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News from Nowhere; Or, An Epoch of Rest

by William Morris · English · Gutenberg #3261 · 442,361 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: News from Nowhere; Or, An Epoch of Rest

Author: William Morris


        
Release date: June 1, 2002 [eBook #3261]
                Most recently updated: April 20, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3261

Credits: Transcribed from the 1908 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEWS FROM NOWHERE; OR, AN EPOCH OF REST ***




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 Pharao

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