) with similar subjects to those of the frieze outside;
+everything about the place was handsome and generously solid as to
+material; and though it was not very large (somewhat smaller than Crosby
+Hall perhaps), one felt in it that exhilarating sense of space and
+freedom which satisfactory architecture always gives to an unanxious man
+who is in the habit of using his eyes.
+
+In this pleasant place, which of course I knew to be the hall of the
+Guest House, three young women were flitting to and fro.  As they were
+the first of the sex I had seen on this eventful morning, I naturally
+looked at them very attentively, and found them at least as good as the
+gardens, the architecture, and the male men.  As to their dress, which of
+course I took note of, I should say that they were decently veiled with
+drapery, and not bundled up with millinery; that they were clothed like
+women, not upholstered like armchairs, as most women of our time are.  In
+short, their dress was somewhat between that of the ancient classical
+costume and the simpler forms of the fourteenth century garments, though
+it was clearly not an imitation of either: the materials were light and
+gay to suit the season.  As to the women themselves, it was pleasant
+indeed to see them, they were so kind and happy-looking in expression of
+face, so shapely and well-knit of body, and thoroughly healthy-looking
+and strong.  All were at least comely, and one of them very handsome and
+regular of feature.  They came up to us at once merrily and without the
+least affectation of shyness, and all three shook hands with me as if I
+were a friend newly come back from a long journey: though I could not
+help noticing that they looked askance at my garments; for I had on my
+clothes of last night, and at the best was never a dressy person.
+
+A word or two from Robert the weaver, and they bustled about on our
+behoof, and presently came and took us by the hands and led us to a table
+in the pleasantest corner of the hall, where our breakfast was spread for
+us; and, as we sat down, one of them hurried out by the chambers
+aforesaid, and came back again in a little while with a great bunch of
+roses, very different in size and quality to what Hammersmith had been
+wont to grow, but very like the produce of an old country garden.  She
+hurried back thence into the buttery, and came back once more with a
+delicately made glass, into which she put the flowers and set them down
+in the midst of our table.  One of the others, who had run off also, then
+came back with a big cabbage-leaf filled with strawberries, some of them
+barely ripe, and said as she set them on the table, "There, now; I
+thought of that before I got up this morning; but looking at the stranger
+here getting into your boat, Dick, put it out of my head; so that I was
+not before _all_ the blackbirds: however, there are a few about as good
+as you will get them anywhere in Hammersmith this morning."
+
+Robert patted her on the head in a friendly manner; and we fell to on our
+breakfast, which was simple enough, but most delicately cooked, and set
+on the table with much daintiness.  The bread was particularly good, and
+was of several different kinds, from the big, rather close,
+dark-coloured, sweet-tasting farmhouse loaf, which was most to my liking,
+to the thin pipe-stems of wheaten crust, such as I have eaten in Turin.
+
+As I was putting the first mouthfuls into my mouth my eye caught a carved
+and gilded inscription on the panelling, behind what we should have
+called the High Table in an Oxford college hall, and a familiar name in
+it forced me to read it through.  Thus it ran:
+
+   "_Guests and neighbours_, _on the site of this Guest-hall once stood
+   the lecture-room of the Hammersmith Socialists_.  _Drink a glass to
+   the memory_!  _May 1962_."
+
+It is difficult to tell you how I felt as I read these words, and I
+suppose my face showed how much I was moved, for both my friends looked
+curiously at me, and there was silence between us for a little while.
+
+Presently the weaver, who was scarcely so well mannered a man as the
+ferryman, said to me rather awkwardly:
+
+"Guest, we don't know what to call you: is there any indiscretion in
+asking you your name?"
+
+"Well," said I, "I have some doubts about it myself; so suppose you call
+me Guest, which is a family name, you know, and add William to it if you
+please."
+
+Dick nodded kindly to me; but a shade of anxiousness passed over the
+weaver's face, and he said--"I hope you don't mind my asking, but would
+you tell me where you come from?  I am curious about such things for good
+reasons, literary reasons."
+
+Dick was clearly kicking him underneath the table; but he was not much
+abashed, and awaited my answer somewhat eagerly.  As for me, I was just
+going to blurt out "Hammersmith," when I bethought me what an
+entanglement of cross purposes that would lead us into; so I took time to
+invent a lie with circumstance, guarded by a little truth, and said:
+
+"You see, I have been such a long time away from Europe that things seem
+strange to me now; but I was born and bred on the edge of Epping Forest;
+Walthamstow and Woodford, to wit."
+
+"A pretty place, too," broke in Dick; "a very jolly place, now that the
+trees have had time to grow again since the great clearing of houses in
+1955."
+
+Quoth the irrepressible weaver: "Dear neighbour, since you knew the
+Forest some time ago, could you tell me what truth there is in the rumour
+that in the nineteenth century the trees were all pollards?"
+
+This was catching me on my archaeological natural-history side, and I
+fell into the trap without any thought of where and when I was; so I
+began on it, while one of the girls, the handsome one, who had been
+scattering little twigs of lavender and other sweet-smelling herbs about
+the floor, came near to listen, and stood behind me with her hand on my
+shoulder, in which she held some of the plant that I used to call balm:
+its strong sweet smell brought back to my mind my very early days in the
+kitchen-garden at Woodford, and the large blue plums which grew on the
+wall beyond the sweet-herb patch,--a connection of memories which all
+boys will see at once.
+
+I started off: "When I was a boy, and for long after, except for a piece
+about Queen Elizabeth's Lodge, and for the part about High Beech, the
+Forest was almost wholly made up of pollard hornbeams mixed with holly
+thickets.  But when the Corporation of London took it over about twenty-
+five years ago, the topping and lopping, which was a part of the old
+commoners' rights, came to an end, and the trees were let to grow.  But I
+have not seen the place now for many years, except once, when we Leaguers
+went a pleasuring to High Beech.  I was very much shocked then to see how
+it was built-over and altered; and the other day we heard that the
+philistines were going to landscape-garden it.  But what you were saying
+about the building being stopped and the trees growing is only too good
+news;--only you know--"
+
+At that point I suddenly remembered Dick's date, and stopped short rather
+confused.  The eager weaver didn't notice my confusion, but said hastily,
+as if he were almost aware of his breach of good manners, "But, I say,
+how old are you?"
+
+Dick and the pretty girl both burst out laughing, as if Robert's conduct
+were excusable on the grounds of eccentricity; and Dick said amidst his
+laughter:
+
+"Hold hard, Bob; this questioning of guests won't do.  Why, much learning
+is spoiling you.  You remind me of the radical cobblers in the silly old
+novels, who, according to the authors, were prepared to trample down all
+good manners in the pursuit of utilitarian knowledge.  The fact is, I
+begin to think that you have so muddled your head with mathematics, and
+with grubbing into those idiotic old books about political economy (he
+he!), that you scarcely know how to behave.  Really, it is about time for
+you to take to some open-air work, so that you may clear away the cobwebs
+from your brain."
+
+The weaver only laughed good-humouredly; and the girl went up to him and
+patted his cheek and said laughingly, "Poor fellow! he was born so."
+
+As for me, I was a little puzzled, but I laughed also, partly for
+company's sake, and partly with pleasure at their unanxious happiness and
+good temper; and before Robert could make the excuse to me which he was
+getting ready, I said:
+
+"But neighbours" (I had caught up that word), "I don't in the least mind
+answering questions, when I can do so: ask me as many as you please; it's
+fun for me.  I will tell you all about Epping Forest when I was a boy, if
+you please; and as to my age, I'm not a fine lady, you know, so why
+shouldn't I tell you?  I'm hard on fifty-six."
+
+In spite of the recent lecture on good manners, the weaver could not help
+giving a long "whew" of astonishment, and the others were so amused by
+his _naivete_ that the merriment flitted all over their faces, though for
+courtesy's sake they forbore actual laughter; while I looked from one to
+the other in a puzzled manner, and at last said:
+
+"Tell me, please, what is amiss: you know I want to learn from you.  And
+please laugh; only tell me."
+
+Well, they _did_ laugh, and I joined them again, for the above-stated
+reasons.  But at last the pretty woman said coaxingly--
+
+"Well, well, he _is_ rude, poor fellow! but you see I may as well tell
+you what he is thinking about: he means that you look rather old for your
+age.  But surely there need be no wonder in that, since you have been
+travelling; and clearly from all you have been saying, in unsocial
+countries.  It has often been said, and no doubt truly, that one ages
+very quickly if one lives amongst unhappy people.  Also they say that
+southern England is a good place for keeping good looks."  She blushed
+and said: "How old am I, do you think?"
+
+"Well," quoth I, "I have always been told that a woman is as old as she
+looks, so without offence or flattery, I should say that you were
+twenty."
+
+She laughed merrily, and said, "I am well served out for fishing for
+compliments, since I have to tell you the truth, to wit, that I am forty-
+two."
+
+I stared at her, and drew musical laughter from her again; but I might
+well stare, for there was not a careful line on her face; her skin was as
+smooth as ivory, her cheeks full and round, her lips as red as the roses
+she had brought in; her beautiful arms, which she had bared for her work,
+firm and well-knit from shoulder to wrist.  She blushed a little under my
+gaze, though it was clear that she had taken me for a man of eighty; so
+to pass it off I said--
+
+"Well, you see, the old saw is proved right again, and I ought not to
+have let you tempt me into asking you a rude question."
+
+She laughed again, and said: "Well, lads, old and young, I must get to my
+work now.  We shall be rather busy here presently; and I want to clear it
+off soon, for I began to read a pretty old book yesterday, and I want to
+get on with it this morning: so good-bye for the present."
+
+She waved a hand to us, and stepped lightly down the hall, taking (as
+Scott says) at least part of the sun from our table as she went.
+
+When she was gone, Dick said "Now guest, won't you ask a question or two
+of our friend here?  It is only fair that you should have your turn."
+
+"I shall be very glad to answer them," said the weaver.
+
+"If I ask you any questions, sir," said I, "they will not be very severe;
+but since I hear that you are a weaver, I should like to ask you
+something about that craft, as I am--or was--interested in it."
+
+"Oh," said he, "I shall not be of much use to you there, I'm afraid.  I
+only do the most mechanical kind of weaving, and am in fact but a poor
+craftsman, unlike Dick here.  Then besides the weaving, I do a little
+with machine printing and composing, though I am little use at the finer
+kinds of printing; and moreover machine printing is beginning to die out,
+along with the waning of the plague of book-making, so I have had to turn
+to other things that I have a taste for, and have taken to mathematics;
+and also I am writing a sort of antiquarian book about the peaceable and
+private history, so to say, of the end of the nineteenth century,--more
+for the sake of giving a picture of the country before the fighting began
+than for anything else.  That was why I asked you those questions about
+Epping Forest.  You have rather puzzled me, I confess, though your
+information was so interesting.  But later on, I hope, we may have some
+more talk together, when our friend Dick isn't here.  I know he thinks me
+rather a grinder, and despises me for not being very deft with my hands:
+that's the way nowadays.  From what I have read of the nineteenth century
+literature (and I have read a good deal), it is clear to me that this is
+a kind of revenge for the stupidity of that day, which despised everybody
+who _could_ use his hands.  But Dick, old fellow, _Ne quid nimis_!  Don't
+overdo it!"
+
+"Come now," said Dick, "am I likely to?  Am I not the most tolerant man
+in the world?  Am I not quite contented so long as you don't make me
+learn mathematics, or go into your new science of aesthetics, and let me
+do a little practical aesthetics with my gold and steel, and the blowpipe
+and the nice little hammer?  But, hillo! here comes another questioner
+for you, my poor guest.  I say, Bob, you must help me to defend him now."
+
+"Here, Boffin," he cried out, after a pause; "here we are, if you must
+have it!"
+
+I looked over my shoulder, and saw something flash and gleam in the
+sunlight that lay across the hall; so I turned round, and at my ease saw
+a splendid figure slowly sauntering over the pavement; a man whose
+surcoat was embroidered most copiously as well as elegantly, so that the
+sun flashed back from him as if he had been clad in golden armour.  The
+man himself was tall, dark-haired, and exceedingly handsome, and though
+his face was no less kindly in expression than that of the others, he
+moved with that somewhat haughty mien which great beauty is apt to give
+to both men and women.  He came and sat down at our table with a smiling
+face, stretching out his long legs and hanging his arm over the chair in
+the slowly graceful way which tall and well-built people may use without
+affectation.  He was a man in the prime of life, but looked as happy as a
+child who has just got a new toy.  He bowed gracefully to me and said--
+
+"I see clearly that you are the guest, of whom Annie has just told me,
+who have come from some distant country that does not know of us, or our
+ways of life.  So I daresay you would not mind answering me a few
+questions; for you see--"
+
+Here Dick broke in: "No, please, Boffin! let it alone for the present.  Of
+course you want the guest to be happy and comfortable; and how can that
+be if he has to trouble himself with answering all sorts of questions
+while he is still confused with the new customs and people about him?  No,
+no: I am going to take him where he can ask questions himself, and have
+them answered; that is, to my great-grandfather in Bloomsbury: and I am
+sure you can't have anything to say against that.  So instead of
+bothering, you had much better go out to James Allen's and get a carriage
+for me, as I shall drive him up myself; and please tell Jim to let me
+have the old grey, for I can drive a wherry much better than a carriage.
+Jump up, old fellow, and don't be disappointed; our guest will keep
+himself for you and your stories."
+
+I stared at Dick; for I wondered at his speaking to such a
+dignified-looking personage so familiarly, not to say curtly; for I
+thought that this Mr. Boffin, in spite of his well-known name out of
+Dickens, must be at the least a senator of these strange people.  However,
+he got up and said, "All right, old oar-wearer, whatever you like; this
+is not one of my busy days; and though" (with a condescending bow to me)
+"my pleasure of a talk with this learned guest is put off, I admit that
+he ought to see your worthy kinsman as soon as possible.  Besides,
+perhaps he will be the better able to answer _my_ questions after his own
+have been answered."
+
+And therewith he turned and swung himself out of the hall.
+
+When he was well gone, I said: "Is it wrong to ask what Mr. Boffin is?
+whose name, by the way, reminds me of many pleasant hours passed in
+reading Dickens."
+
+Dick laughed.  "Yes, yes," said he, "as it does us.  I see you take the
+allusion.  Of course his real name is not Boffin, but Henry Johnson; we
+only call him Boffin as a joke, partly because he is a dustman, and
+partly because he will dress so showily, and get as much gold on him as a
+baron of the Middle Ages.  As why should he not if he likes? only we are
+his special friends, you know, so of course we jest with him."
+
+I held my tongue for some time after that; but Dick went on:
+
+"He is a capital fellow, and you can't help liking him; but he has a
+weakness: he will spend his time in writing reactionary novels, and is
+very proud of getting the local colour right, as he calls it; and as he
+thinks you come from some forgotten corner of the earth, where people are
+unhappy, and consequently interesting to a story-teller, he thinks he
+might get some information out of you.  O, he will be quite
+straightforward with you, for that matter.  Only for your own comfort
+beware of him!"
+
+"Well, Dick," said the weaver, doggedly, "I think his novels are very
+good."
+
+"Of course you do," said Dick; "birds of a feather flock together;
+mathematics and antiquarian novels stand on much the same footing.  But
+here he comes again."
+
+And in effect the Golden Dustman hailed us from the hall-door; so we all
+got up and went into the porch, before which, with a strong grey horse in
+the shafts, stood a carriage ready for us which I could not help
+noticing.  It was light and handy, but had none of that sickening
+vulgarity which I had known as inseparable from the carriages of our
+time, especially the "elegant" ones, but was as graceful and pleasant in
+line as a Wessex waggon.  We got in, Dick and I.  The girls, who had come
+into the porch to see us off, waved their hands to us; the weaver nodded
+kindly; the dustman bowed as gracefully as a troubadour; Dick shook the
+reins, and we were off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV: A MARKET BY THE WAY
+
+
+We turned away from the river at once, and were soon in the main road
+that runs through Hammersmith.  But I should have had no guess as to
+where I was, if I had not started from the waterside; for King Street was
+gone, and the highway ran through wide sunny meadows and garden-like
+tillage.  The Creek, which we crossed at once, had been rescued from its
+culvert, and as we went over its pretty bridge we saw its waters, yet
+swollen by the tide, covered with gay boats of different sizes.  There
+were houses about, some on the road, some amongst the fields with
+pleasant lanes leading down to them, and each surrounded by a teeming
+garden.  They were all pretty in design, and as solid as might be, but
+countryfied in appearance, like yeomen's dwellings; some of them of red
+brick like those by the river, but more of timber and plaster, which were
+by the necessity of their construction so like mediaeval houses of the
+same materials that I fairly felt as if I were alive in the fourteenth
+century; a sensation helped out by the costume of the people that we met
+or passed, in whose dress there was nothing "modern."  Almost everybody
+was gaily dressed, but especially the women, who were so well-looking, or
+even so handsome, that I could scarcely refrain my tongue from calling my
+companion's attention to the fact.  Some faces I saw that were
+thoughtful, and in these I noticed great nobility of expression, but none
+that had a glimmer of unhappiness, and the greater part (we came upon a
+good many people) were frankly and openly joyous.
+
+I thought I knew the Broadway by the lie of the roads that still met
+there.  On the north side of the road was a range of buildings and
+courts, low, but very handsomely built and ornamented, and in that way
+forming a great contrast to the unpretentiousness of the houses round
+about; while above this lower building rose the steep lead-covered roof
+and the buttresses and higher part of the wall of a great hall, of a
+splendid and exuberant style of architecture, of which one can say little
+more than that it seemed to me to embrace the best qualities of the
+Gothic of northern Europe with those of the Saracenic and Byzantine,
+though there was no copying of any one of these styles.  On the other,
+the south side, of the road was an octagonal building with a high roof,
+not unlike the Baptistry at Florence in outline, except that it was
+surrounded by a lean-to that clearly made an arcade or cloisters to it:
+it also was most delicately ornamented.
+
+This whole mass of architecture which we had come upon so suddenly from
+amidst the pleasant fields was not only exquisitely beautiful in itself,
+but it bore upon it the expression of such generosity and abundance of
+life that I was exhilarated to a pitch that I had never yet reached.  I
+fairly chuckled for pleasure.  My friend seemed to understand it, and sat
+looking on me with a pleased and affectionate interest.  We had pulled up
+amongst a crowd of carts, wherein sat handsome healthy-looking people,
+men, women, and children very gaily dressed, and which were clearly
+market carts, as they were full of very tempting-looking country produce.
+
+I said, "I need not ask if this is a market, for I see clearly that it
+is; but what market is it that it is so splendid?  And what is the
+glorious hall there, and what is the building on the south side?"
+
+"O," said he, "it is just our Hammersmith market; and I am glad you like
+it so much, for we are really proud of it.  Of course the hall inside is
+our winter Mote-House; for in summer we mostly meet in the fields down by
+the river opposite Barn Elms.  The building on our right hand is our
+theatre: I hope you like it."
+
+"I should be a fool if I didn't," said I.
+
+He blushed a little as he said: "I am glad of that, too, because I had a
+hand in it; I made the great doors, which are of damascened bronze.  We
+will look at them later in the day, perhaps: but we ought to be getting
+on now.  As to the market, this is not one of our busy days; so we shall
+do better with it another time, because you will see more people."
+
+I thanked him, and said: "Are these the regular country people?  What
+very pretty girls there are amongst them."
+
+As I spoke, my eye caught the face of a beautiful woman, tall,
+dark-haired, and white-skinned, dressed in a pretty light-green dress in
+honour of the season and the hot day, who smiled kindly on me, and more
+kindly still, I thought on Dick; so I stopped a minute, but presently
+went on:
+
+"I ask because I do not see any of the country-looking people I should
+have expected to see at a market--I mean selling things there."
+
+"I don't understand," said he, "what kind of people you would expect to
+see; nor quite what you mean by 'country' people.  These are the
+neighbours, and that like they run in the Thames valley.  There are parts
+of these islands which are rougher and rainier than we are here, and
+there people are rougher in their dress; and they themselves are tougher
+and more hard-bitten than we are to look at.  But some people like their
+looks better than ours; they say they have more character in them--that's
+the word.  Well, it's a matter of taste.--Anyhow, the cross between us
+and them generally turns out well," added he, thoughtfully.
+
+I heard him, though my eyes were turned away from him, for that pretty
+girl was just disappearing through the gate with her big basket of early
+peas, and I felt that disappointed kind of feeling which overtakes one
+when one has seen an interesting or lovely face in the streets which one
+is never likely to see again; and I was silent a little.  At last I said:
+"What I mean is, that I haven't seen any poor people about--not one."
+
+He knit his brows, looked puzzled, and said: "No, naturally; if anybody
+is poorly, he is likely to be within doors, or at best crawling about the
+garden: but I don't know of any one sick at present.  Why should you
+expect to see poorly people on the road?"
+
+"No, no," I said; "I don't mean sick people.  I mean poor people, you
+know; rough people."
+
+"No," said he, smiling merrily, "I really do not know.  The fact is, you
+must come along quick to my great-grandfather, who will understand you
+better than I do.  Come on, Greylocks!"  Therewith he shook the reins,
+and we jogged along merrily eastward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V: CHILDREN ON THE ROAD
+
+
+Past the Broadway there were fewer houses on either side.  We presently
+crossed a pretty little brook that ran across a piece of land dotted over
+with trees, and awhile after came to another market and town-hall, as we
+should call it.  Although there was nothing familiar to me in its
+surroundings, I knew pretty well where we were, and was not surprised
+when my guide said briefly, "Kensington Market."
+
+Just after this we came into a short street of houses: or rather, one
+long house on either side of the way, built of timber and plaster, and
+with a pretty arcade over the footway before it.
+
+Quoth Dick: "This is Kensington proper.  People are apt to gather here
+rather thick, for they like the romance of the wood; and naturalists
+haunt it, too; for it is a wild spot even here, what there is of it; for
+it does not go far to the south: it goes from here northward and west
+right over Paddington and a little way down Notting Hill: thence it runs
+north-east to Primrose Hill, and so on; rather a narrow strip of it gets
+through Kingsland to Stoke-Newington and Clapton, where it spreads out
+along the heights above the Lea marshes; on the other side of which, as
+you know, is Epping Forest holding out a hand to it.  This part we are
+just coming to is called Kensington Gardens; though why 'gardens' I don't
+know."
+
+I rather longed to say, "Well, _I_ know"; but there were so many things
+about me which I did _not_ know, in spite of his assumptions, that I
+thought it better to hold my tongue.
+
+The road plunged at once into a beautiful wood spreading out on either
+side, but obviously much further on the north side, where even the oaks
+and sweet chestnuts were of a good growth; while the quicker-growing
+trees (amongst which I thought the planes and sycamores too numerous)
+were very big and fine-grown.
+
+It was exceedingly pleasant in the dappled shadow, for the day was
+growing as hot as need be, and the coolness and shade soothed my excited
+mind into a condition of dreamy pleasure, so that I felt as if I should
+like to go on for ever through that balmy freshness.  My companion seemed
+to share in my feelings, and let the horse go slower and slower as he sat
+inhaling the green forest scents, chief amongst which was the smell of
+the trodden bracken near the wayside.
+
+Romantic as this Kensington wood was, however, it was not lonely.  We
+came on many groups both coming and going, or wandering in the edges of
+the wood.  Amongst these were many children from six or eight years old
+up to sixteen or seventeen.  They seemed to me to be especially fine
+specimens of their race, and enjoying themselves to the utmost; some of
+them were hanging about little tents pitched on the greensward, and by
+some of these fires were burning, with pots hanging over them gipsy
+fashion.  Dick explained to me that there were scattered houses in the
+forest, and indeed we caught a glimpse of one or two.  He said they were
+mostly quite small, such as used to be called cottages when there were
+slaves in the land, but they were pleasant enough and fitting for the
+wood.
+
+"They must be pretty well stocked with children," said I, pointing to the
+many youngsters about the way.
+
+"O," said he, "these children do not all come from the near houses, the
+woodland houses, but from the country-side generally.  They often make up
+parties, and come to play in the woods for weeks together in summer-time,
+living in tents, as you see.  We rather encourage them to it; they learn
+to do things for themselves, and get to notice the wild creatures; and,
+you see, the less they stew inside houses the better for them.  Indeed, I
+must tell you that many grown people will go to live in the forests
+through the summer; though they for the most part go to the bigger ones,
+like Windsor, or the Forest of Dean, or the northern wastes.  Apart from
+the other pleasures of it, it gives them a little rough work, which I am
+sorry to say is getting somewhat scarce for these last fifty years."
+
+He broke off, and then said, "I tell you all this, because I see that if
+I talk I must be answering questions, which you are thinking, even if you
+are not speaking them out; but my kinsman will tell you more about it."
+
+I saw that I was likely to get out of my depth again, and so merely for
+the sake of tiding over an awkwardness and to say something, I said--
+
+"Well, the youngsters here will be all the fresher for school when the
+summer gets over and they have to go back again."
+
+"School?" he said; "yes, what do you mean by that word?  I don't see how
+it can have anything to do with children.  We talk, indeed, of a school
+of herring, and a school of painting, and in the former sense we might
+talk of a school of children--but otherwise," said he, laughing, "I must
+own myself beaten."
+
+Hang it! thought I, I can't open my mouth without digging up some new
+complexity.  I wouldn't try to set my friend right in his etymology; and
+I thought I had best say nothing about the boy-farms which I had been
+used to call schools, as I saw pretty clearly that they had disappeared;
+so I said after a little fumbling, "I was using the word in the sense of
+a system of education."
+
+"Education?" said he, meditatively, "I know enough Latin to know that the
+word must come from _educere_, to lead out; and I have heard it used; but
+I have never met anybody who could give me a clear explanation of what it
+means."
+
+You may imagine how my new friends fell in my esteem when I heard this
+frank avowal; and I said, rather contemptuously, "Well, education means a
+system of teaching young people."
+
+"Why not old people also?" said he with a twinkle in his eye.  "But," he
+went on, "I can assure you our children learn, whether they go through a
+'system of teaching' or not.  Why, you will not find one of these
+children about here, boy or girl, who cannot swim; and every one of them
+has been used to tumbling about the little forest ponies--there's one of
+them now!  They all of them know how to cook; the bigger lads can mow;
+many can thatch and do odd jobs at carpentering; or they know how to keep
+shop.  I can tell you they know plenty of things."
+
+"Yes, but their mental education, the teaching of their minds," said I,
+kindly translating my phrase.
+
+"Guest," said he, "perhaps you have not learned to do these things I have
+been speaking about; and if that's the case, don't you run away with the
+idea that it doesn't take some skill to do them, and doesn't give plenty
+of work for one's mind: you would change your opinion if you saw a
+Dorsetshire lad thatching, for instance.  But, however, I understand you
+to be speaking of book-learning; and as to that, it is a simple affair.
+Most children, seeing books lying about, manage to read by the time they
+are four years old; though I am told it has not always been so.  As to
+writing, we do not encourage them to scrawl too early (though scrawl a
+little they will), because it gets them into a habit of ugly writing; and
+what's the use of a lot of ugly writing being done, when rough printing
+can be done so easily.  You understand that handsome writing we like, and
+many people will write their books out when they make them, or get them
+written; I mean books of which only a few copies are needed--poems, and
+such like, you know.  However, I am wandering from my lambs; but you must
+excuse me, for I am interested in this matter of writing, being myself a
+fair-writer."
+
+"Well," said I, "about the children; when they know how to read and
+write, don't they learn something else--languages, for instance?"
+
+"Of course," he said; "sometimes even before they can read, they can talk
+French, which is the nearest language talked on the other side of the
+water; and they soon get to know German also, which is talked by a huge
+number of communes and colleges on the mainland.  These are the principal
+languages we speak in these islands, along with English or Welsh, or
+Irish, which is another form of Welsh; and children pick them up very
+quickly, because their elders all know them; and besides our guests from
+over sea often bring their children with them, and the little ones get
+together, and rub their speech into one another."
+
+"And the older languages?" said I.
+
+"O, yes," said he, "they mostly learn Latin and Greek along with the
+modern ones, when they do anything more than merely pick up the latter."
+
+"And history?" said I; "how do you teach history?"
+
+"Well," said he, "when a person can read, of course he reads what he
+likes to; and he can easily get someone to tell him what are the best
+books to read on such or such a subject, or to explain what he doesn't
+understand in the books when he is reading them."
+
+"Well," said I, "what else do they learn?  I suppose they don't all learn
+history?"
+
+"No, no," said he; "some don't care about it; in fact, I don't think many
+do.  I have heard my great-grandfather say that it is mostly in periods
+of turmoil and strife and confusion that people care much about history;
+and you know," said my friend, with an amiable smile, "we are not like
+that now.  No; many people study facts about the make of things and the
+matters of cause and effect, so that knowledge increases on us, if that
+be good; and some, as you heard about friend Bob yonder, will spend time
+over mathematics.  'Tis no use forcing people's tastes."
+
+Said I: "But you don't mean that children learn all these things?"
+
+Said he: "That depends on what you mean by children; and also you must
+remember how much they differ.  As a rule, they don't do much reading,
+except for a few story-books, till they are about fifteen years old; we
+don't encourage early bookishness: though you will find some children who
+_will_ take to books very early; which perhaps is not good for them; but
+it's no use thwarting them; and very often it doesn't last long with
+them, and they find their level before they are twenty years old.  You
+see, children are mostly given to imitating their elders, and when they
+see most people about them engaged in genuinely amusing work, like house-
+building and street-paving, and gardening, and the like, that is what
+they want to be doing; so I don't think we need fear having too many book-
+learned men."
+
+What could I say?  I sat and held my peace, for fear of fresh
+entanglements.  Besides, I was using my eyes with all my might, wondering
+as the old horse jogged on, when I should come into London proper, and
+what it would be like now.
+
+But my companion couldn't let his subject quite drop, and went on
+meditatively:
+
+"After all, I don't know that it does them much harm, even if they do
+grow up book-students.  Such people as that, 'tis a great pleasure seeing
+them so happy over work which is not much sought for.  And besides, these
+students are generally such pleasant people; so kind and sweet tempered;
+so humble, and at the same time so anxious to teach everybody all that
+they know.  Really, I like those that I have met prodigiously."
+
+This seemed to me such very queer talk that I was on the point of asking
+him another question; when just as we came to the top of a rising ground,
+down a long glade of the wood on my right I caught sight of a stately
+building whose outline was familiar to me, and I cried out, "Westminster
+Abbey!"
+
+"Yes," said Dick, "Westminster Abbey--what there is left of it."
+
+"Why, what have you done with it?" quoth I in terror.
+
+"What have _we_ done with it?" said he; "nothing much, save clean it.  But
+you know the whole outside was spoiled centuries ago: as to the inside,
+that remains in its beauty after the great clearance, which took place
+over a hundred years ago, of the beastly monuments to fools and knaves,
+which once blocked it up, as great-grandfather says."
+
+We went on a little further, and I looked to the right again, and said,
+in rather a doubtful tone of voice, "Why, there are the Houses of
+Parliament!  Do you still use them?"
+
+He burst out laughing, and was some time before he could control himself;
+then he clapped me on the back and said:
+
+"I take you, neighbour; you may well wonder at our keeping them standing,
+and I know something about that, and my old kinsman has given me books to
+read about the strange game that they played there.  Use them!  Well,
+yes, they are used for a sort of subsidiary market, and a storage place
+for manure, and they are handy for that, being on the waterside.  I
+believe it was intended to pull them down quite at the beginning of our
+days; but there was, I am told, a queer antiquarian society, which had
+done some service in past times, and which straightway set up its pipe
+against their destruction, as it has done with many other buildings,
+which most people looked upon as worthless, and public nuisances; and it
+was so energetic, and had such good reasons to give, that it generally
+gained its point; and I must say that when all is said I am glad of it:
+because you know at the worst these silly old buildings serve as a kind
+of foil to the beautiful ones which we build now.  You will see several
+others in these parts; the place my great-grandfather lives in, for
+instance, and a big building called St. Paul's.  And you see, in this
+matter we need not grudge a few poorish buildings standing, because we
+can always build elsewhere; nor need we be anxious as to the breeding of
+pleasant work in such matters, for there is always room for more and more
+work in a new building, even without making it pretentious.  For
+instance, elbow-room _within_ doors is to me so delightful that if I were
+driven to it I would most sacrifice outdoor space to it.  Then, of
+course, there is the ornament, which, as we must all allow, may easily be
+overdone in mere living houses, but can hardly be in mote-halls and
+markets, and so forth.  I must tell you, though, that my
+great-grandfather sometimes tells me I am a little cracked on this
+subject of fine building; and indeed I _do_ think that the energies of
+mankind are chiefly of use to them for such work; for in that direction I
+can see no end to the work, while in many others a limit does seem
+possible."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI: A LITTLE SHOPPING
+
+
+As he spoke, we came suddenly out of the woodland into a short street of
+handsomely built houses, which my companion named to me at once as
+Piccadilly: the lower part of these I should have called shops, if it had
+not been that, as far as I could see, the people were ignorant of the
+arts of buying and selling.  Wares were displayed in their finely
+designed fronts, as if to tempt people in, and people stood and looked at
+them, or went in and came out with parcels under their arms, just like
+the real thing.  On each side of the street ran an elegant arcade to
+protect foot-passengers, as in some of the old Italian cities.  About
+halfway down, a huge building of the kind I was now prepared to expect
+told me that this also was a centre of some kind, and had its special
+public buildings.
+
+Said Dick: "Here, you see, is another market on a different plan from
+most others: the upper stories of these houses are used for guest-houses;
+for people from all about the country are apt to drift up hither from
+time to time, as folk are very thick upon the ground, which you will see
+evidence of presently, and there are people who are fond of crowds,
+though I can't say that I am."
+
+I couldn't help smiling to see how long a tradition would last.  Here was
+the ghost of London still asserting itself as a centre,--an intellectual
+centre, for aught I knew.  However, I said nothing, except that I asked
+him to drive very slowly, as the things in the booths looked exceedingly
+pretty.
+
+"Yes," said he, "this is a very good market for pretty things, and is
+mostly kept for the handsomer goods, as the Houses-of-Parliament market,
+where they set out cabbages and turnips and such like things, along with
+beer and the rougher kind of wine, is so near."
+
+Then he looked at me curiously, and said, "Perhaps you would like to do a
+little shopping, as 'tis called."
+
+I looked at what I could see of my rough blue duds, which I had plenty of
+opportunity of contrasting with the gay attire of the citizens we had
+come across; and I thought that if, as seemed likely, I should presently
+be shown about as a curiosity for the amusement of this most
+unbusinesslike people, I should like to look a little less like a
+discharged ship's purser.  But in spite of all that had happened, my hand
+went down into my pocket again, where to my dismay it met nothing
+metallic except two rusty old keys, and I remembered that amidst our talk
+in the guest-hall at Hammersmith I had taken the cash out of my pocket to
+show to the pretty Annie, and had left it lying there.  My face fell
+fifty per cent., and Dick, beholding me, said rather sharply--
+
+"Hilloa, Guest! what's the matter now?  Is it a wasp?"
+
+"No," said I, "but I've left it behind."
+
+"Well," said he, "whatever you have left behind, you can get in this
+market again, so don't trouble yourself about it."
+
+I had come to my senses by this time, and remembering the astounding
+customs of this country, had no mind for another lecture on social
+economy and the Edwardian coinage; so I said only--
+
+"My clothes--Couldn't I?  You see--What do think could be done about
+them?"
+
+He didn't seem in the least inclined to laugh, but said quite gravely:
+
+"O don't get new clothes yet.  You see, my great-grandfather is an
+antiquarian, and he will want to see you just as you are.  And, you know,
+I mustn't preach to you, but surely it wouldn't be right for you to take
+away people's pleasure of studying your attire, by just going and making
+yourself like everybody else.  You feel that, don't you?" said he,
+earnestly.
+
+I did _not_ feel it my duty to set myself up for a scarecrow amidst this
+beauty-loving people, but I saw I had got across some ineradicable
+prejudice, and that it wouldn't do to quarrel with my new friend.  So I
+merely said, "O certainly, certainly."
+
+"Well," said he, pleasantly, "you may as well see what the inside of
+these booths is like: think of something you want."
+
+Said I: "Could I get some tobacco and a pipe?"
+
+"Of course," said he; "what was I thinking of, not asking you before?
+Well, Bob is always telling me that we non-smokers are a selfish lot, and
+I'm afraid he is right.  But come along; here is a place just handy."
+
+Therewith he drew rein and jumped down, and I followed.  A very handsome
+woman, splendidly clad in figured silk, was slowly passing by, looking
+into the windows as she went.  To her quoth Dick: "Maiden, would you
+kindly hold our horse while we go in for a little?"  She nodded to us
+with a kind smile, and fell to patting the horse with her pretty hand.
+
+"What a beautiful creature!" said I to Dick as we entered.
+
+"What, old Greylocks?" said he, with a sly grin.
+
+"No, no," said I; "Goldylocks,--the lady."
+
+"Well, so she is," said he.  "'Tis a good job there are so many of them
+that every Jack may have his Jill: else I fear that we should get
+fighting for them.  Indeed," said he, becoming very grave, "I don't say
+that it does not happen even now, sometimes.  For you know love is not a
+very reasonable thing, and perversity and self-will are commoner than
+some of our moralists think."  He added, in a still more sombre tone:
+"Yes, only a month ago there was a mishap down by us, that in the end
+cost the lives of two men and a woman, and, as it were, put out the
+sunlight for us for a while.  Don't ask me about it just now; I may tell
+you about it later on."
+
+By this time we were within the shop or booth, which had a counter, and
+shelves on the walls, all very neat, though without any pretence of
+showiness, but otherwise not very different to what I had been used to.
+Within were a couple of children--a brown-skinned boy of about twelve,
+who sat reading a book, and a pretty little girl of about a year older,
+who was sitting also reading behind the counter; they were obviously
+brother and sister.
+
+"Good morning, little neighbours," said Dick.  "My friend here wants
+tobacco and a pipe; can you help him?"
+
+"O yes, certainly," said the girl with a sort of demure alertness which
+was somewhat amusing.  The boy looked up, and fell to staring at my
+outlandish attire, but presently reddened and turned his head, as if he
+knew that he was not behaving prettily.
+
+"Dear neighbour," said the girl, with the most solemn countenance of a
+child playing at keeping shop, "what tobacco is it you would like?"
+
+"Latakia," quoth I, feeling as if I were assisting at a child's game, and
+wondering whether I should get anything but make-believe.
+
+But the girl took a dainty little basket from a shelf beside her, went to
+a jar, and took out a lot of tobacco and put the filled basket down on
+the counter before me, where I could both smell and see that it was
+excellent Latakia.
+
+"But you haven't weighed it," said I, "and--and how much am I to take?"
+
+"Why," she said, "I advise you to cram your bag, because you may be going
+where you can't get Latakia.  Where is your bag?"
+
+I fumbled about, and at last pulled out my piece of cotton print which
+does duty with me for a tobacco pouch.  But the girl looked at it with
+some disdain, and said--
+
+"Dear neighbour, I can give you something much better than that cotton
+rag."  And she tripped up the shop and came back presently, and as she
+passed the boy whispered something in his ear, and he nodded and got up
+and went out.  The girl held up in her finger and thumb a red morocco
+bag, gaily embroidered, and said, "There, I have chosen one for you, and
+you are to have it: it is pretty, and will hold a lot."
+
+Therewith she fell to cramming it with the tobacco, and laid it down by
+me and said, "Now for the pipe: that also you must let me choose for you;
+there are three pretty ones just come in."
+
+She disappeared again, and came back with a big-bowled pipe in her hand,
+carved out of some hard wood very elaborately, and mounted in gold
+sprinkled with little gems.  It was, in short, as pretty and gay a toy as
+I had ever seen; something like the best kind of Japanese work, but
+better.
+
+"Dear me!" said I, when I set eyes on it, "this is altogether too grand
+for me, or for anybody but the Emperor of the World.  Besides, I shall
+lose it: I always lose my pipes."
+
+The child seemed rather dashed, and said, "Don't you like it, neighbour?"
+
+"O yes," I said, "of course I like it."
+
+"Well, then, take it," said she, "and don't trouble about losing it.  What
+will it matter if you do?  Somebody is sure to find it, and he will use
+it, and you can get another."
+
+I took it out of her hand to look at it, and while I did so, forgot my
+caution, and said, "But however am I to pay for such a thing as this?"
+
+Dick laid his hand on my shoulder as I spoke, and turning I met his eyes
+with a comical expression in them, which warned me against another
+exhibition of extinct commercial morality; so I reddened and held my
+tongue, while the girl simply looked at me with the deepest gravity, as
+if I were a foreigner blundering in my speech, for she clearly didn't
+understand me a bit.
+
+"Thank you so very much," I said at last, effusively, as I put the pipe
+in my pocket, not without a qualm of doubt as to whether I shouldn't find
+myself before a magistrate presently.
+
+"O, you are so very welcome," said the little lass, with an affectation
+of grown-up manners at their best which was very quaint.  "It is such a
+pleasure to serve dear old gentlemen like you; especially when one can
+see at once that you have come from far over sea."
+
+"Yes, my dear," quoth I, "I have been a great traveller."
+
+As I told this lie from pure politeness, in came the lad again, with a
+tray in his hands, on which I saw a long flask and two beautiful glasses.
+"Neighbours," said the girl (who did all the talking, her brother being
+very shy, clearly) "please to drink a glass to us before you go, since we
+do not have guests like this every day."
+
+Therewith the boy put the tray on the counter and solemnly poured out a
+straw-coloured wine into the long bowls.  Nothing loth, I drank, for I
+was thirsty with the hot day; and thinks I, I am yet in the world, and
+the grapes of the Rhine have not yet lost their flavour; for if ever I
+drank good Steinberg, I drank it that morning; and I made a mental note
+to ask Dick how they managed to make fine wine when there were no longer
+labourers compelled to drink rot-gut instead of the fine wine which they
+themselves made.
+
+"Don't you drink a glass to us, dear little neighbours?" said I.
+
+"I don't drink wine," said the lass; "I like lemonade better: but I wish
+your health!"
+
+"And I like ginger-beer better," said the little lad.
+
+Well, well, thought I, neither have children's tastes changed much.  And
+therewith we gave them good day and went out of the booth.
+
+To my disappointment, like a change in a dream, a tall old man was
+holding our horse instead of the beautiful woman.  He explained to us
+that the maiden could not wait, and that he had taken her place; and he
+winked at us and laughed when he saw how our faces fell, so that we had
+nothing for it but to laugh also--
+
+"Where are you going?" said he to Dick.
+
+"To Bloomsbury," said Dick.
+
+"If you two don't want to be alone, I'll come with you," said the old
+man.
+
+"All right," said Dick, "tell me when you want to get down and I'll stop
+for you.  Let's get on."
+
+So we got under way again; and I asked if children generally waited on
+people in the markets.  "Often enough," said he, "when it isn't a matter
+of dealing with heavy weights, but by no means always.  The children like
+to amuse themselves with it, and it is good for them, because they handle
+a lot of diverse wares and get to learn about them, how they are made,
+and where they come from, and so on.  Besides, it is such very easy work
+that anybody can do it.  It is said that in the early days of our epoch
+there were a good many people who were hereditarily afflicted with a
+disease called Idleness, because they were the direct descendants of
+those who in the bad times used to force other people to work for
+them--the people, you know, who are called slave-holders or employers of
+labour in the history books.  Well, these Idleness-stricken people used
+to serve booths _all_ their time, because they were fit for so little.
+Indeed, I believe that at one time they were actually _compelled_ to do
+some such work, because they, especially the women, got so ugly and
+produced such ugly children if their disease was not treated sharply,
+that the neighbours couldn't stand it.  However, I'm happy to say that
+all that is gone by now; the disease is either extinct, or exists in such
+a mild form that a short course of aperient medicine carries it off.  It
+is sometimes called the Blue-devils now, or the Mulleygrubs.  Queer
+names, ain't they?"
+
+"Yes," said I, pondering much.  But the old man broke in:
+
+"Yes, all that is true, neighbour; and I have seen some of those poor
+women grown old.  But my father used to know some of them when they were
+young; and he said that they were as little like young women as might be:
+they had hands like bunches of skewers, and wretched little arms like
+sticks; and waists like hour-glasses, and thin lips and peaked noses and
+pale cheeks; and they were always pretending to be offended at anything
+you said or did to them.  No wonder they bore ugly children, for no one
+except men like them could be in love with them--poor things!"
+
+He stopped, and seemed to be musing on his past life, and then said:
+
+"And do you know, neighbours, that once on a time people were still
+anxious about that disease of Idleness: at one time we gave ourselves a
+great deal of trouble in trying to cure people of it.  Have you not read
+any of the medical books on the subject?"
+
+"No," said I; for the old man was speaking to me.
+
+"Well," said he, "it was thought at the time that it was the survival of
+the old mediaeval disease of leprosy: it seems it was very catching, for
+many of the people afflicted by it were much secluded, and were waited
+upon by a special class of diseased persons queerly dressed up, so that
+they might be known.  They wore amongst other garments, breeches made of
+worsted velvet, that stuff which used to be called plush some years ago."
+
+All this seemed very interesting to me, and I should like to have made
+the old man talk more.  But Dick got rather restive under so much ancient
+history: besides, I suspect he wanted to keep me as fresh as he could for
+his great-grandfather.  So he burst out laughing at last, and said:
+"Excuse me, neighbours, but I can't help it.  Fancy people not liking to
+work!--it's too ridiculous.  Why, even you like to work, old
+fellow--sometimes," said he, affectionately patting the old horse with
+the whip.  "What a queer disease! it may well be called Mulleygrubs!"
+
+And he laughed out again most boisterously; rather too much so, I
+thought, for his usual good manners; and I laughed with him for company's
+sake, but from the teeth outward only; for _I_ saw nothing funny in
+people not liking to work, as you may well imagine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII: TRAFALGAR SQUARE
+
+
+And now again I was busy looking about me, for we were quite clear of
+Piccadilly Market, and were in a region of elegantly-built much
+ornamented houses, which I should have called villas if they had been
+ugly and pretentious, which was very far from being the case.  Each house
+stood in a garden carefully cultivated, and running over with flowers.
+The blackbirds were singing their best amidst the garden-trees, which,
+except for a bay here and there, and occasional groups of limes, seemed
+to be all fruit-trees: there were a great many cherry-trees, now all
+laden with fruit; and several times as we passed by a garden we were
+offered baskets of fine fruit by children and young girls.  Amidst all
+these gardens and houses it was of course impossible to trace the sites
+of the old streets: but it seemed to me that the main roadways were the
+same as of old.
+
+We came presently into a large open space, sloping somewhat toward the
+south, the sunny site of which had been taken advantage of for planting
+an orchard, mainly, as I could see, of apricot-trees, in the midst of
+which was a pretty gay little structure of wood, painted and gilded, that
+looked like a refreshment-stall.  From the southern side of the said
+orchard ran a long road, chequered over with the shadow of tall old pear
+trees, at the end of which showed the high tower of the Parliament House,
+or Dung Market.
+
+A strange sensation came over me; I shut my eyes to keep out the sight of
+the sun glittering on this fair abode of gardens, and for a moment there
+passed before them a phantasmagoria of another day.  A great space
+surrounded by tall ugly houses, with an ugly church at the corner and a
+nondescript ugly cupolaed building at my back; the roadway thronged with
+a sweltering and excited crowd, dominated by omnibuses crowded with
+spectators.  In the midst a paved be-fountained square, populated only by
+a few men dressed in blue, and a good many singularly ugly bronze images
+(one on the top of a tall column).  The said square guarded up to the
+edge of the roadway by a four-fold line of big men clad in blue, and
+across the southern roadway the helmets of a band of horse-soldiers, dead
+white in the greyness of the chilly November afternoon--I opened my eyes
+to the sunlight again and looked round me, and cried out among the
+whispering trees and odorous blossoms, "Trafalgar Square!"
+
+"Yes," said Dick, who had drawn rein again, "so it is.  I don't wonder at
+your finding the name ridiculous: but after all, it was nobody's business
+to alter it, since the name of a dead folly doesn't bite.  Yet sometimes
+I think we might have given it a name which would have commemorated the
+great battle which was fought on the spot itself in 1952,--that was
+important enough, if the historians don't lie."
+
+"Which they generally do, or at least did," said the old man.  "For
+instance, what can you make of this, neighbours?  I have read a muddled
+account in a book--O a stupid book--called James' Social Democratic
+History, of a fight which took place here in or about the year 1887 (I am
+bad at dates).  Some people, says this story, were going to hold a ward-
+mote here, or some such thing, and the Government of London, or the
+Council, or the Commission, or what not other barbarous half-hatched body
+of fools, fell upon these citizens (as they were then called) with the
+armed hand.  That seems too ridiculous to be true; but according to this
+version of the story, nothing much came of it, which certainly _is_ too
+ridiculous to be true."
+
+"Well," quoth I, "but after all your Mr. James is right so far, and it
+_is_ true; except that there was no fighting, merely unarmed and
+peaceable people attacked by ruffians armed with bludgeons."
+
+"And they put up with that?" said Dick, with the first unpleasant
+expression I had seen on his good-tempered face.
+
+Said I, reddening: "We _had_ to put up with it; we couldn't help it."
+
+The old man looked at me keenly, and said: "You seem to know a great deal
+about it, neighbour!  And is it really true that nothing came of it?"
+
+"This came of it," said I, "that a good many people were sent to prison
+because of it."
+
+"What, of the bludgeoners?" said the old man.  "Poor devils!"
+
+"No, no," said I, "of the bludgeoned."
+
+Said the old man rather severely: "Friend, I expect that you have been
+reading some rotten collection of lies, and have been taken in by it too
+easily."
+
+"I assure you," said I, "what I have been saying is true."
+
+"Well, well, I am sure you think so, neighbour," said the old man, "but I
+don't see why you should be so cocksure."
+
+As I couldn't explain why, I held my tongue.  Meanwhile Dick, who had
+been sitting with knit brows, cogitating, spoke at last, and said gently
+and rather sadly:
+
+"How strange to think that there have been men like ourselves, and living
+in this beautiful and happy country, who I suppose had feelings and
+affections like ourselves, who could yet do such dreadful things."
+
+"Yes," said I, in a didactic tone; "yet after all, even those days were a
+great improvement on the days that had gone before them.  Have you not
+read of the Mediaeval period, and the ferocity of its criminal laws; and
+how in those days men fairly seemed to have enjoyed tormenting their
+fellow men?--nay, for the matter of that, they made their God a tormentor
+and a jailer rather than anything else."
+
+"Yes," said Dick, "there are good books on that period also, some of
+which I have read.  But as to the great improvement of the nineteenth
+century, I don't see it.  After all, the Mediaeval folk acted after their
+conscience, as your remark about their God (which is true) shows, and
+they were ready to bear what they inflicted on others; whereas the
+nineteenth century ones were hypocrites, and pretended to be humane, and
+yet went on tormenting those whom they dared to treat so by shutting them
+up in prison, for no reason at all, except that they were what they
+themselves, the prison-masters, had forced them to be.  O, it's horrible
+to think of!"
+
+"But perhaps," said I, "they did not know what the prisons were like."
+
+Dick seemed roused, and even angry.  "More shame for them," said he,
+"when you and I know it all these years afterwards.  Look you, neighbour,
+they couldn't fail to know what a disgrace a prison is to the
+Commonwealth at the best, and that their prisons were a good step on
+towards being at the worst."
+
+Quoth I: "But have you no prisons at all now?"
+
+As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt that I had made a
+mistake, for Dick flushed red and frowned, and the old man looked
+surprised and pained; and presently Dick said angrily, yet as if
+restraining himself somewhat--
+
+"Man alive! how can you ask such a question?  Have I not told you that we
+know what a prison means by the undoubted evidence of really trustworthy
+books, helped out by our own imaginations?  And haven't you specially
+called me to notice that the people about the roads and streets look
+happy? and how could they look happy if they knew that their neighbours
+were shut up in prison, while they bore such things quietly?  And if
+there were people in prison, you couldn't hide it from folk, like you may
+an occasional man-slaying; because that isn't done of set purpose, with a
+lot of people backing up the slayer in cold blood, as this prison
+business is.  Prisons, indeed!  O no, no, no!"
+
+He stopped, and began to cool down, and said in a kind voice: "But
+forgive me!  I needn't be so hot about it, since there are _not_ any
+prisons: I'm afraid you will think the worse of me for losing my temper.
+Of course, you, coming from the outlands, cannot be expected to know
+about these things.  And now I'm afraid I have made you feel
+uncomfortable."
+
+In a way he had; but he was so generous in his heat, that I liked him the
+better for it, and I said:
+
+"No, really 'tis all my fault for being so stupid.  Let me change the
+subject, and ask you what the stately building is on our left just
+showing at the end of that grove of plane-trees?"
+
+"Ah," he said, "that is an old building built before the middle of the
+twentieth century, and as you see, in a queer fantastic style not over
+beautiful; but there are some fine things inside it, too, mostly
+pictures, some very old.  It is called the National Gallery; I have
+sometimes puzzled as to what the name means: anyhow, nowadays wherever
+there is a place where pictures are kept as curiosities permanently it is
+called a National Gallery, perhaps after this one.  Of course there are a
+good many of them up and down the country."
+
+I didn't try to enlighten him, feeling the task too heavy; but I pulled
+out my magnificent pipe and fell a-smoking, and the old horse jogged on
+again.  As we went, I said:
+
+"This pipe is a very elaborate toy, and you seem so reasonable in this
+country, and your architecture is so good, that I rather wonder at your
+turning out such trivialities."
+
+It struck me as I spoke that this was rather ungrateful of me, after
+having received such a fine present; but Dick didn't seem to notice my
+bad manners, but said:
+
+"Well, I don't know; it is a pretty thing, and since nobody need make
+such things unless they like, I don't see why they shouldn't make them,
+if they like.  Of course, if carvers were scarce they would all be busy
+on the architecture, as you call it, and then these 'toys' (a good word)
+would not be made; but since there are plenty of people who can carve--in
+fact, almost everybody, and as work is somewhat scarce, or we are afraid
+it may be, folk do not discourage this kind of petty work."
+
+He mused a little, and seemed somewhat perturbed; but presently his face
+cleared, and he said: "After all, you must admit that the pipe is a very
+pretty thing, with the little people under the trees all cut so clean and
+sweet;--too elaborate for a pipe, perhaps, but--well, it is very pretty."
+
+"Too valuable for its use, perhaps," said I.
+
+"What's that?" said he; "I don't understand."
+
+I was just going in a helpless way to try to make him understand, when we
+came by the gates of a big rambling building, in which work of some sort
+seemed going on.  "What building is that?" said I, eagerly; for it was a
+pleasure amidst all these strange things to see something a little like
+what I was used to: "it seems to be a factory."
+
+"Yes," he said, "I think I know what you mean, and that's what it is; but
+we don't call them factories now, but Banded-workshops: that is, places
+where people collect who want to work together."
+
+"I suppose," said I, "power of some sort is used there?"
+
+"No, no," said he.  "Why should people collect together to use power,
+when they can have it at the places where they live, or hard by, any two
+or three of them; or any one, for the matter of that?  No; folk collect
+in these Banded-workshops to do hand-work in which working together is
+necessary or convenient; such work is often very pleasant.  In there, for
+instance, they make pottery and glass,--there, you can see the tops of
+the furnaces.  Well, of course it's handy to have fair-sized ovens and
+kilns and glass-pots, and a good lot of things to use them for: though of
+course there are a good many such places, as it would be ridiculous if a
+man had a liking for pot-making or glass-blowing that he should have to
+live in one place or be obliged to forego the work he liked."
+
+"I see no smoke coming from the furnaces," said I.
+
+"Smoke?" said Dick; "why should you see smoke?"
+
+I held my tongue, and he went on: "It's a nice place inside, though as
+plain as you see outside.  As to the crafts, throwing the clay must be
+jolly work: the glass-blowing is rather a sweltering job; but some folk
+like it very much indeed; and I don't much wonder: there is such a sense
+of power, when you have got deft in it, in dealing with the hot metal.  It
+makes a lot of pleasant work," said he, smiling, "for however much care
+you take of such goods, break they will, one day or another, so there is
+always plenty to do."
+
+I held my tongue and pondered.
+
+We came just here on a gang of men road-mending which delayed us a
+little; but I was not sorry for it; for all I had seen hitherto seemed a
+mere part of a summer holiday; and I wanted to see how this folk would
+set to on a piece of real necessary work.  They had been resting, and had
+only just begun work again as we came up; so that the rattle of the picks
+was what woke me from my musing.  There were about a dozen of them,
+strong young men, looking much like a boating party at Oxford would have
+looked in the days I remembered, and not more troubled with their work:
+their outer raiment lay on the road-side in an orderly pile under the
+guardianship of a six-year-old boy, who had his arm thrown over the neck
+of a big mastiff, who was as happily lazy as if the summer-day had been
+made for him alone.  As I eyed the pile of clothes, I could see the gleam
+of gold and silk embroidery on it, and judged that some of these workmen
+had tastes akin to those of the Golden Dustman of Hammersmith.  Beside
+them lay a good big basket that had hints about it of cold pie and wine:
+a half dozen of young women stood by watching the work or the workers,
+both of which were worth watching, for the latter smote great strokes and
+were very deft in their labour, and as handsome clean-built fellows as
+you might find a dozen of in a summer day.  They were laughing and
+talking merrily with each other and the women, but presently their
+foreman looked up and saw our way stopped.  So he stayed his pick and
+sang out, "Spell ho, mates! here are neighbours want to get past."
+Whereon the others stopped also, and, drawing around us, helped the old
+horse by easing our wheels over the half undone road, and then, like men
+with a pleasant task on hand, hurried back to their work, only stopping
+to give us a smiling good-day; so that the sound of the picks broke out
+again before Greylocks had taken to his jog-trot.  Dick looked back over
+his shoulder at them and said:
+
+"They are in luck to-day: it's right down good sport trying how much pick-
+work one can get into an hour; and I can see those neighbours know their
+business well.  It is not a mere matter of strength getting on quickly
+with such work; is it, guest?"
+
+"I should think not," said I, "but to tell you the truth, I have never
+tried my hand at it."
+
+"Really?" said he gravely, "that seems a pity; it is good work for
+hardening the muscles, and I like it; though I admit it is pleasanter the
+second week than the first.  Not that I am a good hand at it: the fellows
+used to chaff me at one job where I was working, I remember, and sing out
+to me, 'Well rowed, stroke!'  'Put your back into it, bow!'"
+
+"Not much of a joke," quoth I.
+
+"Well," said Dick, "everything seems like a joke when we have a pleasant
+spell of work on, and good fellows merry about us; we feels so happy, you
+know."  Again I pondered silently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII: AN OLD FRIEND
+
+
+We now turned into a pleasant lane where the branches of great
+plane-trees nearly met overhead, but behind them lay low houses standing
+rather close together.
+
+"This is Long Acre," quoth Dick; "so there must once have been a
+cornfield here.  How curious it is that places change so, and yet keep
+their old names!  Just look how thick the houses stand! and they are
+still going on building, look you!"
+
+"Yes," said the old man, "but I think the cornfields must have been built
+over before the middle of the nineteenth century.  I have heard that
+about here was one of the thickest parts of the town.  But I must get
+down here, neighbours; I have got to call on a friend who lives in the
+gardens behind this Long Acre.  Good-bye and good luck, Guest!"
+
+And he jumped down and strode away vigorously, like a young man.
+
+"How old should you say that neighbour will be?" said I to Dick as we
+lost sight of him; for I saw that he was old, and yet he looked dry and
+sturdy like a piece of old oak; a type of old man I was not used to
+seeing.
+
+"O, about ninety, I should say," said Dick.
+
+"How long-lived your people must be!" said I.
+
+"Yes," said Dick, "certainly we have beaten the threescore-and-ten of the
+old Jewish proverb-book.  But then you see that was written of Syria, a
+hot dry country, where people live faster than in our temperate climate.
+However, I don't think it matters much, so long as a man is healthy and
+happy while he _is_ alive.  But now, Guest, we are so near to my old
+kinsman's dwelling-place that I think you had better keep all future
+questions for him."
+
+I nodded a yes; and therewith we turned to the left, and went down a
+gentle slope through some beautiful rose-gardens, laid out on what I took
+to be the site of Endell Street.  We passed on, and Dick drew rein an
+instant as we came across a long straightish road with houses scantily
+scattered up and down it.  He waved his hand right and left, and said,
+"Holborn that side, Oxford Road that.  This was once a very important
+part of the crowded city outside the ancient walls of the Roman and
+Mediaeval burg: many of the feudal nobles of the Middle Ages, we are
+told, had big houses on either side of Holborn.  I daresay you remember
+that the Bishop of Ely's house is mentioned in Shakespeare's play of King
+Richard III.; and there are some remains of that still left.  However,
+this road is not of the same importance, now that the ancient city is
+gone, walls and all."
+
+He drove on again, while I smiled faintly to think how the nineteenth
+century, of which such big words have been said, counted for nothing in
+the memory of this man, who read Shakespeare and had not forgotten the
+Middle Ages.
+
+We crossed the road into a short narrow lane between the gardens, and
+came out again into a wide road, on one side of which was a great and
+long building, turning its gables away from the highway, which I saw at
+once was another public group.  Opposite to it was a wide space of
+greenery, without any wall or fence of any kind.  I looked through the
+trees and saw beyond them a pillared portico quite familiar to me--no
+less old a friend, in fact, than the British Museum.  It rather took my
+breath away, amidst all the strange things I had seen; but I held my
+tongue and let Dick speak.  Said he:
+
+"Yonder is the British Museum, where my great-grandfather mostly lives;
+so I won't say much about it.  The building on the left is the Museum
+Market, and I think we had better turn in there for a minute or two; for
+Greylocks will be wanting his rest and his oats; and I suppose you will
+stay with my kinsman the greater part of the day; and to say the truth,
+there may be some one there whom I particularly want to see, and perhaps
+have a long talk with."
+
+He blushed and sighed, not altogether with pleasure, I thought; so of
+course I said nothing, and he turned the horse under an archway which
+brought us into a very large paved quadrangle, with a big sycamore tree
+in each corner and a plashing fountain in the midst.  Near the fountain
+were a few market stalls, with awnings over them of gay striped linen
+cloth, about which some people, mostly women and children, were moving
+quietly, looking at the goods exposed there.  The ground floor of the
+building round the quadrangle was occupied by a wide arcade or cloister,
+whose fanciful but strong architecture I could not enough admire.  Here
+also a few people were sauntering or sitting reading on the benches.
+
+Dick said to me apologetically: "Here as elsewhere there is little doing
+to-day; on a Friday you would see it thronged, and gay with people, and
+in the afternoon there is generally music about the fountain.  However, I
+daresay we shall have a pretty good gathering at our mid-day meal."
+
+We drove through the quadrangle and by an archway, into a large handsome
+stable on the other side, where we speedily stalled the old nag and made
+him happy with horse-meat, and then turned and walked back again through
+the market, Dick looking rather thoughtful, as it seemed to me.
+
+I noticed that people couldn't help looking at me rather hard, and
+considering my clothes and theirs, I didn't wonder; but whenever they
+caught my eye they made me a very friendly sign of greeting.
+
+We walked straight into the forecourt of the Museum, where, except that
+the railings were gone, and the whispering boughs of the trees were all
+about, nothing seemed changed; the very pigeons were wheeling about the
+building and clinging to the ornaments of the pediment as I had seen them
+of old.
+
+Dick seemed grown a little absent, but he could not forbear giving me an
+architectural note, and said:
+
+"It is rather an ugly old building, isn't it?  Many people have wanted to
+pull it down and rebuild it: and perhaps if work does really get scarce
+we may yet do so.  But, as my great grandfather will tell you, it would
+not be quite a straightforward job; for there are wonderful collections
+in there of all kinds of antiquities, besides an enormous library with
+many exceedingly beautiful books in it, and many most useful ones as
+genuine records, texts of ancient works and the like; and the worry and
+anxiety, and even risk, there would be in moving all this has saved the
+buildings themselves.  Besides, as we said before, it is not a bad thing
+to have some record of what our forefathers thought a handsome building.
+For there is plenty of labour and material in it."
+
+"I see there is," said I, "and I quite agree with you.  But now hadn't we
+better make haste to see your great-grandfather?"
+
+In fact, I could not help seeing that he was rather dallying with the
+time.  He said, "Yes, we will go into the house in a minute.  My kinsman
+is too old to do much work in the Museum, where he was a custodian of the
+books for many years; but he still lives here a good deal; indeed I
+think," said he, smiling, "that he looks upon himself as a part of the
+books, or the books a part of him, I don't know which."
+
+He hesitated a little longer, then flushing up, took my hand, and saying,
+"Come along, then!" led me toward the door of one of the old official
+dwellings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX: CONCERNING LOVE
+
+
+"Your kinsman doesn't much care for beautiful building, then," said I, as
+we entered the rather dreary classical house; which indeed was as bare as
+need be, except for some big pots of the June flowers which stood about
+here and there; though it was very clean and nicely whitewashed.
+
+"O I don't know," said Dick, rather absently.  "He is getting old,
+certainly, for he is over a hundred and five, and no doubt he doesn't
+care about moving.  But of course he could live in a prettier house if he
+liked: he is not obliged to live in one place any more than any one else.
+This way, Guest."
+
+And he led the way upstairs, and opening a door we went into a fair-sized
+room of the old type, as plain as the rest of the house, with a few
+necessary pieces of furniture, and those very simple and even rude, but
+solid and with a good deal of carving about them, well designed but
+rather crudely executed.  At the furthest corner of the room, at a desk
+near the window, sat a little old man in a roomy oak chair, well
+becushioned.  He was dressed in a sort of Norfolk jacket of blue serge
+worn threadbare, with breeches of the same, and grey worsted stockings.
+He jumped up from his chair, and cried out in a voice of considerable
+volume for such an old man, "Welcome, Dick, my lad; Clara is here, and
+will be more than glad to see you; so keep your heart up."
+
+"Clara here?" quoth Dick; "if I had known, I would not have brought--At
+least, I mean I would--"
+
+He was stuttering and confused, clearly because he was anxious to say
+nothing to make me feel one too many.  But the old man, who had not seen
+me at first, helped him out by coming forward and saying to me in a kind
+tone:
+
+"Pray pardon me, for I did not notice that Dick, who is big enough to
+hide anybody, you know, had brought a friend with him.  A most hearty
+welcome to you!  All the more, as I almost hope that you are going to
+amuse an old man by giving him news from over sea, for I can see that you
+are come from over the water and far off countries."
+
+He looked at me thoughtfully, almost anxiously, as he said in a changed
+voice, "Might I ask you where you come from, as you are so clearly a
+stranger?"
+
+I said in an absent way: "I used to live in England, and now I am come
+back again; and I slept last night at the Hammersmith Guest House."
+
+He bowed gravely, but seemed, I thought, a little disappointed with my
+answer.  As for me, I was now looking at him harder than good manners
+allowed of; perhaps; for in truth his face, dried-apple-like as it was,
+seemed strangely familiar to me; as if I had seen it before--in a looking-
+glass it might be, said I to myself.
+
+"Well," said the old man, "wherever you come from, you are come among
+friends.  And I see my kinsman Richard Hammond has an air about him as if
+he had brought you here for me to do something for you.  Is that so,
+Dick?"
+
+Dick, who was getting still more absent-minded and kept looking uneasily
+at the door, managed to say, "Well, yes, kinsman: our guest finds things
+much altered, and cannot understand it; nor can I; so I thought I would
+bring him to you, since you know more of all that has happened within the
+last two hundred years than any body else does.--What's that?"
+
+And he turned toward the door again.  We heard footsteps outside; the
+door opened, and in came a very beautiful young woman, who stopped short
+on seeing Dick, and flushed as red as a rose, but faced him nevertheless.
+Dick looked at her hard, and half reached out his hand toward her, and
+his whole face quivered with emotion.
+
+The old man did not leave them long in this shy discomfort, but said,
+smiling with an old man's mirth:
+
+"Dick, my lad, and you, my dear Clara, I rather think that we two
+oldsters are in your way; for I think you will have plenty to say to each
+other.  You had better go into Nelson's room up above; I know he has gone
+out; and he has just been covering the walls all over with mediaeval
+books, so it will be pretty enough even for you two and your renewed
+pleasure."
+
+The girl reached out her hand to Dick, and taking his led him out of the
+room, looking straight before her; but it was easy to see that her
+blushes came from happiness, not anger; as, indeed, love is far more self-
+conscious than wrath.
+
+When the door had shut on them the old man turned to me, still smiling,
+and said:
+
+"Frankly, my dear guest, you will do me a great service if you are come
+to set my old tongue wagging.  My love of talk still abides with me, or
+rather grows on me; and though it is pleasant enough to see these
+youngsters moving about and playing together so seriously, as if the
+whole world depended on their kisses (as indeed it does somewhat), yet I
+don't think my tales of the past interest them much.  The last harvest,
+the last baby, the last knot of carving in the market-place, is history
+enough for them.  It was different, I think, when I was a lad, when we
+were not so assured of peace and continuous plenty as we are now--Well,
+well!  Without putting you to the question, let me ask you this: Am I to
+consider you as an enquirer who knows a little of our modern ways of
+life, or as one who comes from some place where the very foundations of
+life are different from ours,--do you know anything or nothing about us?"
+
+He looked at me keenly and with growing wonder in his eyes as he spoke;
+and I answered in a low voice:
+
+"I know only so much of your modern life as I could gather from using my
+eyes on the way here from Hammersmith, and from asking some questions of
+Richard Hammond, most of which he could hardly understand."
+
+The old man smiled at this.  "Then," said he, "I am to speak to you as--"
+
+"As if I were a being from another planet," said I.
+
+The old man, whose name, by the bye, like his kinsman's, was Hammond,
+smiled and nodded, and wheeling his seat round to me, bade me sit in a
+heavy oak chair, and said, as he saw my eyes fix on its curious carving:
+
+"Yes, I am much tied to the past, my past, you understand.  These very
+pieces of furniture belong to a time before my early days; it was my
+father who got them made; if they had been done within the last fifty
+years they would have been much cleverer in execution; but I don't think
+I should have liked them the better.  We were almost beginning again in
+those days: and they were brisk, hot-headed times.  But you hear how
+garrulous I am: ask me questions, ask me questions about anything, dear
+guest; since I must talk, make my talk profitable to you."
+
+I was silent for a minute, and then I said, somewhat nervously: "Excuse
+me if I am rude; but I am so much interested in Richard, since he has
+been so kind to me, a perfect stranger, that I should like to ask a
+question about him."
+
+"Well," said old Hammond, "if he were not 'kind', as you call it, to a
+perfect stranger he would be thought a strange person, and people would
+be apt to shun him.  But ask on, ask on! don't be shy of asking."
+
+Said I: "That beautiful girl, is he going to be married to her?"
+
+"Well," said he, "yes, he is.  He has been married to her once already,
+and now I should say it is pretty clear that he will be married to her
+again."
+
+"Indeed," quoth I, wondering what that meant.
+
+"Here is the whole tale," said old Hammond; "a short one enough; and now
+I hope a happy one: they lived together two years the first time; were
+both very young; and then she got it into her head that she was in love
+with somebody else.  So she left poor Dick; I say _poor_ Dick, because he
+had not found any one else.  But it did not last long, only about a year.
+Then she came to me, as she was in the habit of bringing her troubles to
+the old carle, and asked me how Dick was, and whether he was happy, and
+all the rest of it.  So I saw how the land lay, and said that he was very
+unhappy, and not at all well; which last at any rate was a lie.  There,
+you can guess the rest.  Clara came to have a long talk with me to-day,
+but Dick will serve her turn much better.  Indeed, if he hadn't chanced
+in upon me to-day I should have had to have sent for him to-morrow."
+
+"Dear me," said I.  "Have they any children?"
+
+"Yes," said he, "two; they are staying with one of my daughters at
+present, where, indeed, Clara has mostly been.  I wouldn't lose sight of
+her, as I felt sure they would come together again: and Dick, who is the
+best of good fellows, really took the matter to heart.  You see, he had
+no other love to run to, as she had.  So I managed it all; as I have done
+with such-like matters before."
+
+"Ah," said I, "no doubt you wanted to keep them out of the Divorce Court:
+but I suppose it often has to settle such matters."
+
+"Then you suppose nonsense," said he.  "I know that there used to be such
+lunatic affairs as divorce-courts: but just consider; all the cases that
+came into them were matters of property quarrels: and I think, dear
+guest," said he, smiling, "that though you do come from another planet,
+you can see from the mere outside look of our world that quarrels about
+private property could not go on amongst us in our days."
+
+Indeed, my drive from Hammersmith to Bloomsbury, and all the quiet happy
+life I had seen so many hints of; even apart from my shopping, would have
+been enough to tell me that "the sacred rights of property," as we used
+to think of them, were now no more.  So I sat silent while the old man
+took up the thread of the discourse again, and said:
+
+"Well, then, property quarrels being no longer possible, what remains in
+these matters that a court of law could deal with?  Fancy a court for
+enforcing a contract of passion or sentiment!  If such a thing were
+needed as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the enforcement of contract, such a
+folly would do that for us."
+
+He was silent again a little, and then said: "You must understand once
+for all that we have changed these matters; or rather, that our way of
+looking at them has changed, as we have changed within the last two
+hundred years.  We do not deceive ourselves, indeed, or believe that we
+can get rid of all the trouble that besets the dealings between the
+sexes.  We know that we must face the unhappiness that comes of man and
+woman confusing the relations between natural passion, and sentiment, and
+the friendship which, when things go well, softens the awakening from
+passing illusions: but we are not so mad as to pile up degradation on
+that unhappiness by engaging in sordid squabbles about livelihood and
+position, and the power of tyrannising over the children who have been
+the results of love or lust."
+
+Again he paused awhile, and again went on: "Calf love, mistaken for a
+heroism that shall be lifelong, yet early waning into disappointment; the
+inexplicable desire that comes on a man of riper years to be the all-in-
+all to some one woman, whose ordinary human kindness and human beauty he
+has idealised into superhuman perfection, and made the one object of his
+desire; or lastly the reasonable longing of a strong and thoughtful man
+to become the most intimate friend of some beautiful and wise woman, the
+very type of the beauty and glory of the world which we love so well,--as
+we exult in all the pleasure and exaltation of spirit which goes with
+these things, so we set ourselves to bear the sorrow which not unseldom
+goes with them also; remembering those lines of the ancient poet (I quote
+roughly from memory one of the many translations of the nineteenth
+century):
+
+   'For this the Gods have fashioned man's grief and evil day
+   That still for man hereafter might be the tale and the lay.'
+
+Well, well, 'tis little likely anyhow that all tales shall be lacking, or
+all sorrow cured."
+
+He was silent for some time, and I would not interrupt him.  At last he
+began again: "But you must know that we of these generations are strong
+and healthy of body, and live easily; we pass our lives in reasonable
+strife with nature, exercising not one side of ourselves only, but all
+sides, taking the keenest pleasure in all the life of the world.  So it
+is a point of honour with us not to be self-centred; not to suppose that
+the world must cease because one man is sorry; therefore we should think
+it foolish, or if you will, criminal, to exaggerate these matters of
+sentiment and sensibility: we are no more inclined to eke out our
+sentimental sorrows than to cherish our bodily pains; and we recognise
+that there are other pleasures besides love-making.  You must remember,
+also, that we are long-lived, and that therefore beauty both in man and
+woman is not so fleeting as it was in the days when we were burdened so
+heavily by self-inflicted diseases.  So we shake off these griefs in a
+way which perhaps the sentimentalists of other times would think
+contemptible and unheroic, but which we think necessary and manlike.  As
+on the other hand, therefore, we have ceased to be commercial in our love-
+matters, so also we have ceased to be _artificially_ foolish.  The folly
+which comes by nature, the unwisdom of the immature man, or the older man
+caught in a trap, we must put up with that, nor are we much ashamed of
+it; but to be conventionally sensitive or sentimental--my friend, I am
+old and perhaps disappointed, but at least I think we have cast off
+_some_ of the follies of the older world."
+
+He paused, as if for some words of mine; but I held my peace: then he
+went on: "At least, if we suffer from the tyranny and fickleness of
+nature or our own want of experience, we neither grimace about it, nor
+lie.  If there must be sundering betwixt those who meant never to sunder,
+so it must be: but there need be no pretext of unity when the reality of
+it is gone: nor do we drive those who well know that they are incapable
+of it to profess an undying sentiment which they cannot really feel: thus
+it is that as that monstrosity of venal lust is no longer possible, so
+also it is no longer needed.  Don't misunderstand me.  You did not seemed
+shocked when I told you that there were no law-courts to enforce
+contracts of sentiment or passion; but so curiously are men made, that
+perhaps you will be shocked when I tell you that there is no code of
+public opinion which takes the place of such courts, and which might be
+as tyrannical and unreasonable as they were.  I do not say that people
+don't judge their neighbours' conduct, sometimes, doubtless, unfairly.
+But I do say that there is no unvarying conventional set of rules by
+which people are judged; no bed of Procrustes to stretch or cramp their
+minds and lives; no hypocritical excommunication which people are
+_forced_ to pronounce, either by unconsidered habit, or by the
+unexpressed threat of the lesser interdict if they are lax in their
+hypocrisy.  Are you shocked now?"
+
+"N-o--no," said I, with some hesitation.  "It is all so different."
+
+"At any rate," said he, "one thing I think I can answer for: whatever
+sentiment there is, it is real--and general; it is not confined to people
+very specially refined.  I am also pretty sure, as I hinted to you just
+now, that there is not by a great way as much suffering involved in these
+matters either to men or to women as there used to be.  But excuse me for
+being so prolix on this question!  You know you asked to be treated like
+a being from another planet."
+
+"Indeed I thank you very much," said I.  "Now may I ask you about the
+position of women in your society?"
+
+He laughed very heartily for a man of his years, and said: "It is not
+without reason that I have got a reputation as a careful student of
+history.  I believe I really do understand 'the Emancipation of Women
+movement' of the nineteenth century.  I doubt if any other man now alive
+does."
+
+"Well?" said I, a little bit nettled by his merriment.
+
+"Well," said he, "of course you will see that all that is a dead
+controversy now.  The men have no longer any opportunity of tyrannising
+over the women, or the women over the men; both of which things took
+place in those old times.  The women do what they can do best, and what
+they like best, and the men are neither jealous of it or injured by it.
+This is such a commonplace that I am almost ashamed to state it."
+
+I said, "O; and legislation? do they take any part in that?"
+
+Hammond smiled and said: "I think you may wait for an answer to that
+question till we get on to the subject of legislation.  There may be
+novelties to you in that subject also."
+
+"Very well," I said; "but about this woman question?  I saw at the Guest
+House that the women were waiting on the men: that seems a little like
+reaction doesn't it?"
+
+"Does it?" said the old man; "perhaps you think housekeeping an
+unimportant occupation, not deserving of respect.  I believe that was the
+opinion of the 'advanced' women of the nineteenth century, and their male
+backers.  If it is yours, I recommend to your notice an old Norwegian
+folk-lore tale called How the Man minded the House, or some such title;
+the result of which minding was that, after various tribulations, the man
+and the family cow balanced each other at the end of a rope, the man
+hanging halfway up the chimney, the cow dangling from the roof, which,
+after the fashion of the country, was of turf and sloping down low to the
+ground.  Hard on the cow, _I_ think.  Of course no such mishap could
+happen to such a superior person as yourself," he added, chuckling.
+
+I sat somewhat uneasy under this dry gibe.  Indeed, his manner of
+treating this latter part of the question seemed to me a little
+disrespectful.
+
+"Come, now, my friend," quoth he, "don't you know that it is a great
+pleasure to a clever woman to manage a house skilfully, and to do it so
+that all the house-mates about her look pleased, and are grateful to her?
+And then, you know, everybody likes to be ordered about by a pretty
+woman: why, it is one of the pleasantest forms of flirtation.  You are
+not so old that you cannot remember that.  Why, I remember it well."
+
+And the old fellow chuckled again, and at last fairly burst out laughing.
+
+"Excuse me," said he, after a while; "I am not laughing at anything you
+could be thinking of; but at that silly nineteenth-century fashion,
+current amongst rich so-called cultivated people, of ignoring all the
+steps by which their daily dinner was reached, as matters too low for
+their lofty intelligence.  Useless idiots!  Come, now, I am a 'literary
+man,' as we queer animals used to be called, yet I am a pretty good cook
+myself."
+
+"So am I," said I.
+
+"Well, then," said he, "I really think you can understand me better than
+you would seem to do, judging by your words and your silence."
+
+Said I: "Perhaps that is so; but people putting in practice commonly this
+sense of interest in the ordinary occupations of life rather startles me.
+I will ask you a question or two presently about that.  But I want to
+return to the position of women amongst you.  You have studied the
+'emancipation of women' business of the nineteenth century: don't you
+remember that some of the 'superior' women wanted to emancipate the more
+intelligent part of their sex from the bearing of children?"
+
+The old man grew quite serious again.  Said he: "I _do_ remember about
+that strange piece of baseless folly, the result, like all other follies
+of the period, of the hideous class tyranny which then obtained.  What do
+we think of it now? you would say.  My friend, that is a question easy to
+answer.  How could it possibly be but that maternity should be highly
+honoured amongst us?  Surely it is a matter of course that the natural
+and necessary pains which the mother must go through form a bond of union
+between man and woman, an extra stimulus to love and affection between
+them, and that this is universally recognised.  For the rest, remember
+that all the _artificial_ burdens of motherhood are now done away with.  A
+mother has no longer any mere sordid anxieties for the future of her
+children.  They may indeed turn out better or worse; they may disappoint
+her highest hopes; such anxieties as these are a part of the mingled
+pleasure and pain which goes to make up the life of mankind.  But at
+least she is spared the fear (it was most commonly the certainty) that
+artificial disabilities would make her children something less than men
+and women: she knows that they will live and act according to the measure
+of their own faculties.  In times past, it is clear that the 'Society' of
+the day helped its Judaic god, and the 'Man of Science' of the time, in
+visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children.  How to reverse this
+process, how to take the sting out of heredity, has for long been one of
+the most constant cares of the thoughtful men amongst us.  So that, you
+see, the ordinarily healthy woman (and almost all our women are both
+healthy and at least comely), respected as a child-bearer and rearer of
+children, desired as a woman, loved as a companion, unanxious for the
+future of her children, has far more instinct for maternity than the poor
+drudge and mother of drudges of past days could ever have had; or than
+her sister of the upper classes, brought up in affected ignorance of
+natural facts, reared in an atmosphere of mingled prudery and prurience."
+
+"You speak warmly," I said, "but I can see that you are right."
+
+"Yes," he said, "and I will point out to you a token of all the benefits
+which we have gained by our freedom.  What did you think of the looks of
+the people whom you have come across to-day?"
+
+Said I: "I could hardly have believed that there could be so many good-
+looking people in any civilised country."
+
+He crowed a little, like the old bird he was.  "What! are we still
+civilised?" said he.  "Well, as to our looks, the English and Jutish
+blood, which on the whole is predominant here, used not to produce much
+beauty.  But I think we have improved it.  I know a man who has a large
+collection of portraits printed from photographs of the nineteenth
+century, and going over those and comparing them with the everyday faces
+in these times, puts the improvement in our good looks beyond a doubt.
+Now, there are some people who think it not too fantastic to connect this
+increase of beauty directly with our freedom and good sense in the
+matters we have been speaking of: they believe that a child born from the
+natural and healthy love between a man and a woman, even if that be
+transient, is likely to turn out better in all ways, and especially in
+bodily beauty, than the birth of the respectable commercial marriage bed,
+or of the dull despair of the drudge of that system.  They say, Pleasure
+begets pleasure.  What do you think?"
+
+"I am much of that mind," said I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
+
+
+"Well," said the old man, shifting in his chair, "you must get on with
+your questions, Guest; I have been some time answering this first one."
+
+Said I: "I want an extra word or two about your ideas of education;
+although I gathered from Dick that you let your children run wild and
+didn't teach them anything; and in short, that you have so refined your
+education, that now you have none."
+
+"Then you gathered left-handed," quoth he.  "But of course I understand
+your point of view about education, which is that of times past, when
+'the struggle for life,' as men used to phrase it (_i.e._, the struggle
+for a slave's rations on one side, and for a bouncing share of the slave-
+holders' privilege on the other), pinched 'education' for most people
+into a niggardly dole of not very accurate information; something to be
+swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or
+not, and was hungry for it or not: and which had been chewed and digested
+over and over again by people who didn't care about it in order to serve
+it out to other people who didn't care about it."
+
+I stopped the old man's rising wrath by a laugh, and said: "Well, _you_
+were not taught that way, at any rate, so you may let your anger run off
+you a little."
+
+"True, true," said he, smiling.  "I thank you for correcting my
+ill-temper: I always fancy myself as living in any period of which we may
+be speaking.  But, however, to put it in a cooler way: you expected to
+see children thrust into schools when they had reached an age
+conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying
+faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like disregard
+to facts to be subjected to a certain conventional course of 'learning.'
+My friend, can't you see that such a proceeding means ignoring the fact
+of _growth_, bodily and mental?  No one could come out of such a mill
+uninjured; and those only would avoid being crushed by it who would have
+the spirit of rebellion strong in them.  Fortunately most children have
+had that at all times, or I do not know that we should ever have reached
+our present position.  Now you see what it all comes to.  In the old
+times all this was the result of _poverty_.  In the nineteenth century,
+society was so miserably poor, owing to the systematised robbery on which
+it was founded, that real education was impossible for anybody.  The
+whole theory of their so-called education was that it was necessary to
+shove a little information into a child, even if it were by means of
+torture, and accompanied by twaddle which it was well known was of no
+use, or else he would lack information lifelong: the hurry of poverty
+forbade anything else.  All that is past; we are no longer hurried, and
+the information lies ready to each one's hand when his own inclinations
+impel him to seek it.  In this as in other matters we have become
+wealthy: we can afford to give ourselves time to grow."
+
+"Yes," said I, "but suppose the child, youth, man, never wants the
+information, never grows in the direction you might hope him to do:
+suppose, for instance, he objects to learning arithmetic or mathematics;
+you can't force him when he _is_ grown; can't you force him while he is
+growing, and oughtn't you to do so?"
+
+"Well," said he, "were you forced to learn arithmetic and mathematics?"
+
+"A little," said I.
+
+"And how old are you now?"
+
+"Say fifty-six," said I.
+
+"And how much arithmetic and mathematics do you know now?" quoth the old
+man, smiling rather mockingly.
+
+Said I: "None whatever, I am sorry to say."
+
+Hammond laughed quietly, but made no other comment on my admission, and I
+dropped the subject of education, perceiving him to be hopeless on that
+side.
+
+I thought a little, and said: "You were speaking just now of households:
+that sounded to me a little like the customs of past times; I should have
+thought you would have lived more in public."
+
+"Phalangsteries, eh?" said he.  "Well, we live as we like, and we like to
+live as a rule with certain house-mates that we have got used to.
+Remember, again, that poverty is extinct, and that the Fourierist
+phalangsteries and all their kind, as was but natural at the time,
+implied nothing but a refuge from mere destitution.  Such a way of life
+as that, could only have been conceived of by people surrounded by the
+worst form of poverty.  But you must understand therewith, that though
+separate households are the rule amongst us, and though they differ in
+their habits more or less, yet no door is shut to any good-tempered
+person who is content to live as the other house-mates do: only of course
+it would be unreasonable for one man to drop into a household and bid the
+folk of it to alter their habits to please him, since he can go elsewhere
+and live as he pleases.  However, I need not say much about all this, as
+you are going up the river with Dick, and will find out for yourself by
+experience how these matters are managed."
+
+After a pause, I said: "Your big towns, now; how about them?  London,
+which--which I have read about as the modern Babylon of civilization,
+seems to have disappeared."
+
+"Well, well," said old Hammond, "perhaps after all it is more like
+ancient Babylon now than the 'modern Babylon' of the nineteenth century
+was.  But let that pass.  After all, there is a good deal of population
+in places between here and Hammersmith; nor have you seen the most
+populous part of the town yet."
+
+"Tell me, then," said I, "how is it towards the east?"
+
+Said he: "Time was when if you mounted a good horse and rode straight
+away from my door here at a round trot for an hour and a half; you would
+still be in the thick of London, and the greater part of that would be
+'slums,' as they were called; that is to say, places of torture for
+innocent men and women; or worse, stews for rearing and breeding men and
+women in such degradation that that torture should seem to them mere
+ordinary and natural life."
+
+"I know, I know," I said, rather impatiently.  "That was what was; tell
+me something of what is.  Is any of that left?"
+
+"Not an inch," said he; "but some memory of it abides with us, and I am
+glad of it.  Once a year, on May-day, we hold a solemn feast in those
+easterly communes of London to commemorate The Clearing of Misery, as it
+is called.  On that day we have music and dancing, and merry games and
+happy feasting on the site of some of the worst of the old slums, the
+traditional memory of which we have kept.  On that occasion the custom is
+for the prettiest girls to sing some of the old revolutionary songs, and
+those which were the groans of the discontent, once so hopeless, on the
+very spots where those terrible crimes of class-murder were committed day
+by day for so many years.  To a man like me, who have studied the past so
+diligently, it is a curious and touching sight to see some beautiful
+girl, daintily clad, and crowned with flowers from the neighbouring
+meadows, standing amongst the happy people, on some mound where of old
+time stood the wretched apology for a house, a den in which men and women
+lived packed amongst the filth like pilchards in a cask; lived in such a
+way that they could only have endured it, as I said just now, by being
+degraded out of humanity--to hear the terrible words of threatening and
+lamentation coming from her sweet and beautiful lips, and she unconscious
+of their real meaning: to hear her, for instance, singing Hood's Song of
+the Shirt, and to think that all the time she does not understand what it
+is all about--a tragedy grown inconceivable to her and her listeners.
+Think of that, if you can, and of how glorious life is grown!"
+
+"Indeed," said I, "it is difficult for me to think of it."
+
+And I sat watching how his eyes glittered, and how the fresh life seemed
+to glow in his face, and I wondered how at his age he should think of the
+happiness of the world, or indeed anything but his coming dinner.
+
+"Tell me in detail," said I, "what lies east of Bloomsbury now?"
+
+Said he: "There are but few houses between this and the outer part of the
+old city; but in the city we have a thickly-dwelling population.  Our
+forefathers, in the first clearing of the slums, were not in a hurry to
+pull down the houses in what was called at the end of the nineteenth
+century the business quarter of the town, and what later got to be known
+as the Swindling Kens.  You see, these houses, though they stood
+hideously thick on the ground, were roomy and fairly solid in building,
+and clean, because they were not used for living in, but as mere gambling
+booths; so the poor people from the cleared slums took them for lodgings
+and dwelt there, till the folk of those days had time to think of
+something better for them; so the buildings were pulled down so gradually
+that people got used to living thicker on the ground there than in most
+places; therefore it remains the most populous part of London, or perhaps
+of all these islands.  But it is very pleasant there, partly because of
+the splendour of the architecture, which goes further than what you will
+see elsewhere.  However, this crowding, if it may be called so, does not
+go further than a street called Aldgate, a name which perhaps you may
+have heard of.  Beyond that the houses are scattered wide about the
+meadows there, which are very beautiful, especially when you get on to
+the lovely river Lea (where old Isaak Walton used to fish, you know)
+about the places called Stratford and Old Ford, names which of course you
+will not have heard of, though the Romans were busy there once upon a
+time."
+
+Not heard of them! thought I to myself.  How strange! that I who had seen
+the very last remnant of the pleasantness of the meadows by the Lea
+destroyed, should have heard them spoken of with pleasantness come back
+to them in full measure.
+
+Hammond went on: "When you get down to the Thames side you come on the
+Docks, which are works of the nineteenth century, and are still in use,
+although not so thronged as they once were, since we discourage
+centralisation all we can, and we have long ago dropped the pretension to
+be the market of the world.  About these Docks are a good few houses,
+which, however, are not inhabited by many people permanently; I mean,
+those who use them come and go a good deal, the place being too low and
+marshy for pleasant dwelling.  Past the Docks eastward and landward it is
+all flat pasture, once marsh, except for a few gardens, and there are
+very few permanent dwellings there: scarcely anything but a few sheds,
+and cots for the men who come to look after the great herds of cattle
+pasturing there.  But however, what with the beasts and the men, and the
+scattered red-tiled roofs and the big hayricks, it does not make a bad
+holiday to get a quiet pony and ride about there on a sunny afternoon of
+autumn, and look over the river and the craft passing up and down, and on
+to Shooters' Hill and the Kentish uplands, and then turn round to the
+wide green sea of the Essex marsh-land, with the great domed line of the
+sky, and the sun shining down in one flood of peaceful light over the
+long distance.  There is a place called Canning's Town, and further out,
+Silvertown, where the pleasant meadows are at their pleasantest:
+doubtless they were once slums, and wretched enough."
+
+The names grated on my ear, but I could not explain why to him.  So I
+said: "And south of the river, what is it like?"
+
+He said: "You would find it much the same as the land about Hammersmith.
+North, again, the land runs up high, and there is an agreeable and well-
+built town called Hampstead, which fitly ends London on that side.  It
+looks down on the north-western end of the forest you passed through."
+
+I smiled.  "So much for what was once London," said I.  "Now tell me
+about the other towns of the country."
+
+He said: "As to the big murky places which were once, as we know, the
+centres of manufacture, they have, like the brick and mortar desert of
+London, disappeared; only, since they were centres of nothing but
+'manufacture,' and served no purpose but that of the gambling market,
+they have left less signs of their existence than London.  Of course, the
+great change in the use of mechanical force made this an easy matter, and
+some approach to their break-up as centres would probably have taken
+place, even if we had not changed our habits so much: but they being such
+as they were, no sacrifice would have seemed too great a price to pay for
+getting rid of the 'manufacturing districts,' as they used to be called.
+For the rest, whatever coal or mineral we need is brought to grass and
+sent whither it is needed with as little as possible of dirt, confusion,
+and the distressing of quiet people's lives.  One is tempted to believe
+from what one has read of the condition of those districts in the
+nineteenth century, that those who had them under their power worried,
+befouled, and degraded men out of malice prepense: but it was not so;
+like the mis-education of which we were talking just now, it came of
+their dreadful poverty.  They were obliged to put up with everything, and
+even pretend that they liked it; whereas we can now deal with things
+reasonably, and refuse to be saddled with what we do not want."
+
+I confess I was not sorry to cut short with a question his glorifications
+of the age he lived in.  Said I: "How about the smaller towns?  I suppose
+you have swept those away entirely?"
+
+"No, no," said he, "it hasn't gone that way.  On the contrary, there has
+been but little clearance, though much rebuilding, in the smaller towns.
+Their suburbs, indeed, when they had any, have melted away into the
+general country, and space and elbow-room has been got in their centres:
+but there are the towns still with their streets and squares and market-
+places; so that it is by means of these smaller towns that we of to-day
+can get some kind of idea of what the towns of the older world were
+like;--I mean to say at their best."
+
+"Take Oxford, for instance," said I.
+
+"Yes," said he, "I suppose Oxford was beautiful even in the nineteenth
+century.  At present it has the great interest of still preserving a
+great mass of pre-commercial building, and is a very beautiful place, yet
+there are many towns which have become scarcely less beautiful."
+
+Said I: "In passing, may I ask if it is still a place of learning?"
+
+"Still?" said he, smiling.  "Well, it has reverted to some of its best
+traditions; so you may imagine how far it is from its nineteenth-century
+position.  It is real learning, knowledge cultivated for its own sake--the
+Art of Knowledge, in short--which is followed there, not the Commercial
+learning of the past.  Though perhaps you do not know that in the
+nineteenth century Oxford and its less interesting sister Cambridge
+became definitely commercial.  They (and especially Oxford) were the
+breeding places of a peculiar class of parasites, who called themselves
+cultivated people; they were indeed cynical enough, as the so-called
+educated classes of the day generally were; but they affected an
+exaggeration of cynicism in order that they might be thought knowing and
+worldly-wise.  The rich middle classes (they had no relation with the
+working classes) treated them with the kind of contemptuous toleration
+with which a mediaeval baron treated his jester; though it must be said
+that they were by no means so pleasant as the old jesters were, being, in
+fact, _the_ bores of society.  They were laughed at, despised--and paid.
+Which last was what they aimed at."
+
+Dear me! thought I, how apt history is to reverse contemporary judgments.
+Surely only the worst of them were as bad as that.  But I must admit that
+they were mostly prigs, and that they _were_ commercial.  I said aloud,
+though more to myself than to Hammond, "Well, how could they be better
+than the age that made them?"
+
+"True," he said, "but their pretensions were higher."
+
+"Were they?" said I, smiling.
+
+"You drive me from corner to corner," said he, smiling in turn.  "Let me
+say at least that they were a poor sequence to the aspirations of Oxford
+of 'the barbarous Middle Ages.'"
+
+"Yes, that will do," said I.
+
+"Also," said Hammond, "what I have been saying of them is true in the
+main.  But ask on!"
+
+I said: "We have heard about London and the manufacturing districts and
+the ordinary towns: how about the villages?"
+
+Said Hammond: "You must know that toward the end of the nineteenth
+century the villages were almost destroyed, unless where they became mere
+adjuncts to the manufacturing districts, or formed a sort of minor
+manufacturing districts themselves.  Houses were allowed to fall into
+decay and actual ruin; trees were cut down for the sake of the few
+shillings which the poor sticks would fetch; the building became
+inexpressibly mean and hideous.  Labour was scarce; but wages fell
+nevertheless.  All the small country arts of life which once added to the
+little pleasures of country people were lost.  The country produce which
+passed through the hands of the husbandmen never got so far as their
+mouths.  Incredible shabbiness and niggardly pinching reigned over the
+fields and acres which, in spite of the rude and careless husbandry of
+the times, were so kind and bountiful.  Had you any inkling of all this?"
+
+"I have heard that it was so," said I "but what followed?"
+
+"The change," said Hammond, "which in these matters took place very early
+in our epoch, was most strangely rapid.  People flocked into the country
+villages, and, so to say, flung themselves upon the freed land like a
+wild beast upon his prey; and in a very little time the villages of
+England were more populous than they had been since the fourteenth
+century, and were still growing fast.  Of course, this invasion of the
+country was awkward to deal with, and would have created much misery, if
+the folk had still been under the bondage of class monopoly.  But as it
+was, things soon righted themselves.  People found out what they were fit
+for, and gave up attempting to push themselves into occupations in which
+they must needs fail.  The town invaded the country; but the invaders,
+like the warlike invaders of early days, yielded to the influence of
+their surroundings, and became country people; and in their turn, as they
+became more numerous than the townsmen, influenced them also; so that the
+difference between town and country grew less and less; and it was indeed
+this world of the country vivified by the thought and briskness of town-
+bred folk which has produced that happy and leisurely but eager life of
+which you have had a first taste.  Again I say, many blunders were made,
+but we have had time to set them right.  Much was left for the men of my
+earlier life to deal with.  The crude ideas of the first half of the
+twentieth century, when men were still oppressed by the fear of poverty,
+and did not look enough to the present pleasure of ordinary daily life,
+spoilt a great deal of what the commercial age had left us of external
+beauty: and I admit that it was but slowly that men recovered from the
+injuries that they inflicted on themselves even after they became free.
+But slowly as the recovery came, it _did_ come; and the more you see of
+us, the clearer it will be to you that we are happy.  That we live amidst
+beauty without any fear of becoming effeminate; that we have plenty to
+do, and on the whole enjoy doing it.  What more can we ask of life?"
+
+He paused, as if he were seeking for words with which to express his
+thought.  Then he said:
+
+"This is how we stand.  England was once a country of clearings amongst
+the woods and wastes, with a few towns interspersed, which were
+fortresses for the feudal army, markets for the folk, gathering places
+for the craftsmen.  It then became a country of huge and foul workshops
+and fouler gambling-dens, surrounded by an ill-kept, poverty-stricken
+farm, pillaged by the masters of the workshops.  It is now a garden,
+where nothing is wasted and nothing is spoilt, with the necessary
+dwellings, sheds, and workshops scattered up and down the country, all
+trim and neat and pretty.  For, indeed, we should be too much ashamed of
+ourselves if we allowed the making of goods, even on a large scale, to
+carry with it the appearance, even, of desolation and misery.  Why, my
+friend, those housewives we were talking of just now would teach us
+better than that."
+
+Said I: "This side of your change is certainly for the better.  But
+though I shall soon see some of these villages, tell me in a word or two
+what they are like, just to prepare me."
+
+"Perhaps," said he, "you have seen a tolerable picture of these villages
+as they were before the end of the nineteenth century.  Such things
+exist."
+
+"I have seen several of such pictures," said I.
+
+"Well," said Hammond, "our villages are something like the best of such
+places, with the church or mote-house of the neighbours for their chief
+building.  Only note that there are no tokens of poverty about them: no
+tumble-down picturesque; which, to tell you the truth, the artist usually
+availed himself of to veil his incapacity for drawing architecture.  Such
+things do not please us, even when they indicate no misery.  Like the
+mediaevals, we like everything trim and clean, and orderly and bright; as
+people always do when they have any sense of architectural power; because
+then they know that they can have what they want, and they won't stand
+any nonsense from Nature in their dealings with her."
+
+"Besides the villages, are there any scattered country houses?" said I.
+
+"Yes, plenty," said Hammond; "in fact, except in the wastes and forests
+and amongst the sand-hills (like Hindhead in Surrey), it is not easy to
+be out of sight of a house; and where the houses are thinly scattered
+they run large, and are more like the old colleges than ordinary houses
+as they used to be.  That is done for the sake of society, for a good
+many people can dwell in such houses, as the country dwellers are not
+necessarily husbandmen; though they almost all help in such work at
+times.  The life that goes on in these big dwellings in the country is
+very pleasant, especially as some of the most studious men of our time
+live in them, and altogether there is a great variety of mind and mood to
+be found in them which brightens and quickens the society there."
+
+"I am rather surprised," said I, "by all this, for it seems to me that
+after all the country must be tolerably populous."
+
+"Certainly," said he; "the population is pretty much the same as it was
+at the end of the nineteenth century; we have spread it, that is all.  Of
+course, also, we have helped to populate other countries--where we were
+wanted and were called for."
+
+Said I: "One thing, it seems to me, does not go with your word of
+'garden' for the country.  You have spoken of wastes and forests, and I
+myself have seen the beginning of your Middlesex and Essex forest.  Why
+do you keep such things in a garden? and isn't it very wasteful to do
+so?"
+
+"My friend," he said, "we like these pieces of wild nature, and can
+afford them, so we have them; let alone that as to the forests, we need a
+great deal of timber, and suppose that our sons and sons' sons will do
+the like.  As to the land being a garden, I have heard that they used to
+have shrubberies and rockeries in gardens once; and though I might not
+like the artificial ones, I assure you that some of the natural rockeries
+of our garden are worth seeing.  Go north this summer and look at the
+Cumberland and Westmoreland ones,--where, by the way, you will see some
+sheep-feeding, so that they are not so wasteful as you think; not so
+wasteful as forcing-grounds for fruit out of season, _I_ think.  Go and
+have a look at the sheep-walks high up the slopes between Ingleborough
+and Pen-y-gwent, and tell me if you think we _waste_ the land there by
+not covering it with factories for making things that nobody wants, which
+was the chief business of the nineteenth century."
+
+"I will try to go there," said I.
+
+"It won't take much trying," said he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI: CONCERNING GOVERNMENT
+
+
+"Now," said I, "I have come to the point of asking questions which I
+suppose will be dry for you to answer and difficult for you to explain;
+but I have foreseen for some time past that I must ask them, will I 'nill
+I.  What kind of a government have you?  Has republicanism finally
+triumphed? or have you come to a mere dictatorship, which some persons in
+the nineteenth century used to prophesy as the ultimate outcome of
+democracy?  Indeed, this last question does not seem so very
+unreasonable, since you have turned your Parliament House into a dung-
+market.  Or where do you house your present Parliament?"
+
+The old man answered my smile with a hearty laugh, and said: "Well, well,
+dung is not the worst kind of corruption; fertility may come of that,
+whereas mere dearth came from the other kind, of which those walls once
+held the great supporters.  Now, dear guest, let me tell you that our
+present parliament would be hard to house in one place, because the whole
+people is our parliament."
+
+"I don't understand," said I.
+
+"No, I suppose not," said he.  "I must now shock you by telling you that
+we have no longer anything which you, a native of another planet, would
+call a government."
+
+"I am not so much shocked as you might think," said I, "as I know
+something about governments.  But tell me, how do you manage, and how
+have you come to this state of things?"
+
+Said he: "It is true that we have to make some arrangements about our
+affairs, concerning which you can ask presently; and it is also true that
+everybody does not always agree with the details of these arrangements;
+but, further, it is true that a man no more needs an elaborate system of
+government, with its army, navy, and police, to force him to give way to
+the will of the majority of his _equals_, than he wants a similar
+machinery to make him understand that his head and a stone wall cannot
+occupy the same space at the same moment.  Do you want further
+explanation?"
+
+"Well, yes, I do," quoth I.
+
+Old Hammond settled himself in his chair with a look of enjoyment which
+rather alarmed me, and made me dread a scientific disquisition: so I
+sighed and abided.  He said:
+
+"I suppose you know pretty well what the process of government was in the
+bad old times?"
+
+"I am supposed to know," said I.
+
+(Hammond)  What was the government of those days?  Was it really the
+Parliament or any part of it?
+
+(I)  No.
+
+(H.)  Was not the Parliament on the one side a kind of watch-committee
+sitting to see that the interests of the Upper Classes took no hurt; and
+on the other side a sort of blind to delude the people into supposing
+that they had some share in the management of their own affairs?
+
+(I)  History seems to show us this.
+
+(H.)  To what extent did the people manage their own affairs?
+
+(I)  I judge from what I have heard that sometimes they forced the
+Parliament to make a law to legalise some alteration which had already
+taken place.
+
+(H.)  Anything else?
+
+(I)  I think not.  As I am informed, if the people made any attempt to
+deal with the _cause_ of their grievances, the law stepped in and said,
+this is sedition, revolt, or what not, and slew or tortured the
+ringleaders of such attempts.
+
+(H.)  If Parliament was not the government then, nor the people either,
+what was the government?
+
+(I)  Can you tell me?
+
+(H.)  I think we shall not be far wrong if we say that government was the
+Law-Courts, backed up by the executive, which handled the brute force
+that the deluded people allowed them to use for their own purposes; I
+mean the army, navy, and police.
+
+(I)  Reasonable men must needs think you are right.
+
+(H.)  Now as to those Law-Courts.  Were they places of fair dealing
+according to the ideas of the day?  Had a poor man a good chance of
+defending his property and person in them?
+
+(I)  It is a commonplace that even rich men looked upon a law-suit as a
+dire misfortune, even if they gained the case; and as for a poor one--why,
+it was considered a miracle of justice and beneficence if a poor man who
+had once got into the clutches of the law escaped prison or utter ruin.
+
+(H.)  It seems, then, my son, that the government by law-courts and
+police, which was the real government of the nineteenth century, was not
+a great success even to the people of that day, living under a class
+system which proclaimed inequality and poverty as the law of God and the
+bond which held the world together.
+
+(I)  So it seems, indeed.
+
+(H.)  And now that all this is changed, and the "rights of property,"
+which mean the clenching the fist on a piece of goods and crying out to
+the neighbours, You shan't have this!--now that all this has disappeared
+so utterly that it is no longer possible even to jest upon its absurdity,
+is such a Government possible?
+
+(I)  It is impossible.
+
+(H.)  Yes, happily.  But for what other purpose than the protection of
+the rich from the poor, the strong from the weak, did this Government
+exist?
+
+(I.)  I have heard that it was said that their office was to defend their
+own citizens against attack from other countries.
+
+(H.)  It was said; but was anyone expected to believe this?  For
+instance, did the English Government defend the English citizen against
+the French?
+
+(I)  So it was said.
+
+(H.)  Then if the French had invaded England and conquered it, they would
+not have allowed the English workmen to live well?
+
+(I, laughing)  As far as I can make out, the English masters of the
+English workmen saw to that: they took from their workmen as much of
+their livelihood as they dared, because they wanted it for themselves.
+
+(H.)  But if the French had conquered, would they not have taken more
+still from the English workmen?
+
+(I)  I do not think so; for in that case the English workmen would have
+died of starvation; and then the French conquest would have ruined the
+French, just as if the English horses and cattle had died of
+under-feeding.  So that after all, the English _workmen_ would have been
+no worse off for the conquest: their French Masters could have got no
+more from them than their English masters did.
+
+(H.)  This is true; and we may admit that the pretensions of the
+government to defend the poor (_i.e._, the useful) people against other
+countries come to nothing.  But that is but natural; for we have seen
+already that it was the function of government to protect the rich
+against the poor.  But did not the government defend its rich men against
+other nations?
+
+(I)  I do not remember to have heard that the rich needed defence;
+because it is said that even when two nations were at war, the rich men
+of each nation gambled with each other pretty much as usual, and even
+sold each other weapons wherewith to kill their own countrymen.
+
+(H.)  In short, it comes to this, that whereas the so-called government
+of protection of property by means of the law-courts meant destruction of
+wealth, this defence of the citizens of one country against those of
+another country by means of war or the threat of war meant pretty much
+the same thing.
+
+(I)  I cannot deny it.
+
+(H.)  Therefore the government really existed for the destruction of
+wealth?
+
+(I)  So it seems.  And yet--
+
+(H.)  Yet what?
+
+(I)  There were many rich people in those times.
+
+(H.)  You see the consequences of that fact?
+
+(I)  I think I do.  But tell me out what they were.
+
+(H.)  If the government habitually destroyed wealth, the country must
+have been poor?
+
+(I)  Yes, certainly.
+
+(H.)  Yet amidst this poverty the persons for the sake of whom the
+government existed insisted on being rich whatever might happen?
+
+(I)  So it was.
+
+(H.)  What must happen if in a poor country some people insist on being
+rich at the expense of the others?
+
+(I)  Unutterable poverty for the others.  All this misery, then, was
+caused by the destructive government of which we have been speaking?
+
+(H.)  Nay, it would be incorrect to say so.  The government itself was
+but the necessary result of the careless, aimless tyranny of the times;
+it was but the machinery of tyranny.  Now tyranny has come to an end, and
+we no longer need such machinery; we could not possibly use it since we
+are free.  Therefore in your sense of the word we have no government.  Do
+you understand this now?
+
+(I)  Yes, I do.  But I will ask you some more questions as to how you as
+free men manage your affairs.
+
+(H.)  With all my heart.  Ask away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII: CONCERNING THE ARRANGEMENT OF LIFE
+
+
+"Well," I said, "about those 'arrangements' which you spoke of as taking
+the place of government, could you give me any account of them?"
+
+"Neighbour," he said, "although we have simplified our lives a great deal
+from what they were, and have got rid of many conventionalities and many
+sham wants, which used to give our forefathers much trouble, yet our life
+is too complex for me to tell you in detail by means of words how it is
+arranged; you must find that out by living amongst us.  It is true that I
+can better tell you what we don't do, than what we do do."
+
+"Well?" said I.
+
+"This is the way to put it," said he: "We have been living for a hundred
+and fifty years, at least, more or less in our present manner, and a
+tradition or habit of life has been growing on us; and that habit has
+become a habit of acting on the whole for the best.  It is easy for us to
+live without robbing each other.  It would be possible for us to contend
+with and rob each other, but it would be harder for us than refraining
+from strife and robbery.  That is in short the foundation of our life and
+our happiness."
+
+"Whereas in the old days," said I, "it was very hard to live without
+strife and robbery.  That's what you mean, isn't it, by giving me the
+negative side of your good conditions?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "it was so hard, that those who habitually acted fairly
+to their neighbours were celebrated as saints and heroes, and were looked
+up to with the greatest reverence."
+
+"While they were alive?" said I.
+
+"No," said he, "after they were dead."
+
+"But as to these days," I said; "you don't mean to tell me that no one
+ever transgresses this habit of good fellowship?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Hammond, "but when the transgressions occur,
+everybody, transgressors and all, know them for what they are; the errors
+of friends, not the habitual actions of persons driven into enmity
+against society."
+
+"I see," said I; "you mean that you have no 'criminal' classes."
+
+"How could we have them," said he, "since there is no rich class to breed
+enemies against the state by means of the injustice of the state?"
+
+Said I: "I thought that I understood from something that fell from you a
+little while ago that you had abolished civil law.  Is that so,
+literally?"
+
+"It abolished itself, my friend," said he.  "As I said before, the civil
+law-courts were upheld for the defence of private property; for nobody
+ever pretended that it was possible to make people act fairly to each
+other by means of brute force.  Well, private property being abolished,
+all the laws and all the legal 'crimes' which it had manufactured of
+course came to an end.  Thou shalt not steal, had to be translated into,
+Thou shalt work in order to live happily.  Is there any need to enforce
+that commandment by violence?"
+
+"Well," said I, "that is understood, and I agree with it; but how about
+crimes of violence? would not their occurrence (and you admit that they
+occur) make criminal law necessary?"
+
+Said he: "In your sense of the word, we have no criminal law either.  Let
+us look at the matter closer, and see whence crimes of violence spring.
+By far the greater part of these in past days were the result of the laws
+of private property, which forbade the satisfaction of their natural
+desires to all but a privileged few, and of the general visible coercion
+which came of those laws.  All that cause of violent crime is gone.
+Again, many violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the
+sexual passions, which caused overweening jealousy and the like miseries.
+Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at
+the bottom of them was mostly the idea (a law-made idea) of the woman
+being the property of the man, whether he were husband, father, brother,
+or what not.  That idea has of course vanished with private property, as
+well as certain follies about the 'ruin' of women for following their
+natural desires in an illegal way, which of course was a convention
+caused by the laws of private property.
+
+"Another cognate cause of crimes of violence was the family tyranny,
+which was the subject of so many novels and stories of the past, and
+which once more was the result of private property.  Of course that is
+all ended, since families are held together by no bond of coercion, legal
+or social, but by mutual liking and affection, and everybody is free to
+come or go as he or she pleases.  Furthermore, our standards of honour
+and public estimation are very different from the old ones; success in
+besting our neighbours is a road to renown now closed, let us hope for
+ever.  Each man is free to exercise his special faculty to the utmost,
+and every one encourages him in so doing.  So that we have got rid of the
+scowling envy, coupled by the poets with hatred, and surely with good
+reason; heaps of unhappiness and ill-blood were caused by it, which with
+irritable and passionate men--_i.e._, energetic and active men--often led
+to violence."
+
+I laughed, and said: "So that you now withdraw your admission, and say
+that there is no violence amongst you?"
+
+"No," said he, "I withdraw nothing; as I told you, such things will
+happen.  Hot blood will err sometimes.  A man may strike another, and the
+stricken strike back again, and the result be a homicide, to put it at
+the worst.  But what then?  Shall we the neighbours make it worse still?
+Shall we think so poorly of each other as to suppose that the slain man
+calls on us to revenge him, when we know that if he had been maimed, he
+would, when in cold blood and able to weigh all the circumstances, have
+forgiven his manner?  Or will the death of the slayer bring the slain man
+to life again and cure the unhappiness his loss has caused?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "but consider, must not the safety of society be
+safeguarded by some punishment?"
+
+"There, neighbour!" said the old man, with some exultation "You have hit
+the mark.  That _punishment_ of which men used to talk so wisely and act
+so foolishly, what was it but the expression of their fear?  And they had
+need to fear, since they--_i.e._, the rulers of society--were dwelling
+like an armed band in a hostile country.  But we who live amongst our
+friends need neither fear nor punish.  Surely if we, in dread of an
+occasional rare homicide, an occasional rough blow, were solemnly and
+legally to commit homicide and violence, we could only be a society of
+ferocious cowards.  Don't you think so, neighbour?"
+
+"Yes, I do, when I come to think of it from that side," said I.
+
+"Yet you must understand," said the old man, "that when any violence is
+committed, we expect the transgressor to make any atonement possible to
+him, and he himself expects it.  But again, think if the destruction or
+serious injury of a man momentarily overcome by wrath or folly can be any
+atonement to the commonwealth?  Surely it can only be an additional
+injury to it."
+
+Said I: "But suppose the man has a habit of violence,--kills a man a
+year, for instance?"
+
+"Such a thing is unknown," said he.  "In a society where there is no
+punishment to evade, no law to triumph over, remorse will certainly
+follow transgression."
+
+"And lesser outbreaks of violence," said I, "how do you deal with them?
+for hitherto we have been talking of great tragedies, I suppose?"
+
+Said Hammond: "If the ill-doer is not sick or mad (in which case he must
+be restrained till his sickness or madness is cured) it is clear that
+grief and humiliation must follow the ill-deed; and society in general
+will make that pretty clear to the ill-doer if he should chance to be
+dull to it; and again, some kind of atonement will follow,--at the least,
+an open acknowledgement of the grief and humiliation.  Is it so hard to
+say, I ask your pardon, neighbour?--Well, sometimes it is hard--and let
+it be."
+
+"You think that enough?" said I.
+
+"Yes," said he, "and moreover it is all that we _can_ do.  If in addition
+we torture the man, we turn his grief into anger, and the humiliation he
+would otherwise feel for _his_ wrong-doing is swallowed up by a hope of
+revenge for _our_ wrong-doing to him.  He has paid the legal penalty, and
+can 'go and sin again' with comfort.  Shall we commit such a folly, then?
+Remember Jesus had got the legal penalty remitted before he said 'Go and
+sin no more.'  Let alone that in a society of equals you will not find
+any one to play the part of torturer or jailer, though many to act as
+nurse or doctor."
+
+"So," said I, "you consider crime a mere spasmodic disease, which
+requires no body of criminal law to deal with it?"
+
+"Pretty much so," said he; "and since, as I have told you, we are a
+healthy people generally, so we are not likely to be much troubled with
+_this_ disease."
+
+"Well, you have no civil law, and no criminal law.  But have you no laws
+of the market, so to say--no regulation for the exchange of wares? for
+you must exchange, even if you have no property."
+
+Said he: "We have no obvious individual exchange, as you saw this morning
+when you went a-shopping; but of course there are regulations of the
+markets, varying according to the circumstances and guided by general
+custom.  But as these are matters of general assent, which nobody dreams
+of objecting to, so also we have made no provision for enforcing them:
+therefore I don't call them laws.  In law, whether it be criminal or
+civil, execution always follows judgment, and someone must suffer.  When
+you see the judge on his bench, you see through him, as clearly as if he
+were made of glass, the policeman to emprison, and the soldier to slay
+some actual living person.  Such follies would make an agreeable market,
+wouldn't they?"
+
+"Certainly," said I, "that means turning the market into a mere battle-
+field, in which many people must suffer as much as in the battle-field of
+bullet and bayonet.  And from what I have seen I should suppose that your
+marketing, great and little, is carried on in a way that makes it a
+pleasant occupation."
+
+"You are right, neighbour," said he.  "Although there are so many, indeed
+by far the greater number amongst us, who would be unhappy if they were
+not engaged in actually making things, and things which turn out
+beautiful under their hands,--there are many, like the housekeepers I was
+speaking of, whose delight is in administration and organisation, to use
+long-tailed words; I mean people who like keeping things together,
+avoiding waste, seeing that nothing sticks fast uselessly.  Such people
+are thoroughly happy in their business, all the more as they are dealing
+with actual facts, and not merely passing counters round to see what
+share they shall have in the privileged taxation of useful people, which
+was the business of the commercial folk in past days.  Well, what are you
+going to ask me next?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII: CONCERNING POLITICS
+
+
+Said I: "How do you manage with politics?"
+
+Said Hammond, smiling: "I am glad that it is of _me_ that you ask that
+question; I do believe that anybody else would make you explain yourself,
+or try to do so, till you were sickened of asking questions.  Indeed, I
+believe I am the only man in England who would know what you mean; and
+since I know, I will answer your question briefly by saying that we are
+very well off as to politics,--because we have none.  If ever you make a
+book out of this conversation, put this in a chapter by itself, after the
+model of old Horrebow's Snakes in Iceland."
+
+"I will," said I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV: HOW MATTERS ARE MANAGED
+
+
+Said I: "How about your relations with foreign nations?"
+
+"I will not affect not to know what you mean," said he, "but I will tell
+you at once that the whole system of rival and contending nations which
+played so great a part in the 'government' of the world of civilisation
+has disappeared along with the inequality betwixt man and man in
+society."
+
+"Does not that make the world duller?" said I.
+
+"Why?" said the old man.
+
+"The obliteration of national variety," said I.
+
+"Nonsense," he said, somewhat snappishly.  "Cross the water and see.  You
+will find plenty of variety: the landscape, the building, the diet, the
+amusements, all various.  The men and women varying in looks as well as
+in habits of thought; the costume far more various than in the commercial
+period.  How should it add to the variety or dispel the dulness, to
+coerce certain families or tribes, often heterogeneous and jarring with
+one another, into certain artificial and mechanical groups, and call them
+nations, and stimulate their patriotism--_i.e._, their foolish and
+envious prejudices?"
+
+"Well--I don't know how," said I.
+
+"That's right," said Hammond cheerily; "you can easily understand that
+now we are freed from this folly it is obvious to us that by means of
+this very diversity the different strains of blood in the world can be
+serviceable and pleasant to each other, without in the least wanting to
+rob each other: we are all bent on the same enterprise, making the most
+of our lives.  And I must tell you whatever quarrels or misunderstandings
+arise, they very seldom take place between people of different race; and
+consequently since there is less unreason in them, they are the more
+readily appeased."
+
+"Good," said I, "but as to those matters of politics; as to general
+differences of opinion in one and the same community.  Do you assert that
+there are none?"
+
+"No, not at all," said he, somewhat snappishly; "but I do say that
+differences of opinion about real solid things need not, and with us do
+not, crystallise people into parties permanently hostile to one another,
+with different theories as to the build of the universe and the progress
+of time.  Isn't that what politics used to mean?"
+
+"H'm, well," said I, "I am not so sure of that."
+
+Said he: "I take, you, neighbour; they only _pretended_ to this serious
+difference of opinion; for if it had existed they could not have dealt
+together in the ordinary business of life; couldn't have eaten together,
+bought and sold together, gambled together, cheated other people
+together, but must have fought whenever they met: which would not have
+suited them at all.  The game of the masters of politics was to cajole or
+force the public to pay the expense of a luxurious life and exciting
+amusement for a few cliques of ambitious persons: and the _pretence_ of
+serious difference of opinion, belied by every action of their lives, was
+quite good enough for that.  What has all that got to do with us?"
+
+Said I: "Why, nothing, I should hope.  But I fear--In short, I have been
+told that political strife was a necessary result of human nature."
+
+"Human nature!" cried the old boy, impetuously; "what human nature?  The
+human nature of paupers, of slaves, of slave-holders, or the human nature
+of wealthy freemen?  Which?  Come, tell me that!"
+
+"Well," said I, "I suppose there would be a difference according to
+circumstances in people's action about these matters."
+
+"I should think so, indeed," said he.  "At all events, experience shows
+that it is so.  Amongst us, our differences concern matters of business,
+and passing events as to them, and could not divide men permanently.  As
+a rule, the immediate outcome shows which opinion on a given subject is
+the right one; it is a matter of fact, not of speculation.  For instance,
+it is clearly not easy to knock up a political party on the question as
+to whether haymaking in such and such a country-side shall begin this
+week or next, when all men agree that it must at latest begin the week
+after next, and when any man can go down into the fields himself and see
+whether the seeds are ripe enough for the cutting."
+
+Said I: "And you settle these differences, great and small, by the will
+of the majority, I suppose?"
+
+"Certainly," said he; "how else could we settle them?  You see in matters
+which are merely personal which do not affect the welfare of the
+community--how a man shall dress, what he shall eat and drink, what he
+shall write and read, and so forth--there can be no difference of
+opinion, and everybody does as he pleases.  But when the matter is of
+common interest to the whole community, and the doing or not doing
+something affects everybody, the majority must have their way; unless the
+minority were to take up arms and show by force that they were the
+effective or real majority; which, however, in a society of men who are
+free and equal is little likely to happen; because in such a community
+the apparent majority _is_ the real majority, and the others, as I have
+hinted before, know that too well to obstruct from mere pigheadedness;
+especially as they have had plenty of opportunity of putting forward
+their side of the question."
+
+"How is that managed?" said I.
+
+"Well," said he, "let us take one of our units of management, a commune,
+or a ward, or a parish (for we have all three names, indicating little
+real distinction between them now, though time was there was a good
+deal).  In such a district, as you would call it, some neighbours think
+that something ought to be done or undone: a new town-hall built; a
+clearance of inconvenient houses; or say a stone bridge substituted for
+some ugly old iron one,--there you have undoing and doing in one.  Well,
+at the next ordinary meeting of the neighbours, or Mote, as we call it,
+according to the ancient tongue of the times before bureaucracy, a
+neighbour proposes the change, and of course, if everybody agrees, there
+is an end of discussion, except about details.  Equally, if no one backs
+the proposer,--'seconds him,' it used to be called--the matter drops for
+the time being; a thing not likely to happen amongst reasonable men,
+however, as the proposer is sure to have talked it over with others
+before the Mote.  But supposing the affair proposed and seconded, if a
+few of the neighbours disagree to it, if they think that the beastly iron
+bridge will serve a little longer and they don't want to be bothered with
+building a new one just then, they don't count heads that time, but put
+off the formal discussion to the next Mote; and meantime arguments _pro_
+and _con_ are flying about, and some get printed, so that everybody knows
+what is going on; and when the Mote comes together again there is a
+regular discussion and at last a vote by show of hands.  If the division
+is a close one, the question is again put off for further discussion; if
+the division is a wide one, the minority are asked if they will yield to
+the more general opinion, which they often, nay, most commonly do.  If
+they refuse, the question is debated a third time, when, if the minority
+has not perceptibly grown, they always give way; though I believe there
+is some half-forgotten rule by which they might still carry it on
+further; but I say, what always happens is that they are convinced, not
+perhaps that their view is the wrong one, but they cannot persuade or
+force the community to adopt it."
+
+"Very good," said I; "but what happens if the divisions are still
+narrow?"
+
+Said he: "As a matter of principle and according to the rule of such
+cases, the question must then lapse, and the majority, if so narrow, has
+to submit to sitting down under the _status quo_.  But I must tell you
+that in point of fact the minority very seldom enforces this rule, but
+generally yields in a friendly manner."
+
+"But do you know," said I, "that there is something in all this very like
+democracy; and I thought that democracy was considered to be in a
+moribund condition many, many years ago."
+
+The old boy's eyes twinkled.  "I grant you that our methods have that
+drawback.  But what is to be done?  We can't get _anyone_ amongst us to
+complain of his not always having his own way in the teeth of the
+community, when it is clear that _everybody_ cannot have that indulgence.
+What is to be done?"
+
+"Well," said I, "I don't know."
+
+Said he: "The only alternatives to our method that I can conceive of are
+these.  First, that we should choose out, or breed, a class of superior
+persons capable of judging on all matters without consulting the
+neighbours; that, in short, we should get for ourselves what used to be
+called an aristocracy of intellect; or, secondly, that for the purpose of
+safe-guarding the freedom of the individual will, we should revert to a
+system of private property again, and have slaves and slave-holders once
+more.  What do you think of those two expedients?"
+
+"Well," said I, "there is a third possibility--to wit, that every man
+should be quite independent of every other, and that thus the tyranny of
+society should be abolished."
+
+He looked hard at me for a second or two, and then burst out laughing
+very heartily; and I confess that I joined him.  When he recovered
+himself he nodded at me, and said: "Yes, yes, I quite agree with you--and
+so we all do."
+
+"Yes," I said, "and besides, it does not press hardly on the minority:
+for, take this matter of the bridge, no man is obliged to work on it if
+he doesn't agree to its building.  At least, I suppose not."
+
+He smiled, and said: "Shrewdly put; and yet from the point of view of the
+native of another planet.  If the man of the minority does find his
+feelings hurt, doubtless he may relieve them by refusing to help in
+building the bridge.  But, dear neighbour, that is not a very effective
+salve for the wound caused by the 'tyranny of a majority' in our society;
+because all work that is done is either beneficial or hurtful to every
+member of society.  The man is benefited by the bridge-building if it
+turns out a good thing, and hurt by it if it turns out a bad one, whether
+he puts a hand to it or not; and meanwhile he is benefiting the bridge-
+builders by his work, whatever that may be.  In fact, I see no help for
+him except the pleasure of saying 'I told you so' if the bridge-building
+turns out to be a mistake and hurts him; if it benefits him he must
+suffer in silence.  A terrible tyranny our Communism, is it not?  Folk
+used often to be warned against this very unhappiness in times past, when
+for every well-fed, contented person you saw a thousand miserable
+starvelings.  Whereas for us, we grow fat and well-liking on the tyranny;
+a tyranny, to say the truth, not to be made visible by any microscope I
+know.  Don't be afraid, my friend; we are not going to seek for troubles
+by calling our peace and plenty and happiness by ill names whose very
+meaning we have forgotten!"
+
+He sat musing for a little, and then started and said: "Are there any
+more questions, dear guest?  The morning is waning fast amidst my
+garrulity?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV: ON THE LACK OF INCENTIVE TO LABOUR IN A COMMUNIST SOCIETY
+
+
+"Yes," said I.  "I was expecting Dick and Clara to make their appearance
+any moment: but is there time to ask just one or two questions before
+they come?"
+
+"Try it, dear neighbour--try it," said old Hammond.  "For the more you
+ask me the better I am pleased; and at any rate if they do come and find
+me in the middle of an answer, they must sit quiet and pretend to listen
+till I come to an end.  It won't hurt them; they will find it quite
+amusing enough to sit side by side, conscious of their proximity to each
+other."
+
+I smiled, as I was bound to, and said: "Good; I will go on talking
+without noticing them when they come in.  Now, this is what I want to ask
+you about--to wit, how you get people to work when there is no reward of
+labour, and especially how you get them to work strenuously?"
+
+"No reward of labour?" said Hammond, gravely.  "The reward of labour is
+_life_.  Is that not enough?"
+
+"But no reward for especially good work," quoth I.
+
+"Plenty of reward," said he--"the reward of creation.  The wages which
+God gets, as people might have said time agone.  If you are going to ask
+to be paid for the pleasure of creation, which is what excellence in work
+means, the next thing we shall hear of will be a bill sent in for the
+begetting of children."
+
+"Well, but," said I, "the man of the nineteenth century would say there
+is a natural desire towards the procreation of children, and a natural
+desire not to work."
+
+"Yes, yes," said he, "I know the ancient platitude,--wholly untrue;
+indeed, to us quite meaningless.  Fourier, whom all men laughed at,
+understood the matter better."
+
+"Why is it meaningless to you?" said I.
+
+He said: "Because it implies that all work is suffering, and we are so
+far from thinking that, that, as you may have noticed, whereas we are not
+short of wealth, there is a kind of fear growing up amongst us that we
+shall one day be short of work.  It is a pleasure which we are afraid of
+losing, not a pain."
+
+"Yes," said I, "I have noticed that, and I was going to ask you about
+that also.  But in the meantime, what do you positively mean to assert
+about the pleasurableness of work amongst you?"
+
+"This, that _all_ work is now pleasurable; either because of the hope of
+gain in honour and wealth with which the work is done, which causes
+pleasurable excitement, even when the actual work is not pleasant; or
+else because it has grown into a pleasurable _habit_, as in the case with
+what you may call mechanical work; and lastly (and most of our work is of
+this kind) because there is conscious sensuous pleasure in the work
+itself; it is done, that is, by artists."
+
+"I see," said I.  "Can you now tell me how you have come to this happy
+condition?  For, to speak plainly, this change from the conditions of the
+older world seems to me far greater and more important than all the other
+changes you have told me about as to crime, politics, property,
+marriage."
+
+"You are right there," said he.  "Indeed, you may say rather that it is
+this change which makes all the others possible.  What is the object of
+Revolution?  Surely to make people happy.  Revolution having brought its
+foredoomed change about, how can you prevent the counter-revolution from
+setting in except by making people happy?  What! shall we expect peace
+and stability from unhappiness?  The gathering of grapes from thorns and
+figs from thistles is a reasonable expectation compared with that!  And
+happiness without happy daily work is impossible."
+
+"Most obviously true," said I: for I thought the old boy was preaching a
+little.  "But answer my question, as to how you gained this happiness."
+
+"Briefly," said he, "by the absence of artificial coercion, and the
+freedom for every man to do what he can do best, joined to the knowledge
+of what productions of labour we really wanted.  I must admit that this
+knowledge we reached slowly and painfully."
+
+"Go on," said I, "give me more detail; explain more fully.  For this
+subject interests me intensely."
+
+"Yes, I will," said he; "but in order to do so I must weary you by
+talking a little about the past.  Contrast is necessary for this
+explanation.  Do you mind?"
+
+"No, no," said I.
+
+Said he, settling himself in his chair again for a long talk: "It is
+clear from all that we hear and read, that in the last age of
+civilisation men had got into a vicious circle in the matter of
+production of wares.  They had reached a wonderful facility of
+production, and in order to make the most of that facility they had
+gradually created (or allowed to grow, rather) a most elaborate system of
+buying and selling, which has been called the World-Market; and that
+World-Market, once set a-going, forced them to go on making more and more
+of these wares, whether they needed them or not.  So that while (of
+course) they could not free themselves from the toil of making real
+necessaries, they created in a never-ending series sham or artificial
+necessaries, which became, under the iron rule of the aforesaid World-
+Market, of equal importance to them with the real necessaries which
+supported life.  By all this they burdened themselves with a prodigious
+mass of work merely for the sake of keeping their wretched system going."
+
+"Yes--and then?" said I.
+
+"Why, then, since they had forced themselves to stagger along under this
+horrible burden of unnecessary production, it became impossible for them
+to look upon labour and its results from any other point of view than
+one--to wit, the ceaseless endeavour to expend the least possible amount
+of labour on any article made, and yet at the same time to make as many
+articles as possible.  To this 'cheapening of production', as it was
+called, everything was sacrificed: the happiness of the workman at his
+work, nay, his most elementary comfort and bare health, his food, his
+clothes, his dwelling, his leisure, his amusement, his education--his
+life, in short--did not weigh a grain of sand in the balance against this
+dire necessity of 'cheap production' of things, a great part of which
+were not worth producing at all.  Nay, we are told, and we must believe
+it, so overwhelming is the evidence, though many of our people scarcely
+_can_ believe it, that even rich and powerful men, the masters of the
+poor devils aforesaid, submitted to live amidst sights and sounds and
+smells which it is in the very nature of man to abhor and flee from, in
+order that their riches might bolster up this supreme folly.  The whole
+community, in fact, was cast into the jaws of this ravening monster, 'the
+cheap production' forced upon it by the World-Market."
+
+"Dear me!" said I.  "But what happened?  Did not their cleverness and
+facility in production master this chaos of misery at last?  Couldn't
+they catch up with the World-Market, and then set to work to devise means
+for relieving themselves from this fearful task of extra labour?"
+
+He smiled bitterly.  "Did they even try to?" said he.  "I am not sure.
+You know that according to the old saw the beetle gets used to living in
+dung; and these people, whether they found the dung sweet or not,
+certainly lived in it."
+
+His estimate of the life of the nineteenth century made me catch my
+breath a little; and I said feebly, "But the labour-saving machines?"
+
+"Heyday!" quoth he.  "What's that you are saying? the labour-saving
+machines?  Yes, they were made to 'save labour' (or, to speak more
+plainly, the lives of men) on one piece of work in order that it might be
+expended--I will say wasted--on another, probably useless, piece of work.
+Friend, all their devices for cheapening labour simply resulted in
+increasing the burden of labour.  The appetite of the World-Market grew
+with what it fed on: the countries within the ring of 'civilisation'
+(that is, organised misery) were glutted with the abortions of the
+market, and force and fraud were used unsparingly to 'open up' countries
+_outside_ that pale.  This process of 'opening up' is a strange one to
+those who have read the professions of the men of that period and do not
+understand their practice; and perhaps shows us at its worst the great
+vice of the nineteenth century, the use of hypocrisy and cant to evade
+the responsibility of vicarious ferocity.  When the civilised
+World-Market coveted a country not yet in its clutches, some transparent
+pretext was found--the suppression of a slavery different from and not so
+cruel as that of commerce; the pushing of a religion no longer believed
+in by its promoters; the 'rescue' of some desperado or homicidal madman
+whose misdeeds had got him into trouble amongst the natives of the
+'barbarous' country--any stick, in short, which would beat the dog at
+all.  Then some bold, unprincipled, ignorant adventurer was found (no
+difficult task in the days of competition), and he was bribed to 'create
+a market' by breaking up whatever traditional society there might be in
+the doomed country, and by destroying whatever leisure or pleasure he
+found there.  He forced wares on the natives which they did not want, and
+took their natural products in 'exchange,' as this form of robbery was
+called, and thereby he 'created new wants,' to supply which (that is, to
+be allowed to live by their new masters) the hapless, helpless people had
+to sell themselves into the slavery of hopeless toil so that they might
+have something wherewith to purchase the nullities of 'civilisation.'
+
+"Ah," said the old man, pointing to the Museum, "I have read books and
+papers in there, telling strange stories indeed of the dealings of
+civilisation (or organised misery) with 'non-civilisation'; from the time
+when the British Government deliberately sent blankets infected with
+small-pox as choice gifts to inconvenient tribes of Red-skins, to the
+time when Africa was infested by a man named Stanley, who--"
+
+"Excuse me," said I, "but as you know, time presses; and I want to keep
+our question on the straightest line possible; and I want at once to ask
+this about these wares made for the World-Market--how about their
+quality; these people who were so clever about making goods, I suppose
+they made them well?"
+
+"Quality!" said the old man crustily, for he was rather peevish at being
+cut short in his story; "how could they possibly attend to such trifles
+as the quality of the wares they sold?  The best of them were of a lowish
+average, the worst were transparent make-shifts for the things asked for,
+which nobody would have put up with if they could have got anything else.
+It was a current jest of the time that the wares were made to sell and
+not to use; a jest which you, as coming from another planet, may
+understand, but which our folk could not."
+
+Said I: "What! did they make nothing well?"
+
+"Why, yes," said he, "there was one class of goods which they did make
+thoroughly well, and that was the class of machines which were used for
+making things.  These were usually quite perfect pieces of workmanship,
+admirably adapted to the end in view.  So that it may be fairly said that
+the great achievement of the nineteenth century was the making of
+machines which were wonders of invention, skill, and patience, and which
+were used for the production of measureless quantities of worthless make-
+shifts.  In truth, the owners of the machines did not consider anything
+which they made as wares, but simply as means for the enrichment of
+themselves.  Of course the only admitted test of utility in wares was the
+finding of buyers for them--wise men or fools, as it might chance."
+
+"And people put up with this?" said I.
+
+"For a time," said he.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"And then the overturn," said the old man, smiling, "and the nineteenth
+century saw itself as a man who has lost his clothes whilst bathing, and
+has to walk naked through the town."
+
+"You are very bitter about that unlucky nineteenth century," said I.
+
+"Naturally," said he, "since I know so much about it."
+
+He was silent a little, and then said: "There are traditions--nay, real
+histories--in our family about it: my grandfather was one of its victims.
+If you know something about it, you will understand what he suffered when
+I tell you that he was in those days a genuine artist, a man of genius,
+and a revolutionist."
+
+"I think I do understand," said I: "but now, as it seems, you have
+reversed all this?"
+
+"Pretty much so," said he.  "The wares which we make are made because
+they are needed: men make for their neighbours' use as if they were
+making for themselves, not for a vague market of which they know nothing,
+and over which they have no control: as there is no buying and selling,
+it would be mere insanity to make goods on the chance of their being
+wanted; for there is no longer anyone who can be compelled to buy them.
+So that whatever is made is good, and thoroughly fit for its purpose.
+Nothing can be made except for genuine use; therefore no inferior goods
+are made.  Moreover, as aforesaid, we have now found out what we want, so
+we make no more than we want; and as we are not driven to make a vast
+quantity of useless things we have time and resources enough to consider
+our pleasure in making them.  All work which would be irksome to do by
+hand is done by immensely improved machinery; and in all work which it is
+a pleasure to do by hand machinery is done without.  There is no
+difficulty in finding work which suits the special turn of mind of
+everybody; so that no man is sacrificed to the wants of another.  From
+time to time, when we have found out that some piece of work was too
+disagreeable or troublesome, we have given it up and done altogether
+without the thing produced by it.  Now, surely you can see that under
+these circumstances all the work that we do is an exercise of the mind
+and body more or less pleasant to be done: so that instead of avoiding
+work everybody seeks it: and, since people have got defter in doing the
+work generation after generation, it has become so easy to do, that it
+seems as if there were less done, though probably more is produced.  I
+suppose this explains that fear, which I hinted at just now, of a
+possible scarcity in work, which perhaps you have already noticed, and
+which is a feeling on the increase, and has been for a score of years."
+
+"But do you think," said I, "that there is any fear of a work-famine
+amongst you?"
+
+"No, I do not," said he, "and I will tell why; it is each man's business
+to make his own work pleasanter and pleasanter, which of course tends
+towards raising the standard of excellence, as no man enjoys turning out
+work which is not a credit to him, and also to greater deliberation in
+turning it out; and there is such a vast number of things which can be
+treated as works of art, that this alone gives employment to a host of
+deft people.  Again, if art be inexhaustible, so is science also; and
+though it is no longer the only innocent occupation which is thought
+worth an intelligent man spending his time upon, as it once was, yet
+there are, and I suppose will be, many people who are excited by its
+conquest of difficulties, and care for it more than for anything else.
+Again, as more and more of pleasure is imported into work, I think we
+shall take up kinds of work which produce desirable wares, but which we
+gave up because we could not carry them on pleasantly.  Moreover, I think
+that it is only in parts of Europe which are more advanced than the rest
+of the world that you will hear this talk of the fear of a work-famine.
+Those lands which were once the colonies of Great Britain, for instance,
+and especially America--that part of it, above all, which was once the
+United states--are now and will be for a long while a great resource to
+us.  For these lands, and, I say, especially the northern parts of
+America, suffered so terribly from the full force of the last days of
+civilisation, and became such horrible places to live in, that they are
+now very backward in all that makes life pleasant.  Indeed, one may say
+that for nearly a hundred years the people of the northern parts of
+America have been engaged in gradually making a dwelling-place out of a
+stinking dust-heap; and there is still a great deal to do, especially as
+the country is so big."
+
+"Well," said I, "I am exceedingly glad to think that you have such a
+prospect of happiness before you.  But I should like to ask a few more
+questions, and then I have done for to-day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI: DINNER IN THE HALL OF THE BLOOMSBURY MARKET
+
+
+As I spoke, I heard footsteps near the door; the latch yielded, and in
+came our two lovers, looking so handsome that one had no feeling of shame
+in looking on at their little-concealed love-making; for indeed it seemed
+as if all the world must be in love with them.  As for old Hammond, he
+looked on them like an artist who has just painted a picture nearly as
+well as he thought he could when he began it, and was perfectly happy.  He
+said:
+
+"Sit down, sit down, young folk, and don't make a noise.  Our guest here
+has still some questions to ask me."
+
+"Well, I should suppose so," said Dick; "you have only been three hours
+and a half together; and it isn't to be hoped that the history of two
+centuries could be told in three hours and a half: let alone that, for
+all I know, you may have been wandering into the realms of geography and
+craftsmanship."
+
+"As to noise, my dear kinsman," said Clara, "you will very soon be
+disturbed by the noise of the dinner-bell, which I should think will be
+very pleasant music to our guest, who breakfasted early, it seems, and
+probably had a tiring day yesterday."
+
+I said: "Well, since you have spoken the word, I begin to feel that it is
+so; but I have been feeding myself with wonder this long time past:
+really, it's quite true," quoth I, as I saw her smile, O so prettily!  But
+just then from some tower high up in the air came the sound of silvery
+chimes playing a sweet clear tune, that sounded to my unaccustomed ears
+like the song of the first blackbird in the spring, and called a rush of
+memories to my mind, some of bad times, some of good, but all sweetened
+now into mere pleasure.
+
+"No more questions now before dinner," said Clara; and she took my hand
+as an affectionate child would, and led me out of the room and down
+stairs into the forecourt of the Museum, leaving the two Hammonds to
+follow as they pleased.
+
+We went into the market-place which I had been in before, a thinnish
+stream of elegantly {1} dressed people going in along with us.  We turned
+into the cloister and came to a richly moulded and carved doorway, where
+a very pretty dark-haired young girl gave us each a beautiful bunch of
+summer flowers, and we entered a hall much bigger than that of the
+Hammersmith Guest House, more elaborate in its architecture and perhaps
+more beautiful.  I found it difficult to keep my eyes off the
+wall-pictures (for I thought it bad manners to stare at Clara all the
+time, though she was quite worth it).  I saw at a glance that their
+subjects were taken from queer old-world myths and imaginations which in
+yesterday's world only about half a dozen people in the country knew
+anything about; and when the two Hammonds sat down opposite to us, I said
+to the old man, pointing to the frieze:
+
+"How strange to see such subjects here!"
+
+"Why?" said he.  "I don't see why you should be surprised; everybody
+knows the tales; and they are graceful and pleasant subjects, not too
+tragic for a place where people mostly eat and drink and amuse
+themselves, and yet full of incident."
+
+I smiled, and said: "Well, I scarcely expected to find record of the
+Seven Swans and the King of the Golden Mountain and Faithful Henry, and
+such curious pleasant imaginations as Jacob Grimm got together from the
+childhood of the world, barely lingering even in his time: I should have
+thought you would have forgotten such childishness by this time."
+
+The old man smiled, and said nothing; but Dick turned rather red, and
+broke out:
+
+"What _do_ you mean, guest?  I think them very beautiful, I mean not only
+the pictures, but the stories; and when we were children we used to
+imagine them going on in every wood-end, by the bight of every stream:
+every house in the fields was the Fairyland King's House to us.  Don't
+you remember, Clara?"
+
+"Yes," she said; and it seemed to me as if a slight cloud came over her
+fair face.  I was going to speak to her on the subject, when the pretty
+waitresses came to us smiling, and chattering sweetly like reed warblers
+by the river side, and fell to giving us our dinner.  As to this, as at
+our breakfast, everything was cooked and served with a daintiness which
+showed that those who had prepared it were interested in it; but there
+was no excess either of quantity or of gourmandise; everything was
+simple, though so excellent of its kind; and it was made clear to us that
+this was no feast, only an ordinary meal.  The glass, crockery, and plate
+were very beautiful to my eyes, used to the study of mediaeval art; but a
+nineteenth-century club-haunter would, I daresay, have found them rough
+and lacking in finish; the crockery being lead-glazed pot-ware, though
+beautifully ornamented; the only porcelain being here and there a piece
+of old oriental ware.  The glass, again, though elegant and quaint, and
+very varied in form, was somewhat bubbled and hornier in texture than the
+commercial articles of the nineteenth century.  The furniture and general
+fittings of the hall were much of a piece with the table-gear, beautiful
+in form and highly ornamented, but without the commercial "finish" of the
+joiners and cabinet-makers of our time.  Withal, there was a total
+absence of what the nineteenth century calls "comfort"--that is, stuffy
+inconvenience; so that, even apart from the delightful excitement of the
+day, I had never eaten my dinner so pleasantly before.
+
+When we had done eating, and were sitting a little while, with a bottle
+of very good Bordeaux wine before us, Clara came back to the question of
+the subject-matter of the pictures, as though it had troubled her.
+
+She looked up at them, and said: "How is it that though we are so
+interested with our life for the most part, yet when people take to
+writing poems or painting pictures they seldom deal with our modern life,
+or if they do, take good care to make their poems or pictures unlike that
+life?  Are we not good enough to paint ourselves?  How is it that we find
+the dreadful times of the past so interesting to us--in pictures and
+poetry?"
+
+Old Hammond smiled.  "It always was so, and I suppose always will be,"
+said he, "however it may be explained.  It is true that in the nineteenth
+century, when there was so little art and so much talk about it, there
+was a theory that art and imaginative literature ought to deal with
+contemporary life; but they never did so; for, if there was any pretence
+of it, the author always took care (as Clara hinted just now) to
+disguise, or exaggerate, or idealise, and in some way or another make it
+strange; so that, for all the verisimilitude there was, he might just as
+well have dealt with the times of the Pharaohs."
+
+"Well," said Dick, "surely it is but natural to like these things
+strange; just as when we were children, as I said just now, we used to
+pretend to be so-and-so in such-and-such a place.  That's what these
+pictures and poems do; and why shouldn't they?"
+
+"Thou hast hit it, Dick," quoth old Hammond; "it is the child-like part
+of us that produces works of imagination.  When we are children time
+passes so slow with us that we seem to have time for everything."
+
+He sighed, and then smiled and said: "At least let us rejoice that we
+have got back our childhood again.  I drink to the days that are!"
+
+"Second childhood," said I in a low voice, and then blushed at my double
+rudeness, and hoped that he hadn't heard.  But he had, and turned to me
+smiling, and said: "Yes, why not?  And for my part, I hope it may last
+long; and that the world's next period of wise and unhappy manhood, if
+that should happen, will speedily lead us to a third childhood: if indeed
+this age be not our third.  Meantime, my friend, you must know that we
+are too happy, both individually and collectively, to trouble ourselves
+about what is to come hereafter."
+
+"Well, for my part," said Clara, "I wish we were interesting enough to be
+written or painted about."
+
+Dick answered her with some lover's speech, impossible to be written
+down, and then we sat quiet a little.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII: HOW THE CHANGE CAME
+
+
+Dick broke the silence at last, saying: "Guest, forgive us for a little
+after-dinner dulness.  What would you like to do?  Shall we have out
+Greylocks and trot back to Hammersmith? or will you come with us and hear
+some Welsh folk sing in a hall close by here? or would you like presently
+to come with me into the City and see some really fine building? or--what
+shall it be?"
+
+"Well," said I, "as I am a stranger, I must let you choose for me."
+
+In point of fact, I did not by any means want to be 'amused' just then;
+and also I rather felt as if the old man, with his knowledge of past
+times, and even a kind of inverted sympathy for them caused by his active
+hatred of them, was as it were a blanket for me against the cold of this
+very new world, where I was, so to say, stripped bare of every habitual
+thought and way of acting; and I did not want to leave him too soon.  He
+came to my rescue at once, and said--
+
+"Wait a bit, Dick; there is someone else to be consulted besides you and
+the guest here, and that is I.  I am not going to lose the pleasure of
+his company just now, especially as I know he has something else to ask
+me.  So go to your Welshmen, by all means; but first of all bring us
+another bottle of wine to this nook, and then be off as soon as you like;
+and come again and fetch our friend to go westward, but not too soon."
+
+Dick nodded smilingly, and the old man and I were soon alone in the great
+hall, the afternoon sun gleaming on the red wine in our tall
+quaint-shaped glasses.  Then said Hammond:
+
+"Does anything especially puzzle you about our way of living, now you
+have heard a good deal and seen a little of it?"
+
+Said I: "I think what puzzles me most is how it all came about."
+
+"It well may," said he, "so great as the change is.  It would be
+difficult indeed to tell you the whole story, perhaps impossible:
+knowledge, discontent, treachery, disappointment, ruin, misery,
+despair--those who worked for the change because they could see further
+than other people went through all these phases of suffering; and
+doubtless all the time the most of men looked on, not knowing what was
+doing, thinking it all a matter of course, like the rising and setting of
+the sun--and indeed it was so."
+
+"Tell me one thing, if you can," said I.  "Did the change, the
+'revolution' it used to be called, come peacefully?"
+
+"Peacefully?" said he; "what peace was there amongst those poor confused
+wretches of the nineteenth century?  It was war from beginning to end:
+bitter war, till hope and pleasure put an end to it."
+
+"Do you mean actual fighting with weapons?" said I, "or the strikes and
+lock-outs and starvation of which we have heard?"
+
+"Both, both," he said.  "As a matter of fact, the history of the terrible
+period of transition from commercial slavery to freedom may thus be
+summarised.  When the hope of realising a communal condition of life for
+all men arose, quite late in the nineteenth century, the power of the
+middle classes, the then tyrants of society, was so enormous and
+crushing, that to almost all men, even those who had, you may say despite
+themselves, despite their reason and judgment, conceived such hopes, it
+seemed a dream.  So much was this the case that some of those more
+enlightened men who were then called Socialists, although they well knew,
+and even stated in public, that the only reasonable condition of Society
+was that of pure Communism (such as you now see around you), yet shrunk
+from what seemed to them the barren task of preaching the realisation of
+a happy dream.  Looking back now, we can see that the great motive-power
+of the change was a longing for freedom and equality, akin if you please
+to the unreasonable passion of the lover; a sickness of heart that
+rejected with loathing the aimless solitary life of the well-to-do
+educated man of that time: phrases, my dear friend, which have lost their
+meaning to us of the present day; so far removed we are from the dreadful
+facts which they represent.
+
+"Well, these men, though conscious of this feeling, had no faith in it,
+as a means of bringing about the change.  Nor was that wonderful: for
+looking around them they saw the huge mass of the oppressed classes too
+much burdened with the misery of their lives, and too much overwhelmed by
+the selfishness of misery, to be able to form a conception of any escape
+from it except by the ordinary way prescribed by the system of slavery
+under which they lived; which was nothing more than a remote chance of
+climbing out of the oppressed into the oppressing class.
+
+"Therefore, though they knew that the only reasonable aim for those who
+would better the world was a condition of equality; in their impatience
+and despair they managed to convince themselves that if they could by
+hook or by crook get the machinery of production and the management of
+property so altered that the 'lower classes' (so the horrible word ran)
+might have their slavery somewhat ameliorated, they would be ready to fit
+into this machinery, and would use it for bettering their condition still
+more and still more, until at last the result would be a practical
+equality (they were very fond of using the word 'practical'), because
+'the rich' would be forced to pay so much for keeping 'the poor' in a
+tolerable condition that the condition of riches would become no longer
+valuable and would gradually die out.  Do you follow me?"
+
+"Partly," said I.  "Go on."
+
+Said old Hammond: "Well, since you follow me, you will see that as a
+theory this was not altogether unreasonable; but 'practically,' it turned
+out a failure."
+
+"How so?" said I.
+
+"Well, don't you see," said he, "because it involved the making of a
+machinery by those who didn't know what they wanted the machines to do.
+So far as the masses of the oppressed class furthered this scheme of
+improvement, they did it to get themselves improved slave-rations--as
+many of them as could.  And if those classes had really been incapable of
+being touched by that instinct which produced the passion for freedom and
+equality aforesaid, what would have happened, I think, would have been
+this: that a certain part of the working classes would have been so far
+improved in condition that they would have approached the condition of
+the middling rich men; but below them would have been a great class of
+most miserable slaves, whose slavery would have been far more hopeless
+than the older class-slavery had been."
+
+"What stood in the way of this?" said I.
+
+"Why, of course," said he, "just that instinct for freedom aforesaid.  It
+is true that the slave-class could not conceive the happiness of a free
+life.  Yet they grew to understand (and very speedily too) that they were
+oppressed by their masters, and they assumed, you see how justly, that
+they could do without them, though perhaps they scarce knew how; so that
+it came to this, that though they could not look forward to the happiness
+or peace of the freeman, they did at least look forward to the war which
+a vague hope told them would bring that peace about."
+
+"Could you tell me rather more closely what actually took place?" said I;
+for I thought _him_ rather vague here.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I can.  That machinery of life for the use of people who
+didn't know what they wanted of it, and which was known at the time as
+State Socialism, was partly put in motion, though in a very piecemeal
+way.  But it did not work smoothly; it was, of course, resisted at every
+turn by the capitalists; and no wonder, for it tended more and more to
+upset the commercial system I have told you of; without providing
+anything really effective in its place.  The result was growing
+confusion, great suffering amongst the working classes, and, as a
+consequence, great discontent.  For a long time matters went on like
+this.  The power of the upper classes had lessened, as their command over
+wealth lessened, and they could not carry things wholly by the high hand
+as they had been used to in earlier days.  So far the State Socialists
+were justified by the result.  On the other hand, the working classes
+were ill-organised, and growing poorer in reality, in spite of the gains
+(also real in the long run) which they had forced from the masters.  Thus
+matters hung in the balance; the masters could not reduce their slaves to
+complete subjection, though they put down some feeble and partial riots
+easily enough.  The workers forced their masters to grant them
+ameliorations, real or imaginary, of their condition, but could not force
+freedom from them.  At last came a great crash.  To explain this you must
+understand that very great progress had been made amongst the workers,
+though as before said but little in the direction of improved
+livelihood."
+
+I played the innocent and said: "In what direction could they improve, if
+not in livelihood?"
+
+Said he: "In the power to bring about a state of things in which
+livelihood would be full, and easy to gain.  They had at last learned how
+to combine after a long period of mistakes and disasters.  The workmen
+had now a regular organization in the struggle against their masters, a
+struggle which for more than half a century had been accepted as an
+inevitable part of the conditions of the modern system of labour and
+production.  This combination had now taken the form of a federation of
+all or almost all the recognised wage-paid employments, and it was by its
+means that those betterments of the conditions of the workmen had been
+forced from the masters: and though they were not seldom mixed up with
+the rioting that happened, especially in the earlier days of their
+organization, it by no means formed an essential part of their tactics;
+indeed at the time I am now speaking of they had got to be so strong that
+most commonly the mere threat of a 'strike' was enough to gain any minor
+point: because they had given up the foolish tactics of the ancient
+trades unions of calling out of work a part only of the workers of such
+and such an industry, and supporting them while out of work on the labour
+of those that remained in.  By this time they had a biggish fund of money
+for the support of strikes, and could stop a certain industry altogether
+for a time if they so determined."
+
+Said I: "Was there not a serious danger of such moneys being misused--of
+jobbery, in fact?"
+
+Old Hammond wriggled uneasily on his seat, and said:
+
+"Though all this happened so long ago, I still feel the pain of mere
+shame when I have to tell you that it was more than a danger: that such
+rascality often happened; indeed more than once the whole combination
+seemed dropping to pieces because of it: but at the time of which I am
+telling, things looked so threatening, and to the workmen at least the
+necessity of their dealing with the fast-gathering trouble which the
+labour-struggle had brought about, was so clear, that the conditions of
+the times had begot a deep seriousness amongst all reasonable people; a
+determination which put aside all non-essentials, and which to thinking
+men was ominous of the swiftly-approaching change: such an element was
+too dangerous for mere traitors and self-seekers, and one by one they
+were thrust out and mostly joined the declared reactionaries."
+
+"How about those ameliorations," said I; "what were they? or rather of
+what nature?"
+
+Said he: "Some of them, and these of the most practical importance to the
+mens' livelihood, were yielded by the masters by direct compulsion on the
+part of the men; the new conditions of labour so gained were indeed only
+customary, enforced by no law: but, once established, the masters durst
+not attempt to withdraw them in face of the growing power of the combined
+workers.  Some again were steps on the path of 'State Socialism'; the
+most important of which can be speedily summed up.  At the end of the
+nineteenth century the cry arose for compelling the masters to employ
+their men a less number of hours in the day: this cry gathered volume
+quickly, and the masters had to yield to it.  But it was, of course,
+clear that unless this meant a higher price for work per hour, it would
+be a mere nullity, and that the masters, unless forced, would reduce it
+to that.  Therefore after a long struggle another law was passed fixing a
+minimum price for labour in the most important industries; which again
+had to be supplemented by a law fixing the maximum price on the chief
+wares then considered necessary for a workman's life."
+
+"You were getting perilously near to the late Roman poor-rates," said I,
+smiling, "and the doling out of bread to the proletariat."
+
+"So many said at the time," said the old man drily; "and it has long been
+a commonplace that that slough awaits State Socialism in the end, if it
+gets to the end, which as you know it did not with us.  However it went
+further than this minimum and maximum business, which by the by we can
+now see was necessary.  The government now found it imperative on them to
+meet the outcry of the master class at the approaching destruction of
+Commerce (as desirable, had they known it, as the extinction of the
+cholera, which has since happily taken place).  And they were forced to
+meet it by a measure hostile to the masters, the establishment of
+government factories for the production of necessary wares, and markets
+for their sale.  These measures taken altogether did do something: they
+were in fact of the nature of regulations made by the commander of a
+beleaguered city.  But of course to the privileged classes it seemed as
+if the end of the world were come when such laws were enacted.
+
+"Nor was that altogether without a warrant: the spread of communistic
+theories, and the partial practice of State Socialism had at first
+disturbed, and at last almost paralysed the marvellous system of commerce
+under which the old world had lived so feverishly, and had produced for
+some few a life of gambler's pleasure, and for many, or most, a life of
+mere misery: over and over again came 'bad times' as they were called,
+and indeed they were bad enough for the wage-slaves.  The year 1952 was
+one of the worst of these times; the workmen suffered dreadfully: the
+partial, inefficient government factories, which were terribly jobbed,
+all but broke down, and a vast part of the population had for the time
+being to be fed on undisguised "charity" as it was called.
+
+"The Combined Workers watched the situation with mingled hope and
+anxiety.  They had already formulated their general demands; but now by a
+solemn and universal vote of the whole of their federated societies, they
+insisted on the first step being taken toward carrying out their demands:
+this step would have led directly to handing over the management of the
+whole natural resources of the country, together with the machinery for
+using them into the power of the Combined Workers, and the reduction of
+the privileged classes into the position of pensioners obviously
+dependent on the pleasure of the workers.  The 'Resolution,' as it was
+called, which was widely published in the newspapers of the day, was in
+fact a declaration of war, and was so accepted by the master class.  They
+began henceforward to prepare for a firm stand against the 'brutal and
+ferocious communism of the day,' as they phrased it.  And as they were in
+many ways still very powerful, or seemed so to be; they still hoped by
+means of brute force to regain some of what they had lost, and perhaps in
+the end the whole of it.  It was said amongst them on all hands that it
+had been a great mistake of the various governments not to have resisted
+sooner; and the liberals and radicals (the name as perhaps you may know
+of the more democratically inclined part of the ruling classes) were much
+blamed for having led the world to this pass by their mis-timed pedantry
+and foolish sentimentality: and one Gladstone, or Gledstein (probably,
+judging by this name, of Scandinavian descent), a notable politician of
+the nineteenth century, was especially singled out for reprobation in
+this respect.  I need scarcely point out to you the absurdity of all
+this.  But terrible tragedy lay hidden behind this grinning through a
+horse-collar of the reactionary party.  'The insatiable greed of the
+lower classes must be repressed'--'The people must be taught a
+lesson'--these were the sacramental phrases current amongst the
+reactionists, and ominous enough they were."
+
+The old man stopped to look keenly at my attentive and wondering face;
+and then said:
+
+"I know, dear guest, that I have been using words and phrases which few
+people amongst us could understand without long and laborious
+explanation; and not even then perhaps.  But since you have not yet gone
+to sleep, and since I am speaking to you as to a being from another
+planet, I may venture to ask you if you have followed me thus far?"
+
+"O yes," said I, "I quite understand: pray go on; a great deal of what
+you have been saying was common place with us--when--when--"
+
+"Yes," said he gravely, "when you were dwelling in the other planet.
+Well, now for the crash aforesaid.
+
+"On some comparatively trifling occasion a great meeting was summoned by
+the workmen leaders to meet in Trafalgar Square (about the right to meet
+in which place there had for years and years been bickering).  The civic
+bourgeois guard (called the police) attacked the said meeting with
+bludgeons, according to their custom; many people were hurt in the
+_melee_, of whom five in all died, either trampled to death on the spot,
+or from the effects of their cudgelling; the meeting was scattered, and
+some hundred of prisoners cast into gaol.  A similar meeting had been
+treated in the same way a few days before at a place called Manchester,
+which has now disappeared.  Thus the 'lesson' began.  The whole country
+was thrown into a ferment by this; meetings were held which attempted
+some rough organisation for the holding of another meeting to retort on
+the authorities.  A huge crowd assembled in Trafalgar Square and the
+neighbourhood (then a place of crowded streets), and was too big for the
+bludgeon-armed police to cope with; there was a good deal of dry-blow
+fighting; three or four of the people were killed, and half a score of
+policemen were crushed to death in the throng, and the rest got away as
+they could.  This was a victory for the people as far as it went.  The
+next day all London (remember what it was in those days) was in a state
+of turmoil.  Many of the rich fled into the country; the executive got
+together soldiery, but did not dare to use them; and the police could not
+be massed in any one place, because riots or threats of riots were
+everywhere.  But in Manchester, where the people were not so courageous
+or not so desperate as in London, several of the popular leaders were
+arrested.  In London a convention of leaders was got together from the
+Federation of Combined Workmen, and sat under the old revolutionary name
+of the Committee of Public Safety; but as they had no drilled and armed
+body of men to direct, they attempted no aggressive measures, but only
+placarded the walls with somewhat vague appeals to the workmen not to
+allow themselves to be trampled upon.  However, they called a meeting in
+Trafalgar Square for the day fortnight of the last-mentioned skirmish.
+
+"Meantime the town grew no quieter, and business came pretty much to an
+end.  The newspapers--then, as always hitherto, almost entirely in the
+hands of the masters--clamoured to the Government for repressive
+measures; the rich citizens were enrolled as an extra body of police, and
+armed with bludgeons like them; many of these were strong, well-fed, full-
+blooded young men, and had plenty of stomach for fighting; but the
+Government did not dare to use them, and contented itself with getting
+full powers voted to it by the Parliament for suppressing any revolt, and
+bringing up more and more soldiers to London.  Thus passed the week after
+the great meeting; almost as large a one was held on the Sunday, which
+went off peaceably on the whole, as no opposition to it was offered, and
+again the people cried 'victory.'  But on the Monday the people woke up
+to find that they were hungry.  During the last few days there had been
+groups of men parading the streets asking (or, if you please, demanding)
+money to buy food; and what for goodwill, what for fear, the richer
+people gave them a good deal.  The authorities of the parishes also (I
+haven't time to explain that phrase at present) gave willy-nilly what
+provisions they could to wandering people; and the Government, by means
+of its feeble national workshops, also fed a good number of half-starved
+folk.  But in addition to this, several bakers' shops and other provision
+stores had been emptied without a great deal of disturbance.  So far, so
+good.  But on the Monday in question the Committee of Public Safety, on
+the one hand afraid of general unorganised pillage, and on the other
+emboldened by the wavering conduct of the authorities, sent a deputation
+provided with carts and all necessary gear to clear out two or three big
+provision stores in the centre of the town, leaving papers with the shop
+managers promising to pay the price of them: and also in the part of the
+town where they were strongest they took possession of several bakers'
+shops and set men at work in them for the benefit of the people;--all of
+which was done with little or no disturbance, the police assisting in
+keeping order at the sack of the stores, as they would have done at a big
+fire.
+
+"But at this last stroke the reactionaries were so alarmed, that they
+were, determined to force the executive into action.  The newspapers next
+day all blazed into the fury of frightened people, and threatened the
+people, the Government, and everybody they could think of, unless 'order
+were at once restored.'  A deputation of leading commercial people waited
+on the Government and told them that if they did not at once arrest the
+Committee of Public Safety, they themselves would gather a body of men,
+arm them, and fall on 'the incendiaries,' as they called them.
+
+"They, together with a number of the newspaper editors, had a long
+interview with the heads of the Government and two or three military men,
+the deftest in their art that the country could furnish.  The deputation
+came away from that interview, says a contemporary eye-witness, smiling
+and satisfied, and said no more about raising an anti-popular army, but
+that afternoon left London with their families for their country seats or
+elsewhere.
+
+"The next morning the Government proclaimed a state of siege in London,--a
+thing common enough amongst the absolutist governments on the Continent,
+but unheard-of in England in those days.  They appointed the youngest and
+cleverest of their generals to command the proclaimed district; a man who
+had won a certain sort of reputation in the disgraceful wars in which the
+country had been long engaged from time to time.  The newspapers were in
+ecstacies, and all the most fervent of the reactionaries now came to the
+front; men who in ordinary times were forced to keep their opinions to
+themselves or their immediate circle, but who began to look forward to
+crushing once for all the Socialist, and even democratic tendencies,
+which, said they, had been treated with such foolish indulgence for the
+last sixty years.
+
+"But the clever general took no visible action; and yet only a few of the
+minor newspapers abused him; thoughtful men gathered from this that a
+plot was hatching.  As for the Committee of Public Safety, whatever they
+thought of their position, they had now gone too far to draw back; and
+many of them, it seems, thought that the government would not act.  They
+went on quietly organising their food supply, which was a miserable
+driblet when all is said; and also as a retort to the state of siege,
+they armed as many men as they could in the quarter where they were
+strongest, but did not attempt to drill or organise them, thinking,
+perhaps, that they could not at the best turn them into trained soldiers
+till they had some breathing space.  The clever general, his soldiers,
+and the police did not meddle with all this in the least in the world;
+and things were quieter in London that week-end; though there were riots
+in many places of the provinces, which were quelled by the authorities
+without much trouble.  The most serious of these were at Glasgow and
+Bristol.
+
+"Well, the Sunday of the meeting came, and great crowds came to Trafalgar
+Square in procession, the greater part of the Committee amongst them,
+surrounded by their band of men armed somehow or other.  The streets were
+quite peaceful and quiet, though there were many spectators to see the
+procession pass.  Trafalgar Square had no body of police in it; the
+people took quiet possession of it, and the meeting began.  The armed men
+stood round the principal platform, and there were a few others armed
+amidst the general crowd; but by far the greater part were unarmed.
+
+"Most people thought the meeting would go off peaceably; but the members
+of the Committee had heard from various quarters that something would be
+attempted against them; but these rumours were vague, and they had no
+idea of what threatened.  They soon found out.
+
+"For before the streets about the Square were filled, a body of soldiers
+poured into it from the north-west corner and took up their places by the
+houses that stood on the west side.  The people growled at the sight of
+the red-coats; the armed men of the Committee stood undecided, not
+knowing what to do; and indeed this new influx so jammed the crowd
+together that, unorganised as they were, they had little chance of
+working through it.  They had scarcely grasped the fact of their enemies
+being there, when another column of soldiers, pouring out of the streets
+which led into the great southern road going down to the Parliament House
+(still existing, and called the Dung Market), and also from the
+embankment by the side of the Thames, marched up, pushing the crowd into
+a denser and denser mass, and formed along the south side of the Square.
+Then any of those who could see what was going on, knew at once that they
+were in a trap, and could only wonder what would be done with them.
+
+"The closely-packed crowd would not or could not budge, except under the
+influence of the height of terror, which was soon to be supplied to them.
+A few of the armed men struggled to the front, or climbled up to the base
+of the monument which then stood there, that they might face the wall of
+hidden fire before them; and to most men (there were many women amongst
+them) it seemed as if the end of the world had come, and to-day seemed
+strangely different from yesterday.  No sooner were the soldiers drawn up
+aforesaid than, says an eye-witness, 'a glittering officer on horseback
+came prancing out from the ranks on the south, and read something from a
+paper which he held in his hand; which something, very few heard; but I
+was told afterwards that it was an order for us to disperse, and a
+warning that he had legal right to fire on the crowd else, and that he
+would do so.  The crowd took it as a challenge of some sort, and a hoarse
+threatening roar went up from them; and after that there was comparative
+silence for a little, till the officer had got back into the ranks.  I
+was near the edge of the crowd, towards the soldiers,' says this
+eye-witness, 'and I saw three little machines being wheeled out in front
+of the ranks, which I knew for mechanical guns.  I cried out, "Throw
+yourselves down! they are going to fire!"  But no one scarcely could
+throw himself down, so tight as the crowd were packed.  I heard a sharp
+order given, and wondered where I should be the next minute; and then--It
+was as if the earth had opened, and hell had come up bodily amidst us.
+It is no use trying to describe the scene that followed.  Deep lanes were
+mowed amidst the thick crowd; the dead and dying covered the ground, and
+the shrieks and wails and cries of horror filled all the air, till it
+seemed as if there were nothing else in the world but murder and death.
+Those of our armed men who were still unhurt cheered wildly and opened a
+scattering fire on the soldiers.  One or two soldiers fell; and I saw the
+officers going up and down the ranks urging the men to fire again; but
+they received the orders in sullen silence, and let the butts of their
+guns fall.  Only one sergeant ran to a machine-gun and began to set it
+going; but a tall young man, an officer too, ran out of the ranks and
+dragged him back by the collar; and the soldiers stood there motionless
+while the horror-stricken crowd, nearly wholly unarmed (for most of the
+armed men had fallen in that first discharge), drifted out of the Square.
+I was told afterwards that the soldiers on the west side had fired also,
+and done their part of the slaughter.  How I got out of the Square I
+scarcely know: I went, not feeling the ground under me, what with rage
+and terror and despair.'
+
+"So says our eye-witness.  The number of the slain on the side of the
+people in that shooting during a minute was prodigious; but it was not
+easy to come at the truth about it; it was probably between one and two
+thousand.  Of the soldiers, six were killed outright, and a dozen
+wounded."
+
+I listened, trembling with excitement.  The old man's eyes glittered and
+his face flushed as he spoke, and told the tale of what I had often
+thought might happen.  Yet I wondered that he should have got so elated
+about a mere massacre, and I said:
+
+"How fearful!  And I suppose that this massacre put an end to the whole
+revolution for that time?"
+
+"No, no," cried old Hammond; "it began it!"
+
+He filled his glass and mine, and stood up and cried out, "Drink this
+glass to the memory of those who died there, for indeed it would be a
+long tale to tell how much we owe them."
+
+I drank, and he sat down again and went on.
+
+"That massacre of Trafalgar Square began the civil war, though, like all
+such events, it gathered head slowly, and people scarcely knew what a
+crisis they were acting in.
+
+"Terrible as the massacre was, and hideous and overpowering as the first
+terror had been, when the people had time to think about it, their
+feeling was one of anger rather than fear; although the military
+organisation of the state of siege was now carried out without shrinking
+by the clever young general.  For though the ruling-classes when the news
+spread next morning felt one gasp of horror and even dread, yet the
+Government and their immediate backers felt that now the wine was drawn
+and must be drunk.  However, even the most reactionary of the capitalist
+papers, with two exceptions, stunned by the tremendous news, simply gave
+an account of what had taken place, without making any comment upon it.
+The exceptions were one, a so-called 'liberal' paper (the Government of
+the day was of that complexion), which, after a preamble in which it
+declared its undeviating sympathy with the cause of labour, proceeded to
+point out that in times of revolutionary disturbance it behoved the
+Government to be just but firm, and that by far the most merciful way of
+dealing with the poor madmen who were attacking the very foundations of
+society (which had made them mad and poor) was to shoot them at once, so
+as to stop others from drifting into a position in which they would run a
+chance of being shot.  In short, it praised the determined action of the
+Government as the acme of human wisdom and mercy, and exulted in the
+inauguration of an epoch of reasonable democracy free from the tyrannical
+fads of Socialism.
+
+"The other exception was a paper thought to be one of the most violent
+opponents of democracy, and so it was; but the editor of it found his
+manhood, and spoke for himself and not for his paper.  In a few simple,
+indignant words he asked people to consider what a society was worth
+which had to be defended by the massacre of unarmed citizens, and called
+on the Government to withdraw their state of siege and put the general
+and his officers who fired on the people on their trial for murder.  He
+went further, and declared that whatever his opinion might be as to the
+doctrines of the Socialists, he for one should throw in his lot with the
+people, until the Government atoned for their atrocity by showing that
+they were prepared to listen to the demands of men who knew what they
+wanted, and whom the decrepitude of society forced into pushing their
+demands in some way or other.
+
+"Of course, this editor was immediately arrested by the military power;
+but his bold words were already in the hands of the public, and produced
+a great effect: so great an effect that the Government, after some
+vacillation, withdrew the state of siege; though at the same time it
+strengthened the military organisation and made it more stringent.  Three
+of the Committee of Public Safety had been slain in Trafalgar Square: of
+the rest the greater part went back to their old place of meeting, and
+there awaited the event calmly.  They were arrested there on the Monday
+morning, and would have been shot at once by the general, who was a mere
+military machine, if the Government had not shrunk before the
+responsibility of killing men without any trial.  There was at first a
+talk of trying them by a special commission of judges, as it was
+called--_i.e._, before a set of men bound to find them guilty, and whose
+business it was to do so.  But with the Government the cold fit had
+succeeded to the hot one; and the prisoners were brought before a jury at
+the assizes.  There a fresh blow awaited the Government; for in spite of
+the judge's charge, which distinctly instructed the jury to find the
+prisoners guilty, they were acquitted, and the jury added to their
+verdict a presentment, in which they condemned the action of the
+soldiery, in the queer phraseology of the day, as 'rash, unfortunate, and
+unnecessary.'  The Committee of Public Safety renewed its sittings, and
+from thenceforth was a popular rallying-point in opposition to the
+Parliament.  The Government now gave way on all sides, and made a show of
+yielding to the demands of the people, though there was a widespread plot
+for effecting a coup d'etat set on foot between the leaders of the two so-
+called opposing parties in the parliamentary faction fight.  The well-
+meaning part of the public was overjoyed, and thought that all danger of
+a civil war was over.  The victory of the people was celebrated by huge
+meetings held in the parks and elsewhere, in memory of the victims of the
+great massacre.
+
+"But the measures passed for the relief of the workers, though to the
+upper classes they seemed ruinously revolutionary, were not thorough
+enough to give the people food and a decent life, and they had to be
+supplemented by unwritten enactments without legality to back them.
+Although the Government and Parliament had the law-courts, the army, and
+'society' at their backs, the Committee of Public Safety began to be a
+force in the country, and really represented the producing classes.  It
+began to improve immensely in the days which followed on the acquittal of
+its members.  Its old members had little administrative capacity, though
+with the exception of a few self-seekers and traitors, they were honest,
+courageous men, and many of them were endowed with considerable talent of
+other kinds.  But now that the times called for immediate action, came
+forward the men capable of setting it on foot; and a new network of
+workmen's associations grew up very speedily, whose avowed single object
+was the tiding over of the ship of the community into a simple condition
+of Communism; and as they practically undertook also the management of
+the ordinary labour-war, they soon became the mouthpiece and intermediary
+of the whole of the working classes; and the manufacturing
+profit-grinders now found themselves powerless before this combination;
+unless _their_ committee, Parliament, plucked up courage to begin the
+civil war again, and to shoot right and left, they were bound to yield to
+the demands of the men whom they employed, and pay higher and higher
+wages for shorter and shorter day's work.  Yet one ally they had, and
+that was the rapidly approaching breakdown of the whole system founded on
+the World-Market and its supply; which now became so clear to all people,
+that the middle classes, shocked for the moment into condemnation of the
+Government for the great massacre, turned round nearly in a mass, and
+called on the Government to look to matters, and put an end to the
+tyranny of the Socialist leaders.
+
+"Thus stimulated, the reactionist plot exploded probably before it was
+ripe; but this time the people and their leaders were forewarned, and,
+before the reactionaries could get under way, had taken the steps they
+thought necessary.
+
+"The Liberal Government (clearly by collusion) was beaten by the
+Conservatives, though the latter were nominally much in the minority.  The
+popular representatives in the House understood pretty well what this
+meant, and after an attempt to fight the matter out by divisions in the
+House of Commons, they made a protest, left the House, and came in a body
+to the Committee of Public Safety: and the civil war began again in good
+earnest.
+
+"Yet its first act was not one of mere fighting.  The new Tory Government
+determined to act, yet durst not re-enact the state of siege, but it sent
+a body of soldiers and police to arrest the Committee of Public Safety in
+the lump.  They made no resistance, though they might have done so, as
+they had now a considerable body of men who were quite prepared for
+extremities.  But they were determined to try first a weapon which they
+thought stronger than street fighting.
+
+"The members of the Committee went off quietly to prison; but they had
+left their soul and their organisation behind them.  For they depended
+not on a carefully arranged centre with all kinds of checks and counter-
+checks about it, but on a huge mass of people in thorough sympathy with
+the movement, bound together by a great number of links of small centres
+with very simple instructions.  These instructions were now carried out.
+
+"The next morning, when the leaders of the reaction were chuckling at the
+effect which the report in the newspapers of their stroke would have upon
+the public--no newspapers appeared; and it was only towards noon that a
+few straggling sheets, about the size of the gazettes of the seventeenth
+century, worked by policemen, soldiers, managers, and press-writers, were
+dribbled through the streets.  They were greedily seized on and read; but
+by this time the serious part of their news was stale, and people did not
+need to be told that the GENERAL STRIKE had begun.  The railways did not
+run, the telegraph-wires were unserved; flesh, fish, and green stuff
+brought to market was allowed to lie there still packed and perishing;
+the thousands of middle-class families, who were utterly dependant for
+the next meal on the workers, made frantic efforts through their more
+energetic members to cater for the needs of the day, and amongst those of
+them who could throw off the fear of what was to follow, there was, I am
+told, a certain enjoyment of this unexpected picnic--a forecast of the
+days to come, in which all labour grew pleasant.
+
+"So passed the first day, and towards evening the Government grew quite
+distracted.  They had but one resource for putting down any popular
+movement--to wit, mere brute-force; but there was nothing for them
+against which to use their army and police: no armed bodies appeared in
+the streets; the offices of the Federated Workmen were now, in
+appearance, at least, turned into places for the relief of people thrown
+out of work, and under the circumstances, they durst not arrest the men
+engaged in such business, all the more, as even that night many quite
+respectable people applied at these offices for relief, and swallowed
+down the charity of the revolutionists along with their supper.  So the
+Government massed soldiers and police here and there--and sat still for
+that night, fully expecting on the morrow some manifesto from 'the
+rebels,' as they now began to be called, which would give them an
+opportunity of acting in some way or another.  They were disappointed.
+The ordinary newspapers gave up the struggle that morning, and only one
+very violent reactionary paper (called the _Daily Telegraph_) attempted
+an appearance, and rated 'the rebels' in good set terms for their folly
+and ingratitude in tearing out the bowels of their 'common mother,' the
+English Nation, for the benefit of a few greedy paid agitators, and the
+fools whom they were deluding.  On the other hand, the Socialist papers
+(of which three only, representing somewhat different schools, were
+published in London) came out full to the throat of well-printed matter.
+They were greedily bought by the whole public, who, of course, like the
+Government, expected a manifesto in them.  But they found no word of
+reference to the great subject.  It seemed as if their editors had
+ransacked their drawers for articles which would have been in place forty
+years before, under the technical name of educational articles.  Most of
+these were admirable and straightforward expositions of the doctrines and
+practice of Socialism, free from haste and spite and hard words, and came
+upon the public with a kind of May-day freshness, amidst the worry and
+terror of the moment; and though the knowing well understood that the
+meaning of this move in the game was mere defiance, and a token of
+irreconcilable hostility to the then rulers of society, and though, also,
+they were meant for nothing else by 'the rebels,' yet they really had
+their effect as 'educational articles.'  However, 'education' of another
+kind was acting upon the public with irresistible power, and probably
+cleared their heads a little.
+
+"As to the Government, they were absolutely terrified by this act of
+'boycotting' (the slang word then current for such acts of abstention).
+Their counsels became wild and vacillating to the last degree: one hour
+they were for giving way for the present till they could hatch another
+plot; the next they all but sent an order for the arrest in the lump of
+all the workmen's committees; the next they were on the point of ordering
+their brisk young general to take any excuse that offered for another
+massacre.  But when they called to mind that the soldiery in that
+'Battle' of Trafalgar Square were so daunted by the slaughter which they
+had made, that they could not be got to fire a second volley, they shrank
+back again from the dreadful courage necessary for carrying out another
+massacre.  Meantime the prisoners, brought the second time before the
+magistrates under a strong escort of soldiers, were the second time
+remanded.
+
+"The strike went on this day also.  The workmen's committees were
+extended, and gave relief to great numbers of people, for they had
+organised a considerable amount of production of food by men whom they
+could depend upon.  Quite a number of well-to-do people were now
+compelled to seek relief of them.  But another curious thing happened: a
+band of young men of the upper classes armed themselves, and coolly went
+marauding in the streets, taking what suited them of such eatables and
+portables that they came across in the shops which had ventured to open.
+This operation they carried out in Oxford Street, then a great street of
+shops of all kinds.  The Government, being at that hour in one of their
+yielding moods, thought this a fine opportunity for showing their
+impartiality in the maintenance of 'order,' and sent to arrest these
+hungry rich youths; who, however, surprised the police by a valiant
+resistance, so that all but three escaped.  The Government did not gain
+the reputation for impartiality which they expected from this move; for
+they forgot that there were no evening papers; and the account of the
+skirmish spread wide indeed, but in a distorted form for it was mostly
+told simply as an exploit of the starving people from the East-end; and
+everybody thought it was but natural for the Government to put them down
+when and where they could.
+
+"That evening the rebel prisoners were visited in their cells by _very_
+polite and sympathetic persons, who pointed out to them what a suicidal
+course they were following, and how dangerous these extreme courses were
+for the popular cause.  Says one of the prisoners: 'It was great sport
+comparing notes when we came out anent the attempt of the Government to
+"get at" us separately in prison, and how we answered the blandishments
+of the highly "intelligent and refined" persons set on to pump us.  One
+laughed; another told extravagant long-bow stories to the envoy; a third
+held a sulky silence; a fourth damned the polite spy and bade him hold
+his jaw--and that was all they got out of us.'
+
+"So passed the second day of the great strike.  It was clear to all
+thinking people that the third day would bring on the crisis; for the
+present suspense and ill-concealed terror was unendurable.  The ruling
+classes, and the middle-class non-politicians who had been their real
+strength and support, were as sheep lacking a shepherd; they literally
+did not know what to do.
+
+"One thing they found they had to do: try to get the 'rebels' to do
+something.  So the next morning, the morning of the third day of the
+strike, when the members of the Committee of Public Safety appeared again
+before the magistrate, they found themselves treated with the greatest
+possible courtesy--in fact, rather as envoys and ambassadors than
+prisoners.  In short, the magistrate had received his orders; and with no
+more to do than might come of a long stupid speech, which might have been
+written by Dickens in mockery, he discharged the prisoners, who went back
+to their meeting-place and at once began a due sitting.  It was high
+time.  For this third day the mass was fermenting indeed.  There was, of
+course, a vast number of working people who were not organised in the
+least in the world; men who had been used to act as their masters drove
+them, or rather as the system drove, of which their masters were a part.
+That system was now falling to pieces, and the old pressure of the master
+having been taken off these poor men, it seemed likely that nothing but
+the mere animal necessities and passions of men would have any hold on
+them, and that mere general overturn would be the result.  Doubtless this
+would have happened if it had not been that the huge mass had been
+leavened by Socialist opinion in the first place, and in the second by
+actual contact with declared Socialists, many or indeed most of whom were
+members of those bodies of workmen above said.
+
+If anything of this kind had happened some years before, when the masters
+of labour were still looked upon as the natural rulers of the people, and
+even the poorest and most ignorant man leaned upon them for support,
+while they submitted to their fleecing, the entire break-up of all
+society would have followed.  But the long series of years during which
+the workmen had learned to despise their rulers, had done away with their
+dependence upon them, and they were now beginning to trust (somewhat
+dangerously, as events proved) in the non-legal leaders whom events had
+thrust forward; and though most of these were now become mere
+figure-heads, their names and reputations were useful in this crisis as a
+stop-gap.
+
+"The effect of the news, therefore, of the release of the Committee gave
+the Government some breathing time: for it was received with the greatest
+joy by the workers, and even the well-to-do saw in it a respite from the
+mere destruction which they had begun to dread, and the fear of which
+most of them attributed to the weakness of the Government.  As far as the
+passing hour went, perhaps they were right in this."
+
+"How do you mean?" said I.  "What could the Government have done?  I
+often used to think that they would be helpless in such a crisis."
+
+Said old Hammond: "Of course I don't doubt that in the long run matters
+would have come about as they did.  But if the Government could have
+treated their army as a real army, and used them strategically as a
+general would have done, looking on the people as a mere open enemy to be
+shot at and dispersed wherever they turned up, they would probably have
+gained the victory at the time."
+
+"But would the soldiers have acted against the people in this way?" said
+I.
+
+Said he: "I think from all I have heard that they would have done so if
+they had met bodies of men armed however badly, and however badly they
+had been organised.  It seems also as if before the Trafalgar Square
+massacre they might as a whole have been depended upon to fire upon an
+unarmed crowd, though they were much honeycombed by Socialism.  The
+reason for this was that they dreaded the use by apparently unarmed men
+of an explosive called dynamite, of which many loud boasts were made by
+the workers on the eve of these events; although it turned out to be of
+little use as a material for war in the way that was expected.  Of course
+the officers of the soldiery fanned this fear to the utmost, so that the
+rank and file probably thought on that occasion that they were being led
+into a desperate battle with men who were really armed, and whose weapon
+was the more dreadful, because it was concealed.  After that massacre,
+however, it was at all times doubtful if the regular soldiers would fire
+upon an unarmed or half-armed crowd."
+
+Said I: "The regular soldiers?  Then there were other combatants against
+the people?"
+
+"Yes," said he, "we shall come to that presently."
+
+"Certainly," I said, "you had better go on straight with your story.  I
+see that time is wearing."
+
+Said Hammond: "The Government lost no time in coming to terms with the
+Committee of Public Safety; for indeed they could think of nothing else
+than the danger of the moment.  They sent a duly accredited envoy to
+treat with these men, who somehow had obtained dominion over people's
+minds, while the formal rulers had no hold except over their bodies.
+There is no need at present to go into the details of the truce (for such
+it was) between these high contracting parties, the Government of the
+empire of Great Britain and a handful of working-men (as they were called
+in scorn in those days), amongst whom, indeed, were some very capable and
+'square-headed' persons, though, as aforesaid, the abler men were not
+then the recognised leaders.  The upshot of it was that all the definite
+claims of the people had to be granted.  We can now see that most of
+these claims were of themselves not worth either demanding or resisting;
+but they were looked on at that time as most important, and they were at
+least tokens of revolt against the miserable system of life which was
+then beginning to tumble to pieces.  One claim, however, was of the
+utmost immediate importance, and this the Government tried hard to evade;
+but as they were not dealing with fools, they had to yield at last.  This
+was the claim of recognition and formal status for the Committee of
+Public Safety, and all the associations which it fostered under its wing.
+This it is clear meant two things: first, amnesty for 'the rebels,' great
+and small, who, without a distinct act of civil war, could no longer be
+attacked; and next, a continuance of the organised revolution.  Only one
+point the Government could gain, and that was a name.  The dreadful
+revolutionary title was dropped, and the body, with its branches, acted
+under the respectable name of the 'Board of Conciliation and its local
+offices.'  Carrying this name, it became the leader of the people in the
+civil war which soon followed."
+
+"O," said I, somewhat startled, "so the civil war went on, in spite of
+all that had happened?"
+
+"So it was," said he.  "In fact, it was this very legal recognition which
+made the civil war possible in the ordinary sense of war; it took the
+struggle out of the element of mere massacres on one side, and endurance
+plus strikes on the other."
+
+"And can you tell me in what kind of way the war was carried on?" said I.
+
+"Yes" he said; "we have records and to spare of all that; and the essence
+of them I can give you in a few words.  As I told you, the rank and file
+of the army was not to be trusted by the reactionists; but the officers
+generally were prepared for anything, for they were mostly the very
+stupidest men in the country.  Whatever the Government might do, a great
+part of the upper and middle classes were determined to set on foot a
+counter revolution; for the Communism which now loomed ahead seemed quite
+unendurable to them.  Bands of young men, like the marauders in the great
+strike of whom I told you just now, armed themselves and drilled, and
+began on any opportunity or pretence to skirmish with the people in the
+streets.  The Government neither helped them nor put them down, but stood
+by, hoping that something might come of it.  These 'Friends of Order,' as
+they were called, had some successes at first, and grew bolder; they got
+many officers of the regular army to help them, and by their means laid
+hold of munitions of war of all kinds.  One part of their tactics
+consisted in their guarding and even garrisoning the big factories of the
+period: they held at one time, for instance, the whole of that place
+called Manchester which I spoke of just now.  A sort of irregular war was
+carried on with varied success all over the country; and at last the
+Government, which at first pretended to ignore the struggle, or treat it
+as mere rioting, definitely declared for 'the Friends of Order,' and
+joined to their bands whatsoever of the regular army they could get
+together, and made a desperate effort to overwhelm 'the rebels,' as they
+were now once more called, and as indeed they called themselves.
+
+"It was too late.  All ideas of peace on a basis of compromise had
+disappeared on either side.  The end, it was seen clearly, must be either
+absolute slavery for all but the privileged, or a system of life founded
+on equality and Communism.  The sloth, the hopelessness, and if I may say
+so, the cowardice of the last century, had given place to the eager,
+restless heroism of a declared revolutionary period.  I will not say that
+the people of that time foresaw the life we are leading now, but there
+was a general instinct amongst them towards the essential part of that
+life, and many men saw clearly beyond the desperate struggle of the day
+into the peace which it was to bring about.  The men of that day who were
+on the side of freedom were not unhappy, I think, though they were
+harassed by hopes and fears, and sometimes torn by doubts, and the
+conflict of duties hard to reconcile."
+
+"But how did the people, the revolutionists, carry on the war?  What were
+the elements of success on their side?"
+
+I put this question, because I wanted to bring the old man back to the
+definite history, and take him out of the musing mood so natural to an
+old man.
+
+He answered: "Well, they did not lack organisers; for the very conflict
+itself, in days when, as I told you, men of any strength of mind cast
+away all consideration for the ordinary business of life, developed the
+necessary talent amongst them.  Indeed, from all I have read and heard, I
+much doubt whether, without this seemingly dreadful civil war, the due
+talent for administration would have been developed amongst the working
+men.  Anyhow, it was there, and they soon got leaders far more than equal
+to the best men amongst the reactionaries.  For the rest, they had no
+difficulty about the material of their army; for that revolutionary
+instinct so acted on the ordinary soldier in the ranks that the greater
+part, certainly the best part, of the soldiers joined the side of the
+people.  But the main element of their success was this, that wherever
+the working people were not coerced, they worked, not for the
+reactionists, but for 'the rebels.'  The reactionists could get no work
+done for them outside the districts where they were all-powerful: and
+even in those districts they were harassed by continual risings; and in
+all cases and everywhere got nothing done without obstruction and black
+looks and sulkiness; so that not only were their armies quite worn out
+with the difficulties which they had to meet, but the non-combatants who
+were on their side were so worried and beset with hatred and a thousand
+little troubles and annoyances that life became almost unendurable to
+them on those terms.  Not a few of them actually died of the worry; many
+committed suicide.  Of course, a vast number of them joined actively in
+the cause of reaction, and found some solace to their misery in the
+eagerness of conflict.  Lastly, many thousands gave way and submitted to
+'the rebels'; and as the numbers of these latter increased, it at last
+became clear to all men that the cause which was once hopeless, was now
+triumphant, and that the hopeless cause was that of slavery and
+privilege."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII: THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE
+
+
+"Well," said I, "so you got clear out of all your trouble.  Were people
+satisfied with the new order of things when it came?"
+
+"People?" he said.  "Well, surely all must have been glad of peace when
+it came; especially when they found, as they must have found, that after
+all, they--even the once rich--were not living very badly.  As to those
+who had been poor, all through the war, which lasted about two years,
+their condition had been bettering, in spite of the struggle; and when
+peace came at last, in a very short time they made great strides towards
+a decent life.  The great difficulty was that the once-poor had such a
+feeble conception of the real pleasure of life: so to say, they did not
+ask enough, did not know how to ask enough, from the new state of things.
+It was perhaps rather a good than an evil thing that the necessity for
+restoring the wealth destroyed during the war forced them into working at
+first almost as hard as they had been used to before the Revolution.  For
+all historians are agreed that there never was a war in which there was
+so much destruction of wares, and instruments for making them as in this
+civil war."
+
+"I am rather surprised at that," said I.
+
+"Are you?  I don't see why," said Hammond.
+
+"Why," I said, "because the party of order would surely look upon the
+wealth as their own property, no share of which, if they could help it,
+should go to their slaves, supposing they conquered.  And on the other
+hand, it was just for the possession of that wealth that 'the rebels'
+were fighting, and I should have thought, especially when they saw that
+they were winning, that they would have been careful to destroy as little
+as possible of what was so soon to be their own."
+
+"It was as I have told you, however," said he.  "The party of order, when
+they recovered from their first cowardice of surprise--or, if you please,
+when they fairly saw that, whatever happened, they would be ruined,
+fought with great bitterness, and cared little what they did, so long as
+they injured the enemies who had destroyed the sweets of life for them.
+As to 'the rebels,' I have told you that the outbreak of actual war made
+them careless of trying to save the wretched scraps of wealth that they
+had.  It was a common saying amongst them, Let the country be cleared of
+everything except valiant living men, rather than that we fall into
+slavery again!"
+
+He sat silently thinking a little while, and then said:
+
+"When the conflict was once really begun, it was seen how little of any
+value there was in the old world of slavery and inequality.  Don't you
+see what it means?  In the times which you are thinking of, and of which
+you seem to know so much, there was no hope; nothing but the dull jog of
+the mill-horse under compulsion of collar and whip; but in that fighting-
+time that followed, all was hope: 'the rebels' at least felt themselves
+strong enough to build up the world again from its dry bones,--and they
+did it, too!" said the old man, his eyes glittering under his beetling
+brows.  He went on: "And their opponents at least and at last learned
+something about the reality of life, and its sorrows, which they--their
+class, I mean--had once known nothing of.  In short, the two combatants,
+the workman and the gentleman, between them--"
+
+"Between them," said I, quickly, "they destroyed commercialism!"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes," said he; "that is it.  Nor could it have been destroyed
+otherwise; except, perhaps, by the whole of society gradually falling
+into lower depths, till it should at last reach a condition as rude as
+barbarism, but lacking both the hope and the pleasures of barbarism.
+Surely the sharper, shorter remedy was the happiest."
+
+"Most surely," said I.
+
+"Yes," said the old man, "the world was being brought to its second
+birth; how could that take place without a tragedy?  Moreover, think of
+it.  The spirit of the new days, of our days, was to be delight in the
+life of the world; intense and overweening love of the very skin and
+surface of the earth on which man dwells, such as a lover has in the fair
+flesh of the woman he loves; this, I say, was to be the new spirit of the
+time.  All other moods save this had been exhausted: the unceasing
+criticism, the boundless curiosity in the ways and thoughts of man, which
+was the mood of the ancient Greek, to whom these things were not so much
+a means, as an end, was gone past recovery; nor had there been really any
+shadow of it in the so-called science of the nineteenth century, which,
+as you must know, was in the main an appendage to the commercial system;
+nay, not seldom an appendage to the police of that system.  In spite of
+appearances, it was limited and cowardly, because it did not really
+believe in itself.  It was the outcome, as it was the sole relief, of the
+unhappiness of the period which made life so bitter even to the rich, and
+which, as you may see with your bodily eyes, the great change has swept
+away.  More akin to our way of looking at life was the spirit of the
+Middle Ages, to whom heaven and the life of the next world was such a
+reality, that it became to them a part of the life upon the earth; which
+accordingly they loved and adorned, in spite of the ascetic doctrines of
+their formal creed, which bade them contemn it.
+
+"But that also, with its assured belief in heaven and hell as two
+countries in which to live, has gone, and now we do, both in word and in
+deed, believe in the continuous life of the world of men, and as it were,
+add every day of that common life to the little stock of days which our
+own mere individual experience wins for us: and consequently we are
+happy.  Do you wonder at it?  In times past, indeed, men were told to
+love their kind, to believe in the religion of humanity, and so forth.
+But look you, just in the degree that a man had elevation of mind and
+refinement enough to be able to value this idea, was he repelled by the
+obvious aspect of the individuals composing the mass which he was to
+worship; and he could only evade that repulsion by making a conventional
+abstraction of mankind that had little actual or historical relation to
+the race; which to his eyes was divided into blind tyrants on the one
+hand and apathetic degraded slaves on the other.  But now, where is the
+difficulty in accepting the religion of humanity, when the men and women
+who go to make up humanity are free, happy, and energetic at least, and
+most commonly beautiful of body also, and surrounded by beautiful things
+of their own fashioning, and a nature bettered and not worsened by
+contact with mankind?  This is what this age of the world has reserved
+for us."
+
+"It seems true," said I, "or ought to be, if what my eyes have seen is a
+token of the general life you lead.  Can you now tell me anything of your
+progress after the years of the struggle?"
+
+Said he: "I could easily tell you more than you have time to listen to;
+but I can at least hint at one of the chief difficulties which had to be
+met: and that was, that when men began to settle down after the war, and
+their labour had pretty much filled up the gap in wealth caused by the
+destruction of that war, a kind of disappointment seemed coming over us,
+and the prophecies of some of the reactionists of past times seemed as if
+they would come true, and a dull level of utilitarian comfort be the end
+for a while of our aspirations and success.  The loss of the competitive
+spur to exertion had not, indeed, done anything to interfere with the
+necessary production of the community, but how if it should make men dull
+by giving them too much time for thought or idle musing?  But, after all,
+this dull thunder-cloud only threatened us, and then passed over.
+Probably, from what I have told you before, you will have a guess at the
+remedy for such a disaster; remembering always that many of the things
+which used to be produced--slave-wares for the poor and mere
+wealth-wasting wares for the rich--ceased to be made.  That remedy was,
+in short, the production of what used to be called art, but which has no
+name amongst us now, because it has become a necessary part of the labour
+of every man who produces."
+
+Said I: "What! had men any time or opportunity for cultivating the fine
+arts amidst the desperate struggle for life and freedom that you have
+told me of?"
+
+Said Hammond: "You must not suppose that the new form of art was founded
+chiefly on the memory of the art of the past; although, strange to say,
+the civil war was much less destructive of art than of other things, and
+though what of art existed under the old forms, revived in a wonderful
+way during the latter part of the struggle, especially as regards music
+and poetry.  The art or work-pleasure, as one ought to call it, of which
+I am now speaking, sprung up almost spontaneously, it seems, from a kind
+of instinct amongst people, no longer driven desperately to painful and
+terrible over-work, to do the best they could with the work in hand--to
+make it excellent of its kind; and when that had gone on for a little, a
+craving for beauty seemed to awaken in men's minds, and they began rudely
+and awkwardly to ornament the wares which they made; and when they had
+once set to work at that, it soon began to grow.  All this was much
+helped by the abolition of the squalor which our immediate ancestors put
+up with so coolly; and by the leisurely, but not stupid, country-life
+which now grew (as I told you before) to be common amongst us.  Thus at
+last and by slow degrees we got pleasure into our work; then we became
+conscious of that pleasure, and cultivated it, and took care that we had
+our fill of it; and then all was gained, and we were happy.  So may it be
+for ages and ages!"
+
+The old man fell into a reverie, not altogether without melancholy I
+thought; but I would not break it.  Suddenly he started, and said: "Well,
+dear guest, here are come Dick and Clara to fetch you away, and there is
+an end of my talk; which I daresay you will not be sorry for; the long
+day is coming to an end, and you will have a pleasant ride back to
+Hammersmith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX: THE DRIVE BACK TO HAMMERSMITH
+
+
+I said nothing, for I was not inclined for mere politeness to him after
+such very serious talk; but in fact I should liked to have gone on
+talking with the older man, who could understand something at least of my
+wonted ways of looking at life, whereas, with the younger people, in
+spite of all their kindness, I really was a being from another planet.
+However, I made the best of it, and smiled as amiably as I could on the
+young couple; and Dick returned the smile by saying, "Well, guest, I am
+glad to have you again, and to find that you and my kinsman have not
+quite talked yourselves into another world; I was half suspecting as I
+was listening to the Welshmen yonder that you would presently be
+vanishing away from us, and began to picture my kinsman sitting in the
+hall staring at nothing and finding that he had been talking a while past
+to nobody."
+
+I felt rather uncomfortable at this speech, for suddenly the picture of
+the sordid squabble, the dirty and miserable tragedy of the life I had
+left for a while, came before my eyes; and I had, as it were, a vision of
+all my longings for rest and peace in the past, and I loathed the idea of
+going back to it again.  But the old man chuckled and said:
+
+"Don't be afraid, Dick.  In any case, I have not been talking to thin
+air; nor, indeed to this new friend of ours only.  Who knows but I may
+not have been talking to many people?  For perhaps our guest may some day
+go back to the people he has come from, and may take a message from us
+which may bear fruit for them, and consequently for us."
+
+Dick looked puzzled, and said: "Well, gaffer, I do not quite understand
+what you mean.  All I can say is, that I hope he will not leave us: for
+don't you see, he is another kind of man to what we are used to, and
+somehow he makes us think of all kind of things; and already I feel as if
+I could understand Dickens the better for having talked with him."
+
+"Yes," said Clara, "and I think in a few months we shall make him look
+younger; and I should like to see what he was like with the wrinkles
+smoothed out of his face.  Don't you think he will look younger after a
+little time with us?"
+
+The old man shook his head, and looked earnestly at me, but did not
+answer her, and for a moment or two we were all silent.  Then Clara broke
+out:
+
+"Kinsman, I don't like this: something or another troubles me, and I feel
+as if something untoward were going to happen.  You have been talking of
+past miseries to the guest, and have been living in past unhappy times,
+and it is in the air all round us, and makes us feel as if we were
+longing for something that we cannot have."
+
+The old man smiled on her kindly, and said: "Well, my child, if that be
+so, go and live in the present, and you will soon shake it off." Then he
+turned to me, and said: "Do you remember anything like that, guest, in
+the country from which you come?"
+
+The lovers had turned aside now, and were talking together softly, and
+not heeding us; so I said, but in a low voice: "Yes, when I was a happy
+child on a sunny holiday, and had everything that I could think of."
+
+"So it is," said he.  "You remember just now you twitted me with living
+in the second childhood of the world.  You will find it a happy world to
+live in; you will be happy there--for a while."
+
+Again I did not like his scarcely veiled threat, and was beginning to
+trouble myself with trying to remember how I had got amongst this curious
+people, when the old man called out in a cheery voice: "Now, my children,
+take your guest away, and make much of him; for it is your business to
+make him sleek of skin and peaceful of mind: he has by no means been as
+lucky as you have.  Farewell, guest!" and he grasped my hand warmly.
+
+"Good-bye," said I, "and thank you very much for all that you have told
+me.  I will come and see you as soon as I come back to London.  May I?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "come by all means--if you can."
+
+"It won't be for some time yet," quoth Dick, in his cheery voice; "for
+when the hay is in up the river, I shall be for taking him a round
+through the country between hay and wheat harvest, to see how our friends
+live in the north country.  Then in the wheat harvest we shall do a good
+stroke of work, I should hope,--in Wiltshire by preference; for he will
+be getting a little hard with all the open-air living, and I shall be as
+tough as nails."
+
+"But you will take me along, won't you, Dick?" said Clara, laying her
+pretty hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Will I not?" said Dick, somewhat boisterously.  "And we will manage to
+send you to bed pretty tired every night; and you will look so beautiful
+with your neck all brown, and your hands too, and you under your gown as
+white as privet, that you will get some of those strange discontented
+whims out of your head, my dear.  However, our week's haymaking will do
+all that for you."
+
+The girl reddened very prettily, and not for shame but for pleasure; and
+the old man laughed, and said:
+
+"Guest, I see that you will be as comfortable as need be; for you need
+not fear that those two will be too officious with you: they will be so
+busy with each other, that they will leave you a good deal to yourself, I
+am sure, and that is a real kindness to a guest, after all.  O, you need
+not be afraid of being one too many, either: it is just what these birds
+in a nest like, to have a good convenient friend to turn to, so that they
+may relieve the ecstasies of love with the solid commonplace of
+friendship.  Besides, Dick, and much more Clara, likes a little talking
+at times; and you know lovers do not talk unless they get into trouble,
+they only prattle.  Good-bye, guest; may you be happy!"
+
+Clara went up to old Hammond, threw her arms about his neck and kissed
+him heartily, and said:
+
+"You are a dear old man, and may have your jest about me as much as you
+please; and it won't be long before we see you again; and you may be sure
+we shall make our guest happy; though, mind you, there is some truth in
+what you say."
+
+Then I shook hands again, and we went out of the hall and into the
+cloisters, and so in the street found Greylocks in the shafts waiting for
+us.  He was well looked after; for a little lad of about seven years old
+had his hand on the rein and was solemnly looking up into his face; on
+his back, withal, was a girl of fourteen, holding a three-year old sister
+on before her; while another girl, about a year older than the boy, hung
+on behind.  The three were occupied partly with eating cherries, partly
+with patting and punching Greylocks, who took all their caresses in good
+part, but pricked up his ears when Dick made his appearance.  The girls
+got off quietly, and going up to Clara, made much of her and snuggled up
+to her.  And then we got into the carriage, Dick shook the reins, and we
+got under way at once, Greylocks trotting soberly between the lovely
+trees of the London streets, that were sending floods of fragrance into
+the cool evening air; for it was now getting toward sunset.
+
+We could hardly go but fair and softly all the way, as there were a great
+many people abroad in that cool hour.  Seeing so many people made me
+notice their looks the more; and I must say, my taste, cultivated in the
+sombre greyness, or rather brownness, of the nineteenth century, was
+rather apt to condemn the gaiety and brightness of the raiment; and I
+even ventured to say as much to Clara.  She seemed rather surprised, and
+even slightly indignant, and said: "Well, well, what's the matter?  They
+are not about any dirty work; they are only amusing themselves in the
+fine evening; there is nothing to foul their clothes.  Come, doesn't it
+all look very pretty?  It isn't gaudy, you know."
+
+Indeed that was true; for many of the people were clad in colours that
+were sober enough, though beautiful, and the harmony of the colours was
+perfect and most delightful.
+
+I said, "Yes, that is so; but how can everybody afford such costly
+garments?  Look! there goes a middle-aged man in a sober grey dress; but
+I can see from here that it is made of very fine woollen stuff, and is
+covered with silk embroidery."
+
+Said Clara: "He could wear shabby clothes if he pleased,--that is, if he
+didn't think he would hurt people's feelings by doing so."
+
+"But please tell me," said I, "how can they afford it?"
+
+As soon as I had spoken I perceived that I had got back to my old
+blunder; for I saw Dick's shoulders shaking with laughter; but he
+wouldn't say a word, but handed me over to the tender mercies of Clara,
+who said--
+
+"Why, I don't know what you mean.  Of course we can afford it, or else we
+shouldn't do it.  It would be easy enough for us to say, we will only
+spend our labour on making our clothes comfortable: but we don't choose
+to stop there.  Why do you find fault with us?  Does it seem to you as if
+we starved ourselves of food in order to make ourselves fine clothes?  Or
+do you think there is anything wrong in liking to see the coverings of
+our bodies beautiful like our bodies are?--just as a deer's or an otter's
+skin has been made beautiful from the first?  Come, what is wrong with
+you?"
+
+I bowed before the storm, and mumbled out some excuse or other.  I must
+say, I might have known that people who were so fond of architecture
+generally, would not be backward in ornamenting themselves; all the more
+as the shape of their raiment, apart from its colour, was both beautiful
+and reasonable--veiling the form, without either muffling or caricaturing
+it.
+
+Clara was soon mollified; and as we drove along toward the wood before
+mentioned, she said to Dick--
+
+"I tell you what, Dick: now that kinsman Hammond the Elder has seen our
+guest in his queer clothes, I think we ought to find him something decent
+to put on for our journey to-morrow: especially since, if we do not, we
+shall have to answer all sorts of questions as to his clothes and where
+they came from.  Besides," she said slily, "when he is clad in handsome
+garments he will not be so quick to blame us for our childishness in
+wasting our time in making ourselves look pleasant to each other."
+
+"All right, Clara," said Dick; "he shall have everything that you--that
+he wants to have.  I will look something out for him before he gets up to-
+morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX: THE HAMMERSMITH GUEST-HOUSE AGAIN
+
+
+Amidst such talk, driving quietly through the balmy evening, we came to
+Hammersmith, and were well received by our friends there.  Boffin, in a
+fresh suit of clothes, welcomed me back with stately courtesy; the weaver
+wanted to button-hole me and get out of me what old Hammond had said, but
+was very friendly and cheerful when Dick warned him off; Annie shook
+hands with me, and hoped I had had a pleasant day--so kindly, that I felt
+a slight pang as our hands parted; for to say the truth, I liked her
+better than Clara, who seemed to be always a little on the defensive,
+whereas Annie was as frank as could be, and seemed to get honest pleasure
+from everything and everybody about her without the least effort.
+
+We had quite a little feast that evening, partly in my honour, and
+partly, I suspect, though nothing was said about it, in honour of Dick
+and Clara coming together again.  The wine was of the best; the hall was
+redolent of rich summer flowers; and after supper we not only had music
+(Annie, to my mind, surpassing all the others for sweetness and clearness
+of voice, as well as for feeling and meaning), but at last we even got to
+telling stories, and sat there listening, with no other light but that of
+the summer moon streaming through the beautiful traceries of the windows,
+as if we had belonged to time long passed, when books were scarce and the
+art of reading somewhat rare.  Indeed, I may say here, that, though, as
+you will have noted, my friends had mostly something to say about books,
+yet they were not great readers, considering the refinement of their
+manners and the great amount of leisure which they obviously had.  In
+fact, when Dick, especially, mentioned a book, he did so with an air of a
+man who has accomplished an achievement; as much as to say, "There, you
+see, I have actually read that!"
+
+The evening passed all too quickly for me; since that day, for the first
+time in my life, I was having my fill of the pleasure of the eyes without
+any of that sense of incongruity, that dread of approaching ruin, which
+had always beset me hitherto when I had been amongst the beautiful works
+of art of the past, mingled with the lovely nature of the present; both
+of them, in fact, the result of the long centuries of tradition, which
+had compelled men to produce the art, and compelled nature to run into
+the mould of the ages.  Here I could enjoy everything without an
+afterthought of the injustice and miserable toil which made my leisure;
+the ignorance and dulness of life which went to make my keen appreciation
+of history; the tyranny and the struggle full of fear and mishap which
+went to make my romance.  The only weight I had upon my heart was a vague
+fear as it drew toward bed-time concerning the place wherein I should
+wake on the morrow: but I choked that down, and went to bed happy, and in
+a very few moments was in a dreamless sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI: GOING UP THE RIVER
+
+
+When I did wake, to a beautiful sunny morning, I leapt out of bed with my
+over-night apprehension still clinging to me, which vanished delightfully
+however in a moment as I looked around my little sleeping chamber and saw
+the pale but pure-coloured figures painted on the plaster of the wall,
+with verses written underneath them which I knew somewhat over well.  I
+dressed speedily, in a suit of blue laid ready for me, so handsome that I
+quite blushed when I had got into it, feeling as I did so that excited
+pleasure of anticipation of a holiday, which, well remembered as it was,
+I had not felt since I was a boy, new come home for the summer holidays.
+
+It seemed quite early in the morning, and I expected to have the hall to
+myself when I came into it out of the corridor wherein was my sleeping
+chamber; but I met Annie at once, who let fall her broom and gave me a
+kiss, quite meaningless I fear, except as betokening friendship, though
+she reddened as she did it, not from shyness, but from friendly pleasure,
+and then stood and picked up her broom again, and went on with her
+sweeping, nodding to me as if to bid me stand out of the way and look on;
+which, to say the truth, I thought amusing enough, as there were five
+other girls helping her, and their graceful figures engaged in the
+leisurely work were worth going a long way to see, and their merry talk
+and laughing as they swept in quite a scientific manner was worth going a
+long way to hear.  But Annie presently threw me back a word or two as she
+went on to the other end of the hall: "Guest," she said, "I am glad that
+you are up early, though we wouldn't disturb you; for our Thames is a
+lovely river at half-past six on a June morning: and as it would be a
+pity for you to lose it, I am told just to give you a cup of milk and a
+bit of bread outside there, and put you into the boat: for Dick and Clara
+are all ready now.  Wait half a minute till I have swept down this row."
+
+So presently she let her broom drop again, and came and took me by the
+hand and led me out on to the terrace above the river, to a little table
+under the boughs, where my bread and milk took the form of as dainty a
+breakfast as any one could desire, and then sat by me as I ate.  And in a
+minute or two Dick and Clara came to me, the latter looking most fresh
+and beautiful in a light silk embroidered gown, which to my unused eyes
+was extravagantly gay and bright; while Dick was also handsomely dressed
+in white flannel prettily embroidered.  Clara raised her gown in her
+hands as she gave me the morning greeting, and said laughingly: "Look,
+guest! you see we are at least as fine as any of the people you felt
+inclined to scold last night; you see we are not going to make the bright
+day and the flowers feel ashamed of themselves.  Now scold me!"
+
+Quoth I: "No, indeed; the pair of you seem as if you were born out of the
+summer day itself; and I will scold you when I scold it."
+
+"Well, you know," said Dick, "this is a special day--all these days are,
+I mean.  The hay-harvest is in some ways better than corn-harvest because
+of the beautiful weather; and really, unless you had worked in the hay-
+field in fine weather, you couldn't tell what pleasant work it is.  The
+women look so pretty at it, too," he said, shyly; "so all things
+considered, I think we are right to adorn it in a simple manner."
+
+"Do the women work at it in silk dresses?" said I, smiling.
+
+Dick was going to answer me soberly; but Clara put her hand over his
+mouth, and said, "No, no, Dick; not too much information for him, or I
+shall think that you are your old kinsman again.  Let him find out for
+himself: he will not have long to wait."
+
+"Yes," quoth Annie, "don't make your description of the picture too fine,
+or else he will be disappointed when the curtain is drawn.  I don't want
+him to be disappointed.  But now it's time for you to be gone, if you are
+to have the best of the tide, and also of the sunny morning.  Good-bye,
+guest."
+
+She kissed me in her frank friendly way, and almost took away from me my
+desire for the expedition thereby; but I had to get over that, as it was
+clear that so delightful a woman would hardly be without a due lover of
+her own age.  We went down the steps of the landing stage, and got into a
+pretty boat, not too light to hold us and our belongings comfortably, and
+handsomely ornamented; and just as we got in, down came Boffin and the
+weaver to see us off.  The former had now veiled his splendour in a due
+suit of working clothes, crowned with a fantail hat, which he took off,
+however, to wave us farewell with his grave old-Spanish-like courtesy.
+Then Dick pushed off into the stream, and bent vigorously to his sculls,
+and Hammersmith, with its noble trees and beautiful water-side houses,
+began to slip away from us.
+
+As we went, I could not help putting beside his promised picture of the
+hay-field as it was then the picture of it as I remembered it, and
+especially the images of the women engaged in the work rose up before me:
+the row of gaunt figures, lean, flat-breasted, ugly, without a grace of
+form or face about them; dressed in wretched skimpy print gowns, and
+hideous flapping sun-bonnets, moving their rakes in a listless mechanical
+way.  How often had that marred the loveliness of the June day to me; how
+often had I longed to see the hay-fields peopled with men and women
+worthy of the sweet abundance of midsummer, of its endless wealth of
+beautiful sights, and delicious sounds and scents.  And now, the world
+had grown old and wiser, and I was to see my hope realised at last!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII: HAMPTON COURT AND A PRAISER OF PAST TIMES
+
+
+So on we went, Dick rowing in an easy tireless way, and Clara sitting by
+my side admiring his manly beauty and heartily good-natured face, and
+thinking, I fancy, of nothing else.  As we went higher up the river,
+there was less difference between the Thames of that day and Thames as I
+remembered it; for setting aside the hideous vulgarity of the cockney
+villas of the well-to-do, stockbrokers and other such, which in older
+time marred the beauty of the bough-hung banks, even this beginning of
+the country Thames was always beautiful; and as we slipped between the
+lovely summer greenery, I almost felt my youth come back to me, and as if
+I were on one of those water excursions which I used to enjoy so much in
+days when I was too happy to think that there could be much amiss
+anywhere.
+
+At last we came to a reach of the river where on the left hand a very
+pretty little village with some old houses in it came down to the edge of
+the water, over which was a ferry; and beyond these houses the elm-beset
+meadows ended in a fringe of tall willows, while on the right hand went
+the tow-path and a clear space before a row of trees, which rose up
+behind huge and ancient, the ornaments of a great park: but these drew
+back still further from the river at the end of the reach to make way for
+a little town of quaint and pretty houses, some new, some old, dominated
+by the long walls and sharp gables of a great red-brick pile of building,
+partly of the latest Gothic, partly of the court-style of Dutch William,
+but so blended together by the bright sun and beautiful surroundings,
+including the bright blue river, which it looked down upon, that even
+amidst the beautiful buildings of that new happy time it had a strange
+charm about it.  A great wave of fragrance, amidst which the lime-tree
+blossom was clearly to be distinguished, came down to us from its unseen
+gardens, as Clara sat up in her place, and said:
+
+"O Dick, dear, couldn't we stop at Hampton Court for to-day, and take the
+guest about the park a little, and show him those sweet old buildings?
+Somehow, I suppose because you have lived so near it, you have seldom
+taken me to Hampton Court."
+
+Dick rested on his oars a little, and said: "Well, well, Clara, you are
+lazy to-day.  I didn't feel like stopping short of Shepperton for the
+night; suppose we just go and have our dinner at the Court, and go on
+again about five o'clock?"
+
+"Well," she said, "so be it; but I should like the guest to have spent an
+hour or two in the Park."
+
+"The Park!" said Dick; "why, the whole Thames-side is a park this time of
+the year; and for my part, I had rather lie under an elm-tree on the
+borders of a wheat-field, with the bees humming about me and the corn-
+crake crying from furrow to furrow, than in any park in England.
+Besides--"
+
+"Besides," said she, "you want to get on to your dearly-loved upper
+Thames, and show your prowess down the heavy swathes of the mowing
+grass."
+
+She looked at him fondly, and I could tell that she was seeing him in her
+mind's eye showing his splendid form at its best amidst the rhymed
+strokes of the scythes; and she looked down at her own pretty feet with a
+half sigh, as though she were contrasting her slight woman's beauty with
+his man's beauty; as women will when they are really in love, and are not
+spoiled with conventional sentiment.
+
+As for Dick, he looked at her admiringly a while, and then said at last:
+"Well, Clara, I do wish we were there!  But, hilloa! we are getting back
+way."  And he set to work sculling again, and in two minutes we were all
+standing on the gravelly strand below the bridge, which, as you may
+imagine, was no longer the old hideous iron abortion, but a handsome
+piece of very solid oak framing.
+
+We went into the Court and straight into the great hall, so well
+remembered, where there were tables spread for dinner, and everything
+arranged much as in Hammersmith Guest-Hall.  Dinner over, we sauntered
+through the ancient rooms, where the pictures and tapestry were still
+preserved, and nothing was much changed, except that the people whom we
+met there had an indefinable kind of look of being at home and at ease,
+which communicated itself to me, so that I felt that the beautiful old
+place was mine in the best sense of the word; and my pleasure of past
+days seemed to add itself to that of to-day, and filled my whole soul
+with content.
+
+Dick (who, in spite of Clara's gibe, knew the place very well) told me
+that the beautiful old Tudor rooms, which I remembered had been the
+dwellings of the lesser fry of Court flunkies, were now much used by
+people coming and going; for, beautiful as architecture had now become,
+and although the whole face of the country had quite recovered its
+beauty, there was still a sort of tradition of pleasure and beauty which
+clung to that group of buildings, and people thought going to Hampton
+Court a necessary summer outing, as they did in the days when London was
+so grimy and miserable.  We went into some of the rooms looking into the
+old garden, and were well received by the people in them, who got
+speedily into talk with us, and looked with politely half-concealed
+wonder at my strange face.  Besides these birds of passage, and a few
+regular dwellers in the place, we saw out in the meadows near the garden,
+down "the Long Water," as it used to be called, many gay tents with men,
+women, and children round about them.  As it seemed, this pleasure-loving
+people were fond of tent-life, with all its inconveniences, which,
+indeed, they turned into pleasure also.
+
+We left this old friend by the time appointed, and I made some feeble
+show of taking the sculls; but Dick repulsed me, not much to my grief, I
+must say, as I found I had quite enough to do between the enjoyment of
+the beautiful time and my own lazily blended thoughts.
+
+As to Dick, it was quite right to let him pull, for he was as strong as a
+horse, and had the greatest delight in bodily exercise, whatever it was.
+We really had some difficulty in getting him to stop when it was getting
+rather more than dusk, and the moon was brightening just as we were off
+Runnymede.  We landed there, and were looking about for a place whereon
+to pitch our tents (for we had brought two with us), when an old man came
+up to us, bade us good evening, and asked if we were housed for that that
+night; and finding that we were not, bade us home to his house.  Nothing
+loth, we went with him, and Clara took his hand in a coaxing way which I
+noticed she used with old men; and as we went on our way, made some
+commonplace remark about the beauty of the day.  The old man stopped
+short, and looked at her and said: "You really like it then?"
+
+"Yes," she said, looking very much astonished, "Don't you?"
+
+"Well," said he, "perhaps I do.  I did, at any rate, when I was younger;
+but now I think I should like it cooler."
+
+She said nothing, and went on, the night growing about as dark as it
+would be; till just at the rise of the hill we came to a hedge with a
+gate in it, which the old man unlatched and led us into a garden, at the
+end of which we could see a little house, one of whose little windows was
+already yellow with candlelight.  We could see even under the doubtful
+light of the moon and the last of the western glow that the garden was
+stuffed full of flowers; and the fragrance it gave out in the gathering
+coolness was so wonderfully sweet, that it seemed the very heart of the
+delight of the June dusk; so that we three stopped instinctively, and
+Clara gave forth a little sweet "O," like a bird beginning to sing.
+
+"What's the matter?" said the old man, a little testily, and pulling at
+her hand.  "There's no dog; or have you trodden on a thorn and hurt your
+foot?"
+
+"No, no, neighbour," she said; "but how sweet, how sweet it is!"
+
+"Of course it is," said he, "but do you care so much for that?"
+
+She laughed out musically, and we followed suit in our gruffer voices;
+and then she said: "Of course I do, neighbour; don't you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," quoth the old fellow; then he added, as if somewhat
+ashamed of himself: "Besides, you know, when the waters are out and all
+Runnymede is flooded, it's none so pleasant."
+
+"_I_ should like it," quoth Dick.  "What a jolly sail one would get about
+here on the floods on a bright frosty January morning!"
+
+"_Would_ you like it?" said our host.  "Well, I won't argue with you,
+neighbour; it isn't worth while.  Come in and have some supper."
+
+We went up a paved path between the roses, and straight into a very
+pretty room, panelled and carved, and as clean as a new pin; but the
+chief ornament of which was a young woman, light-haired and grey-eyed,
+but with her face and hands and bare feet tanned quite brown with the
+sun.  Though she was very lightly clad, that was clearly from choice, not
+from poverty, though these were the first cottage-dwellers I had come
+across; for her gown was of silk, and on her wrists were bracelets that
+seemed to me of great value.  She was lying on a sheep-skin near the
+window, but jumped up as soon as we entered, and when she saw the guests
+behind the old man, she clapped her hands and cried out with pleasure,
+and when she got us into the middle of the room, fairly danced round us
+in delight of our company.
+
+"What!" said the old man, "you are pleased, are you, Ellen?"
+
+The girl danced up to him and threw her arms round him, and said: "Yes I
+am, and so ought you to be grandfather."
+
+"Well, well, I am," said he, "as much as I can be pleased.  Guests,
+please be seated."
+
+This seemed rather strange to us; stranger, I suspect, to my friends than
+to me; but Dick took the opportunity of both the host and his
+grand-daughter being out of the room to say to me, softly: "A grumbler:
+there are a few of them still.  Once upon a time, I am told, they were
+quite a nuisance."
+
+The old man came in as he spoke and sat down beside us with a sigh,
+which, indeed, seemed fetched up as if he wanted us to take notice of it;
+but just then the girl came in with the victuals, and the carle missed
+his mark, what between our hunger generally and that I was pretty busy
+watching the grand-daughter moving about as beautiful as a picture.
+
+Everything to eat and drink, though it was somewhat different to what we
+had had in London, was better than good, but the old man eyed rather
+sulkily the chief dish on the table, on which lay a leash of fine perch,
+and said:
+
+"H'm, perch!  I am sorry we can't do better for you, guests.  The time
+was when we might have had a good piece of salmon up from London for you;
+but the times have grown mean and petty."
+
+"Yes, but you might have had it now," said the girl, giggling, "if you
+had known that they were coming."
+
+"It's our fault for not bringing it with us, neighbours," said Dick, good-
+humouredly.  "But if the times have grown petty, at any rate the perch
+haven't; that fellow in the middle there must have weighed a good two
+pounds when he was showing his dark stripes and red fins to the minnows
+yonder.  And as to the salmon, why, neighbour, my friend here, who comes
+from the outlands, was quite surprised yesterday morning when I told him
+we had plenty of salmon at Hammersmith.  I am sure I have heard nothing
+of the times worsening."
+
+He looked a little uncomfortable.  And the old man, turning to me, said
+very courteously:
+
+"Well, sir, I am happy to see a man from over the water; but I really
+must appeal to you to say whether on the whole you are not better off in
+your country; where I suppose, from what our guest says, you are brisker
+and more alive, because you have not wholly got rid of competition.  You
+see, I have read not a few books of the past days, and certainly _they_
+are much more alive than those which are written now; and good sound
+unlimited competition was the condition under which they were written,--if
+we didn't know that from the record of history, we should know it from
+the books themselves.  There is a spirit of adventure in them, and signs
+of a capacity to extract good out of evil which our literature quite
+lacks now; and I cannot help thinking that our moralists and historians
+exaggerate hugely the unhappiness of the past days, in which such
+splendid works of imagination and intellect were produced."
+
+Clara listened to him with restless eyes, as if she were excited and
+pleased; Dick knitted his brow and looked still more uncomfortable, but
+said nothing.  Indeed, the old man gradually, as he warmed to his
+subject, dropped his sneering manner, and both spoke and looked very
+seriously.  But the girl broke out before I could deliver myself of the
+answer I was framing:
+
+"Books, books! always books, grandfather!  When will you understand that
+after all it is the world we live in which interests us; the world of
+which we are a part, and which we can never love too much?  Look!" she
+said, throwing open the casement wider and showing us the white light
+sparkling between the black shadows of the moonlit garden, through which
+ran a little shiver of the summer night-wind, "look! these are our books
+in these days!--and these," she said, stepping lightly up to the two
+lovers and laying a hand on each of their shoulders; "and the guest
+there, with his over-sea knowledge and experience;--yes, and even you,
+grandfather" (a smile ran over her face as she spoke), "with all your
+grumbling and wishing yourself back again in the good old days,--in
+which, as far as I can make out, a harmless and lazy old man like you
+would either have pretty nearly starved, or have had to pay soldiers and
+people to take the folk's victuals and clothes and houses away from them
+by force.  Yes, these are our books; and if we want more, can we not find
+work to do in the beautiful buildings that we raise up all over the
+country (and I know there was nothing like them in past times), wherein a
+man can put forth whatever is in him, and make his hands set forth his
+mind and his soul."
+
+She paused a little, and I for my part could not help staring at her, and
+thinking that if she were a book, the pictures in it were most lovely.
+The colour mantled in her delicate sunburnt cheeks; her grey eyes, light
+amidst the tan of her face, kindly looked on us all as she spoke.  She
+paused, and said again:
+
+"As for your books, they were well enough for times when intelligent
+people had but little else in which they could take pleasure, and when
+they must needs supplement the sordid miseries of their own lives with
+imaginations of the lives of other people.  But I say flatly that in
+spite of all their cleverness and vigour, and capacity for story-telling,
+there is something loathsome about them.  Some of them, indeed, do here
+and there show some feeling for those whom the history-books call 'poor,'
+and of the misery of whose lives we have some inkling; but presently they
+give it up, and towards the end of the story we must be contented to see
+the hero and heroine living happily in an island of bliss on other
+people's troubles; and that after a long series of sham troubles (or
+mostly sham) of their own making, illustrated by dreary introspective
+nonsense about their feelings and aspirations, and all the rest of it;
+while the world must even then have gone on its way, and dug and sewed
+and baked and built and carpentered round about these useless--animals."
+
+"There!" said the old man, reverting to his dry sulky manner again.
+"There's eloquence!  I suppose you like it?"
+
+"Yes," said I, very emphatically.
+
+"Well," said he, "now the storm of eloquence has lulled for a little,
+suppose you answer my question?--that is, if you like, you know," quoth
+he, with a sudden access of courtesy.
+
+"What question?" said I.  For I must confess that Ellen's strange and
+almost wild beauty had put it out of my head.
+
+Said he: "First of all (excuse my catechising), is there competition in
+life, after the old kind, in the country whence you come?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "it is the rule there."  And I wondered as I spoke what
+fresh complications I should get into as a result of this answer.
+
+"Question two," said the carle: "Are you not on the whole much freer,
+more energetic--in a word, healthier and happier--for it?"
+
+I smiled.  "You wouldn't talk so if you had any idea of our life.  To me
+you seem here as if you were living in heaven compared with us of the
+country from which I came."
+
+"Heaven?" said he: "you like heaven, do you?"
+
+"Yes," said I--snappishly, I am afraid; for I was beginning rather to
+resent his formula.
+
+"Well, I am far from sure that I do," quoth he.  "I think one may do more
+with one's life than sitting on a damp cloud and singing hymns."
+
+I was rather nettled by this inconsequence, and said: "Well, neighbour,
+to be short, and without using metaphors, in the land whence I come,
+where the competition which produced those literary works which you
+admire so much is still the rule, most people are thoroughly unhappy;
+here, to me at least most people seem thoroughly happy."
+
+"No offence, guest--no offence," said he; "but let me ask you; you like
+that, do you?"
+
+His formula, put with such obstinate persistence, made us all laugh
+heartily; and even the old man joined in the laughter on the sly.
+However, he was by no means beaten, and said presently:
+
+"From all I can hear, I should judge that a young woman so beautiful as
+my dear Ellen yonder would have been a lady, as they called it in the old
+time, and wouldn't have had to wear a few rags of silk as she does now,
+or to have browned herself in the sun as she has to do now.  What do you
+say to that, eh?"
+
+Here Clara, who had been pretty much silent hitherto, struck in, and
+said: "Well, really, I don't think that you would have mended matters, or
+that they want mending.  Don't you see that she is dressed deliciously
+for this beautiful weather?  And as for the sun-burning of your
+hay-fields, why, I hope to pick up some of that for myself when we get a
+little higher up the river.  Look if I don't need a little sun on my
+pasty white skin!"
+
+And she stripped up the sleeve from her arm and laid it beside Ellen's
+who was now sitting next her.  To say the truth, it was rather amusing to
+me to see Clara putting herself forward as a town-bred fine lady, for she
+was as well-knit and clean-skinned a girl as might be met with anywhere
+at the best.  Dick stroked the beautiful arm rather shyly, and pulled
+down the sleeve again, while she blushed at his touch; and the old man
+said laughingly: "Well, I suppose you _do_ like that; don't you?"
+
+Ellen kissed her new friend, and we all sat silent for a little, till she
+broke out into a sweet shrill song, and held us all entranced with the
+wonder of her clear voice; and the old grumbler sat looking at her
+lovingly.  The other young people sang also in due time; and then Ellen
+showed us to our beds in small cottage chambers, fragrant and clean as
+the ideal of the old pastoral poets; and the pleasure of the evening
+quite extinguished my fear of the last night, that I should wake up in
+the old miserable world of worn-out pleasures, and hopes that were half
+fears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII: AN EARLY MORNING BY RUNNYMEDE
+
+
+Though there were no rough noises to wake me, I could not lie long abed
+the next morning, where the world seemed so well awake, and, despite the
+old grumbler, so happy; so I got up, and found that, early as it was,
+someone had been stirring, since all was trim and in its place in the
+little parlour, and the table laid for the morning meal.  Nobody was
+afoot in the house as then, however, so I went out a-doors, and after a
+turn or two round the superabundant garden, I wandered down over the
+meadow to the river-side, where lay our boat, looking quite familiar and
+friendly to me.  I walked up stream a little, watching the light mist
+curling up from the river till the sun gained power to draw it all away;
+saw the bleak speckling the water under the willow boughs, whence the
+tiny flies they fed on were falling in myriads; heard the great chub
+splashing here and there at some belated moth or other, and felt almost
+back again in my boyhood.  Then I went back again to the boat, and
+loitered there a minute or two, and then walked slowly up the meadow
+towards the little house.  I noted now that there were four more houses
+of about the same size on the slope away from the river.  The meadow in
+which I was going was not up for hay; but a row of flake-hurdles ran up
+the slope not far from me on each side, and in the field so parted off
+from ours on the left they were making hay busily by now, in the simple
+fashion of the days when I was a boy.  My feet turned that way
+instinctively, as I wanted to see how haymakers looked in these new and
+better times, and also I rather expected to see Ellen there.  I came to
+the hurdles and stood looking over into the hay-field, and was close to
+the end of the long line of haymakers who were spreading the low ridges
+to dry off the night dew.  The majority of these were young women clad
+much like Ellen last night, though not mostly in silk, but in light
+woollen mostly gaily embroidered; the men being all clad in white flannel
+embroidered in bright colours.  The meadow looked like a gigantic tulip-
+bed because of them.  All hands were working deliberately but well and
+steadily, though they were as noisy with merry talk as a grove of autumn
+starlings.  Half a dozen of them, men and women, came up to me and shook
+hands, gave me the sele of the morning, and asked a few questions as to
+whence and whither, and wishing me good luck, went back to their work.
+Ellen, to my disappointment, was not amongst them, but presently I saw a
+light figure come out of the hay-field higher up the slope, and make for
+our house; and that was Ellen, holding a basket in her hand.  But before
+she had come to the garden gate, out came Dick and Clara, who, after a
+minute's pause, came down to meet me, leaving Ellen in the garden; then
+we three went down to the boat, talking mere morning prattle.  We stayed
+there a little, Dick arranging some of the matters in her, for we had
+only taken up to the house such things as we thought the dew might
+damage; and then we went toward the house again; but when we came near
+the garden, Dick stopped us by laying a hand on my arm and said,--
+
+"Just look a moment."
+
+I looked, and over the low hedge saw Ellen, shading her eyes against the
+sun as she looked toward the hay-field, a light wind stirring in her
+tawny hair, her eyes like light jewels amidst her sunburnt face, which
+looked as if the warmth of the sun were yet in it.
+
+"Look, guest," said Dick; "doesn't it all look like one of those very
+stories out of Grimm that we were talking about up in Bloomsbury?  Here
+are we two lovers wandering about the world, and we have come to a fairy
+garden, and there is the very fairy herself amidst of it: I wonder what
+she will do for us."
+
+Said Clara demurely, but not stiffly: "Is she a good fairy, Dick?"
+
+"O, yes," said he; "and according to the card, she would do better, if it
+were not for the gnome or wood-spirit, our grumbling friend of last
+night."
+
+We laughed at this; and I said, "I hope you see that you have left me out
+of the tale."
+
+"Well," said he, "that's true.  You had better consider that you have got
+the cap of darkness, and are seeing everything, yourself invisible."
+
+That touched me on my weak side of not feeling sure of my position in
+this beautiful new country; so in order not to make matters worse, I held
+my tongue, and we all went into the garden and up to the house together.
+I noticed by the way that Clara must really rather have felt the contrast
+between herself as a town madam and this piece of the summer country that
+we all admired so, for she had rather dressed after Ellen that morning as
+to thinness and scantiness, and went barefoot also, except for light
+sandals.
+
+The old man greeted us kindly in the parlour, and said: "Well, guests, so
+you have been looking about to search into the nakedness of the land: I
+suppose your illusions of last night have given way a bit before the
+morning light?  Do you still like, it, eh?"
+
+"Very much," said I, doggedly; "it is one of the prettiest places on the
+lower Thames."
+
+"Oho!" said he; "so you know the Thames, do you?"
+
+I reddened, for I saw Dick and Clara looking at me, and scarcely knew
+what to say.  However, since I had said in our early intercourse with my
+Hammersmith friends that I had known Epping Forest, I thought a hasty
+generalisation might be better in avoiding complications than a downright
+lie; so I said--
+
+"I have been in this country before; and I have been on the Thames in
+those days."
+
+"O," said the old man, eagerly, "so you have been in this country before.
+Now really, don't you _find_ it (apart from all theory, you know) much
+changed for the worse?"
+
+"No, not at all," said I; "I find it much changed for the better."
+
+"Ah," quoth he, "I fear that you have been prejudiced by some theory or
+another.  However, of course the time when you were here before must have
+been so near our own days that the deterioration might not be very great:
+as then we were, of course, still living under the same customs as we are
+now.  I was thinking of earlier days than that."
+
+"In short," said Clara, "you have _theories_ about the change which has
+taken place."
+
+"I have facts as well," said he.  "Look here! from this hill you can see
+just four little houses, including this one.  Well, I know for certain
+that in old times, even in the summer, when the leaves were thickest, you
+could see from the same place six quite big and fine houses; and higher
+up the water, garden joined garden right up to Windsor; and there were
+big houses in all the gardens.  Ah!  England was an important place in
+those days."
+
+I was getting nettled, and said: "What you mean is that you
+de-cockneyised the place, and sent the damned flunkies packing, and that
+everybody can live comfortably and happily, and not a few damned thieves
+only, who were centres of vulgarity and corruption wherever they were,
+and who, as to this lovely river, destroyed its beauty morally, and had
+almost destroyed it physically, when they were thrown out of it."
+
+There was silence after this outburst, which for the life of me I could
+not help, remembering how I had suffered from cockneyism and its cause on
+those same waters of old time.  But at last the old man said, quite
+coolly:
+
+"My dear guest, I really don't know what you mean by either cockneys, or
+flunkies, or thieves, or damned; or how only a few people could live
+happily and comfortably in a wealthy country.  All I can see is that you
+are angry, and I fear with me: so if you like we will change the
+subject."
+
+I thought this kind and hospitable in him, considering his obstinacy
+about his theory; and hastened to say that I did not mean to be angry,
+only emphatic.  He bowed gravely, and I thought the storm was over, when
+suddenly Ellen broke in:
+
+"Grandfather, our guest is reticent from courtesy; but really what he has
+in his mind to say to you ought to be said; so as I know pretty well what
+it is, I will say it for him: for as you know, I have been taught these
+things by people who--"
+
+"Yes," said the old man, "by the sage of Bloomsbury, and others."
+
+"O," said Dick, "so you know my old kinsman Hammond?"
+
+"Yes," said she, "and other people too, as my grandfather says, and they
+have taught me things: and this is the upshot of it.  We live in a little
+house now, not because we have nothing grander to do than working in the
+fields, but because we please; for if we liked, we could go and live in a
+big house amongst pleasant companions."
+
+Grumbled the old man: "Just so!  As if I would live amongst those
+conceited fellows; all of them looking down upon me!"
+
+She smiled on him kindly, but went on as if he had not spoken.  "In the
+past times, when those big houses of which grandfather speaks were so
+plenty, we _must_ have lived in a cottage whether we had liked it or not;
+and the said cottage, instead of having in it everything we want, would
+have been bare and empty.  We should not have got enough to eat; our
+clothes would have been ugly to look at, dirty and frowsy.  You,
+grandfather, have done no hard work for years now, but wander about and
+read your books and have nothing to worry you; and as for me, I work hard
+when I like it, because I like it, and think it does me good, and knits
+up my muscles, and makes me prettier to look at, and healthier and
+happier.  But in those past days you, grandfather, would have had to work
+hard after you were old; and would have been always afraid of having to
+be shut up in a kind of prison along with other old men, half-starved and
+without amusement.  And as for me, I am twenty years old.  In those days
+my middle age would be beginning now, and in a few years I should be
+pinched, thin, and haggard, beset with troubles and miseries, so that no
+one could have guessed that I was once a beautiful girl.
+
+"Is this what you have had in your mind, guest?" said she, the tears in
+her eyes at thought of the past miseries of people like herself.
+
+"Yes," said I, much moved; "that and more.  Often--in my country I have
+seen that wretched change you have spoken of, from the fresh handsome
+country lass to the poor draggle-tailed country woman."
+
+The old man sat silent for a little, but presently recovered himself and
+took comfort in his old phrase of "Well, you like it so, do you?"
+
+"Yes," said Ellen, "I love life better than death."
+
+"O, you do, do you?" said he.  "Well, for my part I like reading a good
+old book with plenty of fun in it, like Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair.'  Why
+don't you write books like that now?  Ask that question of your
+Bloomsbury sage."
+
+Seeing Dick's cheeks reddening a little at this sally, and noting that
+silence followed, I thought I had better do something.  So I said: "I am
+only the guest, friends; but I know you want to show me your river at its
+best, so don't you think we had better be moving presently, as it is
+certainly going to be a hot day?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV: UP THE THAMES: THE SECOND DAY
+
+
+They were not slow to take my hint; and indeed, as to the mere time of
+day, it was best for us to be off, as it was past seven o'clock, and the
+day promised to be very hot.  So we got up and went down to our
+boat--Ellen thoughtful and abstracted; the old man very kind and
+courteous, as if to make up for his crabbedness of opinion.  Clara was
+cheerful and natural, but a little subdued, I thought; and she at least
+was not sorry to be gone, and often looked shyly and timidly at Ellen and
+her strange wild beauty.  So we got into the boat, Dick saying as he took
+his place, "Well, it _is_ a fine day!" and the old man answering "What!
+you like that, do you?" once more; and presently Dick was sending the
+bows swiftly through the slow weed-checked stream.  I turned round as we
+got into mid-stream, and waving my hand to our hosts, saw Ellen leaning
+on the old man's shoulder, and caressing his healthy apple-red cheek, and
+quite a keen pang smote me as I thought how I should never see the
+beautiful girl again.  Presently I insisted on taking the sculls, and I
+rowed a good deal that day; which no doubt accounts for the fact that we
+got very late to the place which Dick had aimed at.  Clara was
+particularly affectionate to Dick, as I noticed from the rowing thwart;
+but as for him, he was as frankly kind and merry as ever; and I was glad
+to see it, as a man of his temperament could not have taken her caresses
+cheerfully and without embarrassment if he had been at all entangled by
+the fairy of our last night's abode.
+
+I need say little about the lovely reaches of the river here.  I duly
+noted that absence of cockney villas which the old man had lamented; and
+I saw with pleasure that my old enemies the "Gothic" cast-iron bridges
+had been replaced by handsome oak and stone ones.  Also the banks of the
+forest that we passed through had lost their courtly game-keeperish
+trimness, and were as wild and beautiful as need be, though the trees
+were clearly well seen to.  I thought it best, in order to get the most
+direct information, to play the innocent about Eton and Windsor; but Dick
+volunteered his knowledge to me as we lay in Datchet lock about the
+first.  Quoth he:
+
+"Up yonder are some beautiful old buildings, which were built for a great
+college or teaching-place by one of the mediaeval kings--Edward the
+Sixth, I think" (I smiled to myself at his rather natural blunder).  "He
+meant poor people's sons to be taught there what knowledge was going in
+his days; but it was a matter of course that in the times of which you
+seem to know so much they spoilt whatever good there was in the founder's
+intentions.  My old kinsman says that they treated them in a very simple
+way, and instead of teaching poor men's sons to know something, they
+taught rich men's sons to know nothing.  It seems from what he says that
+it was a place for the 'aristocracy' (if you know what that word means; I
+have been told its meaning) to get rid of the company of their male
+children for a great part of the year.  I daresay old Hammond would give
+you plenty of information in detail about it."
+
+"What is it used for now?" said I.
+
+"Well," said he, "the buildings were a good deal spoilt by the last few
+generations of aristocrats, who seem to have had a great hatred against
+beautiful old buildings, and indeed all records of past history; but it
+is still a delightful place.  Of course, we cannot use it quite as the
+founder intended, since our ideas about teaching young people are so
+changed from the ideas of his time; so it is used now as a dwelling for
+people engaged in learning; and folk from round about come and get taught
+things that they want to learn; and there is a great library there of the
+best books.  So that I don't think that the old dead king would be much
+hurt if he were to come to life and see what we are doing there."
+
+"Well," said Clara, laughing, "I think he would miss the boys."
+
+"Not always, my dear," said Dick, "for there are often plenty of boys
+there, who come to get taught; and also," said he, smiling, "to learn
+boating and swimming.  I wish we could stop there: but perhaps we had
+better do that coming down the water."
+
+The lock-gates opened as he spoke, and out we went, and on.  And as for
+Windsor, he said nothing till I lay on my oars (for I was sculling then)
+in Clewer reach, and looking up, said, "What is all that building up
+there?"
+
+Said he: "There, I thought I would wait till you asked, yourself.  That
+is Windsor Castle: that also I thought I would keep for you till we come
+down the water.  It looks fine from here, doesn't it?  But a great deal
+of it has been built or skinned in the time of the Degradation, and we
+wouldn't pull the buildings down, since they were there; just as with the
+buildings of the Dung-Market.  You know, of course, that it was the
+palace of our old mediaeval kings, and was used later on for the same
+purpose by the parliamentary commercial sham-kings, as my old kinsman
+calls them."
+
+"Yes," said I, "I know all that.  What is it used for now?"
+
+"A great many people live there," said he, "as, with all drawbacks, it is
+a pleasant place; there is also a well-arranged store of antiquities of
+various kinds that have seemed worth keeping--a museum, it would have
+been called in the times you understand so well."
+
+I drew my sculls through the water at that last word, and pulled as if I
+were fleeing from those times which I understood so well; and we were
+soon going up the once sorely be-cockneyed reaches of the river about
+Maidenhead, which now looked as pleasant and enjoyable as the up-river
+reaches.
+
+The morning was now getting on, the morning of a jewel of a summer day;
+one of those days which, if they were commoner in these islands, would
+make our climate the best of all climates, without dispute.  A light wind
+blew from the west; the little clouds that had arisen at about our
+breakfast time had seemed to get higher and higher in the heavens; and in
+spite of the burning sun we no more longed for rain than we feared it.
+Burning as the sun was, there was a fresh feeling in the air that almost
+set us a-longing for the rest of the hot afternoon, and the stretch of
+blossoming wheat seen from the shadow of the boughs.  No one unburdened
+with very heavy anxieties could have felt otherwise than happy that
+morning: and it must be said that whatever anxieties might lie beneath
+the surface of things, we didn't seem to come across any of them.
+
+We passed by several fields where haymaking was going on, but Dick, and
+especially Clara, were so jealous of our up-river festival that they
+would not allow me to have much to say to them.  I could only notice that
+the people in the fields looked strong and handsome, both men and women,
+and that so far from there being any appearance of sordidness about their
+attire, they seemed to be dressed specially for the occasion,--lightly,
+of course, but gaily and with plenty of adornment.
+
+Both on this day as well as yesterday we had, as you may think, met and
+passed and been passed by many craft of one kind and another.  The most
+part of these were being rowed like ourselves, or were sailing, in the
+sort of way that sailing is managed on the upper reaches of the river;
+but every now and then we came on barges, laden with hay or other country
+produce, or carrying bricks, lime, timber, and the like, and these were
+going on their way without any means of propulsion visible to me--just a
+man at the tiller, with often a friend or two laughing and talking with
+him.  Dick, seeing on one occasion this day, that I was looking rather
+hard on one of these, said: "That is one of our force-barges; it is quite
+as easy to work vehicles by force by water as by land."
+
+I understood pretty well that these "force vehicles" had taken the place
+of our old steam-power carrying; but I took good care not to ask any
+questions about them, as I knew well enough both that I should never be
+able to understand how they were worked, and that in attempting to do so
+I should betray myself, or get into some complication impossible to
+explain; so I merely said, "Yes, of course, I understand."
+
+We went ashore at Bisham, where the remains of the old Abbey and the
+Elizabethan house that had been added to them yet remained, none the
+worse for many years of careful and appreciative habitation.  The folk of
+the place, however, were mostly in the fields that day, both men and
+women; so we met only two old men there, and a younger one who had stayed
+at home to get on with some literary work, which I imagine we
+considerably interrupted.  Yet I also think that the hard-working man who
+received us was not very sorry for the interruption.  Anyhow, he kept on
+pressing us to stay over and over again, till at last we did not get away
+till the cool of the evening.
+
+However, that mattered little to us; the nights were light, for the moon
+was shining in her third quarter, and it was all one to Dick whether he
+sculled or sat quiet in the boat: so we went away a great pace.  The
+evening sun shone bright on the remains of the old buildings at
+Medmenham; close beside which arose an irregular pile of building which
+Dick told us was a very pleasant house; and there were plenty of houses
+visible on the wide meadows opposite, under the hill; for, as it seems
+that the beauty of Hurley had compelled people to build and live there a
+good deal.  The sun very low down showed us Henley little altered in
+outward aspect from what I remembered it.  Actual daylight failed us as
+we passed through the lovely reaches of Wargrave and Shiplake; but the
+moon rose behind us presently.  I should like to have seen with my eyes
+what success the new order of things had had in getting rid of the
+sprawling mess with which commercialism had littered the banks of the
+wide stream about Reading and Caversham: certainly everything smelt too
+deliciously in the early night for there to be any of the old careless
+sordidness of so-called manufacture; and in answer to my question as to
+what sort of a place Reading was, Dick answered:
+
+"O, a nice town enough in its way; mostly rebuilt within the last hundred
+years; and there are a good many houses, as you can see by the lights
+just down under the hills yonder.  In fact, it is one of the most
+populous places on the Thames round about here.  Keep up your spirits,
+guest! we are close to our journey's end for the night.  I ought to ask
+your pardon for not stopping at one of the houses here or higher up; but
+a friend, who is living in a very pleasant house in the Maple-Durham
+meads, particularly wanted me and Clara to come and see him on our way up
+the Thames; and I thought you wouldn't mind this bit of night
+travelling."
+
+He need not have adjured me to keep up my spirits, which were as high as
+possible; though the strangeness and excitement of the happy and quiet
+life which I saw everywhere around me was, it is true, a little wearing
+off, yet a deep content, as different as possible from languid
+acquiescence, was taking its place, and I was, as it were, really new-
+born.
+
+We landed presently just where I remembered the river making an elbow to
+the north towards the ancient house of the Blunts; with the wide meadows
+spreading on the right-hand side, and on the left the long line of
+beautiful old trees overhanging the water.  As we got out of the boat, I
+said to Dick--
+
+"Is it the old house we are going to?"
+
+"No," he said, "though that is standing still in green old age, and is
+well inhabited.  I see, by the way, that you know your Thames well.  But
+my friend Walter Allen, who asked me to stop here, lives in a house, not
+very big, which has been built here lately, because these meadows are so
+much liked, especially in summer, that there was getting to be rather too
+much of tenting on the open field; so the parishes here about, who rather
+objected to that, built three houses between this and Caversham, and
+quite a large one at Basildon, a little higher up.  Look, yonder are the
+lights of Walter Allen's house!"
+
+So we walked over the grass of the meadows under a flood of moonlight,
+and soon came to the house, which was low and built round a quadrangle
+big enough to get plenty of sunshine in it.  Walter Allen, Dick's friend,
+was leaning against the jamb of the doorway waiting for us, and took us
+into the hall without overplus of words.  There were not many people in
+it, as some of the dwellers there were away at the haymaking in the
+neighbourhood, and some, as Walter told us, were wandering about the
+meadow enjoying the beautiful moonlit night.  Dick's friend looked to be
+a man of about forty; tall, black-haired, very kind-looking and
+thoughtful; but rather to my surprise there was a shade of melancholy on
+his face, and he seemed a little abstracted and inattentive to our chat,
+in spite of obvious efforts to listen.
+
+Dick looked on him from time to time, and seemed troubled; and at last he
+said: "I say, old fellow, if there is anything the matter which we didn't
+know of when you wrote to me, don't you think you had better tell us
+about it at once?  Or else we shall think we have come here at an unlucky
+time, and are not quite wanted."
+
+Walter turned red, and seemed to have some difficulty in restraining his
+tears, but said at last: "Of course everybody here is very glad to see
+you, Dick, and your friends; but it is true that we are not at our best,
+in spite of the fine weather and the glorious hay-crop.  We have had a
+death here."
+
+Said Dick: "Well, you should get over that, neighbour: such things must
+be."
+
+"Yes," Walter said, "but this was a death by violence, and it seems
+likely to lead to at least one more; and somehow it makes us feel rather
+shy of one another; and to say the truth, that is one reason why there
+are so few of us present to-night."
+
+"Tell us the story, Walter," said Dick; "perhaps telling it will help you
+to shake off your sadness."
+
+Said Walter: "Well, I will; and I will make it short enough, though I
+daresay it might be spun out into a long one, as used to be done with
+such subjects in the old novels.  There is a very charming girl here whom
+we all like, and whom some of us do more than like; and she very
+naturally liked one of us better than anybody else.  And another of us (I
+won't name him) got fairly bitten with love-madness, and used to go about
+making himself as unpleasant as he could--not of malice prepense, of
+course; so that the girl, who liked him well enough at first, though she
+didn't love him, began fairly to dislike him.  Of course, those of us who
+knew him best--myself amongst others--advised him to go away, as he was
+making matters worse and worse for himself every day.  Well, he wouldn't
+take our advice (that also, I suppose, was a matter of course), so we had
+to tell him that he _must_ go, or the inevitable sending to Coventry
+would follow; for his individual trouble had so overmastered him that we
+felt that _we_ must go if he did not.
+
+"He took that better than we expected, when something or other--an
+interview with the girl, I think, and some hot words with the successful
+lover following close upon it, threw him quite off his balance; and he
+got hold of an axe and fell upon his rival when there was no one by; and
+in the struggle that followed the man attacked, hit him an unlucky blow
+and killed him.  And now the slayer in his turn is so upset that he is
+like to kill himself; and if he does, the girl will do as much, I fear.
+And all this we could no more help than the earthquake of the year before
+last."
+
+"It is very unhappy," said Dick; "but since the man is dead, and cannot
+be brought to life again, and since the slayer had no malice in him, I
+cannot for the life of me see why he shouldn't get over it before long.
+Besides, it was the right man that was killed and not the wrong.  Why
+should a man brood over a mere accident for ever?  And the girl?"
+
+"As to her," said Walter, "the whole thing seems to have inspired her
+with terror rather than grief.  What you say about the man is true, or it
+should be; but then, you see, the excitement and jealousy that was the
+prelude to this tragedy had made an evil and feverish element round about
+him, from which he does not seem to be able to escape.  However, we have
+advised him to go away--in fact, to cross the seas; but he is in such a
+state that I do not think he _can_ go unless someone _takes_ him, and I
+think it will fall to my lot to do so; which is scarcely a cheerful
+outlook for me."
+
+"O, you will find a certain kind of interest in it," said Dick.  "And of
+course he _must_ soon look upon the affair from a reasonable point of
+view sooner or later."
+
+"Well, at any rate," quoth Walter, "now that I have eased my mind by
+making you uncomfortable, let us have an end of the subject for the
+present.  Are you going to take your guest to Oxford?"
+
+"Why, of course we must pass through it," said Dick, smiling, "as we are
+going into the upper waters: but I thought that we wouldn't stop there,
+or we shall be belated as to the haymaking up our way.  So Oxford and my
+learned lecture on it, all got at second-hand from my old kinsman, must
+wait till we come down the water a fortnight hence."
+
+I listened to this story with much surprise, and could not help wondering
+at first that the man who had slain the other had not been put in custody
+till it could be proved that he killed his rival in self-defence only.
+However, the more I thought of it, the plainer it grew to me that no
+amount of examination of witnesses, who had witnessed nothing but the ill-
+blood between the two rivals, would have done anything to clear up the
+case.  I could not help thinking, also, that the remorse of this homicide
+gave point to what old Hammond had said to me about the way in which this
+strange people dealt with what I had been used to hear called crimes.
+Truly, the remorse was exaggerated; but it was quite clear that the
+slayer took the whole consequences of the act upon himself, and did not
+expect society to whitewash him by punishing him.  I had no fear any
+longer that "the sacredness of human life" was likely to suffer amongst
+my friends from the absence of gallows and prison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV: THE THIRD DAY ON THE THAMES
+
+
+As we went down to the boat next morning, Walter could not quite keep off
+the subject of last night, though he was more hopeful than he had been
+then, and seemed to think that if the unlucky homicide could not be got
+to go over-sea, he might at any rate go and live somewhere in the
+neighbourhood pretty much by himself; at any rate, that was what he
+himself had proposed.  To Dick, and I must say to me also, this seemed a
+strange remedy; and Dick said as much.  Quoth he:
+
+"Friend Walter, don't set the man brooding on the tragedy by letting him
+live alone.  That will only strengthen his idea that he has committed a
+crime, and you will have him killing himself in good earnest."
+
+Said Clara: "I don't know.  If I may say what I think of it, it is that
+he had better have his fill of gloom now, and, so to say, wake up
+presently to see how little need there has been for it; and then he will
+live happily afterwards.  As for his killing himself, you need not be
+afraid of that; for, from all you tell me, he is really very much in love
+with the woman; and to speak plainly, until his love is satisfied, he
+will not only stick to life as tightly as he can, but will also make the
+most of every event of his life--will, so to say, hug himself up in it;
+and I think that this is the real explanation of his taking the whole
+matter with such an excess of tragedy."
+
+Walter looked thoughtful, and said: "Well, you may be right; and perhaps
+we should have treated it all more lightly: but you see, guest" (turning
+to me), "such things happen so seldom, that when they do happen, we
+cannot help being much taken up with it.  For the rest, we are all
+inclined, to excuse our poor friend for making us so unhappy, on the
+ground that he does it out of an exaggerated respect for human life and
+its happiness.  Well, I will say no more about it; only this: will you
+give me a cast up stream, as I want to look after a lonely habitation for
+the poor fellow, since he will have it so, and I hear that there is one
+which would suit us very well on the downs beyond Streatley; so if you
+will put me ashore there I will walk up the hill and look to it."
+
+"Is the house in question empty?" said I.
+
+"No," said Walter, "but the man who lives there will go out of it, of
+course, when he hears that we want it.  You see, we think that the fresh
+air of the downs and the very emptiness of the landscape will do our
+friend good."
+
+"Yes," said Clara, smiling, "and he will not be so far from his beloved
+that they cannot easily meet if they have a mind to--as they certainly
+will."
+
+This talk had brought us down to the boat, and we were presently afloat
+on the beautiful broad stream, Dick driving the prow swiftly through the
+windless water of the early summer morning, for it was not yet six
+o'clock.  We were at the lock in a very little time; and as we lay rising
+and rising on the in-coming water, I could not help wondering that my old
+friend the pound-lock, and that of the very simplest and most rural kind,
+should hold its place there; so I said:
+
+"I have been wondering, as we passed lock after lock, that you people, so
+prosperous as you are, and especially since you are so anxious for
+pleasant work to do, have not invented something which would get rid of
+this clumsy business of going up-stairs by means of these rude
+contrivances."
+
+Dick laughed.  "My dear friend," said he, "as long as water has the
+clumsy habit of running down hill, I fear we must humour it by going up-
+stairs when we have our faces turned from the sea.  And really I don't
+see why you should fall foul of Maple-Durham lock, which I think a very
+pretty place."
+
+There was no doubt about the latter assertion, I thought, as I looked up
+at the overhanging boughs of the great trees, with the sun coming
+glittering through the leaves, and listened to the song of the summer
+blackbirds as it mingled with the sound of the backwater near us.  So not
+being able to say why I wanted the locks away--which, indeed, I didn't do
+at all--I held my peace.  But Walter said--
+
+"You see, guest, this is not an age of inventions.  The last epoch did
+all that for us, and we are now content to use such of its inventions as
+we find handy, and leaving those alone which we don't want.  I believe,
+as a matter of fact, that some time ago (I can't give you a date) some
+elaborate machinery was used for the locks, though people did not go so
+far as try to make the water run up hill.  However, it was troublesome, I
+suppose, and the simple hatches, and the gates, with a big counterpoising
+beam, were found to answer every purpose, and were easily mended when
+wanted with material always to hand: so here they are, as you see."
+
+"Besides," said Dick, "this kind of lock is pretty, as you can see; and I
+can't help thinking that your machine-lock, winding up like a watch,
+would have been ugly and would have spoiled the look of the river: and
+that is surely reason enough for keeping such locks as these.  Good-bye,
+old fellow!" said he to the lock, as he pushed us out through the now
+open gates by a vigorous stroke of the boat-hook.  "May you live long,
+and have your green old age renewed for ever!"
+
+On we went; and the water had the familiar aspect to me of the days
+before Pangbourne had been thoroughly cocknified, as I have seen it.  It
+(Pangbourne) was distinctly a village still--_i.e._, a definite group of
+houses, and as pretty as might be.  The beech-woods still covered the
+hill that rose above Basildon; but the flat fields beneath them were much
+more populous than I remembered them, as there were five large houses in
+sight, very carefully designed so as not to hurt the character of the
+country.  Down on the green lip of the river, just where the water turns
+toward the Goring and Streatley reaches, were half a dozen girls playing
+about on the grass.  They hailed us as we were about passing them, as
+they noted that we were travellers, and we stopped a minute to talk with
+them.  They had been bathing, and were light clad and bare-footed, and
+were bound for the meadows on the Berkshire side, where the haymaking had
+begun, and were passing the time merrily enough till the Berkshire folk
+came in their punt to fetch them.  At first nothing would content them
+but we must go with them into the hay-field, and breakfast with them; but
+Dick put forward his theory of beginning the hay-harvest higher up the
+water, and not spoiling my pleasure therein by giving me a taste of it
+elsewhere, and they gave way, though unwillingly.  In revenge they asked
+me a great many questions about the country I came from and the manners
+of life there, which I found rather puzzling to answer; and doubtless
+what answers I did give were puzzling enough to them.  I noticed both
+with these pretty girls and with everybody else we met, that in default
+of serious news, such as we had heard at Maple-Durham, they were eager to
+discuss all the little details of life: the weather, the hay-crop, the
+last new house, the plenty or lack of such and such birds, and so on; and
+they talked of these things not in a fatuous and conventional way, but as
+taking, I say, real interest in them.  Moreover, I found that the women
+knew as much about all these things as the men: could name a flower, and
+knew its qualities; could tell you the habitat of such and such birds and
+fish, and the like.
+
+It is almost strange what a difference this intelligence made in my
+estimate of the country life of that day; for it used to be said in past
+times, and on the whole truly, that outside their daily work country
+people knew little of the country, and at least could tell you nothing
+about it; while here were these people as eager about all the goings on
+in the fields and woods and downs as if they had been Cockneys newly
+escaped from the tyranny of bricks and mortar.
+
+I may mention as a detail worth noticing that not only did there seem to
+be a great many more birds about of the non-predatory kinds, but their
+enemies the birds of prey were also commoner.  A kite hung over our heads
+as we passed Medmenham yesterday; magpies were quite common in the
+hedgerows; I saw several sparrow-hawks, and I think a merlin; and now
+just as we were passing the pretty bridge which had taken the place of
+Basildon railway-bridge, a couple of ravens croaked above our boat, as
+they sailed off to the higher ground of the downs.  I concluded from all
+this that the days of the gamekeeper were over, and did not even need to
+ask Dick a question about it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI: THE OBSTINATE REFUSERS
+
+
+Before we parted from these girls we saw two sturdy young men and a woman
+putting off from the Berkshire shore, and then Dick bethought him of a
+little banter of the girls, and asked them how it was that there was
+nobody of the male kind to go with them across the water, and where their
+boats were gone to.  Said one, the youngest of the party: "O, they have
+got the big punt to lead stone from up the water."
+
+"Who do you mean by 'they,' dear child?" said Dick.
+
+Said an older girl, laughing: "You had better go and see them.  Look
+there," and she pointed northwest, "don't you see building going on
+there?"
+
+"Yes," said Dick, "and I am rather surprised at this time of the year;
+why are they not haymaking with you?"
+
+The girls all laughed at this, and before their laugh was over, the
+Berkshire boat had run on to the grass and the girls stepped in lightly,
+still sniggering, while the new comers gave us the sele of the day.  But
+before they were under way again, the tall girl said:
+
+"Excuse us for laughing, dear neighbours, but we have had some friendly
+bickering with the builders up yonder, and as we have no time to tell you
+the story, you had better go and ask them: they will be glad to see
+you--if you don't hinder their work."
+
+They all laughed again at that, and waved us a pretty farewell as the
+punters set them over toward the other shore, and left us standing on the
+bank beside our boat.
+
+"Let us go and see them," said Clara; "that is, if you are not in a hurry
+to get to Streatley, Walter?"
+
+"O no," said Walter, "I shall be glad of the excuse to have a little more
+of your company."
+
+So we left the boat moored there, and went on up the slow slope of the
+hill; but I said to Dick on the way, being somewhat mystified: "What was
+all that laughing about? what was the joke!"
+
+"I can guess pretty well," said Dick; "some of them up there have got a
+piece of work which interests them, and they won't go to the haymaking,
+which doesn't matter at all, because there are plenty of people to do
+such easy-hard work as that; only, since haymaking is a regular festival,
+the neighbours find it amusing to jeer good-humouredly at them."
+
+"I see," said I, "much as if in Dickens's time some young people were so
+wrapped up in their work that they wouldn't keep Christmas."
+
+"Just so," said Dick, "only these people need not be young either."
+
+"But what did you mean by easy-hard work?" said I.
+
+Quoth Dick: "Did I say that?  I mean work that tries the muscles and
+hardens them and sends you pleasantly weary to bed, but which isn't
+trying in other ways: doesn't harass you in short.  Such work is always
+pleasant if you don't overdo it.  Only, mind you, good mowing requires
+some little skill.  I'm a pretty good mower."
+
+This talk brought us up to the house that was a-building, not a large
+one, which stood at the end of a beautiful orchard surrounded by an old
+stone wall.  "O yes, I see," said Dick; "I remember, a beautiful place
+for a house: but a starveling of a nineteenth century house stood there:
+I am glad they are rebuilding: it's all stone, too, though it need not
+have been in this part of the country: my word, though, they are making a
+neat job of it: but I wouldn't have made it all ashlar."
+
+Walter and Clara were already talking to a tall man clad in his mason's
+blouse, who looked about forty, but was I daresay older, who had his
+mallet and chisel in hand; there were at work in the shed and on the
+scaffold about half a dozen men and two women, blouse-clad like the
+carles, while a very pretty woman who was not in the work but was dressed
+in an elegant suit of blue linen came sauntering up to us with her
+knitting in her hand.  She welcomed us and said, smiling: "So you are
+come up from the water to see the Obstinate Refusers: where are you going
+haymaking, neighbours?"
+
+"O, right up above Oxford," said Dick; "it is rather a late country.  But
+what share have you got with the Refusers, pretty neighbour?"
+
+Said she, with a laugh: "O, I am the lucky one who doesn't want to work;
+though sometimes I get it, for I serve as model to Mistress Philippa
+there when she wants one: she is our head carver; come and see her."
+
+She led us up to the door of the unfinished house, where a rather little
+woman was working with mallet and chisel on the wall near by.  She seemed
+very intent on what she was doing, and did not turn round when we came
+up; but a taller woman, quite a girl she seemed, who was at work near by,
+had already knocked off, and was standing looking from Clara to Dick with
+delighted eyes.  None of the others paid much heed to us.
+
+The blue-clad girl laid her hand on the carver's shoulder and said: "Now
+Philippa, if you gobble up your work like that, you will soon have none
+to do; and what will become of you then?"
+
+The carver turned round hurriedly and showed us the face of a woman of
+forty (or so she seemed), and said rather pettishly, but in a sweet
+voice:
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, Kate, and don't interrupt me if you can help it."
+She stopped short when she saw us, then went on with the kind smile of
+welcome which never failed us.  "Thank you for coming to see us,
+neighbours; but I am sure that you won't think me unkind if I go on with
+my work, especially when I tell you that I was ill and unable to do
+anything all through April and May; and this open-air and the sun and the
+work together, and my feeling well again too, make a mere delight of
+every hour to me; and excuse me, I must go on."
+
+She fell to work accordingly on a carving in low relief of flowers and
+figures, but talked on amidst her mallet strokes: "You see, we all think
+this the prettiest place for a house up and down these reaches; and the
+site has been so long encumbered with an unworthy one, that we masons
+were determined to pay off fate and destiny for once, and build the
+prettiest house we could compass here--and so--and so--"
+
+Here she lapsed into mere carving, but the tall foreman came up and said:
+"Yes, neighbours, that is it: so it is going to be all ashlar because we
+want to carve a kind of a wreath of flowers and figures all round it; and
+we have been much hindered by one thing or other--Philippa's illness
+amongst others,--and though we could have managed our wreath without
+her--"
+
+"Could you, though?" grumbled the last-named from the face of the wall.
+
+"Well, at any rate, she is our best carver, and it would not have been
+kind to begin the carving without her.  So you see," said he, looking at
+Dick and me, "we really couldn't go haymaking, could we, neighbours?  But
+you see, we are getting on so fast now with this splendid weather, that I
+think we may well spare a week or ten days at wheat-harvest; and won't we
+go at that work then!  Come down then to the acres that lie north and by
+west here at our backs and you shall see good harvesters, neighbours.
+
+"Hurrah, for a good brag!" called a voice from the scaffold above us;
+"our foreman thinks that an easier job than putting one stone on
+another!"
+
+There was a general laugh at this sally, in which the tall foreman
+joined; and with that we saw a lad bringing out a little table into the
+shadow of the stone-shed, which he set down there, and then going back,
+came out again with the inevitable big wickered flask and tall glasses,
+whereon the foreman led us up to due seats on blocks of stone, and said:
+
+"Well, neighbours, drink to my brag coming true, or I shall think you
+don't believe me!  Up there!" said he, hailing the scaffold, "are you
+coming down for a glass?"  Three of the workmen came running down the
+ladder as men with good "building legs" will do; but the others didn't
+answer, except the joker (if he must so be called), who called out
+without turning round: "Excuse me, neighbours for not getting down.  I
+must get on: my work is not superintending, like the gaffer's yonder;
+but, you fellows, send us up a glass to drink the haymakers' health."  Of
+course, Philippa would not turn away from her beloved work; but the other
+woman carver came; she turned out to be Philippa's daughter, but was a
+tall strong girl, black-haired and gipsey-like of face and curiously
+solemn of manner.  The rest gathered round us and clinked glasses, and
+the men on the scaffold turned about and drank to our healths; but the
+busy little woman by the door would have none of it all, but only
+shrugged her shoulders when her daughter came up to her and touched her.
+
+So we shook hands and turned our backs on the Obstinate Refusers, went
+down the slope to our boat, and before we had gone many steps heard the
+full tune of tinkling trowels mingle with the humming of the bees and the
+singing of the larks above the little plain of Basildon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII: THE UPPER WATERS
+
+
+We set Walter ashore on the Berkshire side, amidst all the beauties of
+Streatley, and so went our ways into what once would have been the deeper
+country under the foot-hills of the White Horse; and though the contrast
+between half-cocknified and wholly unsophisticated country existed no
+longer, a feeling of exultation rose within me (as it used to do) at
+sight of the familiar and still unchanged hills of the Berkshire range.
+
+We stopped at Wallingford for our mid-day meal; of course, all signs of
+squalor and poverty had disappeared from the streets of the ancient town,
+and many ugly houses had been taken down and many pretty new ones built,
+but I thought it curious, that the town still looked like the old place I
+remembered so well; for indeed it looked like that ought to have looked.
+
+At dinner we fell in with an old, but very bright and intelligent man,
+who seemed in a country way to be another edition of old Hammond.  He had
+an extraordinary detailed knowledge of the ancient history of the country-
+side from the time of Alfred to the days of the Parliamentary Wars, many
+events of which, as you may know, were enacted round about Wallingford.
+But, what was more interesting to us, he had detailed record of the
+period of the change to the present state of things, and told us a great
+deal about it, and especially of that exodus of the people from the town
+to the country, and the gradual recovery by the town-bred people on one
+side, and the country-bred people on the other, of those arts of life
+which they had each lost; which loss, as he told us, had at one time gone
+so far that not only was it impossible to find a carpenter or a smith in
+a village or small country town, but that people in such places had even
+forgotten how to bake bread, and that at Wallingford, for instance, the
+bread came down with the newspapers by an early train from London, worked
+in some way, the explanation of which I could not understand.  He told us
+also that the townspeople who came into the country used to pick up the
+agricultural arts by carefully watching the way in which the machines
+worked, gathering an idea of handicraft from machinery; because at that
+time almost everything in and about the fields was done by elaborate
+machines used quite unintelligently by the labourers.  On the other hand,
+the old men amongst the labourers managed to teach the younger ones
+gradually a little artizanship, such as the use of the saw and the plane,
+the work of the smithy, and so forth; for once more, by that time it was
+as much as--or rather, more than--a man could do to fix an ash pole to a
+rake by handiwork; so that it would take a machine worth a thousand
+pounds, a group of workmen, and half a day's travelling, to do five
+shillings' worth of work.  He showed us, among other things, an account
+of a certain village council who were working hard at all this business;
+and the record of their intense earnestness in getting to the bottom of
+some matter which in time past would have been thought quite trivial, as,
+for example, the due proportions of alkali and oil for soap-making for
+the village wash, or the exact heat of the water into which a leg of
+mutton should be plunged for boiling--all this joined to the utter
+absence of anything like party feeling, which even in a village assembly
+would certainly have made its appearance in an earlier epoch, was very
+amusing, and at the same time instructive.
+
+This old man, whose name was Henry Morsom, took us, after our meal and a
+rest, into a biggish hall which contained a large collection of articles
+of manufacture and art from the last days of the machine period to that
+day; and he went over them with us, and explained them with great care.
+They also were very interesting, showing the transition from the
+makeshift work of the machines (which was at about its worst a little
+after the Civil War before told of) into the first years of the new
+handicraft period.  Of course, there was much overlapping of the periods:
+and at first the new handwork came in very slowly.
+
+"You must remember," said the old antiquary, "that the handicraft was not
+the result of what used to be called material necessity: on the contrary,
+by that time the machines had been so much improved that almost all
+necessary work might have been done by them: and indeed many people at
+that time, and before it, used to think that machinery would entirely
+supersede handicraft; which certainly, on the face of it, seemed more
+than likely.  But there was another opinion, far less logical, prevalent
+amongst the rich people before the days of freedom, which did not die out
+at once after that epoch had begun.  This opinion, which from all I can
+learn seemed as natural then, as it seems absurd now, was, that while the
+ordinary daily work of the world would be done entirely by automatic
+machinery, the energies of the more intelligent part of mankind would be
+set free to follow the higher forms of the arts, as well as science and
+the study of history.  It was strange, was it not, that they should thus
+ignore that aspiration after complete equality which we now recognise as
+the bond of all happy human society?"
+
+I did not answer, but thought the more.  Dick looked thoughtful, and
+said:
+
+"Strange, neighbour?  Well, I don't know.  I have often heard my old
+kinsman say the one aim of all people before our time was to avoid work,
+or at least they thought it was; so of course the work which their daily
+life forced them to do, seemed more like work than that which they seemed
+to choose for themselves."
+
+"True enough," said Morsom.  "Anyhow, they soon began to find out their
+mistake, and that only slaves and slave-holders could live solely by
+setting machines going."
+
+Clara broke in here, flushing a little as she spoke: "Was not their
+mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been
+living?--a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind,
+animate and inanimate--'nature,' as people used to call it--as one thing,
+and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way,
+that they should try to make 'nature' their slave, since they thought
+'nature' was something outside them."
+
+"Surely," said Morsom; "and they were puzzled as to what to do, till they
+found the feeling against a mechanical life, which had begun before the
+Great Change amongst people who had leisure to think of such things, was
+spreading insensibly; till at last under the guise of pleasure that was
+not supposed to be work, work that was pleasure began to push out the
+mechanical toil, which they had once hoped at the best to reduce to
+narrow limits indeed, but never to get rid of; and which, moreover, they
+found they could not limit as they had hoped to do."
+
+"When did this new revolution gather head?" said I.
+
+"In the half-century that followed the Great Change," said Morsom, "it
+began to be noteworthy; machine after machine was quietly dropped under
+the excuse that the machines could not produce works of art, and that
+works of art were more and more called for.  Look here," he said, "here
+are some of the works of that time--rough and unskilful in handiwork, but
+solid and showing some sense of pleasure in the making."
+
+"They are very curious," said I, taking up a piece of pottery from
+amongst the specimens which the antiquary was showing us; "not a bit like
+the work of either savages or barbarians, and yet with what would once
+have been called a hatred of civilisation impressed upon them."
+
+"Yes," said Morsom, "you must not look for delicacy there: in that period
+you could only have got that from a man who was practically a slave.  But
+now, you see," said he, leading me on a little, "we have learned the
+trick of handicraft, and have added the utmost refinement of workmanship
+to the freedom of fancy and imagination."
+
+I looked, and wondered indeed at the deftness and abundance of beauty of
+the work of men who had at last learned to accept life itself as a
+pleasure, and the satisfaction of the common needs of mankind and the
+preparation for them, as work fit for the best of the race.  I mused
+silently; but at last I said--
+
+"What is to come after this?"
+
+The old man laughed.  "I don't know," said he; "we will meet it when it
+comes."
+
+"Meanwhile," quoth Dick, "we have got to meet the rest of our day's
+journey; so out into the street and down to the strand!  Will you come a
+turn with us, neighbour?  Our friend is greedy of your stories."
+
+"I will go as far as Oxford with you," said he; "I want a book or two out
+of the Bodleian Library.  I suppose you will sleep in the old city?"
+
+"No," said Dick, "we are going higher up; the hay is waiting us there,
+you know."
+
+Morsom nodded, and we all went into the street together, and got into the
+boat a little above the town bridge.  But just as Dick was getting the
+sculls into the rowlocks, the bows of another boat came thrusting through
+the low arch.  Even at first sight it was a gay little craft
+indeed--bright green, and painted over with elegantly drawn flowers.  As
+it cleared the arch, a figure as bright and gay-clad as the boat rose up
+in it; a slim girl dressed in light blue silk that fluttered in the
+draughty wind of the bridge.  I thought I knew the figure, and sure
+enough, as she turned her head to us, and showed her beautiful face, I
+saw with joy that it was none other than the fairy godmother from the
+abundant garden on Runnymede--Ellen, to wit.
+
+We all stopped to receive her.  Dick rose in the boat and cried out a
+genial good morrow; I tried to be as genial as Dick, but failed; Clara
+waved a delicate hand to her; and Morsom nodded and looked on with
+interest.  As to Ellen, the beautiful brown of her face was deepened by a
+flush, as she brought the gunwale of her boat alongside ours, and said:
+
+"You see, neighbours, I had some doubt if you would all three come back
+past Runnymede, or if you did, whether you would stop there; and besides,
+I am not sure whether we--my father and I--shall not be away in a week or
+two, for he wants to see a brother of his in the north country, and I
+should not like him to go without me.  So I thought I might never see you
+again, and that seemed uncomfortable to me, and--and so I came after
+you."
+
+"Well," said Dick, "I am sure we are all very glad of that; although you
+may be sure that as for Clara and me, we should have made a point of
+coming to see you, and of coming the second time, if we had found you
+away the first.  But, dear neighbour, there you are alone in the boat,
+and you have been sculling pretty hard I should think, and might find a
+little quiet sitting pleasant; so we had better part our company into
+two."
+
+"Yes," said Ellen, "I thought you would do that, so I have brought a
+rudder for my boat: will you help me to ship it, please?"
+
+And she went aft in her boat and pushed along our side till she had
+brought the stern close to Dick's hand.  He knelt down in our boat and
+she in hers, and the usual fumbling took place over hanging the rudder on
+its hooks; for, as you may imagine, no change had taken place in the
+arrangement of such an unimportant matter as the rudder of a pleasure-
+boat.  As the two beautiful young faces bent over the rudder, they seemed
+to me to be very close together, and though it only lasted a moment, a
+sort of pang shot through me as I looked on.  Clara sat in her place and
+did not look round, but presently she said, with just the least stiffness
+in her tone:
+
+"How shall we divide?  Won't you go into Ellen's boat, Dick, since,
+without offence to our guest, you are the better sculler?"
+
+Dick stood up and laid his hand on her shoulder, and said: "No, no; let
+Guest try what he can do--he ought to be getting into training now.
+Besides, we are in no hurry: we are not going far above Oxford; and even
+if we are benighted, we shall have the moon, which will give us nothing
+worse of a night than a greyer day."
+
+"Besides," said I, "I may manage to do a little more with my sculling
+than merely keeping the boat from drifting down stream."
+
+They all laughed at this, as if it had a been very good joke; and I
+thought that Ellen's laugh, even amongst the others, was one of the
+pleasantest sounds I had ever heard.
+
+To be short, I got into the new-come boat, not a little elated, and
+taking the sculls, set to work to show off a little.  For--must I say
+it?--I felt as if even that happy world were made the happier for my
+being so near this strange girl; although I must say that of all the
+persons I had seen in that world renewed, she was the most unfamiliar to
+me, the most unlike what I could have thought of.  Clara, for instance,
+beautiful and bright as she was, was not unlike a _very_ pleasant and
+unaffected young lady; and the other girls also seemed nothing more than
+specimens of very much improved types which I had known in other times.
+But this girl was not only beautiful with a beauty quite different from
+that of "a young lady," but was in all ways so strangely interesting; so
+that I kept wondering what she would say or do next to surprise and
+please me.  Not, indeed, that there was anything startling in what she
+actually said or did; but it was all done in a new way, and always with
+that indefinable interest and pleasure of life, which I had noticed more
+or less in everybody, but which in her was more marked and more charming
+than in anyone else that I had seen.
+
+We were soon under way and going at a fair pace through the beautiful
+reaches of the river, between Bensington and Dorchester.  It was now
+about the middle of the afternoon, warm rather than hot, and quite
+windless; the clouds high up and light, pearly white, and gleaming,
+softened the sun's burning, but did not hide the pale blue in most
+places, though they seemed to give it height and consistency; the sky, in
+short, looked really like a vault, as poets have sometimes called it, and
+not like mere limitless air, but a vault so vast and full of light that
+it did not in any way oppress the spirits.  It was the sort of afternoon
+that Tennyson must have been thinking about, when he said of the Lotos-
+Eaters' land that it was a land where it was always afternoon.
+
+Ellen leaned back in the stern and seemed to enjoy herself thoroughly.  I
+could see that she was really looking at things and let nothing escape
+her, and as I watched her, an uncomfortable feeling that she had been a
+little touched by love of the deft, ready, and handsome Dick, and that
+she had been constrained to follow us because of it, faded out of my
+mind; since if it had been so, she surely could not have been so
+excitedly pleased, even with the beautiful scenes we were passing
+through.  For some time she did not say much, but at last, as we had
+passed under Shillingford Bridge (new built, but somewhat on its old
+lines), she bade me hold the boat while she had a good look at the
+landscape through the graceful arch.  Then she turned about to me and
+said:
+
+"I do not know whether to be sorry or glad that this is the first time
+that I have been in these reaches.  It is true that it is a great
+pleasure to see all this for the first time; but if I had had a year or
+two of memory of it, how sweetly it would all have mingled with my life,
+waking or dreaming!  I am so glad Dick has been pulling slowly, so as to
+linger out the time here.  How do you feel about your first visit to
+these waters?"
+
+I do not suppose she meant a trap for me, but anyhow I fell into it, and
+said: "My first visit!  It is not my first visit by many a time.  I know
+these reaches well; indeed, I may say that I know every yard of the
+Thames from Hammersmith to Cricklade."
+
+I saw the complications that might follow, as her eyes fixed mine with a
+curious look in them, that I had seen before at Runnymede, when I had
+said something which made it difficult for others to understand my
+present position amongst these people.  I reddened, and said, in order to
+cover my mistake: "I wonder you have never been up so high as this, since
+you live on the Thames, and moreover row so well that it would be no
+great labour to you.  Let alone," quoth I, insinuatingly, "that anybody
+would be glad to row you."
+
+She laughed, clearly not at my compliment (as I am sure she need not have
+done, since it was a very commonplace fact), but at something which was
+stirring in her mind; and she still looked at me kindly, but with the
+above-said keen look in her eyes, and then she said:
+
+"Well, perhaps it is strange, though I have a good deal to do at home,
+what with looking after my father, and dealing with two or three young
+men who have taken a special liking to me, and all of whom I cannot
+please at once.  But you, dear neighbour; it seems to me stranger that
+you should know the upper river, than that I should not know it; for, as
+I understand, you have only been in England a few days.  But perhaps you
+mean that you have read about it in books, and seen pictures of
+it?--though that does not come to much, either."
+
+"Truly," said I.  "Besides, I have not read any books about the Thames:
+it was one of the minor stupidities of our time that no one thought fit
+to write a decent book about what may fairly be called our only English
+river."
+
+The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I saw that I had made
+another mistake; and I felt really annoyed with myself, as I did not want
+to go into a long explanation just then, or begin another series of
+Odyssean lies.  Somehow, Ellen seemed to see this, and she took no
+advantage of my slip; her piercing look changed into one of mere frank
+kindness, and she said:
+
+"Well, anyhow I am glad that I am travelling these waters with you, since
+you know our river so well, and I know little of it past Pangbourne, for
+you can tell me all I want to know about it."  She paused a minute, and
+then said: "Yet you must understand that the part I do know, I know as
+thoroughly as you do.  I should be sorry for you to think that I am
+careless of a thing so beautiful and interesting as the Thames."
+
+She said this quite earnestly, and with an air of affectionate appeal to
+me which pleased me very much; but I could see that she was only keeping
+her doubts about me for another time.
+
+Presently we came to Day's Lock, where Dick and his two sitters had
+waited for us.  He would have me go ashore, as if to show me something
+which I had never seen before; and nothing loth I followed him, Ellen by
+my side, to the well-remembered Dykes, and the long church beyond them,
+which was still used for various purposes by the good folk of Dorchester:
+where, by the way, the village guest-house still had the sign of the
+Fleur-de-luce which it used to bear in the days when hospitality had to
+be bought and sold.  This time, however, I made no sign of all this being
+familiar to me: though as we sat for a while on the mound of the Dykes
+looking up at Sinodun and its clear-cut trench, and its sister _mamelon_
+of Whittenham, I felt somewhat uncomfortable under Ellen's serious
+attentive look, which almost drew from me the cry, "How little anything
+is changed here!"
+
+We stopped again at Abingdon, which, like Wallingford, was in a way both
+old and new to me, since it had been lifted out of its nineteenth-century
+degradation, and otherwise was as little altered as might be.
+
+Sunset was in the sky as we skirted Oxford by Oseney; we stopped a minute
+or two hard by the ancient castle to put Henry Morsom ashore.  It was a
+matter of course that so far as they could be seen from the river, I
+missed none of the towers and spires of that once don-beridden city; but
+the meadows all round, which, when I had last passed through them, were
+getting daily more and more squalid, more and more impressed with the
+seal of the "stir and intellectual life of the nineteenth century," were
+no longer intellectual, but had once again become as beautiful as they
+should be, and the little hill of Hinksey, with two or three very pretty
+stone houses new-grown on it (I use the word advisedly; for they seemed
+to belong to it) looked down happily on the full streams and waving
+grass, grey now, but for the sunset, with its fast-ripening seeds.
+
+The railway having disappeared, and therewith the various level bridges
+over the streams of Thames, we were soon through Medley Lock and in the
+wide water that washes Port Meadow, with its numerous population of geese
+nowise diminished; and I thought with interest how its name and use had
+survived from the older imperfect communal period, through the time of
+the confused struggle and tyranny of the rights of property, into the
+present rest and happiness of complete Communism.
+
+I was taken ashore again at Godstow, to see the remains of the old
+nunnery, pretty nearly in the same condition as I had remembered them;
+and from the high bridge over the cut close by, I could see, even in the
+twilight, how beautiful the little village with its grey stone houses had
+become; for we had now come into the stone-country, in which every house
+must be either built, walls and roof, of grey stone or be a blot on the
+landscape.
+
+We still rowed on after this, Ellen taking the sculls in my boat; we
+passed a weir a little higher up, and about three miles beyond it came by
+moonlight again to a little town, where we slept at a house thinly
+inhabited, as its folk were mostly tented in the hay-fields.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII: THE LITTLE RIVER
+
+
+We started before six o'clock the next morning, as we were still twenty-
+five miles from our resting place, and Dick wanted to be there before
+dusk.  The journey was pleasant, though to those who do not know the
+upper Thames, there is little to say about it.  Ellen and I were once
+more together in her boat, though Dick, for fairness' sake, was for
+having me in his, and letting the two women scull the green toy.  Ellen,
+however, would not allow this, but claimed me as the interesting person
+of the company.  "After having come so far," said she, "I will not be put
+off with a companion who will be always thinking of somebody else than
+me: the guest is the only person who can amuse me properly.  I mean that
+really," said she, turning to me, "and have not said it merely as a
+pretty saying."
+
+Clara blushed and looked very happy at all this; for I think up to this
+time she had been rather frightened of Ellen.  As for me I felt young
+again, and strange hopes of my youth were mingling with the pleasure of
+the present; almost destroying it, and quickening it into something like
+pain.
+
+As we passed through the short and winding reaches of the now quickly
+lessening stream, Ellen said: "How pleasant this little river is to me,
+who am used to a great wide wash of water; it almost seems as if we shall
+have to stop at every reach-end.  I expect before I get home this evening
+I shall have realised what a little country England is, since we can so
+soon get to the end of its biggest river."
+
+"It is not big," said I, "but it is pretty."
+
+"Yes," she said, "and don't you find it difficult to imagine the times
+when this little pretty country was treated by its folk as if it had been
+an ugly characterless waste, with no delicate beauty to be guarded, with
+no heed taken of the ever fresh pleasure of the recurring seasons, and
+changeful weather, and diverse quality of the soil, and so forth?  How
+could people be so cruel to themselves?"
+
+"And to each other," said I.  Then a sudden resolution took hold of me,
+and I said: "Dear neighbour, I may as well tell you at once that I find
+it easier to imagine all that ugly past than you do, because I myself
+have been part of it.  I see both that you have divined something of this
+in me; and also I think you will believe me when I tell you of it, so
+that I am going to hide nothing from you at all."
+
+She was silent a little, and then she said: "My friend, you have guessed
+right about me; and to tell you the truth I have followed you up from
+Runnymede in order that I might ask you many questions, and because I saw
+that you were not one of us; and that interested and pleased me, and I
+wanted to make you as happy as you could be.  To say the truth, there was
+a risk in it," said she, blushing--"I mean as to Dick and Clara; for I
+must tell you, since we are going to be such close friends, that even
+amongst us, where there are so many beautiful women, I have often
+troubled men's minds disastrously.  That is one reason why I was living
+alone with my father in the cottage at Runnymede.  But it did not answer
+on that score; for of course people came there, as the place is not a
+desert, and they seemed to find me all the more interesting for living
+alone like that, and fell to making stories of me to themselves--like I
+know you did, my friend.  Well, let that pass.  This evening, or
+to-morrow morning, I shall make a proposal to you to do something which
+would please me very much, and I think would not hurt you."
+
+I broke in eagerly, saying that I would do anything in the world for her;
+for indeed, in spite of my years and the too obvious signs of them
+(though that feeling of renewed youth was not a mere passing sensation, I
+think)--in spite of my years, I say, I felt altogether too happy in the
+company of this delightful girl, and was prepared to take her confidences
+for more than they meant perhaps.
+
+She laughed now, but looked very kindly on me.  "Well," she said,
+"meantime for the present we will let it be; for I must look at this new
+country that we are passing through.  See how the river has changed
+character again: it is broad now, and the reaches are long and very slow-
+running.  And look, there is a ferry!"
+
+I told her the name of it, as I slowed off to put the ferry-chain over
+our heads; and on we went passing by a bank clad with oak trees on our
+left hand, till the stream narrowed again and deepened, and we rowed on
+between walls of tall reeds, whose population of reed sparrows and
+warblers were delightfully restless, twittering and chuckling as the wash
+of the boats stirred the reeds from the water upwards in the still, hot
+morning.
+
+She smiled with pleasure, and her lazy enjoyment of the new scene seemed
+to bring out her beauty doubly as she leaned back amidst the cushions,
+though she was far from languid; her idleness being the idleness of a
+person, strong and well-knit both in body and mind, deliberately resting.
+
+"Look!" she said, springing up suddenly from her place without any
+obvious effort, and balancing herself with exquisite grace and ease;
+"look at the beautiful old bridge ahead!"
+
+"I need scarcely look at that," said I, not turning my head away from her
+beauty.  "I know what it is; though" (with a smile) "we used not to call
+it the Old Bridge time agone."
+
+She looked down upon me kindly, and said, "How well we get on now you are
+no longer on your guard against me!"
+
+And she stood looking thoughtfully at me still, till she had to sit down
+as we passed under the middle one of the row of little pointed arches of
+the oldest bridge across the Thames.
+
+"O the beautiful fields!" she said; "I had no idea of the charm of a very
+small river like this.  The smallness of the scale of everything, the
+short reaches, and the speedy change of the banks, give one a feeling of
+going somewhere, of coming to something strange, a feeling of adventure
+which I have not felt in bigger waters."
+
+I looked up at her delightedly; for her voice, saying the very thing
+which I was thinking, was like a caress to me.  She caught my eye and her
+cheeks reddened under their tan, and she said simply:
+
+"I must tell you, my friend, that when my father leaves the Thames this
+summer he will take me away to a place near the Roman wall in Cumberland;
+so that this voyage of mine is farewell to the south; of course with my
+goodwill in a way; and yet I am sorry for it.  I hadn't the heart to tell
+Dick yesterday that we were as good as gone from the Thames-side; but
+somehow to you I must needs tell it."
+
+She stopped and seemed very thoughtful for awhile, and then said smiling:
+
+"I must say that I don't like moving about from one home to another; one
+gets so pleasantly used to all the detail of the life about one; it fits
+so harmoniously and happily into one's own life, that beginning again,
+even in a small way, is a kind of pain.  But I daresay in the country
+which you come from, you would think this petty and unadventurous, and
+would think the worse of me for it."
+
+She smiled at me caressingly as she spoke, and I made haste to answer:
+"O, no, indeed; again you echo my very thoughts.  But I hardly expected
+to hear you speak so.  I gathered from all I have heard that there was a
+great deal of changing of abode amongst you in this country."
+
+"Well," she said, "of course people are free to move about; but except
+for pleasure-parties, especially in harvest and hay-time, like this of
+ours, I don't think they do so much.  I admit that I also have other
+moods than that of stay-at-home, as I hinted just now, and I should like
+to go with you all through the west country--thinking of nothing,"
+concluded she smiling.
+
+"I should have plenty to think of," said I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX: A RESTING-PLACE ON THE UPPER THAMES
+
+
+Presently at a place where the river flowed round a headland of the
+meadows, we stopped a while for rest and victuals, and settled ourselves
+on a beautiful bank which almost reached the dignity of a hill-side: the
+wide meadows spread before us, and already the scythe was busy amidst the
+hay.  One change I noticed amidst the quiet beauty of the fields--to wit,
+that they were planted with trees here and there, often fruit-trees, and
+that there was none of the niggardly begrudging of space to a handsome
+tree which I remembered too well; and though the willows were often
+polled (or shrowded, as they call it in that country-side), this was done
+with some regard to beauty: I mean that there was no polling of rows on
+rows so as to destroy the pleasantness of half a mile of country, but a
+thoughtful sequence in the cutting, that prevented a sudden bareness
+anywhere.  To be short, the fields were everywhere treated as a garden
+made for the pleasure as well as the livelihood of all, as old Hammond
+told me was the case.
+
+On this bank or bent of the hill, then, we had our mid-day meal; somewhat
+early for dinner, if that mattered, but we had been stirring early: the
+slender stream of the Thames winding below us between the garden of a
+country I have been telling of; a furlong from us was a beautiful little
+islet begrown with graceful trees; on the slopes westward of us was a
+wood of varied growth overhanging the narrow meadow on the south side of
+the river; while to the north was a wide stretch of mead rising very
+gradually from the river's edge.  A delicate spire of an ancient building
+rose up from out of the trees in the middle distance, with a few grey
+houses clustered about it; while nearer to us, in fact not half a furlong
+from the water, was a quite modern stone house--a wide quadrangle of one
+story, the buildings that made it being quite low.  There was no garden
+between it and the river, nothing but a row of pear-trees still quite
+young and slender; and though there did not seem to be much ornament
+about it, it had a sort of natural elegance, like that of the trees
+themselves.
+
+As we sat looking down on all this in the sweet June day, rather happy
+than merry, Ellen, who sat next me, her hand clasped about one knee,
+leaned sideways to me, and said in a low voice which Dick and Clara might
+have noted if they had not been busy in happy wordless love-making:
+"Friend, in your country were the houses of your field-labourers anything
+like that?"
+
+I said: "Well, at any rate the houses of our rich men were not; they were
+mere blots upon the face of the land."
+
+"I find that hard to understand," she said.  "I can see why the workmen,
+who were so oppressed, should not have been able to live in beautiful
+houses; for it takes time and leisure, and minds not over-burdened with
+care, to make beautiful dwellings; and I quite understand that these poor
+people were not allowed to live in such a way as to have these (to us)
+necessary good things.  But why the rich men, who had the time and the
+leisure and the materials for building, as it would be in this case,
+should not have housed themselves well, I do not understand as yet.  I
+know what you are meaning to say to me," she said, looking me full in the
+eyes and blushing, "to wit that their houses and all belonging to them
+were generally ugly and base, unless they chanced to be ancient like
+yonder remnant of our forefathers' work" (pointing to the spire); "that
+they were--let me see; what is the word?"
+
+"Vulgar," said I.  "We used to say," said I, "that the ugliness and
+vulgarity of the rich men's dwellings was a necessary reflection from the
+sordidness and bareness of life which they forced upon the poor people."
+
+She knit her brows as in thought; then turned a brightened face on me, as
+if she had caught the idea, and said: "Yes, friend, I see what you mean.
+We have sometimes--those of us who look into these things--talked this
+very matter over; because, to say the truth, we have plenty of record of
+the so-called arts of the time before Equality of Life; and there are not
+wanting people who say that the state of that society was not the cause
+of all that ugliness; that they were ugly in their life because they
+liked to be, and could have had beautiful things about them if they had
+chosen; just as a man or body of men now may, if they please, make things
+more or less beautiful--Stop!  I know what you are going to say."
+
+"Do you?" said I, smiling, yet with a beating heart.
+
+"Yes," she said; "you are answering me, teaching me, in some way or
+another, although you have not spoken the words aloud.  You were going to
+say that in times of inequality it was an essential condition of the life
+of these rich men that they should not themselves make what they wanted
+for the adornment of their lives, but should force those to make them
+whom they forced to live pinched and sordid lives; and that as a
+necessary consequence the sordidness and pinching, the ugly barrenness of
+those ruined lives, were worked up into the adornment of the lives of the
+rich, and art died out amongst men?  Was that what you would say, my
+friend?"
+
+"Yes, yes," I said, looking at her eagerly; for she had risen and was
+standing on the edge of the bent, the light wind stirring her dainty
+raiment, one hand laid on her bosom, the other arm stretched downward and
+clenched in her earnestness.
+
+"It is true," she said, "it is true!  We have proved it true!"
+
+I think amidst my--something more than interest in her, and admiration
+for her, I was beginning to wonder how it would all end.  I had a
+glimmering of fear of what might follow; of anxiety as to the remedy
+which this new age might offer for the missing of something one might set
+one's heart on.  But now Dick rose to his feet and cried out in his
+hearty manner: "Neighbour Ellen, are you quarrelling with the guest, or
+are you worrying him to tell you things which he cannot properly explain
+to our ignorance?"
+
+"Neither, dear neighbour," she said.  "I was so far from quarrelling with
+him that I think I have been making him good friends both with himself
+and me.  Is it so, dear guest?" she said, looking down at me with a
+delightful smile of confidence in being understood.
+
+"Indeed it is," said I.
+
+"Well, moreover," she said, "I must say for him that he has explained
+himself to me very well indeed, so that I quite understand him."
+
+"All right," quoth Dick.  "When I first set eyes on you at Runnymede I
+knew that there was something wonderful in your keenness of wits.  I
+don't say that as a mere pretty speech to please you," said he quickly,
+"but because it is true; and it made me want to see more of you.  But,
+come, we ought to be going; for we are not half way, and we ought to be
+in well before sunset."
+
+And therewith he took Clara's hand, and led her down the bent.  But Ellen
+stood thoughtfully looking down for a little, and as I took her hand to
+follow Dick, she turned round to me and said:
+
+"You might tell me a great deal and make many things clear to me, if you
+would."
+
+"Yes," said I, "I am pretty well fit for that,--and for nothing else--an
+old man like me."
+
+She did not notice the bitterness which, whether I liked it or not, was
+in my voice as I spoke, but went on: "It is not so much for myself; I
+should be quite content to dream about past times, and if I could not
+idealise them, yet at least idealise some of the people who lived in
+them.  But I think sometimes people are too careless of the history of
+the past--too apt to leave it in the hands of old learned men like
+Hammond.  Who knows?  Happy as we are, times may alter; we may be bitten
+with some impulse towards change, and many things may seem too wonderful
+for us to resist, too exciting not to catch at, if we do not know that
+they are but phases of what has been before; and withal ruinous,
+deceitful, and sordid."
+
+As we went slowly down toward the boats she said again: "Not for myself
+alone, dear friend; I shall have children; perhaps before the end a good
+many;--I hope so.  And though of course I cannot force any special kind
+of knowledge upon them, yet, my Friend, I cannot help thinking that just
+as they might be like me in body, so I might impress upon them some part
+of my ways of thinking; that is, indeed, some of the essential part of
+myself; that part which was not mere moods, created by the matters and
+events round about me.  What do you think?"
+
+Of one thing I was sure, that her beauty and kindness and eagerness
+combined, forced me to think as she did, when she was not earnestly
+laying herself open to receive my thoughts.  I said, what at the time was
+true, that I thought it most important; and presently stood entranced by
+the wonder of her grace as she stepped into the light boat, and held out
+her hand to me.  And so on we went up the Thames still--or whither?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX: THE JOURNEY'S END
+
+
+On we went.  In spite of my new-born excitement about Ellen, and my
+gathering fear of where it would land me, I could not help taking
+abundant interest in the condition of the river and its banks; all the
+more as she never seemed weary of the changing picture, but looked at
+every yard of flowery bank and gurgling eddy with the same kind of
+affectionate interest which I myself once had so fully, as I used to
+think, and perhaps had not altogether lost even in this strangely changed
+society with all its wonders.  Ellen seemed delighted with my pleasure at
+this, that, or the other piece of carefulness in dealing with the river:
+the nursing of pretty corners; the ingenuity in dealing with difficulties
+of water-engineering, so that the most obviously useful works looked
+beautiful and natural also.  All this, I say, pleased me hugely, and she
+was pleased at my pleasure--but rather puzzled too.
+
+"You seem astonished," she said, just after we had passed a mill {2}
+which spanned all the stream save the water-way for traffic, but which
+was as beautiful in its way as a Gothic cathedral--"You seem astonished
+at this being so pleasant to look at."
+
+"Yes," I said, "in a way I am; though I don't see why it should not be."
+
+"Ah!" she said, looking at me admiringly, yet with a lurking smile in her
+face, "you know all about the history of the past.  Were they not always
+careful about this little stream which now adds so much pleasantness to
+the country side?  It would always be easy to manage this little river.
+Ah!  I forgot, though," she said, as her eye caught mine, "in the days we
+are thinking of pleasure was wholly neglected in such matters.  But how
+did they manage the river in the days that you--"  Lived in she was going
+to say; but correcting herself, said--"in the days of which you have
+record?"
+
+"They _mis_managed it," quoth I.  "Up to the first half of the nineteenth
+century, when it was still more or less of a highway for the country
+people, some care was taken of the river and its banks; and though I
+don't suppose anyone troubled himself about its aspect, yet it was trim
+and beautiful.  But when the railways--of which no doubt you have
+heard--came into power, they would not allow the people of the country to
+use either the natural or artificial waterways, of which latter there
+were a great many.  I suppose when we get higher up we shall see one of
+these; a very important one, which one of these railways entirely closed
+to the public, so that they might force people to send their goods by
+their private road, and so tax them as heavily as they could."
+
+Ellen laughed heartily.  "Well," she said, "that is not stated clearly
+enough in our history-books, and it is worth knowing.  But certainly the
+people of those days must have been a curiously lazy set.  We are not
+either fidgety or quarrelsome now, but if any one tried such a piece of
+folly on us, we should use the said waterways, whoever gainsaid us:
+surely that would be simple enough.  However, I remember other cases of
+this stupidity: when I was on the Rhine two years ago, I remember they
+showed us ruins of old castles, which, according to what we heard, must
+have been made for pretty much the same purpose as the railways were.  But
+I am interrupting your history of the river: pray go on."
+
+"It is both short and stupid enough," said I.  "The river having lost its
+practical or commercial value--that is, being of no use to make money
+of--"
+
+She nodded.  "I understand what that queer phrase means," said she.  "Go
+on!"
+
+"Well, it was utterly neglected, till at last it became a nuisance--"
+
+"Yes," quoth Ellen, "I understand: like the railways and the robber
+knights.  Yes?"
+
+"So then they turned the makeshift business on to it, and handed it over
+to a body up in London, who from time to time, in order to show that they
+had something to do, did some damage here and there,--cut down trees,
+destroying the banks thereby; dredged the river (where it was not needed
+always), and threw the dredgings on the fields so as to spoil them; and
+so forth.  But for the most part they practised 'masterly inactivity,' as
+it was then called--that is, they drew their salaries, and let things
+alone."
+
+"Drew their salaries," she said.  "I know that means that they were
+allowed to take an extra lot of other people's goods for doing nothing.
+And if that had been all, it really might have been worth while to let
+them do so, if you couldn't find any other way of keeping them quiet; but
+it seems to me that being so paid, they could not help doing something,
+and that something was bound to be mischief,--because," said she,
+kindling with sudden anger, "the whole business was founded on lies and
+false pretensions.  I don't mean only these river-guardians, but all
+these master-people I have read of."
+
+"Yes," said I, "how happy you are to have got out of the parsimony of
+oppression!"
+
+"Why do you sigh?" she said, kindly and somewhat anxiously.  "You seem to
+think that it will not last?"
+
+"It will last for you," quoth I.
+
+"But why not for you?" said she.  "Surely it is for all the world; and if
+your country is somewhat backward, it will come into line before long.
+Or," she said quickly, "are you thinking that you must soon go back
+again?  I will make my proposal which I told you of at once, and so
+perhaps put an end to your anxiety.  I was going to propose that you
+should live with us where we are going.  I feel quite old friends with
+you, and should be sorry to lose you."  Then she smiled on me, and said:
+"Do you know, I begin to suspect you of wanting to nurse a sham sorrow,
+like the ridiculous characters in some of those queer old novels that I
+have come across now and then."
+
+I really had almost begun to suspect it myself, but I refused to admit so
+much; so I sighed no more, but fell to giving my delightful companion
+what little pieces of history I knew about the river and its borderlands;
+and the time passed pleasantly enough; and between the two of us (she was
+a better sculler than I was, and seemed quite tireless) we kept up fairly
+well with Dick, hot as the afternoon was, and swallowed up the way at a
+great rate.  At last we passed under another ancient bridge; and through
+meadows bordered at first with huge elm-trees mingled with sweet chestnut
+of younger but very elegant growth; and the meadows widened out so much
+that it seemed as if the trees must now be on the bents only, or about
+the houses, except for the growth of willows on the immediate banks; so
+that the wide stretch of grass was little broken here.  Dick got very
+much excited now, and often stood up in the boat to cry out to us that
+this was such and such a field, and so forth; and we caught fire at his
+enthusiasm for the hay-field and its harvest, and pulled our best.
+
+At last as we were passing through a reach of the river where on the side
+of the towing-path was a highish bank with a thick whispering bed of
+reeds before it, and on the other side a higher bank, clothed with
+willows that dipped into the stream and crowned by ancient elm-trees, we
+saw bright figures coming along close to the bank, as if they were
+looking for something; as, indeed, they were, and we--that is, Dick and
+his company--were what they were looking for.  Dick lay on his oars, and
+we followed his example.  He gave a joyous shout to the people on the
+bank, which was echoed back from it in many voices, deep and sweetly
+shrill; for there were above a dozen persons, both men, women, and
+children.  A tall handsome woman, with black wavy hair and deep-set grey
+eyes, came forward on the bank and waved her hand gracefully to us, and
+said:
+
+"Dick, my friend, we have almost had to wait for you!  What excuse have
+you to make for your slavish punctuality?  Why didn't you take us by
+surprise, and come yesterday?"
+
+"O," said Dick, with an almost imperceptible jerk of his head toward our
+boat, "we didn't want to come too quick up the water; there is so much to
+see for those who have not been up here before."
+
+"True, true," said the stately lady, for stately is the word that must be
+used for her; "and we want them to get to know the wet way from the east
+thoroughly well, since they must often use it now.  But come ashore at
+once, Dick, and you, dear neighbours; there is a break in the reeds and a
+good landing-place just round the corner.  We can carry up your things,
+or send some of the lads after them."
+
+"No, no," said Dick; "it is easier going by water, though it is but a
+step.  Besides, I want to bring my friend here to the proper place.  We
+will go on to the Ford; and you can talk to us from the bank as we paddle
+along."
+
+He pulled his sculls through the water, and on we went, turning a sharp
+angle and going north a little.  Presently we saw before us a bank of elm-
+trees, which told us of a house amidst them, though I looked in vain for
+the grey walls that I expected to see there.  As we went, the folk on the
+bank talked indeed, mingling their kind voices with the cuckoo's song,
+the sweet strong whistle of the blackbirds, and the ceaseless note of the
+corn-crake as he crept through the long grass of the mowing-field; whence
+came waves of fragrance from the flowering clover amidst of the ripe
+grass.
+
+In a few minutes we had passed through a deep eddying pool into the sharp
+stream that ran from the ford, and beached our craft on a tiny strand of
+limestone-gravel, and stepped ashore into the arms of our up-river
+friends, our journey done.
+
+I disentangled myself from the merry throng, and mounting on the cart-
+road that ran along the river some feet above the water, I looked round
+about me.  The river came down through a wide meadow on my left, which
+was grey now with the ripened seeding grasses; the gleaming water was
+lost presently by a turn of the bank, but over the meadow I could see the
+mingled gables of a building where I knew the lock must be, and which now
+seemed to combine a mill with it.  A low wooded ridge bounded the river-
+plain to the south and south-east, whence we had come, and a few low
+houses lay about its feet and up its slope.  I turned a little to my
+right, and through the hawthorn sprays and long shoots of the wild roses
+could see the flat country spreading out far away under the sun of the
+calm evening, till something that might be called hills with a look of
+sheep-pastures about them bounded it with a soft blue line.  Before me,
+the elm-boughs still hid most of what houses there might be in this river-
+side dwelling of men; but to the right of the cart-road a few grey
+buildings of the simplest kind showed here and there.
+
+There I stood in a dreamy mood, and rubbed my eyes as if I were not
+wholly awake, and half expected to see the gay-clad company of beautiful
+men and women change to two or three spindle-legged back-bowed men and
+haggard, hollow-eyed, ill-favoured women, who once wore down the soil of
+this land with their heavy hopeless feet, from day to day, and season to
+season, and year to year.  But no change came as yet, and my heart
+swelled with joy as I thought of all the beautiful grey villages, from
+the river to the plain and the plain to the uplands, which I could
+picture to myself so well, all peopled now with this happy and lovely
+folk, who had cast away riches and attained to wealth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI: AN OLD HOUSE AMONGST NEW FOLK
+
+
+As I stood there Ellen detached herself from our happy friends who still
+stood on the little strand and came up to me.  She took me by the hand,
+and said softly, "Take me on to the house at once; we need not wait for
+the others: I had rather not."
+
+I had a mind to say that I did not know the way thither, and that the
+river-side dwellers should lead; but almost without my will my feet moved
+on along the road they knew.  The raised way led us into a little field
+bounded by a backwater of the river on one side; on the right hand we
+could see a cluster of small houses and barns, new and old, and before us
+a grey stone barn and a wall partly overgrown with ivy, over which a few
+grey gables showed.  The village road ended in the shallow of the
+aforesaid backwater.  We crossed the road, and again almost without my
+will my hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and we stood
+presently on a stone path which led up to the old house to which fate in
+the shape of Dick had so strangely brought me in this new world of men.
+My companion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment; nor did I
+wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was redolent of the
+June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one another with that
+delicious superabundance of small well-tended gardens which at first
+sight takes away all thought from the beholder save that of beauty.  The
+blackbirds were singing their loudest, the doves were cooing on the roof-
+ridge, the rooks in the high elm-trees beyond were garrulous among the
+young leaves, and the swifts wheeled whining about the gables.  And the
+house itself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of
+summer.
+
+Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as she said:
+
+"Yes, friend, this is what I came out for to see; this many-gabled old
+house built by the simple country-folk of the long-past times, regardless
+of all the turmoil that was going on in cities and courts, is lovely
+still amidst all the beauty which these latter days have created; and I
+do not wonder at our friends tending it carefully and making much of it.
+It seems to me as if it had waited for these happy days, and held in it
+the gathered crumbs of happiness of the confused and turbulent past."
+
+She led me up close to the house, and laid her shapely sun-browned hand
+and arm on the lichened wall as if to embrace it, and cried out, "O me!  O
+me!  How I love the earth, and the seasons, and weather, and all things
+that deal with it, and all that grows out of it,--as this has done!"
+
+I could not answer her, or say a word.  Her exultation and pleasure were
+so keen and exquisite, and her beauty, so delicate, yet so interfused
+with energy, expressed it so fully, that any added word would have been
+commonplace and futile.  I dreaded lest the others should come in
+suddenly and break the spell she had cast about me; but we stood there a
+while by the corner of the big gable of the house, and no one came.  I
+heard the merry voices some way off presently, and knew that they were
+going along the river to the great meadow on the other side of the house
+and garden.
+
+We drew back a little, and looked up at the house: the door and the
+windows were open to the fragrant sun-cured air; from the upper window-
+sills hung festoons of flowers in honour of the festival, as if the
+others shared in the love for the old house.
+
+"Come in," said Ellen.  "I hope nothing will spoil it inside; but I don't
+think it will.  Come! we must go back presently to the others.  They have
+gone on to the tents; for surely they must have tents pitched for the
+haymakers--the house would not hold a tithe of the folk, I am sure."
+
+She led me on to the door, murmuring little above her breath as she did
+so, "The earth and the growth of it and the life of it!  If I could but
+say or show how I love it!"
+
+We went in, and found no soul in any room as we wandered from room to
+room,--from the rose-covered porch to the strange and quaint garrets
+amongst the great timbers of the roof, where of old time the tillers and
+herdsmen of the manor slept, but which a-nights seemed now, by the small
+size of the beds, and the litter of useless and disregarded
+matters--bunches of dying flowers, feathers of birds, shells of
+starling's eggs, caddis worms in mugs, and the like--seemed to be
+inhabited for the time by children.
+
+Everywhere there was but little furniture, and that only the most
+necessary, and of the simplest forms.  The extravagant love of ornament
+which I had noted in this people elsewhere seemed here to have given
+place to the feeling that the house itself and its associations was the
+ornament of the country life amidst which it had been left stranded from
+old times, and that to re-ornament it would but take away its use as a
+piece of natural beauty.
+
+We sat down at last in a room over the wall which Ellen had caressed, and
+which was still hung with old tapestry, originally of no artistic value,
+but now faded into pleasant grey tones which harmonised thoroughly well
+with the quiet of the place, and which would have been ill supplanted by
+brighter and more striking decoration.
+
+I asked a few random questions of Ellen as we sat there, but scarcely
+listened to her answers, and presently became silent, and then scarce
+conscious of anything, but that I was there in that old room, the doves
+crooning from the roofs of the barn and dovecot beyond the window
+opposite to me.
+
+My thought returned to me after what I think was but a minute or two, but
+which, as in a vivid dream, seemed as if it had lasted a long time, when
+I saw Ellen sitting, looking all the fuller of life and pleasure and
+desire from the contrast with the grey faded tapestry with its futile
+design, which was now only bearable because it had grown so faint and
+feeble.
+
+She looked at me kindly, but as if she read me through and through.  She
+said: "You have begun again your never-ending contrast between the past
+and this present.  Is it not so?"
+
+"True," said I.  "I was thinking of what you, with your capacity and
+intelligence, joined to your love of pleasure, and your impatience of
+unreasonable restraint--of what you would have been in that past.  And
+even now, when all is won and has been for a long time, my heart is
+sickened with thinking of all the waste of life that has gone on for so
+many years."
+
+"So many centuries," she said, "so many ages!"
+
+"True," I said; "too true," and sat silent again.
+
+She rose up and said: "Come, I must not let you go off into a dream again
+so soon.  If we must lose you, I want you to see all that you can see
+first before you go back again."
+
+"Lose me?" I said--"go back again?  Am I not to go up to the North with
+you?  What do you mean?"
+
+She smiled somewhat sadly, and said: "Not yet; we will not talk of that
+yet.  Only, what were you thinking of just now?"
+
+I said falteringly: "I was saying to myself, The past, the present?
+Should she not have said the contrast of the present with the future: of
+blind despair with hope?"
+
+"I knew it," she said.  Then she caught my hand and said excitedly,
+"Come, while there is yet time!  Come!" And she led me out of the room;
+and as we were going downstairs and out of the house into the garden by a
+little side door which opened out of a curious lobby, she said in a calm
+voice, as if she wished me to forget her sudden nervousness: "Come! we
+ought to join the others before they come here looking for us.  And let
+me tell you, my friend, that I can see you are too apt to fall into mere
+dreamy musing: no doubt because you are not yet used to our life of
+repose amidst of energy; of work which is pleasure and pleasure which is
+work."
+
+She paused a little, and as we came out into the lovely garden again, she
+said: "My friend, you were saying that you wondered what I should have
+been if I had lived in those past days of turmoil and oppression.  Well,
+I think I have studied the history of them to know pretty well.  I should
+have been one of the poor, for my father when he was working was a mere
+tiller of the soil.  Well, I could not have borne that; therefore my
+beauty and cleverness and brightness" (she spoke with no blush or simper
+of false shame) "would have been sold to rich men, and my life would have
+been wasted indeed; for I know enough of that to know that I should have
+had no choice, no power of will over my life; and that I should never
+have bought pleasure from the rich men, or even opportunity of action,
+whereby I might have won some true excitement.  I should have wrecked and
+wasted in one way or another, either by penury or by luxury.  Is it not
+so?"
+
+"Indeed it is," said I.
+
+She was going to say something else, when a little gate in the fence,
+which led into a small elm-shaded field, was opened, and Dick came with
+hasty cheerfulness up the garden path, and was presently standing between
+us, a hand laid on the shoulder of each.  He said: "Well, neighbours, I
+thought you two would like to see the old house quietly without a crowd
+in it.  Isn't it a jewel of a house after its kind?  Well, come along,
+for it is getting towards dinner-time.  Perhaps you, guest, would like a
+swim before we sit down to what I fancy will be a pretty long feast?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "I should like that."
+
+"Well, good-bye for the present, neighbour Ellen," said Dick.  "Here
+comes Clara to take care of you, as I fancy she is more at home amongst
+our friends here."
+
+Clara came out of the fields as he spoke; and with one look at Ellen I
+turned and went with Dick, doubting, if I must say the truth, whether I
+should see her again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII: THE FEAST'S BEGINNING--THE END
+
+
+Dick brought me at once into the little field which, as I had seen from
+the garden, was covered with gaily-coloured tents arranged in orderly
+lanes, about which were sitting and lying on the grass some fifty or
+sixty men, women, and children, all of them in the height of good temper
+and enjoyment--with their holiday mood on, so to say.
+
+"You are thinking that we don't make a great show as to numbers," said
+Dick; "but you must remember that we shall have more to-morrow; because
+in this haymaking work there is room for a great many people who are not
+over-skilled in country matters: and there are many who lead sedentary
+lives, whom it would be unkind to deprive of their pleasure in the hay-
+field--scientific men and close students generally: so that the skilled
+workmen, outside those who are wanted as mowers, and foremen of the
+haymaking, stand aside, and take a little downright rest, which you know
+is good for them, whether they like it or not: or else they go to other
+countrysides, as I am doing here.  You see, the scientific men and
+historians, and students generally, will not be wanted till we are fairly
+in the midst of the tedding, which of course will not be till the day
+after to-morrow."  With that he brought me out of the little field on to
+a kind of causeway above the river-side meadow, and thence turning to the
+left on to a path through the mowing grass, which was thick and very
+tall, led on till we came to the river above the weir and its mill.  There
+we had a delightful swim in the broad piece of water above the lock,
+where the river looked much bigger than its natural size from its being
+dammed up by the weir.
+
+"Now we are in a fit mood for dinner," said Dick, when we had dressed and
+were going through the grass again; "and certainly of all the cheerful
+meals in the year, this one of haysel is the cheerfullest; not even
+excepting the corn-harvest feast; for then the year is beginning to fail,
+and one cannot help having a feeling behind all the gaiety, of the coming
+of the dark days, and the shorn fields and empty gardens; and the spring
+is almost too far off to look forward to.  It is, then, in the autumn,
+when one almost believes in death."
+
+"How strangely you talk," said I, "of such a constantly recurring and
+consequently commonplace matter as the sequence of the seasons." And
+indeed these people were like children about such things, and had what
+seemed to me a quite exaggerated interest in the weather, a fine day, a
+dark night, or a brilliant one, and the like.
+
+"Strangely?" said he.  "Is it strange to sympathise with the year and its
+gains and losses?"
+
+"At any rate," said I, "if you look upon the course of the year as a
+beautiful and interesting drama, which is what I think you do, you should
+be as much pleased and interested with the winter and its trouble and
+pain as with this wonderful summer luxury."
+
+"And am I not?" said Dick, rather warmly; "only I can't look upon it as
+if I were sitting in a theatre seeing the play going on before me, myself
+taking no part of it.  It is difficult," said he, smiling
+good-humouredly, "for a non-literary man like me to explain myself
+properly, like that dear girl Ellen would; but I mean that I am part of
+it all, and feel the pain as well as the pleasure in my own person.  It
+is not done for me by somebody else, merely that I may eat and drink and
+sleep; but I myself do my share of it."
+
+In his way also, as Ellen in hers, I could see that Dick had that
+passionate love of the earth which was common to but few people at least,
+in the days I knew; in which the prevailing feeling amongst intellectual
+persons was a kind of sour distaste for the changing drama of the year,
+for the life of earth and its dealings with men.  Indeed, in those days
+it was thought poetic and imaginative to look upon life as a thing to be
+borne, rather than enjoyed.
+
+So I mused till Dick's laugh brought me back into the Oxfordshire hay-
+fields.  "One thing seems strange to me," said he--"that I must needs
+trouble myself about the winter and its scantiness, in the midst of the
+summer abundance.  If it hadn't happened to me before, I should have
+thought it was your doing, guest; that you had thrown a kind of evil
+charm over me.  Now, you know," said he, suddenly, "that's only a joke,
+so you mustn't take it to heart."
+
+"All right," said I; "I don't."  Yet I did feel somewhat uneasy at his
+words, after all.
+
+We crossed the causeway this time, and did not turn back to the house,
+but went along a path beside a field of wheat now almost ready to
+blossom.  I said:
+
+"We do not dine in the house or garden, then?--as indeed I did not expect
+to do.  Where do we meet, then?  For I can see that the houses are mostly
+very small."
+
+"Yes," said Dick, "you are right, they are small in this country-side:
+there are so many good old houses left, that people dwell a good deal in
+such small detached houses.  As to our dinner, we are going to have our
+feast in the church.  I wish, for your sake, it were as big and handsome
+as that of the old Roman town to the west, or the forest town to the
+north; {3} but, however, it will hold us all; and though it is a little
+thing, it is beautiful in its way."
+
+This was somewhat new to me, this dinner in a church, and I thought of
+the church-ales of the Middle Ages; but I said nothing, and presently we
+came out into the road which ran through the village.  Dick looked up and
+down it, and seeing only two straggling groups before us, said: "It seems
+as if we must be somewhat late; they are all gone on; and they will be
+sure to make a point of waiting for you, as the guest of guests, since
+you come from so far."
+
+He hastened as he spoke, and I kept up with him, and presently we came to
+a little avenue of lime-trees which led us straight to the church porch,
+from whose open door came the sound of cheerful voices and laughter, and
+varied merriment.
+
+"Yes," said Dick, "it's the coolest place for one thing, this hot
+evening.  Come along; they will be glad to see you."
+
+Indeed, in spite of my bath, I felt the weather more sultry and
+oppressive than on any day of our journey yet.
+
+We went into the church, which was a simple little building with one
+little aisle divided from the nave by three round arches, a chancel, and
+a rather roomy transept for so small a building, the windows mostly of
+the graceful Oxfordshire fourteenth century type.  There was no modern
+architectural decoration in it; it looked, indeed, as if none had been
+attempted since the Puritans whitewashed the mediaeval saints and
+histories on the wall.  It was, however, gaily dressed up for this latter-
+day festival, with festoons of flowers from arch to arch, and great
+pitchers of flowers standing about on the floor; while under the west
+window hung two cross scythes, their blades polished white, and gleaming
+from out of the flowers that wreathed them.  But its best ornament was
+the crowd of handsome, happy-looking men and women that were set down to
+table, and who, with their bright faces and rich hair over their gay
+holiday raiment, looked, as the Persian poet puts it, like a bed of
+tulips in the sun.  Though the church was a small one, there was plenty
+of room; for a small church makes a biggish house; and on this evening
+there was no need to set cross tables along the transepts; though
+doubtless these would be wanted next day, when the learned men of whom
+Dick has been speaking should be come to take their more humble part in
+the haymaking.
+
+I stood on the threshold with the expectant smile on my face of a man who
+is going to take part in a festivity which he is really prepared to
+enjoy.  Dick, standing by me was looking round the company with an air of
+proprietorship in them, I thought.  Opposite me sat Clara and Ellen, with
+Dick's place open between them: they were smiling, but their beautiful
+faces were each turned towards the neighbours on either side, who were
+talking to them, and they did not seem to see me.  I turned to Dick,
+expecting him to lead me forward, and he turned his face to me; but
+strange to say, though it was as smiling and cheerful as ever, it made no
+response to my glance--nay, he seemed to take no heed at all of my
+presence, and I noticed that none of the company looked at me.  A pang
+shot through me, as of some disaster long expected and suddenly realised.
+Dick moved on a little without a word to me.  I was not three yards from
+the two women who, though they had been my companions for such a short
+time, had really, as I thought, become my friends.  Clara's face was
+turned full upon me now, but she also did not seem to see me, though I
+know I was trying to catch her eye with an appealing look.  I turned to
+Ellen, and she _did_ seem to recognise me for an instant; but her bright
+face turned sad directly, and she shook her head with a mournful look,
+and the next moment all consciousness of my presence had faded from her
+face.
+
+I felt lonely and sick at heart past the power of words to describe.  I
+hung about a minute longer, and then turned and went out of the porch
+again and through the lime-avenue into the road, while the blackbirds
+sang their strongest from the bushes about me in the hot June evening.
+
+Once more without any conscious effort of will I set my face toward the
+old house by the ford, but as I turned round the corner which led to the
+remains of the village cross, I came upon a figure strangely contrasting
+with the joyous, beautiful people I had left behind in the church.  It
+was a man who looked old, but whom I knew from habit, now half forgotten,
+was really not much more than fifty.  His face was rugged, and grimed
+rather than dirty; his eyes dull and bleared; his body bent, his calves
+thin and spindly, his feet dragging and limping.  His clothing was a
+mixture of dirt and rags long over-familiar to me.  As I passed him he
+touched his hat with some real goodwill and courtesy, and much servility.
+
+Inexpressibly shocked, I hurried past him and hastened along the road
+that led to the river and the lower end of the village; but suddenly I
+saw as it were a black cloud rolling along to meet me, like a nightmare
+of my childish days; and for a while I was conscious of nothing else than
+being in the dark, and whether I was walking, or sitting, or lying down,
+I could not tell.
+
+*  * *
+
+I lay in my bed in my house at dingy Hammersmith thinking about it all;
+and trying to consider if I was overwhelmed with despair at finding I had
+been dreaming a dream; and strange to say, I found that I was not so
+despairing.
+
+Or indeed _was_ it a dream?  If so, why was I so conscious all along that
+I was really seeing all that new life from the outside, still wrapped up
+in the prejudices, the anxieties, the distrust of this time of doubt and
+struggle?
+
+All along, though those friends were so real to me, I had been feeling as
+if I had no business amongst them: as though the time would come when
+they would reject me, and say, as Ellen's last mournful look seemed to
+say, "No, it will not do; you cannot be of us; you belong so entirely to
+the unhappiness of the past that our happiness even would weary you.  Go
+back again, now you have seen us, and your outward eyes have learned that
+in spite of all the infallible maxims of your day there is yet a time of
+rest in store for the world, when mastery has changed into fellowship--but
+not before.  Go back again, then, and while you live you will see all
+round you people engaged in making others live lives which are not their
+own, while they themselves care nothing for their own real lives--men who
+hate life though they fear death.  Go back and be the happier for having
+seen us, for having added a little hope to your struggle.  Go on living
+while you may, striving, with whatsoever pain and labour needs must be,
+to build up little by little the new day of fellowship, and rest, and
+happiness."
+
+Yes, surely! and if others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be
+called a vision rather than a dream.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+{1}  "Elegant," I mean, as a Persian pattern is elegant; not like a rich
+"elegant" lady out for a morning call.  I should rather call that
+genteel.
+
+{2}  I should have said that all along the Thames there were abundance of
+mills used for various purposes; none of which were in any degree
+unsightly, and many strikingly beautiful; and the gardens about them
+marvels of loveliness.
+
+{3}  Cirencester and Burford he must have meant.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEWS FROM NOWHERE***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 3261.txt or 3261.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/6/3261
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+