i'im^ CO DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ERS i Treasure %oom r ' T1 -■ -r ,■ L The Gift of_ Dcite_ ^Aj ffi^^ 'P/Pi M ? 7 7 /V CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Discussion and Bed 7 II. A Morning Bath 11 III. The Guest-House and Breakfast Therein 22 IV. A Market by the Way 35 V. Children on the Eoad 40 VI. A Little Shopping 50 VII. Trafalgar Square 60 VIII. An Old Friend 68 IX. Concerning Love 73 X. Questions and Answers 88 XI. Concerning Government .... 104 XII. Concerning the Arrangement of Life 110 XIII. Concerning Politics 118 XIV. How Matters are Managed . . . 119 XV. On the Lack of Incentive to Labor IN A Communist Society .... 126 XVI. Dinner in the Hall of the Blooms- bury Market 137 XVII. How the Change Came 143 XVITI. The Beginning of the New Life . 173 167176 VI CHAPTER XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. CONTENTS. PAGE The Drive Back to Hammersmith . 180 The Hammersmith Guest-House Again 187 Going Up the River 189 Hampton Court : and a Praiser of Past Times 193 An Early Morning by Runnymede. 206 Up the Thames: the Second Day. 213 Still Up the Thames 225 The Upper Waters 231 A Resting-Place on the Upper Thames 250 The Journey's End ....... 256 An Old House Among New Folk . 264 The Feast's Beginning : The End . 271 KEWS FEOM KOWHEEE; OE, AN EPOCH OF REST. 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 of£ 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 de- bates, 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 to- gether, as is the custom of people in ordinary polite society when conversing on a subject which interests them. Por the rest, there were six per- sons present, and consequently six sections of the party were represented, four of which had strong but divergent Anarchist opinions. One of the sec- 167176 8 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; tions, says our friend, a man whom lie knows very well indeed, sat almost silent at the beginning of tlie discussion, but at last got drawn into it, and finished by roaring out very loud, and damning all the rest for fools; after which befell 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 civilization has forced upon us like a habit. As he sat in that vapor-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 con- clusive arguments which, though they lay in his fingers' end, he had forgotten in the just past dis- cussion. But this frame of mind he was so used to that it did n'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 Tinhappily. "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 Mm. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 9 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 homef arer 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 lin- gered a little, looking over the low wall to note the moonlit river, near upon high water, go swirling and glittering up to Chiswick Eyott ; 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, disap- peared all remembrance of that brilliant logic and foresight which had so illuminated the recent dis- cussion ; 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 clean- ness 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 sharp- 10 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; ened, 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 stu- pidities amused him, and the entanglements before him, which he saw so clearly, began to shape them- selves 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 adven- tures that he thinks that they should be told to oiu' comrades of the League, 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 I am telling of better than any one else in the world does. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 11 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 op- pression, 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 12 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; I felt dizzy and queer; and remembering tliat people often got a boat and bad a sv,dm in mid- stream, I tbought I would do no less. It seems very early, qixotb I to myself, but I daresay I shall find some one at Biffen's to take me. However, I didn't get as far as Biffen'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 neighbor had rigged one up, though some- how it did n't look like it 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 alwaj^s 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 Avent spluttering under water again, aud when I came up made straight for the boat ; for I felt that I must ask some questions of my OR, AN EPOCH OF KEST. 13 •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, neighbor ; 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 every- where 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 pecu- liarly pleasant and friendly look about his eyes, — an expression which was quite new to me then, though I soon became familiar with it. Por the rest, he was dark-haired and berry-brown of skin, well-knit and strong, and obviously used to exer- cising his muscles, but with nothing rough or coarse about him, and clean as might be. His 14 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 me like some specially manly and refined young gentleman, play- ing 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 fore- shore, 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 OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 15 no sound of riveting 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 trafiic 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 1971." 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 16 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; 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 under- stood; 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 uncomfort- able feeling that perhaps I was offering money to a gentleman. OK, AN EPOCH OF KEST. 17 He looked puzzled, and said, " How ihucIl ? 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 oxidized, was like a blackleaded stove in color. 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 your- self bound to give me something which I am not to give to a neighbor, unless he has done some- thing 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 any- body, so to take gifts in connection with it would look very queer. Besides, if one person gave me 2 18 NEWS FROM nowhere; 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 swim- mer, 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-lis all along the gunwale, so delicately worked. You see," he said, with some- what 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 OR, AN EPOCH OF KEST. 19 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 kind- ness on your part, for almost anybody would make as good a guide, and many much better." There certainly seemed no flavor in him of Colney Hatch ; and besides I thought I could easily shake him of£ 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, un- less you will let me pay you properly; but fear- ing 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." '' Oh," 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 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 5 and he added eagerly, — 20 NEWS FROM nowhere; " Well, then, that 's settled. I will give my friend a call ; he is living in the Guest House like you, and if he is n'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 agree- able 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 strong-built 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 pleas- ure 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 some- what 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 Erightling 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, and you may imagine I don't want to lose the OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 21 opportunity ; so you had better take to the boat at once. But in any case I shoukl n't have kept you out of it for long, since I am due in the hayfields in a few days." The newcomer rubbed his hands with glee, but turning to me, said in a friendly voice, — " Neighbor, 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 for- get 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 expla- nation which would have led to nothing, and which in truth by this time I should have begun Lo doubt myself. And we all three turned toward the door of the Guest House. 22 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; CHAPTER III. THE GUEST HOUSE AND BREAKFAST THEREIN. T LINGEEED 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 win- dows, 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 win- dows 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 recognized 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 cham- bers, one of which showed a glimpse of a garden beyond, and above them a long space of wall gayly 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 (some- what smaller than Crosbey Hall perhaps), one felt OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 23 in it tiiat 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 morn- ing, 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 arm-chairs, 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 imi- tation of either ; the materials were light and gay to suit the season. As to the women themselves, it was plea'sant 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 reg- ular of feature. They came up to us at once merrily and without the least affectation of shy- ness, and all three shook hands with me as if I were a friend newly come back from a long jour- ney, — 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. 24 NEWS FKOM NOWHERE ; A word or two from Robert the weaver, and they bustled about on our behoof, and presently came and took u.s by the hands and led us to a table in the pleasantest corner of the hall, where our break- fast 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 in the midst of ovir 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 ovit 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 Hammer- smith this morning." Eobert patted her on the head in a friendly man- ner ; 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-colored, 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 mouth fuls into my mouth, my eye caught a carved and gilded inscrip- OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 25 tion 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 neighbors, on the site of this Guest- hall once stood the lecture-room of the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League. 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, — " G-uest, 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 curi- ous 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 26 NEWS FROM KOWHERE ; just going to blurt out, "Hammersmith," when I bethought me what an entanglement of cross-pur- poses 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 neigh- bor, since you knew the Forest some time ago, could you tell me what truth there is in the rumor 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 with- out any thought of where and when I was ; so I began on it, while one of the girls 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 OK, AN EPOCH OF BEST. 27 Lodge, and for the part about High Beech, the Forest was almost wholly made up of pollard horn- beams 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 Aveaver did n'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 laugh- ing, 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 28 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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-hunioredly ; 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 neighbors " (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 should n't I tell jon ? 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 for- bore 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 OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 29 about ; he means that you look rather old for your age. But surely there need be no wonder m that, sfnce 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 ao-es very quickly if one lives among 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 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 morn- ing ; so good-by for the present." 30 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 mechan- ical 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 cen- tury, — 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 r puzzled me, I confess, though your informauon was '^ so interesting. But later on I hope we may have some more talk together, when our friend Dick is n't here. I know he thinks me rather a grinder, /■ OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 31 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 over-do 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 sesthetics, 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 splen- did 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 armor. The man himself was tall, dark-haired, and exceed- ingly 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 32 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; tall and well-built people may use without affecta- tion. 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 all 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 in- stead 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 OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 33 to me) " my pleasure of a talk with tliis learned guest is put off, I admit that he ought to see your worthy kinsman as soon as possible. Besides, per- haps 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 read- ing 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 dust- man, and partly because he will dress so showily, and get as much gold on him as a baron in the Mid- dle 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 color right, as he calls it ; and as he thinks you come from some forgotten corner of the earth, where people are unhappy, and conse- quently interesting to a story-teller, he thinks he may get some information out of you. Oh, 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." 3 34 NEWS FKOM nowhere; " Of course you do," said Dick ; " birds of a feather flock together ; mathematics and antiquOr rian novels stand on much the same footing. But here lie 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 gray 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, espe- cially the " elegant " ones, but was as graceful and pleasant in line as a Wessex wagon. 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. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 35 CHAPTER IV. A MARKET BY THE WAT. 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 among 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 ap- pearance, 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 cut by the costume of the people that we met or passed, in whose dress there was nothing '' modern." Almost everybody was gayly dressed, but especially the women, who were so well-looking, or even so 36 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 meet 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 unpretentious- ness of the houses round about; Avhile 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 architect- ure, 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 Sara- cenic 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 Baptistery at Florence, except that it Avas 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 gener- osity 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 under- stand it, and sat looking on me with a pleased and OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 37 affectionate interest. We had pulled up among a crowd of carts, wherein sat handsome, healthy-look- ing people, men, women, and children, very gayly 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 ? " " Oh," said he, " it is just our Hammersmith mar- ket ; 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 among 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 honor of the season and the hot day, who smiled kindly on me, and 38 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 neighbors, 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 them- selves 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 charac- ter 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 thought his eye rather wandered from me, and did n't wonder, for that pretty girl was just disap- pearing through the gate with her big basket of early peas, and I myself felt that disaj^pointed 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 pre- sent. Why should you expect to see poorly people on the road ? " OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 39 "No, no," I said; "1 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 ! " There- with he shook the reins, and we jogged along merrily eastward. 40 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; CHAPTER V. CHILDREN OX 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 a while after came to another market and town-hall, as we should call it. Al- though there was nothing familiar to me in its surrouudings, 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 Avith a pretty arcade over the footway before it. Quoth Dick : *' This is Kensington proper. Peo- ple 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 dotting Hill; thence it runs east to Primrose Hill, and so on; rather a narrow strip of it gets through Kingsland to Stoke-Newington and Clajiton, 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 OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 41 are just coming to is called Kensington Gardens ; though why ' gardens ' I don't know." I rather longed to say, " Well, / know ; " but there were so many things about me which I did not know, in spite of his assumptions, that I thoxight 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 (among 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 plea.sure, so that I felt as if I should like to go on forever 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 among which was the smell of the trodden bracken near the way-side. 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. Among these were many children from six or eight years old up to sixteen or seven- teen. They seemed to me especially fine speci- mens of their race, and were clearly enjoying themselves to the utmost ; some of them were hanging about little tents pitched on the green- sward, and by some of these, fires were burning, with pots hanging over them gypsy fashion. Dick 42 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; explained to me that there were scattered houses iu 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 chil- dren," said I, pointing to the many youngsters about the way. "Oh," said he, "these children do not all come from the near houses, the woodland houses, but from the countryside 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 a little 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 OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 43 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 any- thing to do with children. We talk, indeed, of a school of herring, and a school of pamtmg, and n th former sense we might talk ot a school o children; but otherwise,';^ said he, laughing, "I must own myself beaten." Hang it ! thought I, I can't open my mouth with- oufdigging up some new complexity. I wouldnt Z to s!t my friend right in his etymology ; and I thought I had best say nothing about the boy-farms which I had used to call schools, as I/^w pretty clearly that they had disappeared ; so I said, after a little fumbling, "I was using the word m the sense of a system of education." "Education?" said he, meditatively, "I know enou-h Latin to know that the word must come tZ^ducere, 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 m mv esteem when I heard this frank avowal; and f'sald, rather contemptuously, "WeU, education means a system of teaching young people. "Why not old people also?" said he, with a twinlJin his eye' "But," he -nt on, "I can assure you our children learn, whether they go ^h^oug/a ' system of teaching ' or not. Why, you liUnot find'one of these children about here boy or girl, who cannot swim; and every one ^f them has^e'en used to tumbling about the little fores ponies -there's one of them now! Thej ail ot 44 NEWS FROM nowhere; 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. " Gruest," said he, " perhaps you have not learned to do these tilings I have been speaking about j and if that 's the case, don't you run away with the idea that it does n't take some skill to do them, and does n't give plenty of work for one 's mind. You would change your opinion if you saw a Dor- setshire 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 b}" 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, j'ou know. How- ever, 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 Avrite, don't they learn something else, — languages, for instance ? " OE, AN EPOCH OF EEST. 45 "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 and 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. "Oh, 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 some one to tell him what are the best books to read on such or such a subject, or to explain what he does n'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 was mostly in periods of turmoil and strife and confusion that people cared 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 46 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; 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. 'T is 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 read- ing, 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 Avhat 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 w^as 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 could n't let his subject quite drop, and went on meditatively : — " After all, I don't knoAv that it does them much harm, even if they grow up book-students. Such people as that, 't is a great pleasure seeing them so OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 47 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," said I, " what have you done with it ? " " What have we done with it ? " said he ; " noth- ing 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, neighbor ; 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 games that went on there. 48 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 water- side. 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 straight- way set up its pipe against their destruction, as it has done with many other buildings which most people looked upon as ivorthless, and public nui- sances ; 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-grand- father 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 almost sacrifice out-door 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 OE, AN EPOCH OF REST. 49 building; and indeed I do think that the ener- gies 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." 50 NEWS FEOM nowhere; CHAPTEE YI. A LITTLE SHOPPIXG. AS he spoke, we came suddenly out of the wood- land 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 coixld see, the people were ignorant of the arts of buying and selling. Wares were disj^layed 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-])assengers, as in some of the old Italian cities. About half-way down, a huge building of the kind I was now pre- pared 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 folks 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 could n't help smiling to see how long a tradi- tion would last. Here was the ghost of London OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 51 still asserting itself as a centre, — an intellectual centre, for aught I knew. However, I said noth- ing, 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 hand- somer 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, '• Per- haps you would like to do a little shopping, as 't is called." I looked at what I could see of my rough blue duds, which I had 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 unbusi- ness-like 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 amid 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, — " Hillo, 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 52 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; you can get in this market, so don't trouble your- self about it." I had come to my senses by this time, and re- membering 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 — Could n't I ? You see — What do you thinli. could be done about them ? " He didn't seem in the least inclined to laugh, but said quite gravely, — <' 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 would n'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 stick myself up for a scarecrow amid this beauty-loving people, but I saw I had got across some ineradicable preju- dice, and that it wouldn't do to quarrel with my new friend. So I merely said, " Oh, 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, "Cordd 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." OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 53 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 showi- ness, but otherwise not very different to what I had been used to. Within were a couple of chil- dren — a brown-skinned boy, of about twelve, who sat reading a book, and a pretty little girl about a 54 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; year older, who was sitting also reading behind the counter ; they were obviously brother and sister. *' Good morning, little neighbors," said Dick. " My friend here wants tobacco and a pipe ; can you help him ? " " Oh, yes, certainly," said the girl with a sort of demure alertness which was somewhat amusing. The boy looked up, and fell staring at my out- landish attire, but presently reddened and turned his head, as if he knew that he was not behaving prettily. "Dear neighbor," 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 have n'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 to- bacco pouch. But the girl looked at it with some disdain, and said, — " Dear neighbor, I can give you something much better than that cotton rag." And she tripped up the shop and came back presently, and as she OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 55 passed the boy whispered something in his ear, and he nodded and got up and went out. The girl hekl up in her finger and thumb a red morocco bag, gayly embroidered, and said, " There, I 've 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 to- bacco, and laid it down by me and said : " Now for the pipe ; that also you must let me choose for you ; tliere 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 sprink- led 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, neighbor ? " " Oh, 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 expres- sion in them, which warned me against another exhibition of extinct commercial morality ; so I 56 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; 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 did n't understand me a bit. " Thank you so very much," I said at last, effu- sively, as I put the pipe in my pocket, not without a qualm of doubt as to whether I should n't find myself before a magistrate presently. " 0, 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 ; es- pecially when one can see at once that you have come from far over the 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. " Neigh- bors," 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-colored wine into the long bowls. Nothing loath, 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 flavor. For if ever I drank good Stein- berg, I drank it that morning ; and I made a men- tal note to ask Dick how they managed to make fine wine when there were no longer laborers com- pelled to drink rot-gut instead of the fine wine which they themselves made. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 57 "Don't you drink a glass to us, dear little neigh- bors ? " said I. " I don't drink wine," said the lass ; " I like lem- onade 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 '11 come with you," said the old man. " All right," said Dick, " tell me when you want to get down and I '11 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 is n'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 58 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; "S'Tr^H^ftftftft — p.al 1 p(l _Idlene^ s, because tliey 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 labor 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 act- ually compelled to do some such work, because they, especially the women, got so ugly and produced such ugly children that the neighbors could n'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, neighbor; 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 bimches 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 iigly children, for no one except men hke 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, neighbors, that once on a OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 59 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 subiect ? " , . «No," said I; for the old man was speaking "Well" said he, "it was thought at the time that it was the survival of the old mediaeval dis- ease of leprosy. It seems it was very catching, tor many of the people afdicted by it were miich se- cluded, and were waited upon by .a. special class of diseased persons que^ferly dre^ed up, so that they might be known. They wore, among other gar- ments, breeches made of worsted velvet, that ^ stuff which used to be called plush some years ago. All this seemed very interesting, to tg^u and i should like to have made the old man taft more But Dick got rather restive unaer 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, neighbors, 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 qneev disease ! it may well be called Mulleygrubs ! " .. -u • 4-..,.,.d.r. 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^ sake, but from the teeth outward only ; for I saw nothing funny in people not liking to work, a. you may well imagine. j^ 60 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; CHAPTER VII. TRAFALGAR SQUARE. AND now again I was busy looking abont 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 verj- far from being the case. Each house stood in a garden carefully cultivated, and running over with flowers. The blackbirds were singing their best amid the garden-trees, wliich, 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. Amid 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, slop- ing 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 re- freshment-stall. Erom the southern side of the said orchard ran a long road, checkered over with OE, AN EPOCH OF EEST. 61 the shadow of tall old pear-trees, at the end of which showed the tall 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 nonde- script 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 road- way 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 grayness of the chilly November afternoon. I opened my eyes to the sunlight again and looked round me, and cried out among the whis- pering 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 does n't bite. Yet sometimes I think we might have given it a name which would have commem- orated the great battle which was fought on the spot itself in 1952, — that was important enough, if the historians don't lie." 62 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; "Which they generally do, or at least did," said the old man. " For instance, what can yon make of this, neighbors ? I have read a mnddled ac- count in a book — oh, 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 INIr. 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 could n't help it." The old man looked at me keenly, and said : " You seem to know a great deal about it, neighbor. 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 OK, AN EPOCH OF KEST. 63 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, Avell, I am sure you think so, neighbor," said the old man, " but I don't see why you should be so cocksure." As I could n'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 seem 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 upon others ; whereas the nineteenth-century ones were hypocrites, and pre- tended to be humane, and yet went on tormenting 64 NEWS FROM KOWHERE ; 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-mas- ters, had forced them to be. Oh, 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, neighbor, they could n'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 : ""Rntjij ^ve ynii no prrsniTs at all nowJ" 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 trust- worthy books, helped out by our own imaginations? And have n'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 neighbors were shut up in prison, while they bore such things quietly ? And if there were people in prison, you could n't hide it from folk, like you may an occasional man-slaying ; because that is n't done of set purpose, with a lot of people backing up the slayer in cold blood, as this prison business is. Prisons, indeed ! Oh no, no, no ! " OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 65 He stopped, and began to cool down, and said in a kind voice : " But forgive me ! I need n'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 uncom- fortable." 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 't is 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 quite in the beginning of the twentieth centu.ry, 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 did n't try to enlighten him, feeling the task too heavy; but I piilled 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." 5 66 NEWS FEOM NOWHEKE ; It struck me as I spoke that this was rather un- grateful of me, after having received such a fine present ; but Dick did n'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 should n'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 per- turbed ; 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 amid 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 fac- tories now, but Banded-workshops, — that is, places where people collect who want to work together." OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 67 "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 dealinc^ 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. 68 NEWS iTvOM NOWIIEEE; CHAPTER VIII. AN OLD FRIEND. T T 7E now turned into a pleasant lane where tlie * * branches of great plane-trees nearly met overhead, but behind them lay low houses stand- ing rather close together. '' This is Long Acre," quoth Dick ; " so there must once have been a cornheld here. How curi- ous 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 corn- fields 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, neighbors ; I have got to call on a friend who lives in the gardens behind this Long Acre. Good-by and good luck, guest ! " And he jumped down and strode away vigorously, like a young man. " How old should you say that neighbor 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. " Oh, about ninety, I should say," said Dick. " How long-lived your people must be ! " said I. " Yes," said Dick, " certainly we have beaten the OK, AN EPOCH OF BEST. 69 tlireescore-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 mat- ters 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 Eoman and Medieeval 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 Shakspeare's play of King Richard III., and there are some re- mains 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, covmted for nothing in the memory of this man, who read Shakspeare and had not for- gotten the Middle Ages. We crossed the road into a short narrow lane be- tween the gardens, and came out again into a wide road, on one side of which was a great and long 70 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; 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, with- out 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 aAvay, amid 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 min- ute 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 par- ticularly want to see, and perhaps have a long talk with." He blushed and sighed, not altogether with pleas- ure, 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 peojjle were sauntering or sitting reading on the benches. Dick said to me apologetically: "Here as else- OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 71 where 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 quadi-angle, and by an arch- way 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 could n't help looking at me rather hard ; and considering my clothes and theirs I did n'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 re- build 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 straightfor- ward job; for there are wonderful collections in there of all kinds of antiquities, besides an enor- mous library with many exceedingly beautiful books in it, and many most useful ones as genuine records 72 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; of texts ; and the woriy and anxiety, and even risk there woukl 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 labor and material in it." " I see there is," said I, " and I quite agree with you. But now had n'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 ojfficial dwellings. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 73 CHAPTEE IX. CONCERNING LOVE. "\70UR kinsman doesn't much care f or beauti- 1 ful 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 tiiere,- though it was very clean and nicely whitewashed. , "Oh I don't know," said Dick, rather absently. "He is getting old, certainly, for he is over a hun- dred and five, and no doubt he doesn't care about movin- But of course he could live in a prettier house if he liked; he is not obliged to live m one place any more than any one else. This way. 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 Tde but solid and with a good deal of carving about them, well designed but rather crudely exe- cuted At the furthest corner of the room, at a desk "near the window, sat a little old man m 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 gray worsted stockings. He jumped up from his 74 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 Avas 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 wel- come 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 Eng- land, 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 al- lowed 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 OK, AN EPOCH OF BEST. 75 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 some- thing 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 anybody 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 tak- ing 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. 76 NEWS FllOM nowiieue; TVlien the door liad slmt on tliem tliu 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 wag- ging. 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 XJlaying together so seriously, as if the whole world depended on their kisses (as indeed it does some- what), yet I don't think my tales of the past in- terest them much. The last harvest, the last baby, the last knot of carving in the inarket-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 j^ou as an inquirer 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 ques- tions 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 by, like his OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 77 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 be- ginning 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 any- thing, dear guest ; since I must talk, make my talk profitable to you." I was silent for a minute, and then I said, some- what 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 mar- ried 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 78 NEWS FKOM NOWHERE; one : they lived together two years the first time ; and then she got it into her head that she was in love with somebody else. So she left poor Dick. 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 where the land lay, and said that he was very unhaj)py 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 had n'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 would n'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 OK, AN EPOCH OF EEST. 79 quarrels about private gropfixty could not go on among us in our days." Indeed, my drive from Hammersmith to Blooms- bury, 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 tyrannizing over the children who have been the results of love or lust." 80 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; Again he paused awhile, and again went on : "Calf love, mistaken for a heroism that shall be life-long, yet early waning into disappointment ; the inexplicable desire that comes on a man of riper yems to be the all-in-all to some one woman, whose ordinary human kindness and human beauty he has idealized 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 beauti- ful 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 all this, so we set ourselves to bear the sorrow which not unseldom goes with it also ; remembering those lines of the ancient poet (I quote roughly from memory of 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, 't is 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 honor 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 3'ou will, criminal, to exag- OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 81 gerate 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 recognize 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 ]3erhaps the sentimentalists of other times would think contemptible and unheroic, but which we think necessary and manlike. As on the one hand, therefore, we have ceased to be commer- cial in our love-matters, so also we have ceased to be artifieiaUy 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 be- twixt those who meant never to sunder, so it must be ; but there need be no pretence of unity when the reality of it is gone. ISTor do we drive those who well know that they are incapable of it to profess an undying sentiment which they cannot really feel ; thus, as that monstrosity of venal lust is no longer possible, so also it is no longer 6 82 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; needed. Don't misunderstand me. You did not seem shocked when I told you that there were no law-courts to enforce contracts of sentiment or I passion ; but so curiously are men made that per- haps you tvill 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 neighbors' 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 peo- ple 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 yoii shocked now ? " " N-o — n-o," 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 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, OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 83 and said : " It is not without reason that I have got a reputation as a careful student of history. I be- lieve 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 mer- riment. " Well," said he, " of course you will see that all that is a dead controversy now. The men have no longer any opportunity of tyrannizing 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 nor injured by it. This is such a commonplace that I am almost ashamed to state it." I said : " Oh ! — 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 novel- ties to you in that subject also." " Very well," I said ; " but about this woman ques- tion ? I saw at the Guest House that the women were waiting on the men ; that seems a little like reaction, does n'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 nine- teenth century, and their male backers. If it is yours, I recommend to your notice an old Norwe- gian folk-lore tale called ' How the Man minded the House,' or some such title ; the result of which 84 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; 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 countr}^, was of turf and sloping down low to the ground. Hard on the cow, / think. Of course, no such mishap could happen to such a superior person as yourself," he added, chuckling. I sat a little uneasy under this dry gibe. Indeed, his manner of treating this latter part of the ques- tion 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 coiild be thinking of, but at that silly nineteenth-century fashion, current among rich, so-called cultivated people, of ignor- ing all the steps by which their daily dinner was reached, as matters too low for their lofty intelli- gence. Useless idiots ! Come, now, I am a ' lit- erary 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 OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 85 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 retvirn to the position of women among 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 their sex from the bearing of children ? " The old man grew quite serious again. Said he : " I do remember about that strange piece of base- less 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 he highly honored among 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 recognized. For the rest, remember that all the artificial burdens of mother- hood 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 go to make up the life of mankind. But at least she is spared the fear (it was most commonly the certainty) that artificial 86 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; 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 j)rocess, how to take the sting out of hereditj^, has been one of the most constant cares of the thoughtful men among us. So that, you see, the ordinarily healthy woman (and almost all our women are both healthy and at least comely), re- spected as a child-bearer and rearer of children, desired as a woman, loved as a companion, un- anxious 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 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 civilized country." He crowed a little, like tlie old bird he was. " What ! are we still civilized ? " said he. " Well, as to our looks, the English and Jutish blood, which on the whole is predominant here, used not OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 87 to produce mucli beauty. But I think we have im- proved it. I know a man who has a large collec- tion of portraits printed from photographs of the nineteenth century ; and going over those and com- paring 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 be- lieve 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. 88 NEWS FKOM NOWHERE; CHAPTEE X. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. "T^7ELL," said the old man, shifting in his ' ^ chair, " you must get on with your ques- tions, 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 did n't teach them anything, and, in short, that your education is like the * snakes in Iceland ' — non- existent." " 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 slaveholders' privi- lege 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 did n't care about it in order to serve it out to other people who did n't care about it." OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 89 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 my- self 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 have reached an age conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying facidties and dispositions may be, and when there, with like disregard, 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 groivth, 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. 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 systematized 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 infor- mation lifelong ; the hurry of poverty forbade any- thing 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 90 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; to seek it. In tliis 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 aritlimetic or mathematics; you can't force him when he is grown; can't you force him while he is growing, and ought n'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 sub- ject of education, perceiving him to be hopeless on that side. I thought a little, and said : " You were speak- ing 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." " Phalansteries, 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 phalansteries and all their kind, as was but natural at the time, implied nothing but a refuge from mere destitution. Such a way OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 91 of life as that could only have been conceived of bv people surrounded by the worst form of poverty. But you must understand therewith, that though separate households are the rule among us, and thou-h 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 iind out for your- self 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 Hammer- smith ; nor have you seen the most populous part of the town yet." . ., , a ^-^■.r. "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 inno- cent men and women; or worse, stews for rearing 92 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; and breeding men and women in such degradation that that torture should seem to them mere ordi- nary 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 dis- content, once so hopeless, on the very spots where those terrible crimes of class-murder were commit- ted 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 neighboring meadows, standing among 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 among 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 lamen- tation coming from her sweet and beautiful lips, and she unconscious of their real meaning ; to hear her, say, singing Hood's ' Song of the Shirt,' and to OE, AN EPOCH OF REST. 93 think that all the time she does not understand what it is all about — a tragedy grown inconceiv- able 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 gam- bling 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 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 splendor 94 NEWS FROM nowhere; 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 Izaak 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 Komans 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 rem- nant 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 centralization 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 OK, AN EPOCH OF EEST. 95 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 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 manufac- ture, they have, like the brick and mortar desert of London, disappeared ; only, since they were centres of nothing but ' manufacture,' and served no pur- pose but that of the gambling market, they have left less signs of their existence than London. Of 96 NEWS FROM nowhere; 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 are, no sac- rifice 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 dis- tricts 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 every- thing, and even pretend that they liked it ; where- as we can 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 sup- pose you have swept those away entirely ? " "Ko, no," said he, "it hasn't gone that way. On the contrary, there has been but little clear- ance, though much rebuilding, in the smaller towns. Their suburbs, indeed, Avhen 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 OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 97 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 be- come 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 re- I verted 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 para- sites, 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 rela- tion 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 7 98 NEWS FROM NOWHEEE; 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 re- verse 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 say- ing of them is true in the m,ain. 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 centviry the villages were almost destroyed, unless where they became inere 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. Labor 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. OR, AN EPOCH OF EEST. 99 The country produce which passed through the hands of the husbandmen never got so far as their mouths. Incredible shabbiness and niggardly pinch- ing 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 them- selves. People found out what they were fit for, and gave up attempting to push themselves into occupa- tions in which they must needs fail. The town in- vaded 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 coun- try 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 100 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; 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 amid beauty without any fear of becoming eifeminate ; 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 among the woods and wastes, with a few towns interspersed, which were for- tresses 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 work- shops. It is now a garden, where nothing is wasted and nothing is spoiled, 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 OE, AN EPOCH OF REST. 101 of desolation and misery. Why, my friend, those housewives we were talking of just now woukl 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 some- thing like the best of such places, with the church or mote-house of the neighbors 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 draw- ing architecture. Such things do not please us, even when they indicate no misery. Like the med- iaBvals, we like everything trim and clean, and or- derly 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 among 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. 102 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 al- together 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. VThy do you keep such things in a garden ? and is n'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 gar- den, I have heard that they used to have shrubber- ies 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 OE, AN EPOCH OF EEST. 103 the Cumberland and Westmoreland ones, — where, by the way, you will see some sheep feeding, so they are not so wasteful as you think, — not so wasteful as forcing grounds for fruit out of season, / 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. 104 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; CHAPTER XI. CONCERNING GOVERNMENT. " "\T ^^'" ^^^^ ^> " ^ liave come to the point of ■^^ asking questions which I suppose will be dry for you to answer and difficult for you to ex- plain ; 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 dictator- ship, which some persons in the nineteenth century used to projDhesy as the ultimate outcome of democ- racy? Indeed, this last question does not seem so very unreasonable, since you have turned your Par- liament 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 gviest, let me tell you that our present parliament would be hard to house in one place, because the whole ppoj^le 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." OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 105 " 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 govern- ment, 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 can- not 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 pro- cess 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 in- terests 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 ? 106 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; I. History seems to sliow us this. H. To what extent did the people manage their own affairs ? I. I judge from what I have heard that some- times they forced the Parliament to make a law to legalize some alteration which had already taken place. H. Anything else ? /. 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 se- dition, 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 ? /. Can you tell me ? H. I think we shall not be far wrong if we say that government was the law-courts, Lacked 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. /. 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 OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 107 by law-courts and police, which was the real gov- ernment 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. /. So it seems, indeed. H. And now that all this is changed, and the " rights of property," which means the clenching the fist on a piece of goods and crying out to the neighbors, You sha'n't have this ! — now that all this has disappeared, so utterly that it is no longer pos- sible even to jest upon its absurdity, is such a Government possible ? /. 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 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 any one expected to believe this ? For instance, did the English Gov- ernment defend the English citizen against the French ? /. 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 ? / (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. 108 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 Eng- lish 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 underfeeding. So that after all, the English xvorkmen 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 where- with 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 cannot deny it. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 109 B. Therefore the government really existed for the destruction of wealth ? /. So it seems. And yet — H. Yet what ? /. There were many rich people in those times. H. You see the consequences of that fact ? /. I think I do. But tell me out what they were. H. If the government habitually destroyed wealth, the country must have been poor ? /. Yes, certainly. H. Yet amid this poverty the persons for the sake of whom the government existed insisted on being rich whatever might happen ? /. 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 govern- ment 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 ma- chinery ; 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 ? /. 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. 110 NEWS FKOM NOWHERE; CHAPTER XII. COXCERXIXG THE ARRAXGEMEXT OF LIFE. " T ■! 7ELL," I said, "about those 'arrangements' ' » which you spoke of as taking the place of government, — could you give me any account of them ? " "Neighbor," he said, "although we have simpli- fied our lives a great deal from what they were, and 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 among 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 j^ears, 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 ouf' happiness." OR, AN EPOCH OF EEST, 111 " Whereas in the old days," said I, " it was very- hard to live without strife and robbery. That 's what you mean, is n'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 neighbors were cele- brated 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 some- thing 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 112 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 over-weening jealousy and the like miseries. Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at the bot- tom 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 pri- vate property, as well as certain follies about the ' ruin ' of women for following their natural desires in an illegal way, which was of course 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 to- gether by no bond of coercion, legal or social, but OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 113 by mutual liking and affection, and everybody is free to come or go as lie or she pleases. Further- more, our standards of honor and public estimation are very different from the old ones, and success in besting our neighbors is a road to renown now closed, let us hope forever. Each man is free to exercise his special faculty to the utmost, and every one en- courages 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 un- happiness 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 among 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 homi- cide, to put it at the worst. But what then ? Shall we the neighbors make it worse still ? Shall we think so poorly of each other as to suppose that the slam 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 cir- cumstances, have forgiven his. maimer ? 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, neighbor ! " said the old man, with some exultation. '' You have hit the mark. That pun- 8 114 NEWS FROM nowhere; ishment of wMcli men used to talk so wisely and act so foolishly, what was it hut 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 among our friends need neither fear nor punish. Surely if we, in dread of an occasional rare homi- cide, an occasional rough blow, were to solemnly and legally commit homicide and violence, we could only be a society of ferocious cowards. Don't you think so, neighbor ? " " 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 mo- mentarily 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 f)r madness is cured) it is clear that grief and humiliation must follow the ill-deed ; and OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 115 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 acknowledgment of the grief and humiliation. Is it so hard to say, ' I ask your pardon, neighbor ' ? 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 swal- lowed 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 com- mit 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 tor- turer or jailer, though many to act as nurse or doctor." " So," said I, " you consider crime a mere spas- modic 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." Said I : " 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 ex- 116 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; change, as you saw this morning when yon went a-shopping ; but of course there are regulations of the markets, varying according to the circum- stances, 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 some- one 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 imprison and the soldier to slay some actual living person. Such follies would make an agreeable market, would n'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, neighbor," said he. " Although there are so many, indeed by far the greater number among 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 speak- ing of, whose delight is in administration, organ- ization, 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 OE, AN EPOCH OF REST. 117 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 com- mercial folk in past days. Well, what are you going to ask me next ? " 118 NEWS FROM nowhere; CHAPTER XIII. CONCEKNING 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 have made 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. OK, AN EPOCH OF EEST. 119 CHAPTER XIV. HOW MATTERS ARE MANAGED. " "DUT," quoth I, "is there no difference of opin- -•— ^ ion among you.? Is that your assertion ? " " 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, crystal- lize people into parties permanently hostile to one another, with different theories as to the build of the universe and the progress of time. Is n't that what politics used to mean ? " " H'm, well," said I, " I am not so sure of that." Said he : "I take you, neighbor , they only jpre- tendecl 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 amuse- ment 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?" 120 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; 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, impetu- ously, " what human nature ? The human nature of paupers, of slaves, of slave-holders, or the hu- man nature of wealthy freemen ? Which ? Come, teU 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. Among us, our differences concern matters of business, and passing events as to them, and could not divide men permanently. As a rule, the immediate out- come shows which opinion on a given subject is the right one ; it is a matter of fact, not of specula- tion. For instance, it is clearly not easy to knock up a political party on the question as to whether hay-making 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 him self and see whether the seeds are ripe enough for 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 per- sonal, which do not affect the welfare of the com- munity, — how a man shall dress, what he shall eat and drink, what he shall write and read, and so OR, AN EPOCH OF BEST. 121 forth, — there can be no difference of opinion, and everybody does as he pleases. But when the mat- ter is of common interest to the whole community, and the doing or not doing something affects every- body, 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 neighbors 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 neighbors, or Mote as we call it, according to the ancient tongue of the times before bureaucracy, a neighbor pro- poses 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 122 NEWS FKOM NOWHERE ; happen among reasonable men, however, as the proposer is sure to have talked it over with others before the Mote. But supposing the affair pro- posed and seconded, if a few of the neighbors dis- agree 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 mean- time 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 opin- ion, 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 as a matter of fact, if there is any rule on the case, 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 that they cannot persuade or force the community to adopt it." a Yery good," said I ; " but what happens if the divisions are still narrow ? " Said he : " As a matter of principle and accord- ing 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 OR, AN EPOCH OF BEST. 123 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 any one among us to com- plain of his not always having his own way in the teeth of the community, when it is clear that every- body 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 neighbors, — that, in short, we should get for ourselves what used to be called an aris- tocracy of intellect ; or secondly, that for the pur- pose of safe-guarding the freedom of the indi- vidual will, we should revert to a system of pri- vate 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 con- fess that I joined him. When he recovered him- 124 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; self 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 does n'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 re- fusing to help in building the bridge. But, dear neighbor, that is not a very effective salve for the wound caused by the ' tyraimy of a majority ' in our socijety ; because all work that is done is either bene- ficial or hurtful to every member of it. 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 mis- erable 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 micro- scope I know. Don't be afraid, my friend ; we are not going to seek for troubles by calling our peace OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 125 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 amid my garrulity." 126 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; CHAPTER XV. ON THE LACK OF INCENTIVE TO LABOR IN A COM- MUNIST SOCIETY. " '\/'ES," 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 neighbor — try it," said okl Ham- mond. " 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 prox- imity 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 labor, and especially how you get them to work strenuously." " No reward of labor ? " said Hammond, gravely. " The reward of labor is life. Is that not enough ? " " But no reward for specially 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 OE, AN EPOCH OF REST. 127 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 be- getting 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 plati- tude, — wholly untrue ; indeed, to us quite mean- ingless. 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 among 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 mean time, what do you positively mean to assert about the pleasurableness of work among you ? " " This, that all work is now pleasurable ; either because of the hope of gain in honor and wealth with which the work is done, — which causes pleas- urable 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' con-- scious sensuous pleasure in the work itself 5 it is,, done, that is, by artists." 128 NEWS FEOM NOWHERE; " 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 Avorld 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. Rev- olution 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 haj^py 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 labor 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 ? " OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 129 " 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 civilization 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 them- selves 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 im- portance to them with the real necessaries which supported life. By all this they burdened them- selves 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 unne- cessary production, it became impossible for them to look upon labor and its results from any other point of view than one, — to wit, the ceaseless en- deavor to expend the least possible amount of labor on any article made, and yet at the same time to make as many articles as possible. To this 'cheap- ening of production,' as it was called, everything was sacrificed, — the happiness of the workman at 130 NEWS FROM nowhere; 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 bal- ance against this dire necessity of 'cheap produc- tion ' of things a great part of which were not worth producing at all. i^ay, 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 amid 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 pro- duction' forced upon it by the world-market." " Dear me ! " said I. " But what happened ? Did not their cleverness and facility in production mas- ter this chaos of misery at last ? Could n't they catch up with the world-market, and then set to Avork to devise means for relieving themselves from this fearful task of extra labor ? " He smiled bitterly. " Did they even try to ? " said he. " I am not sure. You know that accord- ing to the old saw the beetle gets used to livdng 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 labor-saving machines ? " " Heyday ! " quoth he. "• What 's that you are saying ? the labor-saving machines ? Yes, they were made to ' save labor ' (or, to speak more OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 131 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 labor sim- ply resulted in increasing the burden of labor. The appetite of the world-market grew with what it fed on ; the countries within the ring of what was called 'civilization' (that is, organized 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 cen- tury, — the use of hypocrisy and cant to evade the responsibility of vicarious ferocity. When the civilized 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 mad- man whose misdeeds had got him into trouble among 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 break- ing 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 132 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; of robbery was called, and tliereby 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 ' civilization.' 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 civiliza- tion (or organized misery) with ' non-civilization,' — from the time when the British Government delib- erately 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 1 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." OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 133 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 per- fect pieces of workmanship, admirably adapted to the end in view. So that it may be fairly said that the great achievement of the nineteenth cen- tury was the making of machines which were won- ders of invention, skill, and patience, and which were used for the production of measureless quan- tities of worthless makeshifts. 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, smil- ing ; " and the nineteenth century saw itself as a man who has lost his clothes while bathing, and has to walk naked through the town." "You are very bitter about that unlucky nine- teenth 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 under- stand what he suffered when I tell you that he was 134 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 neighbors' use as if they were mak- ing for themselves, not for a vague market of which they know nothing, and over which they can 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 any one who can be compelled to buy them. So that whatever is made is good, and thoroughly fit for its purpose. I^othing 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 re- sources 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 we do is an exercise of the mind and body more or less pleasant OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 135 to be done ; so that instead of avoiding work every- body 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 a certain fear 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 among you ? " " ISTo, 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 occu- pation 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. 136 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; 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 civilization, 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; aud there is still a great deal to do, espe- cially 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 ques- tions, and then I have done for to-day." OR, AN EPOCH OF llEST. 137 CHAPTER XVI. DINNER IN THE HALL OF THE BLOOMSBUKT MARKET. A S 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." " And 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." 138 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; I said : " Well, since you liave spoken the word, I begin to feel that it is so ; but I have been feed- ing myself with wonder this long time past ; really, it 's quite true," quoth I, as I saw her smile, — oh, 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 I had been in before, a thinnish stream of elegantly 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 imag- 1 " Elegant," I mean, as a Persian pattern is elegant, — not like a rich, " elegant " lady out for a morning call. I should rather call that genteel. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 139 inatioils whicli 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 child- ishness 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 140 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; a daintiness which showed that those who had pre- pared it were interested in it; but there was no excess either of quantity or gourmandise. Every- thing 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 dare say, have found them rough and lacking in finish, — the crockery being lead-glazed pot-ware, though beautifully ornament- ed; 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 somcAvhat bubbled and hornier in texture than the commercial articles of the nineteenth cen- tury. The furniture and general fittings of the hall were much of a piece with the table gear, beautiful in form and highly ornamented, but with- out 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 OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 141 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 nine- teenth 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 con- temporary 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 idealize, and in some way or another make it strange ; so that for all the veri- similitude there was, he might just as well have dealt with the times of the Pharaohs." " Well," said Dick, '' surely it is but natural to like these things strange ; just as when we were children, as I said just now, we used to pretend to be so-and-so in such-and-such a place. That 's what these pictures and poems do ; and why should n't they ? " " Thou hast hit it, Dick," quoth old Hammond ; " it is the childlike part of us that produces works of imagination. When we are children time passes so slow with us that we seem to have time for everything." He sighed, and then smiled and said : " At least let us rejoice that we have got back our childhood again. I drink to the days that are ! " " Second childhood," said I in a low voice, and 142 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; then blushed at my double rudeness, and hoped that he had n't heard. But he had, and turned to me smiling, and said : " Yes, why not ? And for my part I hope it may last long ; and that the world's next period of wise and unhappy manhood, if that should happen, will speedily lead us to a third childhood, — if indeed this age be not our third. Meantime, my friend, you must know that we are too happy, both individually and collectively, to trouble ourselves about what is to come hereafter." '' Well, for my part," said Clara, " I wish we were interesting enough to be written or painted about." Dick answered her with some lover's speech, impossible to be written down, and then we sat quiet a little. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 143 CHAPTER XVII. HOW THE CHANGE CAME. DICK broke tlie silence at last, saying : " Cruest, forgive us for a little after-dinner dulness. What would you like to do ? Shall we have out Greylocks and trot back to Hammersmith ? or will you come with us and hear some Welsh folk sing in a hall close by here ? or would you like pres- ently to come with me into the City and see some really fine buildings ? or — what shall it be ? " "Well," said I, "as I am a stranger, I must let you choose for me." In point of fact, I did not by any means want to be " amused " just then ; and also I rather felt as if the old man, with his knowledge of past times, and even a kind of inverted sympathy for them caused by his active hatred of them, was a kind of blanket for me against the cold of this very new world, where I was, so to say, stripped bare of every habitual thought and way of acting ; and I did not want to leave him too soon. He came to my rescue at once, and said, — " Wait a bit, Dick ; there is some one else to be consulted besides you and the guest here, and that is I. I am not going to lose the pleasure of his company just now, especially as I know he has something else to ask me. So go to your Welsh- men, by all means ; but first of all bring us another 144 NEWS FROM nowhere; bottle of wine to this nook, and then be off as soon as you like ; and come again and fetch our friend to go westward, but not too soon." Dick nodded smilingly, and the old man and I were soon alone in the great hall, the afternoon sun gleaming on the red wine in our tall quaint- shaped glasses. Then said Hammond, — *' Does anything especially puzzle you about our way of living, now you have heard a good deal and seen a little of it ? " Said I : " I think what puzzles me most is how it all came about." " It well may," said he, " so great as the change is. It would be difficult indeed to tell you the whole story, perhaps impossible ; knowledge, dis- content, treachery, disappointment, ruin, misery, despair, — those who worked for the change be- cause they could see further than other people went through all these phases of suffering ; and doubtless all the time the most of men looked on, not knowing what was doing, thinking it all a matter of course, like the rising and setting of the sun ; and indeed it was so." " Tell me one thing, if you can," said I. " Did the change, the 'revolution' it used to be called, come peacefully ? " " Peacefully ? " said he ; " what peace was there among those poor confused wretches of the nine- teenth century? It was war from beginning to end, — bitter war, till hope and pleasure put an end to it." " Do you mean actual fighting with weapons ? " said I, " or the strikes and lock-outs and starvation of which we have heard ? " OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 145 "Both, both," he said. "As a matter of fact, the history of the terrible period of transition from commercial slavery to freedom may tlms be sum- marized. When the hope of realizing a communal condition of life for all men arose, quite late in the nineteenth century, the power of the middle classes, the then tyrants of society, was so enor- mous and crushing that to almost all men, even those who had, you may say despite themselves, despite their reason and judgment, conceived such hopes, it seemed a dream. So much was this the case that some of those more enlightened men who were then called Socialists, although they well knew, and even stated in public, that the only reasonable condition of society wa»s that of pure Communism (such as you now see around you), yet shrunk from what seemed to them the barren task of preaching the realization of a happy dream. Looking back now, we can see that the great motive-power of the change was a longing for freedom and equality, akin if you please to the unreasonable passion of the lover; a sickness of heart that rejected with loathing the aimless solitary life of the well-to-do educated man of that time, — phrases, my dear friend, which have lost their meaning to us of the present cTay, so far removed we are from the dreadful facts which they represent. "Well, these men, though conscious of this feel- ing, had no faith in it. Nor was that wonderful ; for looking around them they saw the huge mass of the oppressed classes too much burdened with the misery of their' lives, and too much over- whelmed by the selfishness of misery, to be able 10 146 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; to form a conception of any escape from it except by the ordinary way prescribed by the system of slavery under which they lived; which was noth- ing more than a remote chance of climbing out of the oppressed into the oppressing classes. "Therefore, though they knew that the only reasonable aim for those who would better the world was a condition of equality, in their impa- tience and despair they managed to convince them- selves that if they could by hook or by crook get the machinery of production and the management of property so altered that the 'lower classes' (so the horrible word ran) might have their slavery somewhat ameliorated, they would be ready to fit into this machinery, and would use it for bettering their condition still more and still more, imtil at last the result would be a practical equality (they were very fond of using the word ' practical '), because 'the rich' would be forced to pay so much for keeping ' the poor ' in a tolerable condi- tion that the condition of riches would become no longer .valuable and would gradually die out. Do you follow me ? " " Partly," said I. " Go on." Said old Hammond : " Well, since you follow me, you will see that as a theory this was not alto- gether unreasonable; but 'practically,' it turned out a failure." " How so ? " said I. " Well, don't you see ? '' said he, — " because it involves the making of a machinery by those who didn't know what they wanted the machines to do. So far as the masses of the oppressed class furthered this scheme of improvement, they did OR, AN EPOCH OF EEST. I47 it to get themselves improved slave-rations, — as many of them as could. And if those classes had really been incapable of being touched by that instinct Avhich produced the passion for freedom and equality aforesaid, what would have happened, I think, would have been this : that a certain part of the working-classes would have been so far improved in condition that they would have ap- proached the condition of the middling rich men ; but below them would have been a great class of most miserable slaves, whose slavery would have been far more hopeless than the older-class slavery had been." " What stood in the way of this ? " said I. "Why, of course," said he, "just that instinct for freedom aforesaid. It is true that the slave- class could not conceive the happiness of a free life. Yet they, grew to understand (and very speedily too) that they were oppressed by their masters, and they assumed, you see how justly that they could do without them, though perhaps they scarce knew how; so that it came to this, that though they could not look forward to the happi- ness or the peace of the freeman, they did at least look forward to the war which should bring that peace about." "Could you tell me rather more closely what actually took place?" said I; for I thought him rather vague here. "Yes," he said, " I can. That machinery of life for the use of people who didn't know what they wanted of it, and which was known at the time as btate Socialism, was partly put in motion, though m a very piecemeal way. But it did not work 148 NEWS FROM nowhere; smoothly ; it was, of course, resisted at every turn by the capitalists ; and no wonder, for it tended more and more to upset the commercial system I have told you of without providing anything really effective in its place. The result was growing con- fusion, great suffering among the working-classes, and as a conseqvience, great discontent. For a long- time matters went on like this. The power of the upper classes had lessened as their command over wealth lessened, and they could not carry things wholly by the high hand as they had been used to in earlier days. On the other hand the working classes were ill-organized, and growing poorer in reality, in spite of the gains (also real in the long run) which they had forced from the masters. Thus matters hung in the balance ; the masters could not reduce their slaves to complete subjec- tion, though they put down some feeble and partial riots easily enough. The workers forced their masters to grant them ameliorations, real or im- aginary, of their condition, but could not force freedom from them. At last came a great crash. On some trilling occasion a great meeting was sum- moned by the workmen leaders to meet in Trafal- gar Square (about the right to meet in which place there had for long been bickering). The civic bourgeois guard (called the police) attacked the said meeting with bludgeons, according to their custom ; many people were hurt in the melee, of whom live in all died, either trampled to death on the spot, or from the effects of their cudgelling ; the meeting was scattered, and some hundred of prisoners cast into jail. A similar meeting had been treated in the same way a few days before at OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 149 a place called Manchester, which has now disap- peared. The whole country was thrown into a fer- ment by this ; meetings were held which attempted some rough organization for the holding of another meeting to retort on the authorities. A huge crowd assembled in Trafalgar Square and the neighbor- hood (then a place of crowded streets), and was too big for the bludgeon-armed police to cope with; there was a good deal of dry-blow fighting ; three or four of the people were killed, and half a score of policemen were crushed to death in the throng, and the rest got away as they could. The next day all London (remember what it was in those days) was in a state of turmoil. Many of the rich fled into the country ; the executive got together soldiery, but did not dare to use them; and the police could not be massed in any one place, be- cause riots or threats of riots were everywhere. But in Manchester, where the people were not so courageous or not so desperate as in London, sev- eral of the popular leaders were arrested. In Lon- don a convention of leaders was got together, and sat under the old revolutionary name of the Com- mittee of Public Safety; but as they had no or- ganized body of men to direct, they attempted no aggressive measures, but only placarded the walls with somewhat vague appeals to the workmen not to allow themselves to be trampled upon. However, they called a meeting in Trafalgar Square for the day fortnight of the last-men- tioned skirmish. " Meantime the town grew , no quieter, and business came pretty much to an end. The news- papers, — then, as always hitherto, almost entirely 150 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; in the hands of the masters, — clamored to the government for repressive measures. The rich citizens were enrolled as an extra body of police, and armed with bludgeons like them. Many of these were strong, well-fed, full-blooded young men, and had plenty of stomach for fighting; but the government did not dare to use them, and con- tented itself with getting full powers voted to it by the Parliament for suppressing any revolt, and bringing up more and more soldiers to London. Thus passed the week after the great meeting. Almost as large a one was held on the Sunday, which went off peaceably on the whole, as no op- position to it was offered. But on the Monday the people woke up to find that they were hungry. During the last few days there had been groups of men parading the streets asking (or, if you please, demanding) money to buy food ; and what for good-will, what for fear, the richer people gave them a good deal. The authorities of the parishes also (I have n't time to explain that phrase at pres- ent) gave willy-nilly what provisions they could to wandering people ; and the government, which had by that time established some feeble national work- shops, also fed a good number of half-starved folk. But in addition to this, several bakers' shops and other provision stores had been emptied without a great deal of disturbance. So far, so good. But on the Monday in question, the Committee of Pub- lic Safety, on the one hand afraid of general unor- ganized pillage, and on the other emboldened by the wavering coijduct of the authorities, sent a deputation provided with carts and all necessary gear to clear out two or three big provision stores OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 151 in the centre of the town, leaving blank papers promising to pay the price of them with the shop managers ; and also in the part of the town where they were strongest they took possession of several bakers' shops, and set men at work in them for the benefit of the people, — all of which was done with little or no disturbance, the police assisting in keeping order at the sack of the stores as they would have done at a big fire. "But at this last stroke the reactionaries were so alarmed that they were determined to force the executive into action. The newspapers next day all blazed into the fury of frightened people, and threatened the people, the government, and every- body they could think of, unless 'order were at once restored.' A deputation of leading commer- cial people waited on the government, and told them that if they did not at once arrest the Com- mittee of Public Safety, they themselves would gather a body of men, arm them, and fall on 'the incendiaries,' as they called them. " They, together with a number of the newspaper editors, had a long interview with the heads of the government and two or three military men, the deftest in their art that the country could fur- nish. The deputation came away from that in- terview, says a contemporary eyewitness, smiling and satisfied, and said no more about raising an anti-popular army, but that afternoon left London with their families for their country seats or elsewhere. "The next morning the government proclaimed a state of siege in London, — a thing common enough among the absolutist governments on the 152 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; Continent, but unheard of in England in those days. They appointed the youngest and cleverest of their generals to command the proclaimed dis- trict, — a man who had won a certain sort of repu- tation in the disgraceful wars in which the country had long engaged from time to time. The news- papers were in ecstacies, and all the most fervent of the reactionaries now came to the front, — men who in ordinary times were forced to keep their opinions to themselves or their immediate circle, but who now began to look forward to crushing, once for all, the Socialist, and even democratic ten- dencies, which, said they, had been treated with such indulgence for the last twenty years. " But the clever general took no visible action ; and yet only a few of the minor newspapers abused him. Thoughtful men gathered from this that a plot was hatching. As for the Committee of Public Safety, whatever they thought of their position, they had now gone too far to draw back ; and many of them, it seems, thought that the government would not act. They went on quietly organizing their food supply, which was a miserable driblet when all is said ; and also as a retort to the state of siege, they armed as many men as they could in the quarter where they were strongest, but did not attempt to drill or organize them, thinking, per- haps, that they could not at the best turn them into trained soldiers till they had some breathing space. The clever general, his soldiers, and the police, did not meddle with all this in the least in the world, and things were quieter in London that week-end ; though there were riots in many places of the provinces, which were quelled by the OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 153 authorities without much trouble. The most seri- ous of these were at Glasgow and Bristol. "Well, the Sunday of the meeting came, and great crowds came to Trafalgar Square in proces- sion, the greater part of the Committee among them, surrounded by their band of men armed somehow or other. The streets were quite peace- ful and quiet, though there were many spectators to see the procession pass. Trafalgar Square had no body of police in it, the people took quiet pos- session of it, and the meeting began. The armed men stood round the principal platform, and there were a few others armed amid the general crowd ; but by far the greater part were unarmed. " Most people thought the meeting would go off peaceably ; but the members of the Committee had heard from various quarters that something would be attempted against them ; but these rumors were vague, and they had no idea of what threatened. They soon found out. " For before the streets about the Square were filled, a body of soldiers poured into it from the northwest corner and took up their places by the houses that stood on the west side. The people growled at the sight of the red-coats ; the armed men of the Committee stood undecided, not knowing what to do ; and indeed this new influx so jammed the crowd together that, unorganized as they were, they had little chance of working through it. They had scarcely grasped the fact of their ene- mies being there, when another column of soldiers, pouring out of the streets which led into the great southern road going down to the Parliament House (still existing, and called the Dung Market), and also 154 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; from the embankmeut by the side of tlie Thames, marched up, pushing the crowd into a denser and denser mass, and formed along the south side of the Square. Then any of those who could see what was going on, could see at once that they were in a trap, and could only wonder what would be done with them. "The closely packed crowd would not or could not budge, except under the influence of the height of terror, which was soon to be supplied to them. A few of the armed men struggled to the front, or climbed up to the base of the monument which then stood there, that they might face the wall of hidden fire before them ; and to most men (there were many women among them) it seemed as if the end of the world had come, and to-day seemed strangely different from yesterday. No sooner were the soldiers drawn up as aforesaid than, says an eye-witness, ' a glittering officer on horseback came prancing out from the ranks on the south, and read something from a paper which he held in his hand ; which something very few heard ; but I was told afterwards that it was an order for us to disperse, and a warning that he had legal right to fire on the crowd else, and that he would do so. The crowd took it as a challenge of some sort, and a hoarse threatening roar went up from them ; and after that there was a comparative silence for a little, till the officer had got back into the ranks. I was near the edge of the crowd, toward the soldiers,' says this eye-witness, ' and I saw three little machines being wheeled out in front of the ranks, which I knew for mechanical guns. I cried out, "Throw yourselves down ! they are going to fire ! " But no OK, AN EPOCH OF KEST. 155 one scarcely could throw himself doAvn, so tight as the crowd were packed. I heard a sharp order given, and wondered where I should be the next min- ute ; and then — It was as if the earth had opened and hell had come up bodily amid us. It is no use trying to describe the scene that followed. Deep lanes were mowed amid the thick crowd ; the dead and dying covered the ground, and the shrieks and wails and cries of horror filled all the air, till it seemed as if there was nothing else in the world but murder and death. Those of our men who were still unhurt cheered wildly and opened a scat- tered fire on the soldiers. One or two fell ; and I saw the officers going up and down the ranks urging the men to fire again ; but they received the orders in sullen silence, and let the butts of their guns fall. Only one sergeant ran to a machine-gun and began to set it going ; but a tall young man — an officer too — ran out of the ranks and dragged him back by the collar; and the soldiers stood there motionless, while the horror-stricken crowd, nearly wholly unarmed (for most of the armed men had fallen in that first discharge), drifted out of the Square. I was told afterwards that the soldiers on the west side had fired also, and done their part of the slaughter. -How I got out of the Square I scarcely know ; I went, not feeling the ground under me, what with rage and terror and despair.' " So says our eye-witness. The number of the slain on the side of the people in that shooting during a minute was prodigious ; but it was not easy to come at the truth about it ; it was probably between one and two thousand. Of the soldiers, six were killed outright, and a dozen wounded." 156 NEWS FROM nowhere; I listened trembling Tvitli excitement. The old man's eyes glittered and Ms face flushed as he spoke, and told the tale of what I had often thought might happen. Yet I wondered that he should have got so elated about a mere massacre, and I said, — " How fearful ! And I suppose that this massacre put an end to the whole revolution for that time ? " " No, no," cried old Hammond ; " it began it ! " He filled his glass and mine, and stood up and cried out, " Drink this glass to the memory of those who died there, for indeed it would be a long tale to tell how much we owe them." I drank, and he sat down again and went on. " That massacre of Trafalgar Square began the civil war ; though, like all such events, it gathered head slowly, and people scarcely knew what a crisis they were acting in. " Terrible as the massacre was, and hideous and overpowering as the first terror had been, when the people had time to think about it, their feeling was one of anger rather than fear, — although the military organization of the state of siege was now carried out without shrinking by the clever young general. For though the ruling-classes, when the news spread next morning, felt- one gasp of horror and even dread, yet the government and their immediate backers felt that now the wine was drawn and must be drunk. However, even the most reactionary of the capitalist papers, with two exceptions, stunned by the tremendous news, simply gave an account of what had taken place, without making any comment upon it. The exceptions were, one, a so-called 'liberal' paper (the govern- OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 157 ment of the day was of that complexion), which, after a preamble in which it declared its undeviat- ing sympathy with the cause of labor, proceeded to point out that in times of revolutionary disturb- ance it behooved the Government to be just but firm, and that by far the most merciful way of dealing with the poor madmen who were attacking the very foundations of society (which had made them mad and poor) was to shoot them at once, so as to stop others from drifting into a position in which they would run a chance of being shot. In short, it praised the determined action of the government as the acme of human wisdom and mercy, and exulted in the inauguration of an epoch of reasonable democracy free from the tyran- nical fads of Socialism. "The other exception was a paper thought to be one of the most violent opponents of democracy, and so it was ; but the editor of it found his man- hood, and spoke for himself and not for his paper. In a few simple, indignant words he asked people to consider what a society was worth which had to be defended by the massacre of unarmed citizens, aiid called on the government to withdraw their state of siege and put the general and his officers who fired on the people on their trial for murder. He went further, and declared that whatever his opinion might be as to the doctrines of the Social- ists, he for one should throw in his lot with the people, until the government atoned for their atrocity by showing that they were prepared to listen to the demands of men who knew what they wanted, and whom the decrepitude of society forced into pushing their demands. 158 NEWS FROM nowhere; " Of course, this editor was immediately arrested by the military power ; but his bold words were already in the hands of the public and produced a great effect, — so great an effect that the govern- ment, after some vacillation, withdrew the state of siege, though at the same time it strengthened the military organization and made it more strin- gent. Three of the Committee of Public Safety had been slain in Trafalgar Square ; of the rest, the greater part went back to their old place of meet- ing and there awaited the event calmly. They were arrested there on the Monday morning, and would have been shot at once by the general, who Avas a mere military machine, if the government had not shrunk before the responsibility of killing men without any trial. There was at first a talk of trying them by a special commission of judges as it was called, — /. e., before a set of men bound to find them guilty, and whose business it was to do so. But with the government the cold fit had succeeded to the hot one ; and the prisoners were brought before a jury at the assizes. There a fresh blow awaited the government; for in spite of the judge's charge, which distinctly instructed the jury to find the prisoners guilty, they were acquitted, and the jury added to their verdict a presentment, in which they condemned the action of the soldiery, in the queer phraseology of the day, as ' rash, unfortunate, and unnecessary.' The Committee of Public Safety renewed its sittings, and from thenceforth was a rallying-point in oppo- sition to the Parliament. The government now gave way on all sides, and yielded to the demands of the people ; though there was a widespread plot OR, AN EPOCH OF EEST. 159 for effecting a coup cVetat set on foot between the leaders of the two so-called opposing parties. The well-meaning part of the public was overjoyed, and thought that all danger of a civil war was over. The victory of the people was celebrated by huge meetings held in the parks and elsewhere in memory of the victims of the great massacre. " But the measures passed for the relief of the workers, though to the upper classes they seemed ruinously revolutionary, were not thorough enough to give the people food and a decent life, and they had to be supplemented by unwritten enactments without legality to back them. Although the gov- ernment and Parliament had the law-courts, the army and ' society ' at their backs, the Committee of Public Safety began to be a force in the country, and really represented the producing classes. It began to improve immensely in the days which followed on the acquittal of its members. Its old members had little administrative capacity, though with the exception of a few self-seekers and trai- tors, they were honest, courageous men, and many of them endowed with considerable talent. But now that the times called for immediate action, came forward the men capable of setting it on foot ; and a great network of workmen's associations grew up very speedily, whose avowed object was the tiding over of the ship of the community into a simple condition of Communism; and as they practically undertook also the management of the ordinary labor war, they soon became the mouth- piece and intermediary of the whole of the working- classes, and the manufacturing profit-grinders now found themselves powerless before this combina- 160 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; tion. Unless their committee, Parliamentj plucked up courage to begin the civil war again, and to shoot right and left, they were bound to yield to the demands of the men whom they employed, and pay higher and higher wages for shorter and shorter days' work. Yet one ally they had, and that was the rapidly approaching break-down of the whole system founded on the world-market and its supply ; which now became so clear to all peo- ple that the middle classes, shocked for the mo- ment into condemnation of the government for the great massacre, turned round nearly in a mass, and called on the government to look to matters and put an end to the tyranny of the Socialist leaders. "Thus stimulated, the reactionist plot exploded probably before it was ripe ; but this time the people and their leaders were forewarned, and be- fore the reactionaries could get under way had taken the steps they thought necessary. " The Liberal government (clearly by collusion) was beaten by the Conservatives, though the latter were nominally much in the minority. The popu- lar representatives in the House understood pretty well what this meant, and after an attempt to fight the matter out by divisions in the House of Com- mons, they made a protest, left the House, and came in a body to the Committee of Public Safety ; and the civil war began again in good earnest. '' Yet its first act was not one of mere fighting. The new Tory government determined to act, yet durst not re-enact the state of siege, but it sent a body of soldiers and police to arrest the Committee of Public Safety in the lump. They made no re- sistance, though the}^ might have done so, as they OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 161 had now a considerable body of men who were quite prepared for extremities. But they were de- termined to try first a weapon which they thought stronger than street fighting. " The members of the Committee went off quietly to prison ; but they had left their soul and their organization behind them. For they depended not on a carefully arranged centre with all kinds of checks and counter checks about it, but on a huge mass of people in thorough sympathy with the movement, officered by a great number of links of small centres with very simple instructions. These instructions were now carried out. " The next morning, when the leaders of the reaction were chuckling at the effect which the report in the newspapers of their stroke would have upon the public — no newspapers appeared ; and it was only towards noon that a few straggling sheets, about the size of the gazettes of the seven- teenth century, worked by policemen, soldiers, managers, and press-writers, were dribbled through the streets. They were greedily seized on and read ; but by this time the serious part of their news was stale, and people did not need to be told that the General Strike had begun. The rail- ways did not run, the telegraph-wires were un- served ; flesh, fish, and green stuff brought to market were allowed to lie there still packed and perishing; the thousands of middle-class families, who were utterly dependent for the next meal on the workers, made frantic efforts through their more energetic members to cater for the needs of the day, and among those of them who could throw off the fear of what was to follow, there was, I am 11 162 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; told, a certain enjoyment of tliis unexpected picnic, — a forecast of the days to come, in which all labor grew pleasant. "So passed the first day, and towards evening the government grew quite distracted. They had but one resource for putting down any popular movement, — to wit, mere brute-force ; but there was nothing for them against which to use their army and police ; no armed bodies appeared in the streets ; the offices of the federated workmen were now, in appearance at least, turned into places for the relief of people thrown out of work, and under the circumstances they durst not arrest the men engaged in such work, — all the more, as even that night many quite respectable people applied at these offices for relief, and swallowed down the charity of the revolutionists along with their supper. So the government massed soldiers and police here and there, — and sat still for that night, fully expecting on the morrow some mani- festo from ' the rebels,' as they now began to be called, which would give them an opportunity of acting in some way or another. They were dis- appointed. The ordinary newspapers gave up the struggle that morning, and only one very violent reactionary paper (called the ' Daily Telegraph ') attempted an appearance, and rated the ' rebels ' in good set terms for their folly and ingratitude in tearing out the bowels of their ' common mother,' the English Nation, for the benefit of a few greedy paid agitators and the fools whom they were de- luding. On the other hand, the Socialist papers (of which three only, representing somewhat dif- ferent schools, were published in London) came OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 163 out full to the throat of well-printed matter. They were greedily bought by the whole public, who, of course, like the government, expected a manifesto in them. But they found no word of reference to the great subject. It seemed as if their editors had ransacked their drawers for articles which would have been in place forty years before, under the technical name of educational articles. Most of these were admirable and straightforward ex- positions of the doctrines and practice of Socialism, free from haste and spite and hard words, and came upon the public with a kind of May-day freshness, amid the worry and terror of the mo- ment; and though the knowing well understood that the meaning of this move in the game was mere defiance, and a token of irreconcilable hos- tility to the then rulers of society, and though, also, they were meant for nothing else by the rebels, yet they really had their effect as 'educational articles.' However, 'education' of another kind was acting upon them with irresistible power, and probably cleared their heads a little. "As to the government, they were absolutely terrified by the act of ' boycotting ' (the slang word then current for such acts of abstention). Their counsels became wild and vacillating to the last degree. One hour they were for giving way for the present till they could hatch another plot ; the next they all but sent an order for the arrest in the lump of all the workmen's committees ; the next they were on the point of ordering their brisk young general to take any excuse that offered for another massacre. But when they called to mind that the soldiery in that ' Battle ' of Trafalgar 1G4 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; Square were so daunted by the slaughter which they had made that they could not be got to fire a second volley, they shrank back again from the dreadful courage necessary for carrying out an- other massacre. Meantime the prisoners, brouglit the second time before the magistrates under a strong escort of soldiers, were the second time remanded. " The strike went on this day also. The work- men's committees were extended, and gave relief to great numbers of people, for they had organized a considerable amount of production of food by men whom they could depend upon. Quite a num- ber of well-to-do people were now compelled to seek relief of them. But another curious thing happened ; a band of young men of the upper classes armed themselves, and coolly went maraud- ing in the streets, taking what suited them of such eatables and portables as they came across in the shops which had ventured to open. This operation they carried out in Oxford Street, then a great street of shops of all kinds. The government, being at that hour in one of their yielding moods, thought this a fine opportunity for showing their impartiality in the maintenance of ' order,' and sent to arrest these hungry rich youths ; who, however, surprised the police by a valiant resistance, so tliat all but three escaped. The government did not gain the reputation for impartiality which they expected from this move ; for they forgot that there were no evening papers ; and the account of the skirmish spread wide indeed, but in a distorted form, for it was mostly told simply as an exploit of the starving people from the East-end ; and OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 165 everybody thought it was but natural for the gov- ernment to put them down when and where they could. " That evening the rebel prisoners were visited in their cells by very polite and sympathetic per- sons, who pointed out to them what a suicidal course they were following, and how dangerous these ex- treme courses were for the popular cause. Says one of the prisoners : ' It was great sport compar- ing notes, when we came out, anent the attempt of the government to " get at " us separately in prison, and how we answered the blandishments of the highly " intelligent and refined " persons set on to pump us. One laughed ; another told extravagant long-bow stories to the envoy ; a third held a sulky silence ; a fourth damned the polite spy and bade him hold his jaw, — and that was all they got out of us.' " So passed the second day of the great strike. It was clear to all thinking people that the third day would bring on the crisis; for the present suspense and ill-concealed terror were unendurable. The ruling classes, and the middle-class non-poli- ticians who had been their real strength and sup- port, were as sheep lacking a shepherd; they literally did not know what to do. " One thing they found they had to do, — try to get the 'rebels' to do something. So the next morning, the morning of the third day of the strike, when the members of the Committee of Public Safety appeared again before the magis- trate, they found themselves treated with the great- est possible courtesy, — in fact, rather as envoys and ambassadors than prisoners. In short, the 1G6 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; magistrate had received liis orders ; and with no more to do than might come of a long stnpid speech, which might have been Avritten by Dickens in mock- ery, he discharged the prisoners, who went back to their meeting-place and at once began a due sitting. " It was high time. For this third day the mass was fermenting indeed. There was, of course, a vast number of working-people who were not or- ganized the least in the world, — men who had been used to act as their masters drove them, or rather as the system drove, of which their masters were a part. That system was now falling to pieces, and the old pressure of the master having been taken off these poor men, it seemed likely that nothing but the mere animal necessities and passions of men would have any hold on them, and that mere general overturn would be the result. Doubt- less this would have happened if it had not been that the huge mass had been leavened by Socialist opinion in the first place, and in the second by ac- tual contact with declared Socialists, many or in- deed most of whom were members of those bodies of workmen above said. ''If anything of this kind had happened some years before, when the masters of labor were still looked upon as the natural rulers of the people, and even the poorest and most ignorant men leaned upon them for support, while they submitted to their fleec- ing, the entire break-up of all society would have followed. But the long series of years during which the workmen had learned to despise their rulers had done away with their dependence upon them, and they were now beginning to trust (somewhat dan- gerously, as events proved) in the non-legal leaders OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 167 wliom events liad thrust forward ; and though most of these were now become mere figure-heads, their names and reimtations were useful in this crisis as a stop-gap. " The effect of the news, therefore, of the release of the Committee gave the government some breath- ing time ; for it was received with the greatest joy by the workers, and even the well-to-do saw in it a respite from the mere destruction which they had begun to dread, and the fear of which most of them attributed to the weakness of the government. As far as the passing hour went, perhaps they were right in this." "How do you mean?" said I. "What could the government have done ? I often used to think that they would be helpless in such a crisis." Said old Hammond : " Of course I don't doubt that in the long run matters would have come about as they did. But if the government could have treated their army as a real army, and used them strategically as a general would have done, looking on the people as a mere open enemy to be shot at and dispersed wherever they turned up, they would probably have gained the victory at the time." " But would the soldiers have acted against the people in this way ? " said I. Said he : "I think from all I have heard that they would have done so if they had met bodies of men armed however badly, and however badly they had been organized. It seems also as if before the Trafal- gar Square massacre they might as a whole have been depended upon to fire upon an unarmed crowd, though they were much honeycombed by Socialism, The reason for this was that they dreaded the use 168 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; by apparently unarmed men of an explosive called dynamite, of which many lond boasts were made by the workers on the eve of these events ; and of course the officers of the soldiers fanned this fear to the utmost, so that the rank and file probably thought on that occasion that they were being led into a desperate battle with men who were really armed, and whose weapon was the more dreadful because it was concealed. After that massacre, however, it was at all times doubtful if the regular soldiers would fire upon an unarmed or half-armed crowd." Said I : " The regular soldiers ? Then there were other combatants against the people ? " " Yes," said he, " we shall come to that pfes- ently." " Certainly," I said, " you had better go on straight with your story. I see that time is wearing." Said Hammond : " The government lost no time in coming to terms with the Committee of Public Safety, for, indeed, they could think of nothing else than the danger of the moment. They sent a duly accredited envoy to treat with these men, who somehow had obtained dominion over people's minds, while the formal rulers had no hold except over their bodies. There is no need at present to go into the details of the truce (for such it was) between these high contracting parties, the gov- ernment of the empire of Great Britain and a hand- ful of working-men (as they were called in scorn in those days), — among whom, indeed, were some very capable and ' square-headed ' persons. The upshot of it was that all the definite claims of the OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 169 people had to be granted. We can now see that most of these claims were of themselves not worth either demanding or resisting ; but they were looked on at that time as most important, and they Avere at least tokens of revolt against the miserable sys- tem of life which was then beginning to tumble to pieces. One claim, however, was of the utmost immediate importance, and this the government tried hard to evade ; but, as they were not dealing with fools, they had to yield at last. This was the claim of recognition and formal status for the Com- mittee of Public Safety, and all the associations which it fostered under its wing. This, it is clear, meant two things, — first, amnesty for the ' rebels,' great and small, who, without a distinct act of civil war, could no longer be attacked ; and next, a con- tinuance of the organized revolution. Only one point the government could gain, and that was a name. The dreadful revolutionary title was dropped, and the body, with its branches, acted under the respectable name of the ' Board of Con- ciliation and its Local Offices.' Carrying this name, it became the leader of the people in the civil war which soon followed." "Oh," said I, somewhat startled, "so the civil war went on, in spite of all that had happened ? " " So it was," said he. " In fact, it was this very legal recognition which made the civil war possible in the ordinary sense of war ; it took the struggle out of the element of mere massacres on one side, and endurance plus strikes on the other." " And can you tell me in what kind of way the war was carried on ? " said I. " Yes," he said, " we have records and to spare 170 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; of all that, and the essence of them I can give you in a few words. As I told you, the rank and file of the army was not to be trusted by the reaction- ists ; but the officers generally were prepared for anything, for they were mostly the very stupidest men in the country. Whatever the government might do, a great part of the upper and middle classes were determined to set on foot a counter revolution ; for the Communism which now loomed ahead seemed quite unendurable to them. Bands of young men, like the marauders in the great strike of whom I told you just now, armed them- selves and drilled, and began on any opportunity or pretence to skirmish with the people in the streets. The government neither helped them nor put them down, but stood by, hoping that some- thing might come of it. These * Friends of Order,' as they were called, had some successes at first, and grew bolder. They got many of the officers of the regular army to help them, and by their means laid hold of munitions of war of all kinds. One part of their tactics consisted in their guarding, and even garrisoning the big factories of the period. They held at one time, for instance, the whole of that place called Manchester, which I spoke of just now. A sort of irregular war was carried on with varied success all over the country ; and at last the government, which had at first pretended to ignore the struggle, or treat it as mere rioting, definitely declared for 'the Friends of Order,' and joined to their bands whatsoever of the regular army they could get together, and made a desperate effort to overwhelm ' the rebels,' as they were now once more called, and as indeed they called themselves. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 171 " It was too late. All ideas of peace on a basis of compromise had disappeared on either side. The end, it was seen clearly, must be either abso- lute slavery for all but the privileged, or a system of life founded on equality and Communism, The sloth, the hopelessness, and, if I may say so, the cowardice of the last century, had given place to the eager, restless heroism of a declared revolu- tionary period. I will not say that the people of that time foresaw the life we are leading now, but there was a general instinct among them towards the essential part of that life, and many men saw clearly beyond the desperate struggle of the day into the peace which it was to bring about. The men of that day who were on the side of freedom were not unhappy, I think, though they were harassed by hopes and fears, and sometimes torn by doubts, and the conflict of duties hard to reconcile." "But how did the people, the revolutionists, carry on the war ? What were the elements of success on their side ? " I put this question, because I wanted to bring the old man back to the definite history, and take him out of the musing mood so natural to an old man. He answered : " Well, they did not lack organ- izers ; for the very conflict itself, in days when, as I told you, men of any strength of mind cast away all consideration for the ordinary business of life, developed the necessary talent among them. In- deed, from all I have read and heard, I much doubt whether, without this seemingly dreadful civil war, the due talent for administration would have been 172 NEWS FROiM NOWHERE; developed among the working-men. Anyhow, it was there, and they had leaders far more than equal to the best men among the reactionaries. For the rest, they had no difficulty about the mate- rial of their army ; for that revolutionary instinct so acted on the ordinary soldier in the ranks tliat the greater part, certainly the best part, of the soldiers joined the side of the people. But the main element of their success was this, that Avher- ever the working people were not coerced, they worked, not for the reactionists, but for ' the rebels.' The reactionists could get no work done for them outside the districts where they were all- powerful ; and even in those districts they were harassed by continual risings ; and in all cases and everywhere got nothing done witliout obstruction and black looks and sulkiness ; so that not only were their armies quite Avorn out with the difficul- ties which they had to meet, but the non-combatants who were on their side were so worried and beset with hatred and a thousand little troubles and annoyances that life became almost unendurable to them on those terms. Not a few of them actually died of the worry ; many committed suicide. Of course, a vast number of them joined actively in the cause of reaction, and found some solace to their misery in the eagerness of conflict. Lastly, many thousands gave way and submitted to the rebels ; and as the numbers of these latter increased, it at last became clear to all men that the cause which was once- hopeless was now triumphant, and that the hopeless cause was that of slavery and privilege." OK, AN EPOCH OF REST. 173 CHAPTER XVIII. THE BEGIXNIXG OF THE NEW LIFE. "T7[ TELL," said I, "so you got clear out of all ' * your troubles. Were people satisfied with the new order of things when it came ? " "People?" he said. "Well, surely almost all must have been glad of peace when it came ; espe- cially when they found, as they must have found, that, after all, they — even the once rich — were not living very badly. As to those who had been poor all through the war, which lasted about two years, their condition had been bettering, in spite of the struggle ; and when peace came at last, in a very short time they made great strides toward a decent life. The great difficulty was that the once poor had such a feeble conception of the real pleasure of life ; so to say, they did not ask enough, did not know how to ask enough, from the new state of things. It was perhaps rather a good than an evil thing that the necessity for restoring the wealth destroyed during the war forced them into working at first almost as hard as they had been used to before the Revolution. For all historians are agreed that there never was a war in which there was so much destruction of wares and instruments for making them as in this civil war." " I am rather surprised at that," said I. " Are you ? I don't see why," said Hammond. 174 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; " Why," I said, " because the party of order would surely look upon the wealth as their own property, no share of which, if they could help it, should go to their slaves, supposing they conquered. And on the other hand, it was just for the possession of that wealth that the ' rebels ' were fighting ; and I should have thought, especially when they saw that they were winning, that they would have been careful to destroy as little as possible of what was so soon to be their own." '' It was as I have told you, however," said he. " The party of order, when they recovered from their first cowardice of surprise, — or, if you please, when they fairly saw that, whatever happened, they would be ruined, fought with great bitterness, and cared little what they did, so long as they in- jured the enemies who had destroyed the sweets of life for them. As to the rebels, I have told you that the outbreak of actual war made them careless of trying to save the wretched scraps of wealth that they had. It was a common saying among them, ' Let the country be cleared of every- thing except valiant living men, rather than that we fall into slavery again ! ' " He sat silently thinking a while, and then said : " Don't you see what it means ? In the times which you are thinking of, and of which you seem to know so much, there was no hope ; nothing but the dull jog of the mill-horse under compulsion of collar and whip ; but in that fighting-time that followed all was hope ; the rebels at least felt themselves strong enough to build up the world again from its dry bones, — and they did it too ! " said the old man, his eyes glittering under his OE, AN EPOCH OF KEST. 175 beetling brows. He went on : " And their oppo- nents, at least and at last, learned something about the reality of life, and its sorrows, which they — their class, I mean — had once known nothing of. In short, the two combatants, the workman and the gentleman, between them — " " Between them," said I, quickly, " they de- stroyed commercialism ! " " Yes, yes, yes ! " said he ; " that is it. Nor could it have been destroyed otherwise ; except, perhaps, by the whole of society gradually falling into lower depths, till it should at last reach a condition as rude as barbarism, but lacking both the hope and the pleasures of barbarism. Surely the sharper, shorter remedy was the happiest." " Most surely," said I. " Yes," said the old man, " the world was being brought to its second birth ; how could that take place without a tragedy. Moreover, think of it. The spirit of the new days, of our days, was to be delight in the life of the world ; intense and almost overweening love of the very skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells, such as a lover has in the fair flesh of the woman he loves ; this, I say, was to be the new spirit of the time. All other moods save this had been exhausted ; the unceasing criticism, the boundless curiosity in the ways and thoughts of man, which was the mood of the an- cient Greek, to whom these things were not so much a means as an end, was gone past recovery ; nor had there been really any shadow of it in the so-called science of the nineteenth century, which, as you must know, was in the main an appendage to the commercial system, — nay, not seldom an 176 NEWS FROM nowhere; appendage to the police of that system. In spite of appearances, it was limited and cowardly, be- cause it did not really believe in itself. It was the outcome, as it was the sole relief, of the unhappi- ness of the period which made life so bitter even to the rich, and which, as yon may see with your bodily eyes, the great change has swept away. More akin to our way of looking at life is the spirit of the Middle Ages, to whom heaven and the life of the next world was such a reality that it became to them a part of the life upon the earth ; which accordingly they loved and adorned, in spite of the ascetic doctrines of their creed, which bade them contemn it. " But that also, with its assured belief in heaven and hell as two countries in which to live, has gone, and now we do, both in word and in deed, believe in the continuous life of the world of men, and as it were, add every day of that common life to the little stock of days which our own mere individual experience wins for us ; and consequently we are happy. Do you wonder at it ? In times past, indeed, men were told to love their kind, to believe in the religion of- humanity, and so forth. But look you ; just in the degree that a man had eleva- tion of mind and refinement enough to be able to value this idea, was he repelled by the obvious aspect of the individuals composing the mass which he was to worship, and could only evade that repul- sion by making a conventional abstraction of man- kind that had little actual or historical relation to the race, which to his eyes was divided into blind tyrants on the one hand and apathetic degraded slaves on the other. But now, where is the difli- OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. I77 culty in accepting the religion of humanity when the men and women who go to make up humanity are free, happy, and energetic at least, and most commoidy beautiful of l)ody also, and surrounded by beautiful things of their own fashioning, and a nature bettered and not worsened by contact with mankind. This is what this age of the world has reserved for us." " It seems true," said I, " or ought to be, if what my eyes have seen is a token of the general life you lead. Can you now tell me anything of your progress after the years of the struggle ? " Said he : " I could easily tell you more than you have time to listen to ; but I can at least hint at one of the chief difficulties which had to be met ; and that was that when men began to settle down after the war, and their labor had pretty much filled up the gap in wealth caused by the destruc- tion of that war, a kind of disappointment seemed coming over us, and the prophecies of some of the reactionists of past times seemed as if they would come true, and a dull level of utilitarian comfort be the end for a while of our aspirations and success. The loss of the competitive spur to exertion had not, indeed, done anything to interfere with the necessary production of the community ; but hovv^ if it should make men dull by giving them too mucli time for thought or idle musing ? But, after all, this dull thunder-cloud only threatened us, and then passed over. Probably, from what I have told you before, you will have a guess at the remedy for such a disaster ; remembering always that many of the things which used to be produced — slave-wares for the poor, and mere wealth-wastino- ]2 ° 178 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; wares for the rich — ceased to be made. That remedy was, in short, the production of what used to be called art, but which has no name among us now, because it has become a necessary part of the labor of every man who produces." Said I : '' What ! had men any time or oppor- tunity for cultivating the frne arts amid the desperate struggle for life and freedom that you have told me of ? " Said Hammond : " You must not suppose that the new form of art was founded chiefly on the memory of the art of the past; although, strange to say, the civil war was much less destructive of art than of other things, and although what of art existed under the old forms revived in a wonderful way during the latter part of the struggle, espe- cially as regards music and poetry. The art or work- pleasure, as one ought to call it, of which I am now speaking, sprung up almost spontaneously, it seems, from a kind of instinct among people, no longer driven desperately to painful and terrible over- work, to do the best they could with the work in hand, — to make it excellent of its kind ; and when that had gone on for a little, a craving for beauty' seemed to awaken in men's minds, and they began rudely and awkwardly to ornament the wares which they made ; and when they had once set to work at that, it soon began to grow. All this was much helped by the abolition of the squalor our imme- diate ancestors put up with so coolly, and by the leisurely but not stupid country-life which now grew (as 1 told you before) to be common among us. Thus at last and by slow degrees we got pleasure into our work ; then we became conscious OR, AN EPOCH OF REST, 179 of that pleasure, and cultivated it, and took care that we had our fill of it ; and then all was gained, and we were happy. So may it be for ages and ages ! " The old man fell into a reverie, not altogether without melancholy, I thought; but I would not break it. Suddenly he started, and said : " Well, dear guest, here are come Dick and Clara to fetch you away, and there is an end of my talk ; which I dare say you will not be sorry for ; the long day is coming to an end, and you will have a pleasant ride back to Hammersmith." 180 NEWS FKOM NOWHEKE; CHAPTER XIX. THE DRIVE BACK TO HAMMERSMITH. I SAID nothing, for I was not inclined for mere politeness to him after such very serious talk ; but in fact I should like to have gone on talking with the older man, who covild understand some- thing at least of my wonted ways of looking at life, whereas Avith the younger people, in spite of all their kindness, I really was a being from another planet. However, I made the best of it, and smiled as amiably as I could on the young couple ; and Dick returned the smile by saying : " Well, guest, I am glad to have you again, and to find that you and my kinsman have not quite talked yourselves into another world. I was half suspecting as I was listening to the Welshmen yonder that you would presently be vanishing away from us, and began to picture my kinsman sitting staring in the hall at nothing, and finding that he had been talking a while past to nobody." I felt rather uncomfortable at this speech, for suddenly the picture of the sordid squabble, the dirty and miserable tragedy of the life I had left for a while, came before my eyes ; and I had as it were a vision of all ray longings for rest and peace in the past, and I loathed the idea of going back to it again. But the old man chuckled and said, — OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 181 " Don't be afraid, Dick. In any case, I have not been talking to thin air ; nor, indeed, to this new friend of ours only. Who knows but I may not have been talking to many people ? For perhaps our guest may some day go back to the people he has come from, and may take a message from us which may bear fruit for them, and consequently for us." Dick looked puzzled, and said : " Well, gaffer, I do not quite understand what you mean. All I can say is, that I hope he will not leave us ; for don't you see, he is another kind of man to what we are used to, and somehow he makes us think of all kinds of things ; and already I feel as if I could understand Dickens the better for having talked with him." " Yes," said Clara, " and I think in a few months we shall make him look younger ; and I should like to see what he was like with the wrinkles smoothed out of his face. Don't you think he will look younger after a little time with us ? " The old man shook his head, and looked earnestly at me, but did not answer her, and for a minute or two we were all silent. Then Clara broke out, — " Kinsman, I don't like this ; something or an- other troubles me, and I feel as if something untoward were going to happen. You have been talking of past miseries to the guest, and have been living in past unhappy times, and it's in the air all round us, and makes us feel as if we were longing for something that we cannot have." The old man smiled on her kindly, and said : "Well, my child, if that is so, go and live in the present, and you will soon shake it off." Then he 182 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; turned to me, and said : "Do you remember any- thing like that, guest, in the country from which you. come ? " The lovers had turned aside now, and were talk- ing together softly, and not heeding us ; so I said, but in a low voice : " Yes, when I was a happy child on a sunny holiday, and had everything that I could think of." "So it is," said he. "You remember just now you twitted me with living in the second child- hood of the world. You will find it a happy world to live in ; you will be happy there — for a while." Again I did not like his scarcely veiled threat, and was beginning to trouble myself with trying to remember how I had got among this curious people, when the old man called out in a cheery voice : " Now, my children, take your guest away, and make much of him ; for it is your business to make him sleek of skin and peaceful of mind ; he has by no means been as lucky as you have. Fare- well, guest ! " and he grasped my hand warmly. "Good-by," said I, "and thank you very much for all that you have told me. I will come and see you as soon as I come back to London. May 1 ? " " Yes," he said, " come by all means — if you can." " It won't be for some time yet," quoth Dick, in his cheery voice ; " for when the hay is in up the river, I shall be for taking him a round through the country between hay and wheat harvest, to see how our friends live in the north country. Then in the wheat-harvest we shall do a good stroke of work, I should hope, — in Wiltshire by preference j OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 183 for lie will be getting a little hard with all the open-air living, and I shall be as tough as nails." ''But you will take me along, won't you, Dick ? " said Clara, laying her pretty hand on his shoulder. " Will I not ? " said Dick, somewhat boisterously. "And we will manage to send you to bed pretty tired every night ; and you will look so beautiful with your neck all brown, and your hands too, and you under your gown as white as privet ; that will get some of those strange discontented whims out of your head, my dear. However, our week's hay- making will do all that for you." The girl reddened very prettily, not for shame but for pleasure ; and the old man laughed, and said, — " Gruest, I see that you will be as comfortable as need be ; for you need not fear that those two will be too officious with you. They will be so busy with each other that they will leave you a good deal to yourself, I am sure ; and that is real kindness to a guest, after all. Oh, you need not be afraid of being one too many, either ; it is just what these birds in a nest like, to have a good convenient friend to turn to, so that they may relieve the ecstasies of love with the solid commonplace of friendship. Besides, Dick, and much more Clara, likes a little talking at times ; and you know lovers do not talk unless they get into trouble, they only prattle. Good-by, guest ; may you be happy ! " Clara went up to old Hammond, threw her arms about his neck and kissed him heartily, and said : " You are a dear old man, and may have your jest about me as much as you please ; and it won't be 184 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; long before we see you again ; and you may be sure we shall make our guest happy ; though, mind you, there is some truth in what j^ou say." Then I shook hands again, and we went out of the hall and into the cloisters, and so in the street found Greylocks in the shafts waiting for us. He was well looked after ; for a little lad about seven years old had his hand on the rein and was solemnly looking up into his face ; on his back, withal, was a girl of fourteen, holding a three-year- old sister on before her, while another girl, about a year older than the boy, hung on behind. The three were occupied partly with eating cherries, partly with patting and punching Greylocks, who took all their caresses in good part, but pricked up his ears when Dick made his appearance. The girls got off quietly, and going up to Clara made much of her and snuggled up to her. And then we got into the carriage, Dick shook the reins, and we got under way at once, Greylocks trotting soberly between the lovely trees of the London streets, that were sending floods of fragrance into the cool even- ing air, for it was now getting toward sunset. We could hardly go but fair and softly all the way, as there were a great many people abroad in that cool hour. Seeing so many people made me notice their looks the more ; and I must say, my taste, cultivated in the sombre grayness, or rather brownness, of the nineteenth century, was rather apt to condemn the gayety and brightness of the raiment ; and I even ventured to say as much to Clara. She seemed rather surprised, and even slightly indignant, and said : " Well, well, what 's the matter ? They are not about any dirty work ; OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 185 they are only amusing themselves in the fine evening; there is nothing to foul their clothes. Come, does n't it all look very pretty ? It is n't gaudy, you know." Indeed that was true ; for many of the people were clad in colors that were sober enough, though beautiful, and the harmony of the colors was per- fect and most delightful. I said, " Yes, that is so ; but how can every- body afford such costly garments ? Look ! there goes a middle-aged man in a sober gray dress ; but I can see from here that it is made of very fine woollen stuff, and is covered with silk embroidery." Said Clara: ''He could wear shabby clothes if he pleased, — that is, if he did n't think he would hurt people's feelings by doing so." "But please tell me," said I, "how can they afford it ? " As soon as I had spoken I perceived that I had got back to my old blunder, for I saw Dick's shoulders shaking with laughter ; but he would n't say a word, but handed me over to the tender mercies of Clara, who said, — " Why, I don't know what you mean. Of course we can afford it, or else we shouldn't do it. It Avould be easy enough for us to say, We will only spend our labor on making our clothes comfortable ; but we don't choose to stop there. Why do you find fault with us ? Does it seem to you as if we starved ourselves of food in order to make our- selves fine clothes ? or do you think there is any- thing wrong in liking to see the coverings of our bodies beautiful like our bodies are? — just as a 186 NEWS FKOM NOWHERE ; deer's or an otter's skin has been made beautiful from the first. Come, what is wrong with you ? " I bowed before the storm, and mumbled out some excuse or other. I must say, I might have known that people who were so fond of architect- ure generally would not be backward in ornament- ing themselves ; all the more as the shape of their raiment, apart from its color, was both beautiful and reasonable, — veiling the form without either muffling or caricaturing it. Clara was soon mollified ; and as we drove along toward the wood before mentioned, she said to Dick, — " 1 tell you what, Dick ; now that kinsman Ham- mond the elder has seen our guest in his queer clothes, 1 think we ought to find him something decent to put on for our journey to-morrow ; espe- cially since, if we don't, we shall have to answer all sorts of questions as to his clothes and where they came from. Besides," she said, slyly, " when he is clad in handsome garments he will not be so quick to blame us for our childishness in wasting our time in making ourselves look pleasant to each other." " All right, Clara," said Dick ; " he shall have everything that you — that he wants to have. I will look something out for him before he gets up to-morrow." OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 187 CHAPTEE XX. THE HAMMEKSMITH GUEST-HOUSE AGAIN. AMID such talk, driving quietly through the balmy evening, we came to Hammersmith, and were well received by our friends there. Boffin, in a fresh suit of clothes, welcomed me back with stately courtesy ; the weaver wanted to button-hole me and get out of me what old Ham- mond had said, but was very friendly and cheerful when Dick warned him off. Annie shook hands with me, and hoped I had had a pleasant day, — so kindly, that I felt a slight pang as our hands parted ; for to say the truth, I liked her better than Clara, who seemed to be always a little on the de- fensive, whereas Annie was as frank as could be, and seemed to get honest pleasure from everything and everybody about her without the least effort. We had quite a little feast that evening, partly in my honor, and partly, I suspect, — though noth- ing was said about it, — in honor of Dick and Clara coming together again. The wine was of the best ; the hall was redolent of rich, summer flowers ; and after supper we not only had music (Annie, to my mind, surpassing all the others for sweetness and clearness of voice, as well as for feeling and mean- ing), but at last we even got to telling stories, and sat there listening, with no other light but that of the summer moon streamina: through the beautiful 188 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; traceries of the windows, as if we had belonged to time long passed, when books were scarce and the art of reading somewhat rare. Indeed, I may say here that though, as you will have noted, my friends had mostly something to say about books, yet they were not great readers, considering the re- finement of their manners and the great amount of leisure which they obviously had. In fact, when Dick, especially, mentioned a book, he did so with an air of a man who has accomplished an achieve- ment, — as much as to say, " There, you see I have actually read that ! " The evening passed all too quickly for me, since that day, for the first time in my life, I was hav- ing my fill of the pleasure of the eyes without any of that sense of incongruity, that dread of ap- proaching ruin, which had always beset me hitherto when I had been among the beautiful works of art of the past, mingled with the lovely nature of the present, — both of them, in fact, the result of the long centuries of tradition which had compelled men to produce the art, and compelled nature to run into the mould of the ages. Here I could enjoy everything without an after-thought of the injus- tice and miserable toil which made my leisure ; the ignorance and dulness of life which went to make my keen appreciation of history ; the tyranny and the struggle full of fear and mishap which went to make my romance. The only weight I had upon my heart was a vague fear, as it drew toward bed- time, concerning the place wherein I should wake on the morrow ; but I choked that down, and went to bed happy, and in a very few moments was in a dreamless sleep. OK, AN EPOCH OF KEST. 189 XXI. GOING UP THE RIVER. "X X /"HEN I did wake, to a beautiful sunny morn- * » ing, I leaped out of bed with my over-night apprehension still clinging to me, which vanished delightfully, however, in a moment as I looked around my little sleeping-chamber and saw the pale but pure-colored figures painted on the plaster of the wall, with verses written underneath them which I knew somewhat over well. I dressed speedily, in a suit of blue laid ready for me, so handsome that I quite blushed when I had got into it, feeling as I did so that excited pleasure of antici- pation of a holiday which, well remembered as it was, I had not felt since I was a boy, new come home for the summer holidays. It seemed quite early in the morning, and I ex- pected to have the hall to myself when I came into it out of the corridor wherein was my sleeping chamber ; but I met Annie at once, who let fall her broom and gave me a kiss, — quite meaningless I fear, except as betokening friendship, though she reddened as she did it, not from shyness, but from friendly pleasure, — and then stood and picked up her broom again and went on with her sweeping, nodding to me as if to bid me stand out of the way and look on ; which, to say the truth, I thought 190 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; amusing enough, as there were five other girls help- ing her, and their graceful figures engaged, in the leisurely work were worth going a long way to see, and their merry talk and laughing as they swept in quite a scientific manner was worth going a long way to hear. But Annie presently threw me back a word or two as she went on to the other end of the hall : " Guest," she said, " I am glad that 3'ou are up early, though we would n't disturb you ; for our Thames is a lovely river at half-past six on a June morning ; and as it would be a pity for you to lose it, I am told just to give you a cup of milk and a bit of bread outside there, and put you into the boat ; for Dick and Clara are all ready now. Wait half a minute till I have swept down this row." So presently she let her broom drop again, and came and took me by the hand and led me out on to the terrace above the river, to a little table under the boughs, where my bread and milk took the form of as dainty a breakfast as any one could de- sire, and then sat by me as 1 ate. And in a minute or two Dick and Clara came to me, — the latter looking most fresh and beautiful in a light silk embroidered gown, which to my unused eyes was extravagantly gay and bright ; while Dick was also handsomely dressed in white flannel prettily em- broidered. Clara raised her gown in her hands as she gave me the morning greeting, and said laugh- ingly : " Look, guest ! you see we are at least as fine as any of the people you felt inclined to scold last night ; you see we are not going to make the bright day and the flowers feel ashamed of them- selves. Now scold me ! " Quoth I : " No, indeed ; the pair of you seem as OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 191 if you were born out of the summer day itself ; and I will scold you when I scold it." " Well, you know," said Dick, " this is a special day, — all these days are, I mean. The hay-harvest is in some ways better than corn-harvest, because of the beautiful weather ; and really, unless you had worked in the hayfield in fine weather, you couldn't tell what pleasant work it is. The women look so pretty at it, too," he said shyly ; *'so all things considered, I think we are right to adorn it in a simple manner." " Do the women work at it in silk dresses ? " said I, smiling. Dick was going to answer me soberly ; but Clara put her pretty hand over his mouth, and said : '' No, no, Dick ; not too much information for him, or I shall think that you are your old kinsman again. Let him find out for himself; he will not have long to wait." " Yes," quoth Annie, " don't make your descrip- tion of the picture too fine, or else he will be disappointed when the curtain is drawn. I don't want him to be disappointed. But now it 's time for you to be gone, if you are to have the best of the tide, and also of the sunny morning. Good- by, guest." She kissed me in her frank, friendly way, and almost took away from me my desire for the ex- pedition thereby ; but I had to get over that, as it was clear that so delightful a woman would hardly be without a due lover of her own age. We went down the steps of the landing-stage, and got into a pretty boat, not too light to hold us and our be- longings comfortably, and handsomely ornamented; 192 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; and just as we got in, down came Boffin and the weaver to see us off. The former had now veiled his splendor in a due suit of working-clothes, crowned with a fantail hat, which he took off, however, to wave us farewell with his grave old Spanish-like courtesy. Then Dick pushed off into the stream, and bent vigorously to his sculls, and Hammersmith, with its noble trees and beautiful water-side houses, began to slip away from us. As we went, I could not help putting beside his promised picture of the hay-field as it was then the picture of it as I remembered it ; and especially the images of the women engaged in the work rose up before me, — the row of gaunt figures, lean, fiat- breasted, ugly, without a grace of form and face about them ; dressed in wretched skimpy print gowns, and hideous flapping sun-bonnets, moving their rakes in a listless, mechanical way. How often had that marred the loveliness of the June day to me ; how often had I longed to see the hay- fields peopled with men and women worthy of the sweet abundance of early summer, of its endless wealth of beautiful sights, and delicious sounds and scents. And now the world had grown old and wiser, and I was to see my hope realized at last! OR, AN EPOCH OF REST, 193 CHAPTER XXII. HAMPTON court: AND A PRAISER OF PAST TIMES. OO on we went, Dick rowing in an easy, tireless ^ way, and Clara sitting by my side, admiring his manly beauty and heartily good-natured face, and thinking, I fancy, of nothing else. As we went higher up the river, there was less difference be- tween the Thames of that day and Thames as I remembered it ; for setting aside the hideous vul- garity of the cockney villas of the well-to-do, stockbrokers and other such, which in older time marred the beauty of the bough-hung banks, even this beginning of the country Thames was always beautiful; and as we slipped between the lovely summer greenery, I almost felt my youth come back to me, and as if I were on one of those water excursions which I used to enjoy so much in days when I was too happy to think that there could be much amiss anywhere. At last we came to a reach of the river where on the left hand a very pretty little village with some old houses in it came down to the edge of the water, over which was a ferry ; and beyond these houses the elm-beset meadows ended in a fringe of tall willows, /while on the right hand went the tow-path and a space nearly clear of trees, which rose up behind, huge and ancient, the ornaments of a great 13 194 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; park; but these drew back still further from the river at the end of the reach to make way for a little town of quaint and pretty houses some new, some old, dominated by the long walls and sharp gables of a great red brick pile of building, partly of the latest Gothic, partly of the Court- style of Dutch William, but so blended together by the bright sun and beautiful surroundings, in- cluding the bright blue river that it looked down upon, that even amid the beautiful buildings of that new happy time it had a strange charm about it. A great wave of fragrance, amid which the lime-tree blossom was clearly to be distinguished, came down to us from its unseen gardens, as Clara sat up in her place, and said, — "0 Dick, dear, couldn't we stop at Hampton Court for to-day, and take the guest about the park a little and show him those sweet old build- ings ? Somehow, I suppose because you have lived so near it, you have seldom taken me to Hampton. Court." Dick rested on his oars a little, and said : " Well, well, Clara, you are lazy to-day. I did n't feel like stopping short of Shepperton to-day ; suppose we just go and have our dinner at the Court, and go on again about five o'clock ? " '•' Well," she said, " so be it ; but I should like the guest to have spent an hour or two in the Park." " The Park ! " said Dick ; " why, the whole Thames'-side is a park this time of the year ; and for my part, I had rather lie under an elm-tree on the borders of a wheat-field, with the bees hum- ming about me and the corn-crake crying from OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 195 furrow to furrow, than in any park in England. Besides — " "Besides," said she, "you want to get on to your dearly loved upper Thames, and show your prowess down the heavy swathes of the mowing grass." She looked at him fondly, and I could tell that she was seeing him in her mind's eye showing his splendid form at its best amid the rhymed strokes of the scythes ; and she looked down at her own pretty feet with a half-sigh, as though she were contrasting her slight woman's beauty with his man's beauty ; as women will when they are really in love, and are not spoiled with conventional sentiment. As for Dick, he looked at her admiringly a while, and then said at last : " Well, Clara, I do wish we were there ! But, hillo ! we are getting back way." And he set to work sculling again, and in two minutes we were all standing on the gravelly strand below the bridge, which, as you may imagine, was no longer the old hideous iron abortion, but a handsome piece of very solid oak framing. We went into the Court and straight into the great hall, so well remembered, where there were tables spread for dinner, and everything arranged much as in the Hammersmith Gviest-hall. Dinner over, we sauntered through the ancient rooms, where the pictures and tapestry were still pre- served, and nothing was much changed, except that the people whom we met there had an inde- finable kind of look of being at home and at ease, which communicated itself to me, so that I felt 196 NEWS FROM NOWHERE; that the beautiful old place was mine in the best sense of the word; and my pleasure of past days seemed to add itself to that of to-day, and filled my whole soul with content. Dick (who, in spite of Clara's gibe, knew the place very well) told me that the beautiful old Tudor rooms, which I remembered were the dwell- ings of the lesser fry of Court flunkies, were much used by people coming and going ; for, beautiful as architecture had now become, and although the whole face of the country had quite recovered its beauty, there was still a sort of tradition of pleas- ure and beauty which clung to that group of build- ings, and people thought going to Hampton Court a necessary summer outing, as they did in the days when London was so grimy and miserable. We went into some of the rooms looking into the old garden, and were well received by the people in them, who got speedily into talk with us, and looked with politely half-concealed wonder at my strange face. Besides these birds of passage, and a few regular dwellers in the place, we saw out in the meadows near the garden, down " the Long Water," as it used to be called, many gay tents, with men, women, and children round about them. As it seemed, this pleasure-loving people were fond of tent-life, with all its inconveniences, which, indeed, they turned into pleasures also. We left this old friend by the time appointed, and I made some feeble show of taking the sculls ; but Dick repulsed me, not much to my grief, I must say, as I found I had quite enough to do between the enjoyment of the beautiful time and my own lazily blended thoughts. OR, AN EPOCH OF REST. 197 As to Dick, it was quite right to let him pull, for he was as strong as a horse, and had the greatest delight in bodily exercise, whatever it was. We really had some difficulty in getting him to stop when it was getting rather more than dusk, and the moon was brightening just as we were off Runny- mede. We landed there, and were looking about for a place whereon to pitch our tents (for we had brought two with us), when an old man came up to us, bade us good-evening, and asked if we were housed for that night ; and finding that we were not, bade us home to his house. Nothing loath, we went with him, and Clara took his hand in a coax- ing way which I noticed she used with old men, and as we went on our way made some common- place remark about the beauty of the day. The old man stopped short, and looked at her and said : " You really like it then ? " " Yes," she said, looking very much astonished. " Don't you ? " " Well," said he, '^ perhaps I do. I did, at any rate, when I was younger ; but now I think I should like it cooler." She said nothing, and went on, the night grow- ing about as dark as it would be ; till just at the rise of the hill we came to a hedge with a gate in it, which the old man unlatched, and led us into a garden, at the end of which we could see a little house, one of whose little windows was already yellow with candle-light. We could see even, under the doubtful light of the moon and the last of the western glow, that the garden was stuffed full of flowers ; and the fragrance it gave out in the gath- ering coolness was so wonderfully sweet that it 198 NEWS FROM NOWHERE ; seemed the very heart of the delight of the June dusk ; so that we three stopped instinctively, and Clara gave forth a little sweet " Oh ! " like a bird beginning to sing. '' What 's the matter ? " said the old man, a lit- tle testily, and pulling at her hand. '' There 's no dog ; or have you trodden on a thorn and hurt your foot ? " " No, no, neighbor," she said ; " but how sweet, how sweet it is ! " " Of course it is," said he ; " but do you care so much for that ? " She laughed out musically, and we followed suit in our gruffer voices; and then she said: "Of course I do, neighbor ; don't you ? " " Well, I don't know," quoth the old fellow ; then he added, as if somewhat ashamed of himself : " Be- sides, you know, when the waters are out and all Eunnymede is flooded it 's none so pleasant." '