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News From Nowhere, or, An Epoch of Rest .....................................................................................................1

Up at the League, says a friend, there had been one night a brisk conversational discussion, as to what would

happen on the Morrow of the Revolution, finally shading off into a vigorous statement by various friends of

Says our friend: Considering the subject, the discussion was goodtempered; for those present being used to

public meetings and afterlecture debates, if they did not listen to each others' opinions (which could hardly

be expected of them), at all events did not always attempt to speak all together, as is the custom of people in

ordinary polite society when conversing on a subject which interests them. For the rest, there were six

persons present, and consequently six sections of the party were represented, four of which had strong but

divergent Anarchist opinions. One of the sections, says our friend, a man whom he knows very well indeed,

sat almost silent at the beginning of the discussion, but at last got drawn into it and finished by roaring out

very loud, and damning all the rest for fools; after which befell a period of noise, and then a lull, during

which the aforesaid section, having said goodnight very amicably, took his way home by himself to a

western suburb, using the means of travelling which civilisation has forced upon us like a habit. As he sat in

that vapourbath of hurried and discontented humanity, a carriage of the underground railway, he, like others

stewed discontentedly, while in selfreproachful mood he turned over the many excellent and conclusive

arguments which though they lay at his fingers' ends, he had forgotten in the just past discussion. But this

frame of mind he was so used to, that it didn't last him long, and after a brief discomfort, caused by disgust

with himself for having lost his temper (which he was also well used to), he found himself musing on the

subjectmatter of discussion, but still discontentedly and unhappily. "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

toward the river before (says our friend who tells the story) all that discontent and trouble seemed to slip off

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 of two which went swiftly down the heavens. There was a young moon

halfway up the sky, and as the homefarer 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

He came right down to the riverside, and lingered a little, looking over the low wall to note the moonlit

river, near upon high water, go swirling and glittering up to Cheswick Eyot; as for the ugly bridge below, he

did not notice it or t hink of it, except when for a moment (says our friend) it stuck him that he missed the

row of lights downstream. Then he turned to his house door and let himself in; and even as he shut the door

to, disappeared all remembrance of that brilliant logic and foresight which had so illuminated the recent

discussion; and of the discussion itself there remained no trace, save a vague hope, that was now become a

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 wideawake condition which sometimes surprises even

good sleepers; a condition uder which we feel all our wits preternaturally sharpened, while all the miserable

muddles we have ever got into, all the disgraces and losses of our lives, will insist on thrusting themselves

In this state he lay (says our friend) till he had almost begun to enjoy it; till the tale of his stupidities amused

him, and the entanglements before him, which he saw so clearly, began to shape themselves into an amusing

He heard one o'clock strike then two and then three; after which he fell asleep again. Our friend says that

from that sleep he awoke once more, and afterwards went through such surprising adventures that he thinks

that they should be told to our comrades, and indeed the public in general, and therefore he 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

feeling and desires of the comrade of whom I am telling better than any one else in the world does.

Well, I awoke, and found that I had kicked my bedclothes; 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 halfawake 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

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 last night, and now,

by witness of the riverside 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

I had by no means shaken off the feeling of oppression, and wherever I might have been should scarce have

been quite conscious of the place; so it was no wonder that I felt rather puzzled in despite of the familiar face

of the Thames. Withal I felt dizzy and queer; and remembering that people often got a boat and had a swim in

midstream, I thought I would do no less. It seems very early, quoth I to myself, but I daresay I shall find

some one at Biffin's to take me. However, I didn't get as far as Biffin's, or even turn to my left thitherward,

because just then I began to see that there was a landingstage right before me in front of my house; in face,

on the place where my nextdoor neighbor had rigged one up, although somehow it didn't look like that

either. Down I went on to it, and sure enough among the empty boats moored to it lay a man on his sculls in a

solidlooking tub of a boat clearly meant for bathers. He nodded to me, and bade me goodmorning 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

"Is it?" said he; "I didn't notice it. You know the floodtide alway s thickens it a bit."

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

sought for the bridge, and so utterly astonished was I by what I saw, that I forgot to strike out, and went

spluttering under water again, and when I came up made straight for the boat; for I felt I that I must ask some

questions of my waterman, so bewildering had been the halfsight 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

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 Cheswick; but now he caught up the sculls and brought her head round again, and said;

"A short swim, neighbour; but perhaps you find the water cold this morning, after your journey. Shall I put

He spoke in a way so unlike what I should have expected from a Hammersmith waterman, that I stared at

him, as I answered, "Please to hold her a little; I want to look about me a bit."

"All right," he said; "It's no less pretty in its way here than it is off Barn Elms; it's jolly everywhere this time

If I was astonished with my sight of the river banks, I was no less astonished at my waterman, not that I had

He was a handsome young fellow, with a peculiarly pleasant and friendly look about his eyes,an

expression which was quite new to me then, though I soon became familiar with it. For the rest, he was

darkhaired and berrybrown of skin, wellknit and strong, and obviously used to exercising his muscles,

but with nothing rough or coarse about him, and clean as might be. His dress was not like any modern

workaday clothes I had seen, but would have served very well as a costume for a picture of

fourteenthcentury 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 around his waise, and I noticed that its clasp was of damascened steel beautifully

wrought. In short, he seemed to be like some specially manly and refined young gentleman, playing

I felt that I must make some conversation; so I pointed to the Surrey bank, where I noticed some light plank

stages running down the foreshore, with windlasses at the landward end of them, and said "What are they

doing with those things here? If we were on the Tay, I should have said that they were for drawing the

"Well," said he, smiling, "of course that is what they _are_ for. Where there are salmon, there are likely to be

salmonnets, Tay or Thames; but of course they are not always in use; we don't want salmon _every_ day ot

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 this

was changed from last night! The soapworks with their smokevomiting chimneys were gone; the

engineer's works gone; the leadworks gone; and 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 as

one out of an dreamed of such a bridge, but never seen such as one out of an illuminated manuscript; for not

even the Ponte Vecchio at Florence came anywhere near it. It was of stone arches, splendidly solid, and as

graceful as they were strong; high enough also to let ordinary river traffic 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 upstream bridges, which are so much smaller, are scarcely

"O, not very old", he said; "it was built or at least opened, in 2003. There used to be a rather plain timber

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 matterofcourse way at the banks of the

river, though this is what I saw up to the bridge and a little beyond; say as far as the site of the soapworks.

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:

I blushed for my fatuity as the words slipped out of my mouth, and my companion looked at me with a half

smile which I thought I understood; so to hide my confusion I said, "Please take me ashore now; I want to get

He nodded, and brought her head round with a sharp stroke, and in a trice we were at the landingstage

again. He jumped out and I followed him; and of course I was not surprised to see him wait, as if for the

inevitable afterpiece that follows the doing of a service to a fellow citizen. So I put my hand in my

waistcoatpocket, and said, "How much?" though still with the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps I was

He looked puzzled, and said, "How much? I don't quite understand what you are asking about. do you mean

I blushed, and said, stammering, "Please don't take it amiss if I ask you; I mean no offence: but what ought I

And therewith I took a handful of money out of my pocket, as one does in a foreign country. And by the way,

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 overpayment. I wonder, by the way, whether I couldn't hire him

"I think I know what you mean. You think that I have done you a service; so you feel yourself bound to give

me something which I am not to give to a neighbour, unless he has done something special for me. I have

heard of this kind of thing; but pardon me for saying, that it seems to us a troublesome and roundabout

custom; and we don't know how to manage it. And you see this ferrying and giving people casts about the

water is my _business_, which I would do for anybody; so to take gifts in connection with it would look very

queer. Besides, if one person gave me something, then another might, and another, and so on; and I hope you

won't think me rude if I say that I shouldn't know where to stow away so many mementos of friendship."

And he laughed loud and merrily, as if the idea of being paid for his work was a very funny joke. I confess I

began to be afraid that the man was mad, though he looked sane enough; and I was rather glad to think that I

was a good swimmer, since we were so close to a deep seift stream. However, he went on by no means like a

"As to your coins, they are curious, but not very old; they seemto be all of the reign of Victoria; you might

give them to some scantilyfurnished 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 fleursdelys all along

the gunwale, so delicately worked. You see," he said, with something of a smirk, "I am fond of working ini

No doubt I looked a little shy of him under the influence of that doubt as to his sanity. So he broke off short,

"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 it also is clear that it won't do to overdose you

with information about this place, and that you had best suck it in little by little. Further, I should take it as

very kind in you if you would allow me to be the showman of our new world to you, since you have stumbled

on me first. Though indeed it will be a mere kindness on your part, for almost anybody would make as good a

There certainly seemed no flavour in him of Colney Hatch; and besides I thought I could easily shake him off

"It is a very kind offer, but it is difficult for me to accept it, unless" I was going to say, Unless you will let

me pay you properly; but fearing to stir up colney Hatch again, I changed the sentence into, "I fear I shall be

"O," he said, "don't trouble about that, because it will give me an opportunity of doing a good turn to a friend

of mine, who wants to take my work here. He is a weaver from Yorkshire, who has rather overdone himself

between his weaving and his mathematics, both indoor work, you see; and being a great friend of mine, he

naturally came to me to get him some outdoor work. If you think you can put up with me, pray take me as

He added presently: "It is true that I have promised to go upstream to some special friends of mine, for the

hayharvest; 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

I felt myself obliged to thank him, whatever might come of it; and he added eagerly:

"Well, then, that's settled. I will give my friend a call; he is living in the Guest House like you, and if he isn't

Therewith he took a little silver buglehorn from his girdle and blew two or three sharp but agreeable notes

on it; and presently from the house which stood on the site of my old dwelling (of which more hereafter)

another young man came sauntering towards us. He was not so welllooking or so strongly made as my

sculler friend, being sandyhaired, rather pale, and not stoutbuilt; but his face was not wanting in that happy

and friendly expression which I had noticed in his friend. As he came up smiling towards us, I saw with

pleasure that I must give up the Colney Hatch theory as to the waterman, for no two madmen ever behaved as

they did before a sane man. His dress was of the same cut as the first man's, though somewhat gayer, the

surcoat being light green with a golden spray embroidered on the breast, and his belt being of filigree

"Well, Dick, what is it this morning? Am I to have my work, or rather your work? I dreamed last night that

"All right, Bob," said my sculler; "you will drop into my place, and if you find it too much, there is George

Brightling on the lookout for a stroke of work and he lives close handy to you. But see, here is a stranger

who is willing to amuse me today by taking me as his guide about our countryside, and you may imagine I

don't want to lose the opportunity; so you had better take to the boat at oncel But in any case I shouldn't have

The newcomer rubbed his hands with glee, but turning to me, said in a friendly voice:

"Neighbour, both you and friend Dick are lucky, and will have a good time today, as indeed I shall too. But

you had better both come in with me at once and get something to ear, lest you should forget your dinner in

your amusement. I suppose you came into the Guest House after I had gone to bed last night? "

I nodded, not caring to enter into a long explanation which would have let to nothing, and which in truth by

this time I should have begun to doubt myself. And we all three turned toward the door of the Guest House.

I lingered a little behind the others to have a stare at this house, which, as I have told you, stood on the site of

It was a longish building with its gable ends turned away from the road, and long traceried windows coming

rather low down set in the wall that faced us. It was very handsomely built of red brick with a lead roof; and

high up above the windows there ran a frieze of figure subjects in baked clay, very well executed, and

designed with a force and directness which I had never noticed in modern work before. The subjects I

However, all t his I took in in a minute; for we were presently within doors, and standing in a hall with a floor

of marble mosaic and an open timber roof. There were no windows on the side opposite to the river, but

arches below leading into chambers, one of which showed a glimpse of a garden beyond, and above them a

long space of wall gaily painted (in fresco, I thought) with similar subjects to those of the frieze outside;

everything about the place was handsome and generously solid as to material; and though it was not very

large (somewhat smaller than Crosby Hall perhaps), one felt in it that exhilarating sense of space and freedom

which satisfactory architecture always gives to an anxious man who is in the habit of using his eyes.

In this pleasant place, which of course I knew to be the hall og the Guest House, three young women were

flitting to and fro. As they were the first of the sex I had seen on this eventful morning, I naturally looked at

them very attentively, and found them at least as good as the gardens, the architecture, and the male men. As

to their dress, which of course I took note of, I should say that they were decently veiled with drapery, and

not bundled up with millinery; that they were clothed like women, not upholstered like armchairs, as most

women of our time are. In short, their dress was somewhat between that of the ancient classical costume and

the simpler forms of the fourteenthcentury garments, though it was clearly not an imitation of either: the

materials were light and gay to suit the season. As to the women themselves, it was pleasant indeed to see

them, they were so kind and happylooking in expression of face, so shapely and wellknit of body and

thoroughly healthylooking and strong. All were at least comely, and one of them very handsome and regular

of feature. They came up to us at once merrily and without the least affectation of shyness, and all three

shook hands with me as if I were a friend newly come back from a long journey: though I could not help

noticing that they looked askance at my garments; for I had on my clothes of last night, and at the best was

A word or two from Robert the weaver, and they bustled about on our behoof, and presently came and took

us by the hands and led us to a table in the pleasantest corner of the hall, where our breakfast was spread for

us; and, as we sat down, one of them hurried out by the chambers aforesaid, and came back again in a little

while with a great branch of roses, very different in size and quality to what Hammersmith had been wont to

grow,but very like the produce of an old country garden. She hurried back thence into the buttery, and came

back once more with a delicately made glass, into which she put the flowers and set them down in the midst

of our table. One of the others, who had run off also, then came back with a big cabbageleaf filled with

strawberries, some of them barely ripe, and said as she set them on the table, "There, now; I thought of that

before I got up this morning; but looking at the stranger here getting into your boat, Dick put it out of my

head; so that I was not before _all_ the blackbirds; however, there are a few about as good as you will get

Robert patted her on the head in a friendly manner; and we fell to on our breakfast, which was simple

enough, but most delicately cooked, and set on the table with much daintiness. The bread was particularly

good, and was of several different kinds, from the big, rather close, darkcoloured, sweettasting farmhouse

loaf, which was most to my liking, to the thin pipestems of wheaten crust, such as I have eaten in Turin.

As I was putting the first mouthfuls into my mouth, my eye caught a carved and gilded inscription on the

panelling, behind what we should have called the High Table in an Oxford college hall, and a familiar name

"_Guests and neighbours, on the site of this_ _Guesthall once stood the lectureroom of the_

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

"Guest, we don't know what to call you: is there any indiscretion in asking your name? "

"Well," said I, "I have some doubts about it myself; so suppose you call me Guest, which is a family name,

Dick nodded kindly to me; but a shade of anxiousness passed over the weaver's face, and he said:

" I hope you don't mind my asking, but would you tell me where you come from? I am curious about such

Dick was clearly kicking him underneath the table; but he was not much abashed, and awaited my answer

somewhat eagerly. As for me, I was just going to blurt out `Hammersmith', when I bethought me what an

entanglement of cross purposes that would lead us into; so I took time to invent a lie with circumstance,

"You see, I have been such a long time away from Europe that things seem strange to me now; but I was born

"A pretty place too," broke in Dick; "a very jolly place, now that the trees have had time to grow again since

Quoth the irrepressible weaver: "Dear neighbour, since you knew the Forest some time ago, could you tell me

what truth there is in the rumour that in the nineteenth century the trees were all pollards?

This was catching me on my archaeological naturalhistory side, and I fell into the trap without any thought

of where and when I was; so I began on it, while one of the girls, the handsome one, who had been scattering

little twigs of lavender and other sweetsmelling 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 kitchengarden at Woodford, and the large

blue plums which grew on the wall beyond the sweetherb patch,a connection of memories which all boys

I started off: "When I was a boy, and for long after, except for a piece about Queen Elizabeth's Lodge, and for

the part about High Beech, the Forest was almost entirely made up of pollard hornbeams mixed with holly

thickets. But when the Corporation of London took it over about twentyfive 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 bnow for many yearsm except once, when we Leaguers were shocked to see how it

was builtover amd altered; and the other day we heard that the philistines were going to landscapegarden

it. But what you were saying about the building being stopped and the trees growing is only too good

At that point I suddenly remembered Dick's date, and stopped short rather confused. The eager weaver didn't

notice my confusion, but said hastily, as if he were almost aware of his breach of good manners, "But I say,

Dick and the pretty girl both burst out laughing, as if Robert's conduct were excusable on the grounds of

"Hold hard, Bob; this questioning of guests won't do. Why, much learning is spoiling you. You remind me of

the radical cobblers in the silly old novels, who, according to the authors, were prepared to trample down all

good manners in the pursuit of utilitarian knowledge. The fact is, I begin to think that you have so muddled

your head with mathematics, and with grubbing into those idiotic old books about political economy (he he!),

that you scarcely know how to behave. Really, it is about time for you to take to some openair work, so that

The weaver only laughed goodhumoredly; and the girl went up to him and patted his cheek and said

As for me, i was a little puzzled, but I laughed also, partly for the 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

"But, neighbours" (I had caught up that word), "I don't in the least mind answering questions, when I can do

so: ask me as many as you please; and as to my age I'm not a fine lady, you know, so why shouldn't I tell

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 _naivet _ that the merriment flitted all over their faces,

though for courtes y's sake thay forbore actual laughter; while I looked from one to the other in a puzzled

"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 abovestated reasons. But at last the pretty woman

"Well, well, he _is_ rude, poor fellow! but you see I may as well tell you what he is thinking about; he means

that you look rather old for your age. But surely there need be no wonder in that, since you have been

travelling; and clearly from all you have been saying, in unsocial countries. It has often been said, and no

doubt truly that one ages very quickly if one lives amongst unhappy people. Also they say that southern

England is a good place for keeping good looks." She blushed and said:"How old am I, do you think?"

"Well," quoth I, "I have always been told that a woman is as old as sht looks, so without offence or flattery, i

She laughed merrily, and said, "I am well served out for fishing for compliments, since I have to tell you the

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 work, firm and wellknit 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

"Well, you see, the old saw is proved right again, and I ought not to have let you tempt me into asking you a

She laughed again, and said: " Well, lads, old and young, I must get to my wowrk 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

She waved a hand to usk, and stepped lightly down the hall, taking (as Scott says) at least part of the sun from

When she was gone, Dick said, "Now, guest, won't you ask a question or two of our friend here? It is only

"If I ask you any questions, sir, " said I, " they will not be very severel but since I hear that you are a weaver I

should like to ask you something about that craft, as I amor wasinterested in it. "

"O," said he, "I shall not be of much use to you there, I'm afraid. I only do the most mechanical kind of

weaving, and am in fact but a poor craftsman, unlike Dick here. Then besides the weaving, I do a little with

machine printing and composing, though I am little use at the finer kinds of printing; and moreover machine

printing is beginning to die out, along with the waning of the plague of bookmaking, so i have had to turn to

other things that I have a taste for, and have taken to mathematics; and also I am writing a sort of antiquarian

book about the peaceable and private history, so to say, of the end of the nineteenth century,more for the

sake of giving a picture of the country befor the fighting began than for anything else. That was why I asked

you those questions about Epping Forest. You have rather puzzled me, I confess, though yoour information

was so interesting. But later on, I hope, we may have some more talk together, when our friend Dick isn't

here. I know he thinks me rather a grinder, and despises me for not being very deft with my hands: that's the

way nowadays. From what I have read of the nineteenth century literature (and I have read a good deal), it is

clear to me that this is a kind of revenge for the stupidity of that day, which despised everybody who _could_

"Come now," said Dick, "Am I likely to? Am I not the most tolerant man in the world? Am I not quite

contented so long as you don't make me learn mathematics or go into your new science of aesthetics, and let

me do a little practical aesthetics with my gold and steel, and the blowpipe and the nice little hammer? But,

hillo! here come another questioner for you, my poor guest. I say, Bob, you must help me defend him now. "

"Here, Boffin," he cried out, after a pause; "here we are, if you must have it! "

I looked over my shoulder, and saw something flash and gleam in the sunlight that lay across the hall; so I

turned round, and at my ease saw a splendid figure slowly sauntering over the pavement; a man whose

surcoat was embroidered most copiously as well as elegantly, so that the sun flashed back from him as if he

had been clad in golden armour. The man himself was tall, darkhaired, and exceedingly handsome, and

though his face was less kindly in expression than that of the others, he moved with that somewhat haughty

mien which great beautyk is apt to give to both men and women. He came and saat down at our table with a

smiling face, stretching out his long legs and hanging his arm over the chair in the slowly graceful way which

tall and wellbuilt people may use without affectation. He was a man in the prime of life, but looked as

happy as a child who has just got a new toy. He bowed gracefully to me and said:

" I see clearly that you are the guest, of whom Annie has just told me, who have come from some distant

country that does not know of us, or our ways of life. So I daresay you would not mind answering me a few

Here Dick broke in: "No, please, Boffin! let it alone for the present. Of course you want the guest to be happy

and comfortable; and how can that be if he has to trouble himself with answering all sorts of questions while

he is still confused with the new customs and people about him? No, no: I am going to take him where he can

ask questions himself, and have them answered; that is, to my greatgranfather in Bloomsbury: and I am sure

you can't have anything to say against that. So instead of bothering, you had much better go out to James

Allen's and get a carriage for me, as I shall drive him up myself; and please tell Jim to let me have the old

grey, for I can drive a wherry much better than a carriage. Jump up old fellow, and don't be disappointed; our

I stared at Dick; for I wondered at his speaking to such a dignifiedlooking personage so familiarly, not to

say curtly; for I thought that this Mr. Boffin, in spite of his wellknown name out of dickens, must be at the

least a senator of these strange people. However, he got up and said, "All rightr, old oarwearer, whatever

you like; this is not one of my busy days; and though" (with a condescending bow to me) "my plesure of a

talk with this learned guest is put off, I admit that he ought to see your worthy kinsman as soon as possible.

Besides, perhaps he will be the better able to answer _my_ questions after his own have been answered."

When he was well gone, I said: "Is it wrong to ask what Mr. Boffin is? whose name, by the way reminds me

Dick laughed. "Yes, yes," said he: "as it does us, I see you take the allusion. Of course jos real name is not

boffin, but Henry Johnson; we only call him Boffin as a joke, partly because he is a dustman, and partly

because he will dress so showily, and get as much gold on him as a baron of the Middle Ages. As why should

he not if he likes? only we are his special friends, you know, so of course we jest with him."

"He is a capital fellow, and you can't help liking him; but he has a weakness; he will spend his time in writing

reactionary novels, and is very proud of getting the local colour right, as he calls it; and as he thinks you

come from some forgotten corner of the earth, where people are unhappy, and consequently interesting to a

storyteller, he thinks he might get some information out of you. O, he will be quite straightforward with

"Of course you do," said Dick; "birds of a feather flock together; mathematics and antiquarian novels stand

And in effect the Golden Dustman hailed us from the halldoor; so we all got up and went into the porch,

before which, with a strong grey horse in the shafts, stood a carriage ready for us which I could not help

noticing. It was light and handy, but had none of that sickening vulgarity which I had known as inseparable

from the carriages of our time, especially the `elegant' ones, but was as graceful and pleasant in line as a

Wessex wagon. we go 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 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 gardenlike tillage. The Creek, which we

crossed at once, had been rescued from its culvert, and as we went over its pretty bridge we saw its waters,

yet swollen by the tide, covered with gay boats of different sizes. There were houses about, some on the road,

some amongst the fields with pleasant lanes leading down to them, and each surrounded by a teeming garden.

They were all pretty in design, and as solid as might be, but countrified in appearance, like yeomen's

dwellings; some of them of red brick like those by the river, but more of timber and plaster, which were by

the necessity of their construction so like medieval houses of the same materials that I fairly felt as if I were

alive in the fourteenth century; a sensation helped out by the costume of the people that we met or passed, in

whose dress there was nothing "modern". Almost everybody was gaily dressed, but especially the women,

who were so welllooking, or even so handsome, that I could scarcely refrain my tongue from calling my

companion's attention to the fact. Some faces I saw that were thoughtful, and in these I noticed great nobility

of expression, but none that had a glimmer of unhappiness, and the greater part (we came upon a good many

I thought I knew the Broadway by the lie of the roads that still met there. On the north side of the road was a

range of buildings and courts low, but very handsomely built and ornamented, and in that way forming a

great contrast to the unpretentiousness of the houses round about; while above this lower building rose the

steep leadcovered roof and the buttresses and higher part of the wall of a great hall, of a splendid and

exuberant style of architecture, of which one can say little more than that it seemed to me to embrace the best

qualities of the Gothic of northern Europe with those of the Saracenic and Byzantine, though there was no

copying of any one of these styles. On the other, the south side, of the road was an octagonal building with a

high roof, not unlike the Baptistry at Florence in outline, except that it was surrounded by a leanto that

clearly made an arcade or cloisters to it; it also was most delicately ornamented.

This whole mass of architecture which we had come upon so suddenly from amidst the pleasant fields was

not only exquisitely beautiful in itself, but it bore upon it the expression of such generosity and abundance of

life that I was exhilarated to a pitch that I had never yet reached. I fairly chuckled for pleasure. My friend

seemed to understand it, and sat looking on me with a pleased and affectionate interest. We had pulled up

amongst a crowd of carts, wherein sat handsome healthylooking people, men, women, and children very

gaily dressed, and which were clearly market carts, as they were full of very temptinglooking country

I said, "I need not ask if this is a marker, for I see clearly that it is; but what market is it that it is so splendid?

And what is the glorious hall there, and what is the building on the south side?"

"O," said he, "it is just our Hammersmith market; and I am glad you like it so much, for we are really proud

of it. Of course the hall inside is our winter MoteHouse; 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."

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

I thanked him, and said: "Are these the regular country people? What very pretty girls there are amongst

As I spoke, my eye caught the face of a beautiful woman, tall, darkhaired, and whiteskinned, dressed in a

pretty lightgreen dress in honour of the season and the hot day, who smiled kindly on me, and more kindly

"I ask because I do not see any of the countrylooking people I should have expected to see at a marketI

"I don't understand," said he, "what kind of people you would expect to see; nor quite what you mean by

`country' people. These are the neighbours and that like they run in the Thames valley. There are parts of

these islands which are rougher and rainier than we are here, and there people are rougher in their dress; and

they themselves are tougher and more hardbitten than we are to look at. But some people like their looks

better than ours; they say they have more character in themthat's the word. Well, it's a matter of

taste.anyhow, the cross between us and them generally turns out well," added he, thoughtfully.

I heard him, thogh my eyes were turned away from him, for that pretty girl was just disappearing through the

gate with her big basket of early peas, and I felt that disappointed kind of feeling which overtakes one when

one has seen an interesting or lovely face in the streets which one is never likely to see again; and I was silent

a little. At last I said: "What I mean is, that I haven't seen any poor people aboutnot 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 in the garden; but I don't know of any one sick at present. Why should you

"No, no," I said; "I don't mean sick people. I mean poor people, you know; rough people."

"No," said he, smiling merrily, "I really do not know. The fact is, you must come along quick to my

greatgrandfather, who will understand you better than I do. Come on, Greylocks!" Therewith he shook the

Past the Broadway there were fewer houses on either side. We presently crossed a pretty little brook that ran

across a piece of land dotted over with trees, and awhile after came to another market and townhall, as we

should call it. Although there was nothing familiar to me in its surroundings, I knew pretty well where we

Just after this we came into a short street of houses; or rather, one long house on either side of the way, built

Quoth Dick: "This is Kensington proper. People are apt to gather here rather thick, for they like the romance

of the wood; and naturalists haunt it, too; for it is a wild spot even here, what there is of it; for it does not go

far to the south: it goes from here northward and west right over Paddington and a little way down Notting

Hill: thence it runs northeast to Primrose Hill, and so on; rather a narrow strip of it gets through Kingsland

to StokeNewington and Clapton, where it spreads out along the heights above the Lea marshes; on the other

side of which, as you know, is Epping Forest holding out a hand to it. This part we are just coming to is

I rather longed to say, "Well, I know;" but there were so many things about me which I did _not_ know, in

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 quickergrowing

etrees (amongst which I thought the planes and sycamores too numerous) were very big and finegrown.

It was exceedingly pleasant in the dappled shadow, for the day was growing as hot as need be, and the

coolness and shade soothed my excited mind into a condition of dreamy pleasure, so that I felt as if I should

like to go on for ever through that balmy freshness. My companion seemed to share in my feelings, and let

the horse go slower and slower as he sat inhaling the green forest scents, chief amongst which was the smell

Romantic as this Kensington wood was, however, it was not lonely. We came on many groups both coming

and going, or wandering in the edges of the wood. Amongst these were many children from six or eight years

old up to sixteen or seventeend. They seemed to me to be especially fine specimens of their race, and were

clearly enjoying themselves to the utmost; some of them were hanging about little tents pitched on the

greensward, and by some of these fires were burning, with pots hanging over them gipsy fashion. Dick

explained to me that there were scattered houses in the forest, and indeed we caught a glimpse of one or two.

He said they were mostly quite small, such as used to be called cottages when there were slaves in the land,

"They must be pretty well stocked with children," said I, pointing to the many youngsters about the way.

"O," said he, "these children do not all come from the near houses, the woodland houses, but from the

countryside generally. They often make up parties, and come to play in the woods for weeks together in

summertime, 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 rto live in the forests through the summer;

though they for the most part go to the bigger ones, like Windsor, or the Forest of the 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

He broke off, and then said, "I tell you all this because I see that if I talk I must be answering questions,

which you are thinking, even if you are not speaking them out; but my kinsman will tell you more about it."

I saw that I was likely to get out of my depth again, and so merely for the sake of tiding over an awkwardness

and to say something, I said: "Well, the youngsters here will be all the fresher for school when the summer

"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 painting, and in the former sense we might

talk of a school of childrenbut otherwise," said he, laughing, "I must own myself beaten."

Hang it! thought I, I can't open my mouth without digging up some new complexity. I wouldn't try to set my

friend right in his etymology; and I thought I had best say nothing about the boyfarms which I had been

used to call schools, as I saw pretty clearly that they had disappeared; and so I said after a little fumbling, "I

"Education?" said he, meditatively, "I know enough Latin to know that the word must come from _educare_,

to lead out; and I have heard it used; but I have never met anybody who could give me a clear explanation of

You may imagine how my new friends fell in my esteem when I heard this frank avowal; and I said, rather

"Why not old people also?" said he with a twinkle in his eye. "But," he went on, "I can assure you our

children learn, whether they go through a `system of teaching' or not. Why, you will not find one of these

children about here, boy or girl, who cannot swim, and every one of them has been used to tumbling about

the little forest poniesthere's one of them now! They all of them know how to cook; the bigger lads can

mow; many can thatch and do odd jobs at carpentering; or they know how to keep shop. I can tell you they

"Yes, but their mental education, the teaching of their minds," said I, kindly translating my phrase.

"Guest," said he, "perhaps you have not learned to do these things I have been speaking about; and if that's

the case, don't you run away with the idea that it doesn't take some skill to do them, and doesn't give plenty of

work for one's mind; ;you would change your opinion if you saw a Dorsetshire lad thatching, for instance.

But, however, I understand you to be speaking of booklearning; and as to that, it is a simple affair. Most

children, seeing books lying about, manage to read by the time they are four years old; though I am told it has

not always been so. As to writing, we do not encourage them to scrawl too early (though scrawl a little they

will), because it gets them in 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 neededpoems, and such like, you know. However, I am wandering from my lambs; but you

must excuse me, for I am interested in this matter of writing, being myself a fair writer."

"Well," said I, "about the children; when they know how to read and write, don't they learn something

"Of course, " he said; " sometimes even before they can read, they can talk French, which is the nearest

language talked on the other side of the water; and they soon get to know German also, which is talked by a

huge number of communes and colleges on the mainland. These are the principal languages we speak in these

islands, along with English or Welsh, or Irisih, which is another form of Welsh; ;and children pick them up

very quickly, because their elders all know them; and besides our guests from over sea often bring their

children with them, and the little ones get together, and rub their speech into one another."

"O yes," said he, "they mostly learn Latin and Greek along with the modern ones, when they do anything

"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 doesn't understand

"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 greatgrandfather

say that it is mostly in periods of turmoil and strife and confusion that people care so much about history;

;and you know," said my friend, with an amiable smile, "we are not like that now No; many people study

facts about the make of things and the matters of cause and effect, so that knowledge increases on us, if that

be good; and some, as you heardabout friend Bob yonder, will spend time over mathematics. 'Tis no use

Said he: "That depends on what you mean by children; ;and also you must remember how much they differ.

As a rule, they don't do much reading, except for a few storybooks, till they are about fifteen years old; we

don't encourage early bookishness; though you'll 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 goven to

imitating their elders, and when they see most people about them engaged in genuinely amusing work, like

housebuilding and streetpaving, and gardening and the like, that is what they want to be doing; so I don't

What could I say? I sat and held my peace, for fear of fresh entanglements. Besides, I was using my eyes with

all my might, wondering as the old horse jogged on, when I should come into London proper, and what it

"After all, I don't know that it does them much harm, even if they do grow up bookstudents. Such people as

that, 'tis a great pleasure seeing them so happy over work which is not much sought for. And besides, these

students are generally such pleasant people; so kind and sweet tempered; so humble, and at the same time so

anxious to teach everybody all that they know. Really, I like those that I have met prodigiously."

This seemed to me such _very_ queer talk that I was on the point of asking him another question; when just

as we came to the top of a rising ground, down a long glade of the wood on my right I caught sight of a

stately building whose outline was familiar to me, and I cried out, "Westminster Abbey!"

"What have _we_done with it?"said he; "nothing much, save clean it. But you know the whole outside was

spoiled centuries ago: as to the inside, that remains in its beauty after the great clearance, which took place

over a hundred years ago, of the beastly monuments to fools and knaves, which once blocked it up, as

We went on a little further, and I looked to the right again, and said, in a rather doubtful tone of voice, "why

He burst out laughing, and was some time before he could control himself; then he clapped me on the back

"I take you, neighbour; you may well wonder at our keeping them standing, and I know something about that,

and my old kinsman has given me books to read about the strange game that they played there. Use them!

Well, yes, they are used for a sort of subsidiary market, and a storage place for manure, and they are handy

for that, being on the waterside. I believe it was intended to pull them down quite at the beginning of our

days; but there was, I am told a queer antiquarian society which had done some service in past times, and

which straightway set up its pipe against their destruction, as it has done with many other buildings, which

most people look on as worthless, and public nuisances; and it was so energetic, and had such good reasons to

give, that it generally gained its point; and I must say that when all is said I am glad of it: because you know

at the worst these silly old buildings serve as a kind of foil to the beautiful ones which we build now. You

will see several others in these parts; the place my greatgrandfather 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, elbowroom _within_ doors is to me so delightful that if I were driven to it I would almost sacrifice

outdoor space to it. Then, of course, there is the ornament, which, as we must all allow, may easily be

overdone in mere living houses, but can hardly be in motehalls and markets, and so forth. I must tell you,

though, that my greatgrandfather sometimes tells me I am a little cracked on this subject of fine building;

and indeed I _do_ think that the energies of mankind are chiefly of use to them for such work; for in that

direction I can see no end to the work, while in many others a limit does seem possible."

As He spoke, we came suddenly out of the woodland into a short street of handsomely built houses, which

my companion named to me at once as Piccadilly: the lower part of these houses I should have called shopos,

if it had not been that, as far as I could see, the people were ignorant of the arts of buying and selling. Wares

were displayed in their finely designed fronts, as if to tempt people in, and people stood and looked at them,

or went in and came out with parcels under their arms, just like the real thing. On each side of the street ran

an elegant arcade to protect footpassengers, as in some of the old Italian cities. About halfway ddown, a

huge building of the kind I was now prepared to expect told me that this was a center of some kind, and had

Said Dick: "Here, you see, is another market on a different plan from most others: the upper stories of these

houses are used for guesthouses; for people from all over 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

I couldn't help smiling to see how long a tradition sould last. Here was the ghost of London still asserting

itself as a centre,an intellectual centre, for aught I knew. However, I said nothing, except that I asked him

"Yes," said he, "this is a very good market for pretty things, and is mostly kept for the handsomer goods, as

the Housesof Parliament market, where they set out cabbages and turnips and such like things, along with

Then he looked at me curiously, and said,"Perhaps you would like to do a little shopping, as 'tis called."

I looked at what I could see of my rough blue duds, which I had plenty of opportunity of contrasting with the

gay attire of the citizens we had come across; and I thought that if, as seemed likely, I should presently be

shown about as a curiosity for the amusement of this most unbusinesslike people, I should like to look a little

less like a discharged ship's purser. But in spite of all that had happened, my hnd went down to my pocket

again where to my dismay it met nothing metallic except two rusty old keys, and I remembered that amidst

our talk in the guesthall 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:

"Well," said he,"whatever you have left behind, you can get into this market again, so don't trouble yourself

I had come to my senses by this time, and remembering the astounding customs of this country, had no mind

for another lecture on social economy and the Edwardian coinage; so I said only:

"O don't get new clothes yet. You see my greatgrandfather is an antiquarian, and he will want to see you just

as you are. And, you know, I mustn't preach to you but surely it wouldn't be right for you to take away

people's pleasure of studying your attire, by just going and making yourself like everybody else. "You feel

I did _not_ feel it my duty to set myself up for a scarecrow amidst this beautyloving people but I saw I had

got across some ineradicable prejudice, and that it wouldn't do to quarrel with my new friend. So I merely

"Well," said he, pleasantly, "you may as well see what the inside of these booths is like: think of something

"Of course," said he; "what was I thinking of, not asking you before? Well, Bob is always telling me that we

nonsmokers are a selfish lot, and I'm afraid he is right. But come along; here is a place just handy."

Therewith he drew rein and jumped down, and I followed. A very handsome woman, splendidly clad in

figured silk, was slowly passing by, looking into the windows as she went. To her quoth Dick: "Maiden,

would you kindly hold our horse while we go in for a little while?" She nodded to us with a kind smile, and

"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," sid 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 selfwill

are commoner than some of our moralists think." He added, in a still more sombre tone: "Yes, only a month

ago there was a mishap down by us, that in the end cost the lives of two men and a woman, and, as it were,

put out the sunlight for us for a while. Don't ask me about it just now; I may tell you about it later on."

By this time we were within the shop or booth, which had a counter, and shelves on the walls, all very neat,

though without any pretence of showiness, but otherwise not very different to what I had been used to.

Within were a couple of childrena brownskinned boy of about twelve, who sat reading a book, and a

pretty little girl of about a year older, who was sitting also reading behind the counter; they were obviously

"Good morning, little neighbours," said Dick. "My friend here wants tobacco and a pipe; can you help

"O yes, certainly," said the girl with a sort of demure alertness which was somewhat amusing. The boy

looked up, and fell to staring at my outlandish attire, but presently reddened and turned his head, as if he

"Dear neighbour," said the girl, with the most solemn countenance of child playing at keeping shop, "what

"Latakia," quoth I, feeling as if I were assisting at a child's game, and wondering whether I should get

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

"Why," she said, "I advise you to cram your bag, because you may be going where you can't get Latakia,

I fumbled about, and at last pulled out my pieceof cotton print which does duty with me for a tobacco pouch.

"Dear neighbour, I can give you something much better than that cotton rag." And she tripped up the shop

and came back presently, and as she passed the boy whispered something in his ear, and he nodded and got

up and went out. The girl held up in her finger and thumb a red morocco bag, gaily embroidered, and said,

"There, I have chosen one for you, and you are to have it: it is pretty, and will hold a lot."

Therewith she fell to cramming it with the tobacco, and laid it down by me and said, "Now for the pipe: that

She disappeared again, and came back with a bigbowled pipe in her hand, carved out of some hard wood

very elaborately and mounted in gold sprinkled with little gems. It was, in short, as pretty and gay a toy as I

"Dear me!" said I, when I set my eyes on it, "this is altogether too grand for me, or for anybody but the

"O yes," I said, "of course I like it." "Well, then take it," said she, "and don't trouble about losing it. What will

it matter if you do? Somebody is sure to find it, and he will use it, and you can get another."

I took it out of her hand to look at it, and while I did so, forgot my caution, and said, "But however am I to

Dick laid his hand on my shoulder as I spoke, and turning I met his eyes with a comical expression in them,

which warned me against another exhibition of extinct commercial morality; so I reddened and held my

tongue, while the girl simply looked at me with the deepest gravity, as if I were a foreigner blundering in my

"Thank you so very much," I said at last, effusively, as I put the pipe in my pocket, not without a qualm of

"O, you are so very welcome," said the little lass, with an affectation of grownup manners at their best

which was very quaint. "It is such a pleasure to serve dear old gentlemen like you; specially when one can see

As I told this lie from pure politeness, in came the lad again, with a tray in his hands, on which I saw a long

flask and two beautiful glasses. "Neighbours," said the girl (who did all the talking, her brother being very

shy, clearly), "please to drink a glass to us before you go since we do not have guests like this every day."

Therewith the boy put the tray on the counter and solemnly poured out a strawcoloured wint into the long

bowls. Nothing loth, I drank, for I was thirsty with the hot day; and thinks I, I am yet in the world, and the

grapes of the Rhine have not yet lost their flavour; for if ever I drank good Steinberg, I drank it that morning;

and I made a mental note to ask Dick how they managed to make fine wine when there were no longer

labourers compelled ato drink roetgut instead of the fine wine which they themselves made.

"I don't drink wine," said the lass; "I like lemonade better; but I wish your health!"

Well, well, thought I, neither have children's tastes changed much. And therewith we gave them good day

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 wais, 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.

"All right," said Dick, "tell me when you want to get down and I'll stop for you. Let's get on."

So we got under way again; and I asked if children generally waited on people in the markets. "Often

enough," said he, "when it isn't a matter of dealing with heavy weights, but by no means always. The children

like to amuse themselves with it, and it is good for them, because they handle a lot of diverse wares and get to

learn about them, how they are made, and where they come from, and so on. Besides, it is such very easy

work that anybody can do it. It is saiid that in the early days of our epoch there were a good many people who

were hereditarily afflicted with a disease called idleness, because they were the direct descendants of those

who in the bad times used to force other people to work for themthe people, you know, who are called

slaveholders or employers of labour in the history books. Well, these Idlenessstricken people used to serve

booths _all_ their time, because they were fit for so little. Indeed, I believe that at one time they were actually

_compelled_ to do some such work, because, they, especially the women, got so ugly and produced such ugly

children if their disease was not treated sharply, that the neighbours couldn't stand it. However I am 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

"Yes, all that is true, neighbour; and I have seen some of those women grown old. But my father used to

know some of them when they were young; and he said that they were as little like young women as might

be: they had hands like bunches of skewers, and wretched little arms like sticks; and waists like hourglasses,

and thin lips and peaked noses and pale cheeks; and they were always pretending to be offended at anything

you said or did to them. No wonder they bore ugly children, for no one except men like them could be in love

"And do you know, neighbours, that once on a time people were still anxious about that diseaseof 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

"Well," said he, "it was thought at the time that it was the survival of the old mediaeval disease of leprosy: it

seems it was very catching for many of the people afflicted by it were much secluded, and were waited upon

by a special class of diseased persons queerly dressed up, so that they might be known. They wore amongst

other garments, breeches made of worsted velvet, that stuff that used to be called plush some years ago."

All this seemed very interesting to me, and I should like to have made the old man talk more. But Dick got

rather restive under so much ancient history: besides, I suspect he wanted to keep me as fresh as he could for

his greatgrandfather. So he burst out laughing at last, and said: "Excuse me, neighbours, but I can't help it.

Fancy people not liking to work!it's too rediculous. Why, even you like to work, old fellowsometimes,"

said he, affectionately patting the old horse with the whip. "What a queer disease! it may well be called

And he laughed out again most boisterously, rather too much so, I thought, for his usual good manners; and I

laughed with him for company's sake, but from the teeth outward only; for _I_ saw nothing funny in people

And now again I was busy looking about me, for we were quite clear of Piccadilly Marketl, and were in a

region of elegantlybuilt much ornamented houses, which I should have called villas if they had been ugly

and pretentious, which was very far from being the case. Each house stood in a garden carefully cultivated

and running over with flowers. The blackbirds were singing their best amidst the gardentrees, which, except

for abay here and there, and occasional troups of limes, seemed to be all fruittrees: there were a great many

cherrytrees, now all laden with fruit; and several times as we passed by a garden we were offered baskets of

fine fruit by children and young girls. Amidst all these gardens and houses it was of course impossible to

trace the sites of the old streets: but it seemed to me that the main roadways were the same as of old.

We came presently into a large open space, sloping somewhat toward the south, the sunny site of which had

been taken advantage of for planting an orchard, mainly, as I could see, of apricot trees, in the midst of which

was a pretty gay little structure of wood, painted and gilded that looked like a refreshmentstall. From the

southern side of the said orchard ran a long road chequered over with the shadow of tall old pear trees, at the

A strange sensation came over me; I shut my eyes to keep out the sight of the sun glittering on this fair abode

of gardens, and for a moment there passed before them a phantasmagoria of another day. A great space

surrounded by tall ugly houses, with an ugly church at the corner and a nondescript ugly cupolaed building at

my back; the roadway thronged with a sweltering and excited crowd, dominated by omnibuses crowded with

spectators. In the midst a paved befountained square, populated only by a few men dressed in blue and a

good many singularly ugly bronze images (one on top of a tall column). The said square guarded up to the

edge of the roadway by a fourfold line of big men clad in blue, and across the southern roadway the helmets

of a band of horsesoldiers, dead white in the greyness of the chilly November afternoon

I opened my eyes to the sunlight again and looked round me, and cried out among the whispering trees and

"Yes," said Dick, who had drawn rein again, "so it is I don't wonder at your finding the name ridiculous: but

after all, it was nobody's business to alter it, since the name of a dead folly doesn't bite. Yet sometimes I think

we might have given it a name which would have commemorated the great battle which was fought on the

"Which they generally do, or at least did," said the old man. "For instance what can you make of this,

neighbours? I have read a muddled account in a bookO 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 wardmote here, or some such thing, and the Government of London, or the

Council, or the Commission, or what not other barbarous halfhatched 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 Me. 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 goodtempered

The old man looked at me keenly, and said: "You seem to know a great deal about it, neighbour! And is it

"This came of it," said I, "that a good many people were sent to prison because of it."

Said the old man rather severely: "Friend, I expect that you have been reading some rotten collection of lies,

"Well, well, I am sure you think so, neighbour," said the old man,"but I don't see why you should be so

As I couldn't explain why, I held my tongue. Meanwhile Dick, who had been sitting with knit brows,

"How strange to think that there could 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; "yetafter all, even those days were a great improvement on the days that had

gone before them. Have you not read of the Medieval period, and the ferocity of its criminal laws; and how in

those days men fairly seemed to have enjoyed tormenting their fellowmen?nay, for the matter of that,

"Yes," said Dick,"there are good books on the 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 Medieval folk acted after their conscience,

as your remark shows about their God (which is true) shows, and they were ready to bear what they inflicted

on others; whereas the nineteenth century ones were hypocrites, and pretended to be humane, and yet went on

tormenting those whom they dared to treat so by shutting them up in prison, for no reason at all, except that

they were what they themselves, the prisonmasters, had forced them to be. O, it's horrible to think of!"

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 couldn't fail to know what a disgrace prison is to the

Commonwealth at the best, and that their prisons were a good step on towards being at the worst."

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

"Man alive! how can you ask such a question? Have I not told you that we know what a prison means by the

undoubted evidence of really trustworthy books, helped out by our own imaginations? And haven't you

specially called me to notice that the people about the roads and streets look happy? and how could they look

happy if they knew that their neighbours were shut up in prison, while they bore such things quietly? And if

there were people in prison, you couldn't hide it from folk, like you can an occasional manslaying; because

that isn't done of set purpose with a lot of people backing up the slayer in cold blood as this prison business

He stopped, and began to cool down, and said in a kind voice: "But forgive me! I needn't be so hot about it,

since there are _not_ any prisons: I'm afraid you will think the worse of me for losing my temper. Of course,

you, coming from the outlands, cannot be expected to know about these things. And now I'm afraid I have

In a way he had; but he was so generous in his heat, that I liked him the better for it, and I said: "No, really

'tis all my fault for being so stupid. Let me change the subject, and ask you what the stately building is on our

"Ah," he said, "that is an old building built before the middle of the twentieth century, and as you see, in a

iiqueer fantastic style not over beautiful; but there are some fine things inside it, too, mostly pictures are kept

as curiosities permanently it is called a National Gallery, perhaps after this one. of course there are a good

I didn't try to enlighten him, feeling the task too heavy, but I pulled out my magnificent pipe and fell

"This pipe is a very elaborate toy, and you seem, so reasonable in this country and your architecture is so

It struck me as I spoke that this was rather ungrateful of me, after having received such a fine present; but

"Well, I don't know; it _is_ a pretty thing, and since nobody need make such things unless they like, I don't

see why they shouldn't make them _if_ they like. Of course, if carvers were scarce they would all be busy on

the architecture, as you callit, and then these `toys' (a good word) would not be made; but since there are

plenty of good people who can carvein fact, almost everybody, and as work is somewhat scarce, or we are

He mused a little, and seemed somewhat perturbed; but presently his face cleared, and he said: "After all, you

must admit that the pipe is a very pretty thing, with the little people under the trees all cut so clean and

I was just going on 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 to see somethiing a little like what I was used to: "it seems to be a factory."

"Yes, he said," "I think I know what you mean, and that's what it is; but we don't call them factories now, but

Bandedworkshops; that is, places where people collect who want to work together."

"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 Bandedworkahops to do handwork in which working together is necessary or convenient; such work

is often very pleasant. In therem for instance they make pottery and glass,there, you can see the tops of the

furnces. Well of course it's handy to have fairsized ovens and kilns and glasspots, 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 potmaking or glassblowing that he should have to live in one place or be obliged to forego the

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 clay must be jolly work: the glassblowing is rather a sweltering job; but some folk like it

very much indeed; and I don't much wonder: there us such a sense" of power, when you have got deft in it, in

dealing with the hot metal. It makes a lot of pleasant work," said he, smiling, "for however" much care

you take of such goods, break they will, one day or another, so there is always plenty to do.

We came just here on a gang of men roadmending, which delayed us a little; but I was not sorry for it; for

all I had seen hitherto seemed a mere part of a summer holiday; and I wanted to see how this folk would set

to on a piece of real necessary work. They had been resting, and had only just begun work again s we came

up; so that the rattle of the picks was what woke me from my musing. There were about a dozen of them,

strong young men, looking much like a boating party at Oxford would have looked in the days I remembered,

and not more troubled with their work: their outer raiment lay on the roadside in an orderly pile under the

guardianship of a sixyearold boy, who had his arm thrown over the neck of a big mastiff, who was as

happily lazy as if the summer day had been made for him alone. As I eyed the pile of clothes, I could see the

gleam of gold and silk embroidery on it, and judged that some of these workmen had tastes akin to those of

the Golden Dustman of Hammersmith. Beside them lay a good big basket that had hints about it of cold pie

and wine: a halfdozen of young women stood by watching the work or the workers, both of which were

worth watching, for the latter smote great strokes and were very deft in their labour, and as handsome

cleanbuilt fellows as you might find of in a summer day. They were laughing and talking merrily with each

other and the women, but presently their foreman looked up and saw our way stopped. So he stayed his pick

and sang out, "Spell ho, mates! here are neighbours want to get past." Whereon the others stopped also, and

drawing around us, helped the old horse by easing our wheels over the half undone road, and then, like men

with a pleasant task on hand, hurried back to their work, onlu stopping to give us a smiling goodday; so that

the sound of the picks broke out again before Greylocks had taken to his jogtrot. Dick looked back over his

"They are in luck today: it's right down good sport trying how much pickwork one can get into an hour; and

I can see those neighbours know their business well. It is not a mere matter of strength getting on quickly

"I should think not,"said I, "but to tell you the truth, I have never tried my hand at it."

"Really?" said he gravely, "that seems a pity; it is good work for hardening the muscles, and I like it; though I

admit it is pleasanter the second week than the first. Not that I am a good hand at it; the fellows used to chaff

me at one job where I was working, I remember, and sing out to me, `Well rowed, stroke!' `Put your back

"Well," said dick, "everything seems like a joke when we have a pleasant spell of work on, and good fellows

We now turned into a pleasant lane where the branches of great plane trees nearly met overhead, but behind

"This is Long Acre," quoth Dick; "so there must once have been a cornfield here. How curious it is that

places change so, and yet keep their old names! Just look how thick the houses stand! and they are still going

"Yes," said the old man, "but I think the cornfields must have been built over before the middle of the

nineteenth century. I have heard that above here was the thickest parts of the town. But I must get down here,

neighbours; I have got to call on a friend who lives in the gardens behind the Long Acre. Goodbye and good

"How old should you say that neighbour will be?" said I to Dick as we lost sight of him; for I saw that he was

old, and yet he looked dry and sturdy like a piece of a piece of old oak; a type of old man I was not used to

"Yes," said Dick "certainly we have beaten the threescoreandten of the old Jewish proverbbook. But

then you see that was written of Syria, a hot dry country, where people live faster than in our temperate

climate. However, I don't think it matters much, so long as a man is healthy and happy while he _is_ alive.

But now, guest, we are so near to my old kinsman's dwellingplace that I think you had better keep all future

I nodded a yes; and therewith we turned to the left, and went down a gentle slope through some beautiful

rosegardens, laid out on what I took to be the site of Endell Street. We passed on, and Dick drew rein an

instant as we came across a long straightish road with houses scantily scattered up and down it. He waved his

hand right and left, and said, "Holborn that side, Oxford Road that. this was once a very important part of the

crowded city outside the ancient walls of the Roman and Mediaeval burg: many of the feudal nobles of the

Middle Ages, we are told, had big houses on either side of Holborn. I daresay you remember that the Bishop

of Ely's house is mentioned in Shakespeare's play of King Richard III.; and there are some remains of that

still left. However, this road is not of the same importance, now that the ancient city is gone, walls and all."

He drove on again, while I smiled faintly to think how the nineteenth century, of which such big words have

been said, counted for nothing in the memory of this man, who read Shakespeare and had not forgotten the

We crossed the road into a short narrow lane between the gardens, and came out again into a wide road, on

one side of which was a great and long building, turning its gables away from the highway, which I saw at

once was another public group. Opposite to it was a wide space of greenery, without any wall or fence of any

kind. I looked through the trees and saw beyond them a pillared portico quite familiar to meno less old a

friend, in fact, than the British Museum. It rather took my breath away, amidst all the strange things I had

"Yonder is the British Museum, where my greatgreandfather mostly lives; so I won't say much about it. The

building on the left is the Museum Markete, and I think we had better turn in there for a minute or two; for

Greylocks will be wanting his rest and his oats; and I suppose you will stay with my kinsman the greater part

of the day; and to say the truth, there may be some one there whom I particularly want to see, and perhaps

He blushed and sighed, not altogether with pleasure, I thought; so of course I said nothing, and he turned the

horse under an archway which brought us into a very large paved quadrangle, with a big sycamore tree in

each corner and a plashing fountain in the midst. Near the foundation 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 cloiste, whose fanciful but strong architecture I could not enough admire. Here

Dick said to me apologetically: "Here, as alsewhere there is little doing today; 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

We drove through the quadrangle and by an archway, into a large handsome stable on the other side, where

we speedily stalled the old nag and made him happy with horsemeat, and then turned and walked back again

I noticed that people couldn't help looking at me rather hard; and considering my clothes and theirs, I didn't

wonder; but whenever they caught my eye they made me a very friendly sign of greeting.

We walked straight into the forecourt of the Museum, where, except that the railings were gone, and the

whispering boughs of the trees were all about, nothing seemed changed; the very pigeons were wheeling

about the building and clinging to the ornaments of the pediment as I had seen them of old.

Dick seemed grown a little absent, but he could not forbear giving me an architectural note, and said:

"It is rather an ugly old building, isn't it? Many people have wanted to pull it down and rebuild it: and

perhaps if work does really get scarce we may yet do so. But, as my greatgrandfather will tell you, it would

not be quite a straightforward job; for there are wonderful collections in there of all kinds of antiquities,

besides an enormous library with many exceedingly beautiful books in it, and many most useful ones as

genuine records, texts of ancient works and the like; and the worry and anxiety, and even the risk, there

would be in moving all this has saved the buildings themselves. Besides, as we said before, it is not a bad

thing to have some record of what our forefathers thought a handsome building. For there is plenty of labour

"I see there is," said I, "and I quite agree with you. But now hadn't we better make haste to see your great

In fact, I could not help seing that he was rather dallying with the time. He said, "Yes, we will go into the

house in a minute. My kinsmen is too old to do much owrk 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

"Your kinsman doesn't much care for beautiful buildings, 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

"O, I don't know," said Dick, rather absently, "He is getting old, certainly, for he is over a hundred and five,

and no doubt he doesn't care about moving. But of course he could live in a prettier house if he liked: he is

not obliged to live in any one place any more than any one else. This way, Guest."

And he led the way upsteairs, and opening a door we went into a fairsized rom of the old type, as plain as

the rest of the house, with a few necessary pieces of furniture, and those very simple and even rude, but solid

and with a good deal of carving about them, well designed but rather crudely executed. At the furthest corner

of the room, at a desk near the window, sat a little old man in a roomy oak chair, well becushioned. He was

dressed in a sort of Norfolk jacket of blue serge worn threadbare, with breeches of the same, and grey

worsted stockings. He jumpped up from his chair, and cried out in a voice of considerable volume for such an

old man, "Welcome, Dick, my lad; Clara is here, and will be more than glad to see you; so keep your heart

"Clara here?" quoth Dick; "if I had known, I would not have brought At least I mean I would"

He was stuttering and confused, clearly because he was anxious to say nothing to make me feel one too

many. But the old man, who had not seen me at first, helped him out by coming forward and saying to me in

"Pray pardon me, for I did not notice that Dick, who is big enough to hade anybody, you know, had brought a

friend with him. A most hearty welcome to you! All the more, as I almost hope that you are going to amuse

an old man by giving him news from over sea for I can see that you are come from over the water and faroff

He looked at me thoughtfully, almost anxiously, as he said in a changed voice, "Might I ask you where you

I said in an absent way: "I used to live in England, and now I am come back again; and I slept last night at

He bowed gravely, but seemed, I thought, a little disappointed with my answer. As for me, I was now looking

at him harder than good manners allowed of, perhaps; for in truth his face, driedapplelike as it was seemed

strangely familiar to me; as if I had seen it beforein a lookingglass it might be, said I to myself.

"Well," said the old man, "wherever you come from, you are among friends. And I see my kinsman Richard

Hammond has an air about him as if he had brought you here for me to do something for you. Is that so,

Dick, who was getting still more absentminded and kept looking uneasily at the door, managed to

say,"Well, yes, kiinsman: 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 withing the last two hundred

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 fllushed 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

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 medieval books, so it will be pretty enough even for you two

The girl reached out her hand to Dick, and taking his led him out of the room, looking straight before her; but

it was easy to see that her blushes came from happiness, not anger; as, indeed love is far more selfconscious

When the door had shut on them the old man turned to me, still smiling, and said:

"Frankly, my dear guest, you will do me a great service if you are come to set my old tongue wagging. My

love of talk still abides with me, or rather grows on me; and though it is pleasant enough to see these

youngsters moving about and playing together so seriously, as if the whole world depended on their kisses (as

indeed it does somewhat), yet I don't think my tales of the past interest them much. The last harvest, the last

baby, the last knot of carving in the marketplace is history enough for them. It was different, I think, when I

was a lad, when we were not so assured of peace and continuous plenty as we are now Well,well! Without

putting you to the question, let me ask you this: Am I to consider you as an enquirer who knows a little of our

modern ways of life, or as one who comes from some place where the very foudations of life are different

He looked at me keenly and with growing wonder in his eyes as he spoke; and I answered in a low voice:

"I know only so much of your modern life as I could gather from using my eyes on the way here from

Hammersmith and from asking some questions of Richard Hammond, most of which he could hardly

The old man, whose name, by the bye, like his kinsman's was Hammond, smiled and nodded, and wheeling

his seat round to me, bade me sit in a heavy oak chair, and said, as he saw my eyes fix on its curious carving:

"Yes, I am much tied to the past, _my_ past, you understand. These very pieces of furniture belong to a time

before my early days; it was my father who got them made; if they had been done within the last fifty years

they would have been much cleverer in execution; but I don't think I should have liked them the better. We

were almost beginning again in those days: and they were brisk, hotheaded times. But you hear how

garrulous I am: ask me questions ask me questions about anything dear guest; since I _must_ talk, make my

I was silent for a minute, and then I said, somewhat nervously: "Excuse me if I am rude; but I am so much

interested in Richard since he has been so kind to me, a perfect stranger, that I should like to ask a question

"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."

"Well," said he, "Yes, he is. He has been married to her once already, and now I should say it is pretty clear

"Here is the whole tale," said old Hammond; "a short one enough; and now I hope a happy one: they lived

together two years the first time; were both very young; and then she got it into her head that she was in love

with somebody else. So she left poor Dick; I say _poor_Dick, because he had not found any one else. But it

did not last long, only about a year. Then she came to me, as she was in the habit of bringing her troubles to

the old carle, and asked me how Dick was, and whether he was happy, and all the rest of it. So I saw how the

land lay, and said that he was very unhappy, and not at all well; which last at any rate was a lie. There, you

can guess the rest. Clara came to have a long talk with me today, but Dick will serve her turn much better.

Indeed, if he hadn't chanced in upon me today I should have had to have sent for him tomorrow."

"Yes," said he,"two; they are staying with one of my daughters at present, where, indeed, Clara has mostly

been. I wouldn't lose sight of her, as I felt sure they would come together again; and Dick, who is the best of

good fellows, really took the matter to heart. You see he had no other love to run to, as she had. So I managed

"Ah," said I, "no doubt you wanted to keep them our of the Divorce Court: but I suppose it often has to settle

"Then you suppose nonsense," said he. "I know that there used to be such lunatic affairs as divorce courts.

But just consider; all the cases that came into them were matters of property quarrels: and I think, dear guest,"

said he, smiling, "that though you do come from another planet, you can see from the mere outside look of

our world that quarrels about private property could not go on amongst us in our days."

Indeed, my drive from Hammersmith to Bloomsbury, and all the quiet happy life I had seen so many hints of,

even apart from my shopping, would have been enough to tell me that `the sacred rights of property,' as we

used to think of them, were now no more. So I sat silent while the old man took up the thread of the discourse

"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 oureselves, 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 an

woman confusing the relations between natural passion, and sentiment, and the friendship ehich, 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 tyrranizing over

Again he paused awhile, and again went on: "Calf love, mistaken for a heroism that shall be lifelong, yet

early waning into disappointment; the inexplicable desire that comes on a man of riper years to be the

allinall to some one woman, whose ordinary human kindness and human beauty he has idealised into

superhuman perfection, and made the one object of his desire; or lastly the reasonable longing of a strong and

thoughtful man to become the most intimate friend of some beautiful and wise woman, the very type of the

beauty and glory of the world which we love so well,as we exult in all the pleasure and exaltation of spirit

which goes with these things, so we set ourselves to bear the sorrow which not unseldom goes with them

also; remembering those lines of the ancient poet (I quote roughly from memory one of the many translations

`For this the gods have fashioned man's grief and evil day That still for man hereafter might be the tale and

Well, well, 'tis little likely anyhow that all tales shall be lacking, or all sorrow cured."

He was silent for some time, and I would not interrupt him. At last he began again: "But you must know that

we of these generations are strong and healthy of body, and live easily; we pass our lives in reasonable strife

with nature exercising not one side of ourselves only, but all sides, taking the keenest pleasure in all the life

of the orld. So it is a point of honour with us not to be selfcentered; not to suppose that the world must cease

because one man is sorry; therefore we should think it foolish, or if you will, criminal, to exaggerate these

matters of sentiment and sensibility: we are no more inclined to eke out our sentimental sorrows than to

cherish our bodily pains; and we recognise that there are other pleasures besides lovemaking. You must

remember, also that we are longlived, 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 selfinflicted diseases. So we shake off these griefs

in a way which perhaps the sentimentalists of other times would think contemptible and unheroic, but which

we think necessary and manlike. As ib the other hand, therefore, we have ceased to be commercial in our

lovematters, so also we have ceased to be _artificially_ foolish. The folly which comes by nature, the

unwisdom of the immature man, or the older man caught in a trap, we must put up with that, nor are we much

ashamed of it; but to be conventionally sensitive or sentimentalmy 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 a sundering betwixt those who meant never to sunder so it must be: but there meed be no

pretext of unity when the reality of it is gone: nor do we drive those who well know that they are incapable of

it to profess an undying sentiment which they cannot really feel:; thus it is that as that monstrosity of venal

lust is no longer possible, so it is no longer needed. Don't misunderstand me. You did not seem shocked when

I told you that there were no lawcourts to enforce contracts of sentiment or passion; but so curiously are

men made, that perhaps you will be shocked when I tell you that there is no code of public opinion which

takes the place of such courts, and which might be as tyrannical and unreasonable as they were. I do not say

that people don't judge their 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 people are _forced_ to pronounce, either by

unconsidered habit, or by the unexpressed threat of the lesser interdict if they are lax in their hypocrisy. Are

"At any rate," said he, "one thing I think I can answer for: whatever sentiment there is, it is realand

general; it is not confined to people very specially refined. I am also pretty sure, as I hinted to you just now,

that there is not by a great way as much suffering involved in these matters either to men or to women as

there used to be. But excuse me for being so prolix on this question! You know you asked to be treated like a

"Indeed I thank you very much," said I. "Now may I ask you about the position of women in your society?"

He laughed very heartily for a man of his years, and said: "It is not without reason that I have got a repuation

as a careful student of history I believe I really do understand `the Emancipation of Women movement' of the

"Well," said he, "of course you will see that all that is a dead controversy now. The men have no longer any

opportunity of tyrrannising over the women, or the women over the men; both of which things took place in

those old times. The women do what they can do best, and what they like best, and the men are neither

jealous of it or injured by it. This is such a commonplace that I am almost ashamed to state it."

Hammond smiled and said: "I think you may wait for an answer to that question till we get on to the subject

"Very well," I said; "but about this woman question? I saw at the Guest House that the women were waiting

"Does it?" said the old man; "perhaps you think housekeeping an unimportant occupation, not deserving of

respect. I believe that was the opinion of the `advanced' women of the nineteenth century, and their male

backers. If it is yours, I recommend to your notice an old Norwegian folklore tale called How the Man

minded the House, or some such title; the result of which minding was that, after various tribulations, the

man and the family now balanced each other at the end of a rope, the man hanging halfway up the chimney

the cow dangling from the roof, which, after the fashion of the country, was of turf and sloping down low to

the ground. Hard on the cow, _I_ think. Of course no such mishap could happen to such a superior person as

I sat somewhat uneasy under this dry gibe. Indeed, his manner of treating this latter part of the question

"Come, now, my friend," quoth he, "don't you know that it is a great pleasure to a clever woman to manage a

house skillfully, and to do it so that all the housemates 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."

"Excuse me," said he, after a while; "I am not laughing at anything you could be thinking of, but at that silly

nineteenthcentury fashion, current amongst rich socalled cultivated people, of ignoring all the steps by

which their daily dinner was reached, as matters too low for their lofty intelligence. Useless idiots! Come,

now, I am a `literary man,' as we queer animals used to be called, yet I am a pretty good cook myself."

"Well, then," said he, "I really think you can understand me better than you would seem to so, judging by

Said I: "Perhaps that is so; but people putting in practice commonly this sense of interest in the ordinary

occupations of life rather startles me. I will ask you a question or two presently about that. But I want to

return to the position of women amongst you. You have studied the `emanciation of women' business of the

nineteenth century: don't you remember that some of the `superior' women wanted to emancipate the more

The old man grew quite serious again. Said he: "I _do_ remember about that strange piece of baseless folly,

the result, like all other follies of the period, of the hideous class tyrrany which then obtained. What do we

think of it now? you would say. My friend, that is a question easy to answer. How could it possibly be but

that maternity should be highly honoured amongst us? Surely it is a matter of course that the natural and

necessary pains that a mother must go through form a bond of union between man and woman, an extra

stimulus to love and affection between them, and that this is universally recognised. For the rest, remember

that all the _artificial_ burdens of motherhood are now done away with. A mother has no longer any mere

sordid anxieties for the future of her children. They may indeed turn out better or worse; they may disappoint

her highest hopes; such anxieties as these are a part of the mingled pleasure and pain which goes to make up

the life of mankind. But at least she is spared the fear (it was most commonly the certainty) that artificial

disabilities would make her children something less than men and women: she knows that they will live and

act according to the measure of their own faculties. In times past, it is clear that the `Society' of the day

helped its Judaic god, and the `Man of Science' of the time, in visiting the sins of the fathers upon the

children. How to reverse this process, how to take the sting out of heredity, has for long been one of the most

constant cares of the thoughtful men amongst us. So that, you see, the ordinarily healthy woman (and almost

all our women are both healthy and at least comely), respected as a childbearer and rearer of children,

desired as a woman, loved as a companion, unanxious for the future of her children, has far more instinct for

maternity than the poor drudge and mother of drudges of past days could ever have had; or than her sister of

the upper classes, brought up in affected ignorance of natural facts, reared in an atmosphere of mingled

"Yes," he said, "and I will point out to you a token of all the benefits which we have gained by our freedom.

Said I "I could hardly have believed that there could be so many goodlooking people in any civilised

He crowed a little, like the old bird he was. "What! are we still civilised?" said he. "Well, as to our looks, the

English and Jutish blood, which on the whole is predominant here, used not to produce much beauty. But I

think we have improved it. I know a man who has a large collection of portraits printed from photographs of

the nineteenth century, and going over them and comparing them with the everyday faces in these times, puts

the improvement in our good looks beyond a doubt. Now, there are some people who think it not too fantastic

to connect this increase of beauty directly with our freedom and good sense in the matters we have been

speaking of: they believe that a child born from the natural and healthy love between a man and a woman,

even if that be transient, is likely to turn out better in all ways, and especially in bodily beauty, than the birth

of the respectable commercial marriage bed, or of the dull despair of the drudge of that system. They say,

"Well," said the old man, shifting in his chair, "you must get on with your questions, Guest; I have been some

Said I: "I want an extra word or two about your ideas of education; although I gathered from Dick that you let

your children run wild and didn't teach them anything; and in short, that you have so refined your education,

"Then you gathered lefthanded," 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' privilege on the other), pinched

`education' for most people into a niggardly dole of not very accurate information; something to be

swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or not, and was hungry for it or not: and

which had been chewed and digested over and over again by people who didn't care about it in order to serve

I stopped the old man's rising wrath by a laugh, and said: "Well, _you_ were not taught that way, at any rate,

"True, true," said he smiling. "I thank you for correcting my ill temper: I always fancy myself as living in any

period of which we may be speaking. But, however, to put it in a cooler way: you expected to see children

thrust into schools when they had reached an age conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their

varying faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like disregard to facts, to be subjected to a

certain conventional courese of `learning'. My friend, can't you see that such a proceeding means ignoring the

fact of _growth_, bodily and mental? No one could come out of such a mill uninjured; and those only would

avoid being crushed by it who would have the spirit of rebellion strong in them. Fortunately most children

have had that at all times, or I do not know that we should ever have reached our present position. Now you

see what it all comes to. In the old times all this was the result of _poverty_. In the nineteenth century, society

was so miserably poor, owing to the systematised robbery on which it was founded that real education was

impossible for anybody. The whole theory of their so called education was that it was necessary to shove a

little information into a child, even if it were by means of torture, and accompanied by twaddle which it was

well known was of no use, or else he would lack information lifelong: the hurry of poverty forbade anything

else. All that is past; we are no longer hurried, and the information lies ready to each one's hand when his

own inclinations impel him to seek it. In this as in other matters we have become wealthy: we can afford to

"Yes," said I, "but suppose the child, youth, man, never wants the information, never grows in the direction

you might hope him to do: suppose, for instance, he objects to learning arithmetic or mathematics; you can't

force him when he _is_ grown; can't you force him while he is growing, and oughtn't you to do so?"

"And how much arithmetic and mathematics do you know now?" quoth the old man, smiling rather

Hammond laughed quietly, but made no other comment on my admission, and I dropped the subject of

I thought a little, and said: "You were speaking just now of households: that sounded to me a little like the

customs of past times; I should have thought you would have lived more in public."

"Phalangsteries, eh?" said he. "Well, we live as we like, and we like to live as a rule with certain housemates

that we have got used to. Remember, again, that poverty is extinct, and that the Fourierist phalangsteries and

all their kind, as was but natural at the time, implied nothing but a refuge from mere destitution. Such a way

of life as that, could only have been conceived of by people surrounded by the worst form of poverty. But

you must understand therewith, that though separate households are the rule amongst us, and though they

differ in their habits more or less, yet no door is shut to any goodtempered person who is content to live as

the other housemates do: only of course it would be unreasonable for one man to drop into a household

and bid the folk of it to alter their habits to please him, since he can go elsewhere and live as he pleases.

However, I need not say much about all this as you are going up the river with Dick, and will find out for

After a pause, I said: "Your big towns, now; how about them? London, whichwhich I have read about as

"Well, well," said old Hammond, "perhaps after all it is more like ancient Babylon now than the `modern

Babylon' of the nineteenth century was. But let that pass. After all, there is a good deal of population in

places between here and Hammersmith; nor have you seen the most populous part of the town yet."

Said he: "Time was when if you mounted a good horse and rode straight away from my door here at a round

trot for an hour and a half, you would still be in the thick of London, and the greater part of that would be

`slums', as they were called; that is to say, places of torture for innocent men and women; or worse, stews for

rearing and breeding men and women in such degradation that that torture should seem to them mere ordinary

"I know, I know," I said, rather impatiently, "That was what was; tell me something of what is. Is there any of

"Not an inch," said he; "but some memory of it abides with us, and I am glad of it. Once a year, on Mayday,

we hold a solemn feast in those easterly communes of London to commemorate The Clearing of Misery, as it

is called. On that day we have music and dancing, and merry games and happy feasting on the site of some of

the worst of the old slums, the traditional memory of which we have kept. On that occasion the custom is for

the prettiest girls to sing some of the old revolutionary songs, and those which were the groans of the

discontent, once so hopeless, on the very spots where those terrible crimes of classmurder were committed

day by day for so many years. To a man like me, who have studied the past so diligently, it is a curious and

touching sight to see some beautiful girl, daintily clad, and crowned with flowers from the neighbouring

meadows standing amongst the happy people, on some mound where of old time stood the wretched apology

for a house, a den in which men and women lived packed amongst the filth like pilchards in a cask; lived in

such a way that they could only have endured it, as I said just now, by being degraded out of humanityto

hear the terrible words of threatening and lamentation coming from her sweet and beautiful lips, and she

unconscious of their real meaning: to hear her, for instance, singing Hood's Song of the Shirt, and to think

that all the time she does not understand what it is all abouta tragedy grown inconceivable to her and her

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 to dinner.

Said he: "There are but few houses between this and the outer part of the old city; but in the city we have a

thicklydwelling 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 town, and

what later got to be known as the Swindling Kens. You see, these houses, though they stood hideously thick

on the ground, were roomy and fairly solid in building, and clean, because they were not used for living in,

but as mere gambling booths; so the poor people from the cleared slums took them for lodgings and dwelt

there, till the folk of those days had time to think of something better for them; so the buildings were pulled

down so gradually that people got used to living thicker on the ground there than in most places; therefore it

remains the most populous part of London, or perhaps of all these islands. But it is very pleasant there, partly

because of the splendor 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 that perhaps you

may have heard of. Beyond that the houses are scattered wide about the meadows there, which are very

beautiful, especially when you get on to the lovely river Lea (where old Isaak Walton used to fish, you know)

about the places called Stratford and Old Ford, names which of course you will not have heard of, though the

Not heard of them! thought I to myself. How strange! that I who had seen the very last remnant of the

pleasantness of the meadows by the Lea destroyed, should have heard them spoken of with pleasantness

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

centralisaion all we can, and we have long ago dropped the pretension to be the market of the world. About

these Docks are a good few houses, which, however, are not inhabited by many people permanently; I mean,

those who use them come and go a good deal, the place being too low and marshy for pleasant dwelling. Past

the Docks eastward and landward it is all flat pasture, once marsh, except for a few gardens, and there are

very few permanent dwellings there: scarcely anything but a few sheds, and cots for the men who come to

look after the great herds of cattle pasturing there. But however, what with the beasts and the men, and the

scattered redtiled roofs and the big hayricks, it does not make a bad holiday to get a quiet pony and ride

about there on a sunny afternoon of autumn, and look over the river and the craft passing up and down, and

on to Shooter s' Hill and the Kentish uplands, and then turn round to the wide green sea of the Essex

marshland, 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

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 wellbuilt town called Hampstead, which fitly ends London on that side.

I smiled. "So much for what was once London," said I. "Now tell me about the other towns of the country."

He said: "As to the big murky places which were once, as we know, the centres of manufacture, they have,

like the brick and mortar desert of London, disappeared; only, since they were the centres of nothing but

`manufacture', and served no purpose but that of the gambling market, they have left less signs of their

existence than London. Of course, the great change in the use of mechanical force made this an easy matter,

and some approach to their breakup as centres would probably have taken place, even if we had not changed

our habits so much: but they being such as they were, no sacrifice would have seemed too great a price to pay

for getting rid of the `manufacturing districts', as they used to be called. For the rest, whatever coal or mineral

we need is brought to grass and sent whither it is needed with as little as possible of dirt, confusion, and the

distressing of quiet people's lives. One is tempted to believe from what one has read of the condition of those

districts in the nineteenth century, that those who had them under their power worried, befouled, and

degraded men out of malice prepense: but it was not so; like the miseducation of which we were talking just

now, it came of their dreadful poverty. They were obliged to put up with everything, and even pretend that

they liked it; whereas we can now deal with things reasonable, and refuse to be saddled with what we do not

I confess I was not sorry to cut short with a question his glorifications of the age he lived in. Said I: "How

"No, no," said he, "it hasn't gone that way. On the contrary, there has been but little clearance, though much

rebuilding in the smaller towns. Their suburbs, indeed, when they had any, have melted away into the general

country, and space and elbowroom has been got in their centres: but there are the towns still with their

streets and squares the marketplaces; so that it is by means of these smaller towns that we of today can get

some kind of idea of what the towns of the older world were like;I mean to say at their best."

"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 precommercial building, and is a very beautiful place, yet there are

"Still?" said he, smiling. "Well, it has reverted to some of its best traditions; so you may imagine how far it is

from its nineteenthcentury position. It is real learning, knowledge cultivated for its own sakethe Art of

Knowledge, in shortwhich is followed there, not the Commercial learning of the past. Though perhaps you

do not know that in the nineteenth century Oxford and its less interesting sister Cambridge became definitely

commercial. They (and especially Oxford) were the breeding places of a peculiar class of parasites, who

called themselves cultivated people; they were indeed cynical enough, as the socalled educated classes of

the day generally were; but they affected an exaggeration of cynicism in order that they might be thought

knowing and worldlywise. The rich middle classes (they had no relation with the workingclasses) treated

them with the kind of contemptuous toleration with which a mediaeval baron treated his jester; though it must

be said that they were by no means so pleasant as the old jesters were, being, in fact, _the_ bores of society.

Dear me! thought I, how apt history is to reverse contemporary judgements. Surely only the worst of them

were as bad as that. But I must admit that they were mostly prigs, and 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?"

"You drive me from corner to corner," said he, smiling in turn. "Let me say at least that they were a poor

"Also," said Hammond, "what I have been saying of them is true in the main. But ask on!"

I said: "We have heard about London and the manufacturing districts and the ordinary towns: how about the

Said Hammond: " You must know that toward the end of the nineteenth century the villages were almost

destroyed, unless where they became mere adjuncts to the manufacturing district themselves. Houses were

allowed to fall into decay and actual ruin; trees were cut down for the sake of the few shillings which the poor

sticks would fetch; the building became inexpressibly mean and hideous. Labour was scarce; but wages fell

nevertheless. All the small country arts of life which once added to the little pleasures of country people were

lost. The country produce which passed throught the hands of the husbandmen never got so far as their

mouths. Incredible shabbiness and niggardly pinching reigned over the fields and acres which, in spite of the

rude and careless husbandry of the times, were so kind and bountiful. Had you any inkling of all this? "

"The change," said Hammond, "which in these matters took place very early in our epoch, was most strangely

rapid. People flocked into the country villages, and, so to say, flung themselves upon the freed land like a

wild beast upon his prey; and in a very little time the villages of England were more populous than they had

been since the fourteenth century, and were still growing fast. Of course, this invasion of the country was

awkward to deal with, and would have created much misery, if the folk had still been under the bondage of

class monopoly. But as it was, things soon righted themselves. People found out what they were fit for, and

gave up attempting to push themselves into occupations in which they must needs fail. The town invaded the

country; but the invaders, like the warlike invaders of early days, yielded to the influence of their

surroundings, and became country people; and in their turn, as they became more numerous than the

townsmen, influenced them also; so that the difference between town and country grew less and less; and it

was indeed this world of townbred folk which has produced that happy and leisurely but eager life of which

you have had a first taste. Again I say, many blunders were made, but we have had time to set them right.

Much was left for the men of my earlier life to deal with. The crude ideas of the first half of the twentieth

century, when men were still oppressed by the fear of poverty, and did not look enough to the present

pleasure of ordinary 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 they had inflicted on themselves even after

they became free. But slowly as the recovery came, it _did_ come; and the more you see of us, the clearer it

will be to you that we are happy. That we live amidst beauty without any fear of becoming effeminate; that

we have plenty to do, and on the whole enjoy doing it. What more can we ask of life?"

He paused, as if he were seeking for words with which to express his thought. Then he said:

"This is how we stand. England was once a country of clearings amongst the woods and wastes, with a few

towns interspersed, which were fortresses for the feudal army, markets for the folk, gathering places for

craftsmen. It then became a country of huge and foul workshops and fouler gamblingdens, surrounded by an

illkept, povertystricken farm, pillaged by the masters of the workshops. It is now a garden, where nothing

is wasted and nothing is spoilt, with the necessary dwellings, sheds, and workshops scattered up and down

the country, all trim and neat and pretty. for, indeed, we should be too much ashamed of ourselves if we

allowed the making of goods, even on a large scale, to carry with it the appearance, even, of desolation and

misery. Why my friend, those housewives we were talking of just now would teach us better than that."

Said I: "This side of your change is certainly for the better. But though I shall soon see some of these villages,

"Perhaps, " said he, "you have seen a tolerable picture of these villages as they were before the end of the

"Well," said Hammond, "our villages are something like the best of such places, with the church or

motehouse of the neighbours for their chief building. Only note that there are no tokens of poverty about

them: no tumbledown picturesque; which, to tell you the truth, the artist usually availed himself of to veil

his incapacity for drawing architecture. Such things do not please us, even when they indicate no misery.

Like the mediaevals, we like everything trim and clean, and orderly and bright; as people always do when

they have any sense of architectural power; because then they know that they can have what they want, and

"Yes, plenty," said Hammond; "in fact, except in the wastes and forests and amongst the sandhills (like

Hindhead in Surrey), it is not easy to be out of sight of a house; and where the houses are thinly scattered they

run large, and are more like the old colleges than ordinary houses as they used to be. That is done for the sake

of society, for a good many people can dwell in such houses, as the country dwellers are not necessarily

husbandmen; though they almost all help in such work at times. The life that goes on in these big dwellings

in the country is very pleasant, especially as some of the most studious men of our time live in them, and

altogether there is a great variety of mind and mood to be found in them which brightens and quickens the

"I am rather surprised," said I, "by all this, for it seems to me that after all the country must be tolerably

"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 countrieswhere we were

Said I: "One thing, it seems to me, does not go with your word of `garden' for the country. You have spoken

of wastes and forests, and I myself have seen the beginning of your Middlesex and Essex forest. Why do you

"My friend," he said, "we like these pieces of wild nature, and can afford them, so we have them; let alone

that as to forests, we need a great deal of timber, and suppose that our sons and our sons' sons will do the like.

As to the land being a garden, I have heard that they used to have shrubberies and rockeries in gardens once;

and though I might not like the artificial ones, I assure you that some of the natural rockeries of our garden

are worth seeing. Go north this summer and look at the Cumberland and Westmoreland ones,where, by the

way, you will see some sheep feeding, so that they are not so wasteful as you think; not so wasteful as

forcinggrounds for fruit out of season, _I_ think. Go and have a look at the sheepwalks high up in the

slopes between Ingleborough and Penygwent, 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

"Now," said I, "I have come to the point of asking questions which I suppose will be dry for you to answer

and difficult for you to explain; but I have foreseen for some time past that I must ask them, will I nill I. What

kind of a government have you? Has republicanism finally triumphed? or have you come to a mere

dictatorship, which some persons in the nineteenth century used to prophesy as the ultimate outcome of

democracy? Indeed, this last question does not seem so very unreasonable, since you have turned your

Parliament House into a dungmarket. Or where do you house your present Parliament?"

The old man answered my smile with a hearty laugh, and said:"Well, well, dung is not the worst kind of

corruption; fertility may come of that, whereas mere dearth came from the other kind, of which those walls

once held the great supporters. Now, dear guest, let me tell you that our present parliament would be hard to

"No, I suppose not," said he. "I must now shock you by telling you that we have no longer anything which

"I am not so much shocked as you might think," said I, "as I know something about governments. But tell me,

Said he: "It is true that we have to make some arrangements about our affairs, concerning which you can ask

presently; and it is also true that everybody does not always agree with the details of these arrangements; but,

further, it is true that a man no more needs an elaborate system of government, with its army, navy, and

police, to force him to give way to the will of the majority of his _equals_, than he wants a similar machinery

to make him understand that his head and a stone wall cannot occupy the same space at the same moment. Do

Old Hammond settled himself in his chair with a look of enjoyment which rather alarmed me, and made me

"I suppose you know pretty well what the process of government was in the bad old times?"

(Hammond) What was the government of those days? Was it really the Parliament or any part of it?

(H.) Was not the Parliament on the one side a kind of watchcommittee sitting to see that the interests of the

Upper Classes took no hurt; and on the other side a sort of blind to delude the people into supposing that they

(I) I judge from what I have heard that sometimes they forced the Parliament to make a law to legalize some

(I) I think not. As I am informed, if the people made any attempt to deal with the _cause_ of their grievances,

the law stepped in and said, this is sedition, revolt, or what not, and slew or tortured the ringleaders of such

(H.) If Parliament was not the government then, nor the people either, what was the government?

(H.) I think we shall not be far wrong if we say that government was the LawCourts, backed up by the

executive, which handled the brute force that deluded people allowed them to use for their own purposes; I

(H.) Now as to those LawCourts. Were they places of fair dealing according to the idea of the day? Had a

(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 onewhy, it was considered a miracle of justice and beneficence if a poor man who

(H.) It seems, then, my son, that the government by lawcourts and police, which was the real government of

the nineteenth century, was not a great success even to the people of that day, living under a class system

which proclaimed inequality and poverty as the law of God and the bond which held the world together.

(H.) And now that all this is changed, and the "rights of property," which mean the clenching the fist on a

piece of goods and crying out to the neighbours, You shan't have this!now that all this has disappeared so

utterly that it is no longer possible even to jest upon its absurdity, is such a Government possible?

(H.) Yes, happily. But for what other purpose than the protection of the rich from the poor the strong from the

(I) I have heard that it was said that their office was to defend their own citizens against attack from other

(H.) It was said; but was any one expected to believe this? For instance, did the English Government defend

(H.) Then if the French had invaded England and conquered it, they would not have allowed the English

(I, laughing) As far as I can make out, the English masters of the English workmen saw to that: they took

from their workmen as much of their livelihood as they dared, because they wanted it for themselves.

(H.) But if the French had conquered, would they not have taken more still from the English workmen?

(I) I do not think so; for in that case the English workmen would have died of starvation; and then the French

conquest would have ruined the French, just as if the English horses adn cattle had died of underfeeding. So

that after all, the English _workmen_ would have been no worse off for the conquest: their French masters

(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 the government to protect the rich against the poor. But did not the government defend its

(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

(H.) In short, it comes to this, that whereas the socalled government of protection of property by means of

the lawcourts 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.

(H.) If the government habitually destroyed wealth, the country must have been poor?

(H.) Yet amidst this poverty the persons for the sake of whom the government existed insisted on being rich

(H.) What _must_ happen if in a poor country some people insist on being rich at the expense of others?

(I) Unutterable poverty for the others. All this misery, then, was caused by the destructive government of

(H.) Nay, it would be incorrect to say so. The government itself was but the necessary result of the careless,

aimless tyranny of the times; it was but the machinery of tyranny. Now tyranny has come to an end, and we

no longer need such machinery; wer could not possibly use it since we are free. Therefore in your sense of the

(I) Yes, I do. But I will ask you some more questions as to how you as free men manage your affairs.

"Well," I said, "about those `arrangements' which you spoke of as taking the place of government, could you

"Neighbour, " he said, "although we have simplified our lives a great deal from what they were, and have got

rid of many conventionalities and many sham wants, which used to give our forefathers much trouble, yet our

life is too complex for me to tell you in detail by means of words how it is arranged; you must find that out

by living amongst us. It is true that I can better tell you what we don't do than what we do do.

"This is the way to put it," said he: "We have been living for a hundred and fifty years, at least, more or less

in our present manner, and a tradition or habit of life has been growing on us; and that habit has become a

habit of acting on the whole for the best. It is easy for us to live without robbing each other. It would be

possible for us to contend with and rob each other, but it would be harder for us than refraining from strife

"Whereas in the old days," said I, "it was very hard to live without strife and robbery. That's what you mean,

"Yes," he said, "it was so hard, that those who habitually acted fairly to their neighbours were celebrated as

"But as to these days," I said; "you don't mean to tell me that no one ever transgresses this habit of good

"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

"How could we have them," said he, "since there is no rich class to breed enemies against the state by means

Said I: "I thought that I understood from something that fell from you a little while ago that you had abolihed

"It abolished itself, my friend," said he. "As I said before, the civil lawcourts were upheld for the defence of

pivate property; for nobody ever pretended that it was possible to make people act fairly to each other by

means of brute force. Well, private property being abolished, all the laws and all the legal `crimes' which it

had manufactured of course came to an end. Thou shalt not steal, had to be translated into, Thou shalt work in

order to live happily. Is there any need to enforce that commandment by violence?"

"Well," said I, "that is understood, and I agree with it; but how about the crimes of violence? would not their

Said he: "In your sense of the word, we have no criminal law either. Let us look at the matter closer, and see

whence crimes of violence spring. By far the greater part of these in past days were the result of the laws of

private property, which forbade the satisfaction of their natural desires to all but a privileged few, and of the

general visible coercion which came of those laws. All _that_ cause of violent crime is gone. Again, many

violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused overweening jealousy

and the like miseries. Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at the bottom of

them was mostly the idea (a lawmade idea) of the woman being the property of the man, whether he were

husband , father, brother, or what not. _That_ idea has of course vanished with private property, as well as

certain follies about the `ruin' of women for following their natural desires in an illegal way, which of course

"Another cognate cause of crimes of violence was the family tyranny,m which was the subject of so many

novels and stories of the past and which once more was the result of private property. of course that is all

ended, since families are held together by no bond of coercion, legal or social, but by mutual liking and

affection, and everybody is free to come or go as he or she pleases. Furthermore, our standards of honour and

public estimation are very different from the old ones; success in beating our neighbours is a road to renown

now closed, let us hope for ever. Each man is free to exercise his special faculty to the utmost and every one

encourages him in so doing. So that we have got rid of the scowling envy, coupled by the poets with hatred,

and surely with good reason; heaps of unhappiness and illblood were caused by it, which with irritable and

I laughed, and said:"So that you now wihdraw your admission, and say that there is no violence amongst

"No," said he, "I withdraw nothing; as I told you, such things will happen. Hot blood will err sometimes. A

man may strike another, and the stricken strike back again, and the result be a homicide, to put it at the worst.

But what then? Shall the neighbours make it worse still? Shall we think so poorly of each other as to suppose

that the slain man calls on us to revenge him, when we _know_ that if he had been maimed, he would, when

in cold blood and able to weigh all the circumstances, have forgiven his maimer? Or will the death of the

slayer bring the slain man to life again and cure the unhappiness his death has caused? "

"Yes," I said, "but consider, must not the safety of society be safeguarded by some punishment?"

"There, neighbour!" said the old man, with some exultation. " You have hit the mark. That _punishment_ of

which men used to talk so wisely and act so foolishly, what was it but the expression of their fear? And they

had no need to fear, since _theyi.e._, the rulers of societywere dwelling like an armed band in a hostile

country. But we who live amongst our friends need neither fear nor punish. Surely if we, in dread of an

occasional rare homicide, an occasional rough blow, were solemnly and legally to commit homicide and

violence, we could only be a society of ferocious cowards. Don't you think so neighbour?"

"Yet you must understand," said the old man, "that when any violence is committed, we expect the

transgressor to make any atonement possible to him, and he himself expects it. But again, think if the

destruction or serious injury of a man momentarily overcome by wrath or folly can be any atonement to the

Said I: "But suppose the man has a habit of violencekills 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

"And lesser outbreaks of violence," said I "how do you deal with them? for hitherto we have been talking of

Said Hammond: "If the illdoer is not sick or mad (in which case he must be restrained until his sickness or

madness is cured) it is clear that grief and humiliation must follow the illdeed; and society in general will

make that pretty clear to the illdone if he should chance to be dull to it; and again,, some kind of atonement

will follow,at the least, an open acknowledgement of the grief and humiliation. Is it so hard to say, I ask

"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_ wrongdoing is swallowed up by a hope of

revenge for _our_ wrongdoing to him. He has paid the legal penalty, and can `go and sin again' with comfort.

Shall we commit such a folly, then? Remember Jesus had got the legal penalty remitted before he said `Go

and sin no more,' Let alone that in a society of equals you will not find any one to play the part of torturer or

"So," said I, "you consider crime a mere spasmodic disease, which requires no body of criminal law to deal

"Pretty much so," said he; "and since, as I have told you we are a healthy people generally, so we are no

"Well, you have no civil law, and no criminal law. But have you no laws of the market, so to sayno

regulation for the exchange of wares? for you must exchange, even if you have no property."

Said he: "We have no obvious individual exchange, as you saw this morning when you went ashopping; but

of course there are regulations of the markets varying according to the circumstances and guided by general

custom. But as these are matters of general assent which nobody dreams of objecting to, so also we have

made no provision for enforcing them: therefore I don't call them laws. In law, whether it be criminal or civil,

execution always follows judgment, and 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 emprison and the soldier to slay some

actual living person. such follies would make an agreeable market, wouldn't they?"

"Certainly," said I, "that means turning the market into a mere battlefield, in which many people must suffer

as much as in the battlefield of bullet and bayonet. And from what I have seen, i should suppose that your

marketing, great and little, is carried on in a way that makes it a pleasant occupation."

"You are right, neighbour," said he. "Although there are so many, indeed by far the greater number amongst

us, who would be unhappy if they were not engaged in actually making things, and things which turn out

beautiful under their hands,there are many, like the housekeepers I was speaking of, whose delight is in

administration and organization to use longtailed words; I mean people who like keeping things together,

avoiding waste, seeing that nothing sticks fast uselessly. Such people are thoroughly happy in their business,

all the more as they are dealing with actual facts, and not merely passing counters round to see what share

they shall have in the privileged taxation of useful people which was the business of the commercial folk in

Said Hammond, smiling: "I am glad that it is of _me_that you ask that question; I do believe that anybody

else would make you explain yourself, or try to do so, till you were sick 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 politiics,because we have none. If ever you make

a book out4 of this conversation, put this in a chapter by itself, after the model of old Horrebow's Snakes in

"I will not affect not to know what you mean," said he, "but I will tell you at once that the whole system of

rival and contending nations which played so great a part in the `government' of the world of civilisation has

"Nonsense," he said, somewhat snappishly. "Cross the water and see. You will find plenty of variety: the

landscape the building, the diet, the amusements, all variious. The men and women varying in looks as well

as in habits of thought; the costume more various than in the commercial period. How should it add to the

variety or dispel the dulness, to coerce certain families or tribesk, often heterogeneouw and jarring with one

anotherk into certain artificial and mechanical groups and call them nations, and stimulate their

"That's right," said Hammond cheerily; "you can easily understand that now we are freed from this folly it is

obvious to us that by means of this very diversity the different strains of blood in the world can be serviceable

and pleasant to each other, without in the least wanting to rob each other: we are all bent on the same

enterprise, making the most of our lives. And I must tell you whatever quarrels or misunderstandings arise,

they very seldom take plact between people of different race; and consequently since there is less unreason in

"Good," said I, "but as to those matters of politics; as to general differenes of opinioon in one and the same

"No, not at all," said he, somewhat snappishly; "but I do say that differences of opinion about real solid things

need not, and with us do not, crystallise people into parties permanently hostile to one another, with different

theories as to the build of the universe and the progress of time. Isn't that what politics used to mean?"

Said he: "I take you, neighbour; they only _pretended_ to this serious difference of opinion; for if it had

existed they could not have dealt together in the ordinary business of life; couldn't have eaten together,

bought and sold together, gambled together, cheated other people together, but must have fought whenever

they met: which would not have suited them at all. The game of the masters of politics was to cajole or force

the public to pay the expense of a luxurious life and exciting amusement for a few cliques of ambitious

persons: and the _pretence_ of serious difference of opinion belied by every action of their lives, was quite

Said I: "Why nothing, I should hope. But I fear In short, I have been told that political strife was a

"Human nature!" cried the old boy, impetuously; "What human nature? The human nature of paupers, of

slaves, of slaveholders, or the human nature of wealthy freemen? Which? Come tell me that!"

"Well." said I, "I supupose there would be a difference according to circumstances in people's action about

"I should think so, indeed," said he. "At all events, experience shows that it is so. Amongst us, our differences

concern matters of business, and passing events as to them, and could not divide men permanently. As a rule,

the immediate outcome shows which opinion on a given subject is the right one; it is a matter of fact, not of

speculation. For instance, it is clerly not easy to knock up a political party on the question as to whether

haymaking in such and such a countryside shall begin this week or next, when all men agree that it must at

latest begin the week after next, and when any man can go down into the fields himself and see whether the

Said I: "And you settle these differences, great and small, by the will of the majority, I suppose?"

"Certainly," said he; "how else could we settle them? You see in matters which are merely personal which do

not affect the welfare of the communityhow a man shall dress, what he shall eat and drink, what he shall

write and read, and so forththere can be no difference of opinion, and everybody does as he pleases. But

when the matter is of common interest to the whole community, and the doing or not doing something affects

everybody, the majority must have their way; unless the minority were to take up arms and show by force

that they were the effective or real majority; which, however, in a society of men who are free and equal is

little likely to happen; because in such a community the apparent majority _is_ the real majority,w and the

others, as I have hinted before, know tht too well to obstruct from mere pigheadedness; especially as they

"Well," said he, "let us take one of our units of management, a commune, or a ward, or a parish (for we have

all three names, indicating little real distinction between them now, though time was there was a good deal).

In such a district, as you would call it, some neighbours think that something ought to be done or undone: a

new townhall built; a clearance of inconvenient houses; or say a stone bridge substituted for some ugly old

iron one,there you have undoing and doing in one. Well, at the next ordinary meeting of the neighbours, or

Mote, as we call it, according to the ancient tongue of the times before bureaucracy, a neighbour proposes the

change and of course, if everybody agrees, there is an end of discussion except about details. Equally, if no

one backs the proposer`seconds him,' it used to be calledthe matter drops for the time being; a thing not

likely to happen amongst reasonable menk however, as the propose is sure to have talked it over with others

before the Mote. But supposingr the affair proposed and seconded, if a few of the neighbours disagree to it, if

they think that the beastly iron bridge will serve a little longer and they don['t want to be bothered with

building a new one just then, they don't count heads that time, but put off the formal discussion to the next

Mote; and meantimer 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 discusssion 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

t4he division is a wide one, the minority are asked if they will yield to the more general opinion, which they

often, nay, most commonly do. If they refuse, the question is debated a third time, when, if the minority has

not perceptibly grown, they always give way; though I believe there is some halfforgotten rule by which

they might still carry it on further; but I say, what always happens is that they are comvoinced not perhaps tht

their view is the wrong one, but they cannot persuade or force the community to adopt it."

Said he: "As a matter of principle and according to the rule of such cases, the question must then lapse, and

the majority, if so narrow, has to submit to sitting down under the _status quo_. But I must tell you that in

point of fact the minority very seldom enforces this rule, but generally yields in a friendly manner."

"But do you know," said I, "that there is something in all this very like democracy; and I thought that

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_ amongst us to complain of his not always having his own way in the teeth of the

community, when it is clear that _everybody_ cannot have that indulgence. What _is_ to be done?"

Said he: " The only alternatives to our method that I can concieve of are these. First, that we should choose

out, or breed, a class of superior persons capable of judging on all matters without consulting the neighbours;

that, in short, we whould get for ourselves what used to be called an aristocracy of intellect; or, secondly, that

for the purpose of safeguarding the freedom of the individual will we should revert to a system of private

property again, and have slaves and slaveholders once more. What do you think of those two expedients?"

"Well,"said I, "there is a third possibilityto wit, that every man should be quite independent of every other

He looked hard at me for a second or two, and then burst out laughing very heartily; and I confess that I

joined him. When he recovered himself he nodded at me, and said:"Yes, yes, i quite agree with youand so

"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 woek on it if he doesn't agree to its building. At least I suppose not."

He smiled, and said: "Shrewdly put; and yet from the point of view of another planet. If the mam of the

minority does find his feelings hurt, doubtless he may relieve them by refusing to help in building the bridge.

But, dear neighbour, that is not a very effective salve for the wound caused by the `tyranny of a majority' in

our society; because all work that is done is either beneficial or hurtful to every member of the society. The

man is benefited by the bridgebuilding 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 iss benefiting the bridgebuilders 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

bridgebuilding 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 bery unhappiness in times past,

when for every wellfed, contented person you saw a thousand miserable starvelings. Whereas for us, we

grow fat and wellliking on the tyranny; a tyranny, to say the truth, not to be made visible by any to seek for

troubles by calling our peace and plenty and happiness by ill names whose very meaning we have forgotten!"

He sat musing for a little, and then started and said: "Are there any more questions, dear guest? The morning

"Yes," said I. "I was expecting Dick and Clara to make their appearance any moment: but is there time to ask

"Try it, dear neighbourtry it," said old Hammond. "For the more you ask me the better I am pleased; and at

any rate if they do come and find me in the middle of an answer, they must sit quiet and pretend to listen till I

come to an end. It won't hurt them; they will find it quite amusing enough to sit side by side, conscious of

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 aboutto wit, how you get people to work when there is no reward of

"But no reward of labour?" said Hammond, gravely. "The reward of labour is _life_. Is that not enough?"

"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 be paid for the pleasure of creation, which is what excellence in work means,

the next thing we shall hear of will be a bill sent in for the begetting of children."

"Well, but," said I, "the man of the nineteenth century would say there is a natural desire towards the

"Yes, yes," said he, "I know the ancient platitude,wholly untrue; indeed, to us quite meaningless. Fourier,

He said: "Because it implies that all work is suffering, and we are so far from thinking that, that, as you may

have noticed, whereas we are not short of wealth, there is a kind of fear growing up amongst us that we shall

one day be short of work. It is a pleasure which we are afraid of losing, not a pain."

"Yes," said I, "I have noticed that, and I was going to ask you about that also. But in the meantime, what do

"This, that _all_ work is now pleasureable; either because of the hope of gain in honour and wealth with

which the work is done, which causes pleasurable _habit_, as in the case with what you may call mechanical

work; and lastly (and most of our work is of this kind) because there is conscious sensuous pleasure in the

"I see," said I. "Can you now tell me how you have come to this happy condition? For, to speak plainly, this

change from the conditions of the older world seems to me far greater and more important than all the other

"You are right there," said he. "Indeed, you may say rather that it is this change which makes all the others

possible. What is the object of Revolution? Surely to make people happy. Revolution having brought its

foredoomed change about, how can you prevent the counterrevolution from setting in except by making

people happy? What! shall we expect peace and stability from unhappiness? The gathering of grapes from

thorns and figs from thistles is a reasonable expectation compared with that! And happiness without happy

"Most obviously true," said I: for I thought the old boy was preaching a little. "But answer my question, as to

"Briefly," said he, "by the absence of artificial coercion, and the freedom for every man to do what he can do

best, joined to the knowledge of what productions of labour we really want. I must admit that this knowledge

"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

Said he, settling himself in his chair again for a long talk: "It is clear from all that we hear and read, that in

the last age of civilisation men had got into a vicious circle in the matter of production of wares. They had

reached a wonderful facility of production, and in order to make the most of that facility they had gradually

created (or allowed to grow, rather) a most elaborate system of buying and selling, which has been called the

WorldMarket; and that World Market, once set agoing, forced them to go on making more and more of

these wares, whether they needed them or not. So that while (of course) they could not free themselves from

the toil of making real necessities, they created in a neverending series sham or artificial necessaries, which

became, under the iron rule of the aforesaid WorldMarket, of equal importance to them with the real

necessaries which supported life. By all this they burdened themselves with a prodigious mass of work

"Why, then, once they had forced themselves to stagger along under this horrible burden of unnecessary

production, it became impossible for them to look upon labour and its results from any other point of view

than oneto wit, the ceaseless endeavour to expend the least possible amount of labour on any article made

and yet at the same time to make as many articles as possible. To this `cheapening of production,' as it was

called, everything was sacrificed: the happiness of the workman at his work, nay, his most elementary

comfort and bare health, his food, his clothes, his dwelling, his leisure, his amusement, his education"his

life, in shortdid not weigh a grain of sand in the balance against this dire necessity of `cheap production' of

things, a great part of which were not worth producing at all. Nay, we are told, and we must believe it, so

overwhelming is the evidence, though many of our people scarcely _can_ believe it, that even rich and

powerful men, the masters of the poor devils aforesaid, submitted to live amidst sights and sounds and smells

which it is in the very nature of man to abhor and flee from, in order that their riches might bolster up this

supreme folly. The whole community, in fact, was cast into the jaws of this ravening monster, `the cheap

"Dear me!" said I. "But what happened? Did not their cleverness and facility in production master this chaos

of misery at last? Couldn't they catch up with the WorldMarket, and then set to work to devise means for

He smiled bitterly. "Did they even try to?" said he. "I am not sure. You know that according to the old saw

the beetle gets used to living in dung; and these people whether they found the dung sweet or not, certainly

His estimate of the life of the nineteenth century made me catch my breath a little; and I said feebly, "But the

"Heyday!" quoth he. "What's that you are saying? the laboursaving machines? Yes, they were meant to

`save labour' (or, to speak more plainly, the lives of men) on one piece of work in order that it might be

expendedI will say wastedon another, probably useless, piece of work. Friend, all their devices for

cheapening labour simply resulted in increasing the burden of labour. The appetite of the WorldMarket

grew with what it fed on: the countries within the ring of `civilisation' (that is organised misery) were glutted

with the abortions of the market, and force and fraud were used unsparingly to `open up' countries _outside_

that pale. This process of `opening up' is a strange one to those who have read the professions of the men of

that period and do not understand their practice; and perhaps shows us at its worst the great vice of the

nineteenth century, the use of hypocrisy and cant to evade the responsibility of vicarious ferocity. When the

civilised WorldMarket coveted a country not yet in its clutches some transparent pretext was foundthe

suppression of a slavery different from, and not so cruel as that of commerce; the pushing of a religion no

longer believed in by its promoters; the `rescue' of some desperado or homicidal madman whose misdeeds

had got him into trouble amongst the natives of the `barbarous' countryany stick, in short, which would

beat the dog at all. Then some bold, unprincipled, ignorant adventurerer was found (no difficult task in the

days of competition), and he was bribed to `create a market' by breaking up whatever traditional society there

might be in the doomed country, and by destroying whatever leisure or pleasure he found there. He forced

wares on the natives which they did not want, and took their natural products in `exchange', as this form of

robbery was called, and thereby he `created new wants', to supply which (that is, to be allowed to live by their

new masters) the hapless helpless people had to sell themselves into the slavery of hopeless toil so that they

might have something wherewith to purchase the nullities of `civilisation.' "Ah," said the old man, pointing to

the Museum, "I have read books and papers in there, telling strange stories indeed of the dealings of

civilisation (or organised misery) with `noncivilisation'; from the time when the British Government

deliberately sent blankets infected with smallpox as choice gifts to inconvenient tribes of Redskins, to the

"Excuse me," said I, "but as you know, time pressesd; and I want to keep our question on the straightest line

possible; and I want at once to ask this about these wares made for the WorldMarkethow 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 makeshifts for the things asked for which nobody would have put up

with if they could have got anything else. It was the 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

"Why, yes," said he, "there was one class of goods which they did make thoroughly well, and that was the

class of machines which were used for making things. These were usually quite perfect pieces of

workmanship, admirably adapted to the end in view. So that it may be fairly said that the great achievement

of the nineteenth century was the making of machines which were wonders of invention, skill, and patience,

and which were used for the production of measureless quantities of worthless 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

"And then the overturn," said the old man, smiling, "and the nineteenth century saw itself as a man who has

He was silent a little, and then said: "There are traditionsnay, real historiesin our family about it; my

grandfather was one of its victims. If you know something about it, you will understand what he suffered

when I tell you that he was in those days a genuine artist, a man of genius, and a revolutionist."

"I think I do understand," said I: "but now, as it seems, you have reversed all this?"

"Pretty much so," said he. "The wares which we make are made because they are needed: men make for their

neighbours' use as if they were making for themselves, not for a vague markeet of which they know nothing,

and over which they have no control: as there is no buying and selling, it would be mere insanity to make

goods on the chance of their being wanted; for there is no longer any one who can be _compelled_ to buy

them. So that whatever is made is good, and thoroughly fit for its purpose. Nothing _can_ be made except for

genuine use; therefore no inferior goods are made. Moreover, as aforesaid, we have now found out what we

want; and as we are not driven to make a vast quantity of useless things, we have time and resources enough

to consider our pleasure in making them. All work which would be irksome to do by hand is done by

immensely improved machinery; and in all work which it is a pleasure to do by hand machinery is done

without. There is no difficulty in finding work which suits the special turn of mind for everybody; so that no

man is sacrificed to the wants of another. From time to time, when we have found out that some piece of

work was too disagreeable or troublesome, we have given it up and done altogether without the thing

produced by it. Now, surely you can see that under these circumstances all the work that we do is an exercise

of the mind and body more or less pleasant to be done; so that instead of avoiding work everybody seeks it:

and, since people have got defter in doing the work generation after generation, it has become so easy to do,

that it seems as if there were less done, though probably more is produced. I suppose this explains that fear,

which I hinted at just now, of a possible scarcity in work, which perhaps you have already noticed, and which

"But do you think," said I, "that there is any fear of a workfamine amongst you?"

"No, I do not," said he, "and I will tell why; it is each man's business to make his own work pleasanter and

pleasanter, which of course tends towards raising the standard of excellence, as no man enjoys turning out

work which is not a credit to him, and also to greater deliberation in turning it out; and there is such a vast

number of things which can be treated as works of art, that this alone gives employment to a host of deft

people. Again, if art be inexhaustible, so is science also; and though it is no longer the only innocent

occupation which is thought worth an intelligent man spending his time upon, as it once was, yet there are,

and I suppose will be, many people who are excited by its conquest of difficulties, and care for it more than

for anything else. Again, as more and more of pleasure is imported into work, I think we shall take up kinds

of work which produce desirable wares, but which we gave up because we could not carry them on

pleasantly. Moreover, I think that it is only in parts of Europe which are more advanced than the rest of the

world that you will hear this talk of the fear of a workfamine. those lands which were once the colonies of

Great Britain, for instance, and especially America, suffered so terribly from the full force of the last days of

civilisation and became such horrible places to live in, that they are now very backward in all that makes life

pleasant. Indeed, one may say that for nearly a hundred years the people of the northern parts of America

have beeen engaged in gradually making a dwelling place out of a stinking dustheap; and there is still a

"Well," said I, "I am exceedingly glad to think that you have such a prospect of happiness before you. But I

As I spoke, I heard footsteps near the door; the latch yielded, and in came our two lovers looking so

handsome that one had no feeling of shame in looking on at their littleconcealed lovemaking; 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

"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,

"As to noise, my dear kinsman," said Clara, "You will very soon be disturbed by the noise of the dinnerbell,

which I should think will be very pleasant music to our guest, who breakfasted early, it seems, and probably

I said: "Well, since you have spoken the word, I begin to feel that it is so; but I have been feeding myself with

wonder this long time past: really, it's quite true," quoth I, as I saw her smile, O so prettily!

But just then from some tower high up in the air came the sound of silvery chimes playing a sweet clear tune,

that sounded to my unaccustomed ears like the song of the first blackbird in the spring, and called a rush of

memories to my mind, some of bad times, some of good but all sweetened now into mere pleasure.

"No more questions now before dinner," said Clara; and she took my hand as an affectionate child would, and

led me out of the room and down stairs into the forecourt of the Museum, leaving the two Hammonds to

We went into the marketplace which I had been in before, a thinnish stream of elegantly(1) dressed people

going in along with us. We turned into the cloister and came to a richly moulded and carved doorway, where

a very pretty darkhaired 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 wallpictures (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

oldworld myths and imaginations which in yesterday's world only about half a dozen people in the country

knew anything about; and when the two Hammonds sat down opposite to us, I said to the old man, pointing

1 "Elegant," I mean, as a Persian pattern is elegant; not like a rich "elegant" lady out for a morning call. I

"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

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

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 woodend, 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 riverside, and fell to giving us our dinner. As to this, as at our breakfast, everything was cooked and

served with a a daintiness which showed that those who had prepared it were interested in it; but there was no

excess either of quantity or of gourmandise; everything was simple, though so excellent of its kind; and it

was made clear to us that this was no feast, only an ordinary meal. The glass, crockery, and plate were very

beautiful to my eyes, used to the study of mediaeval art; but a nineteenth century clubhaunter would, I

daresay, have found them rough and lacking in finish; the crockery being leadglazed potware. though

beautifully ornamented; the only porcelain being here and there a piece of old oriental ware. The glass, again,

though elegant and quaint, and very varied in form, was somewhat bubbled and hornier in texture than the

commercial articles of the nineteenth century. The furniture and general fittings of the hall were much of a

piece with the tablegear, beautiful in form and highly ornamental, but without the commercial `finish' of the

joiners and cabinetmakers 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

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 subjectmatter of the pictures, as though it had troubled her.

She looked up at them, and said: "How is it that though we are so interested with our life for the most part,

yet when people take to writing poems or painting pictures they seldom deal with our modern life, or if they

do, take good care to make their poems or pictures unlike that life? Are we not good enough to paint

ourselves? How is it that we find the dreadful times of the past so interesting to usin pictures and poetry?"

Old Hammond smiled. "It always was so, and I suppose always will be," said he, "however it may be

explained. It is true that in the nineteenth century, when there was so little art and so much talk about it, there

was a theory that art and imaginative literature ought to deal with contemporary life; but they never did so;

for, if there was any pretence of it, the author always took care (as Clara hinted just now) to disguise, or

exaggerate, or idealise, and in some way or another make it strange; so that, for all the verisimilitude there

"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 soandso in suchandsuch a place. That's what these pictures and

"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

"Second childhood," said I in a low voice, and then blushed at my double rudeness, and hoped that he hadn't

heard. But he had, and turned to me smiling, and said: "Yes why not? And for my part, I hope it may last

long; and that the world's next period of wise and unhappy manhood, if that should happen, will speedily lead

us to a third childhood: if indeed this age be not our third. Meantime, my friend, you must know that we are

too happy, both individually and collectively, to trouble ourselves about what is to come hereafter."

"Well, for my part," said Clara, "I wish we were interesting enough to be written or painted about."

Dick answered her with some lover's speech, impossible to be written down, and then we sat quiet a little.

Dick broke the silence at last, saying: "Guest, forgive us for a little afterdinner dulness. What would you

like to do? Shall we have out Greylocks and trot back to Hammersmith? or will you come with us and hear

some Welsh folk sing in a hall close by here? or would you like presently to come with me into the City and

In point of fact, I did not by any means want to be "amused" just then; and also I rather felt as if the old man,

with his knowledge of past times, and even a kind of inverted sympathy for them caused by his active hatred

of them, was as it were a blanket for me against the cold of this very new world, where I was, so to say,

stripped bare of every habitual thought and way of acting; and I did not want to leave him too soon. He came

"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 since I know he has something else to ask me.

So go to your Welshmen, by all means; but first bring us another bottle of wine to this nook, and then be off

as soon as you like; and come again and fetch our friend to go westward, but not too soon."

Dick nodded smilingly, and the old man and I were soon alone in the great hall, the afternoon sun was

"Does anything especially puzzle you about our way of living, now you have heard a good deal and seen a

"It well may," said he, "so great as the change is. It would be difficult indeed to tell you the whole story,

perhaps impossible: knowledge, discontent, treachery, disappointment, ruin, misery, despairthose who

worked for the change because they could see further than other people went through all these phases of

suffering; and doubtless all the time the most of men looked on, not knowing what was doing, thinking it all a

"Tell me one thing, if you can," said I. "Did the change, the `revolution' it used to be called, come

"Peacefully?" said he; "what peace was there amongst those poor confused wretches of the nineteenth

century? It was war from beginning to end: bitter war, till hope and pleasure put an end to it."

"Do you mean actual fighting with weapons?" said I, "or the strikes and lockouts and starvation of which we

"Both, both," he said. "As a matter of fact, the history of the terrible period of transition from commercial

slavery to freedom may thus be summarised. When the hope of realising a communal condition of life for all

men arose, quite late in the nineteenth century, the power of the middle classes, the then tyrants of society,

was so enormous and crushing, that to almost all men, even those who had, you may say despite themselves,

despite their reason and judgement, conceived such hopes, it seemed a dream. So much was this the case that

some of those more enlightened men who were then called Socialists, although they well knew, and even

stated in public, that the only reasonable condition of Society was that of pure Communism (such as you now

see around you), yet shrunk from what seemed to them the barren task of preaching the realism of a happy

dream. Looking back now, we can see that the great motivepower of the change was a longing for freedom

and equality, akin if you please to the unreasonable passion of a lover; a sickness of heart that rejected with

loathing the aimless solitary life of the welleducated men of that time: phrases, my dear friend, which have

lost their meaning to us of the present day; so far removed we are from the dreadful facts which they

"Well, these men, though conscious of this feeling, had no faith in it, as a means of bringing about the

change. Nor was that wonderful: for looking around them they saw the huge mass of the oppressed classes

too much burdened with the misery of their lives, and too much overwhelmed by the selfishness of misery to

be able to form a conception of any escape from it except by the ordinary way prescribed by the system of

slavery under which they lived; which was nothing more than a remote chance of climbing out of the

"Therefore, though they knew that the only reasonable aim for those who would better the world was a

condition of equality; in their impatience and despair they managed to convince themselves that if they could

by hook or by crook get the machinery of production and the management of property so altered that the

`lower classes'(so the horrible word ran) might have their slavery somewhat ameliorated, they would be ready

to fit into this machinery, and would use it for bettering their condition still more and still more, until at last

the result would be a practical equality (they were very fond of using the word `practical'), because `the rich'

would be forced to pay so much for keeping `the poor' in a tolerable condition that the condition of riches

Said old Hammond: "Well, since you follow me, you will see that as a theory this was not altogether

"Well, don't you see," said he, "because it involved the making of a machinery by those who didn't know

what they wanted the machines to do. So far as the masses of the oppressed class furthered this scheme of

improvement, they did it to get themselvesd improved slaverationsas many of them as could. And if those

classes had really been incapable of being touched by that instinct which produced the passion for freedom

and equality aforesaid, what would have happened, I think, would have been this: that a certain part of the

working classes would have been so far improved in condition that they would have approached the condition

of the middling rich men; but below them would have been a great class of most miserable slaves, whose

slavery would have been far more hopeless than the older classslavery had been."

"Why, of course," said he, "just that instinct for freedom aforesaid. it is true that the slaveclass could not

conceive the happiness of a free life. Yet they grew to understand (and very speedily too) that they were

oppressed by their masters, and they assumed, you see how justly, that they could do without them, though

perhaps they scarce knew how; so that it came to this that though they could not look forward to the

happiness or peace of the freeman, they did at least look forward to the war which a vague hope told them

"Could you tell me rather more closely what actually took place?" said I; for I thought _him_ rather vague

"Yes, he said," "I can. That machinery of life for the use of people who didn't know what they wanted of it,

and which was known at the time as State Socialism, was partly put in motion, though in a very piecemeal

way. But it did not work smoothly; it was, of course, resisted at every turn by the capitalists; and no wonder,

for it tended more and more to upset the commercial system I have told you of, without providing anything

really effective in its place. The result was growing confusion, great suffering amongst the working classes,

and, as a consequence, great discontent. For a long time matters went on like this. The power of the upper

classes had lessened, as their command over wealth lessened, and they could not carry things wholly by the

high hand as they had been used to in earlier days. So far the State Socialists were justified by the result. On

the other hand, the working classes were illorganised, and growing poorer in reality, in spite of the gains

(also real in the long run) which they had forced from the masters. Thus matters hung in the balance; the

masters could not reduce their slaves to complete subjection, though they put down some feeble and partial

riots easily enough. The workers forced their masters to grant them ameliorations, real or imaginary, of their

condition, but could not force freedom from them. At last came a great crash. To explain this you must

understand that very great progress had been made amongst the workers, though as before said but little in the

I played the innocent and said: "In what direction could they improve if not in livelihood?"

Said he: "In the power to bring about a state of things in which livelihood would be full, and easy to gain.

They had at last learned how to combine after a long period of mistakes and disasters. The workmen had now

a regular organisation in the struggle against their masters, a struggle which for more than half a century had

been accepted as an inevitable part of the conditions of the modern system of labour and production. This

combination had now taken the form of a federation of all or almost all the recognised wagepaid

employments, and it was by its means that those betterments of the condition of the workmen had been forced

from the masters: and though they were not seldom mixed up with the rioting that happened, especially in the

earlier days of their organisation, it by no means formed an essential part of their tactics; indeed at the time I

am now speaking of they had got to be so strong that most commonly the mere threat of a `strike' was enough

to gain any minor point: because they had given up the foolish tactics of the ancient trades unions of calling

out of work a part only of the workers of such and such an industry, and supporting them while out of work

on the labour of those that remained in. By this time they had a biggish fund of money for the support of

strikes, and could stop a certain industry altogether for a time if they so determined."

Said I: "Was there not a serious danger of such moneys being misusedof jobbery in fact?"

"Though all this happened so long ago, I still feel the pain of mere shame when I have to tell you that it was

more than a danger: that such rascality often happened; indeed more than once the whole combination

seemed dropping to pieces because of it: but at the time of which I am telling, things looked so threatening,

and to the workmen at least the necessity of their dealing with the fastgathering trouble which the

labourstruggle had brought about, was so clear, that the conditions of the times had begot a deep seriousness

amongst all reasonable people; a determination which put aside all nonessentials, and which to thinking men

was ominous of the swiftlyapproaching change: such an element was too dangerous for mere traitors and

selfseekers, and one by one they were thrust out and mostly joined the declared reactionaries."

"How abaout those ameliorations," said I; "what were they? or rather of what nature?"

Said he: "Some of them, and these of the most practical importance to the men's livelihood, were yielded by

the masters by direct compulsion on the part of the men; the new conditions of labour so gained were indeed

only customary, enforced by no law: but, once established, the masters durst not attempt to withdraw them in

face of the growing power of the combined workers. Some again were steps on the path of `State Socialism';

the most important of which can be speedily summed up. At the end of the nineteenth century the cry arose

for compelling the masters to employ their men a less number of hours in the day: this cry gathered volume

quickly, and the masters had to yield to it. But it was, of course, clear that unless this meant a higher price for

the work per hour, it would be a nulliity, and that the masters, unless forced, would reduce it to that.

Therefore after a long struggle another law was passed fixing a minimum price for labour in the most

important industries; which again had to be supplemented by a law fixing the maximum price on the chief

"You were getting perilously near to the late Roman poorrates," said I, smiling, "and the doling out of bread

"So many said at the time," said the old man drily; "and it has long been a commonplace that that slough

awaits State Socialism in the end, if it gets to the end, which as you know it did not with us. However, it went

further than this minimum and maximum business, which by the bye we can now see was necessary. The

government now found it imperative on them to meet the outcry of the master class at the approaching

destruction of commerce (as desirable, had they known it, as the extinction of the cholera, which has since

happily taken place). And they were forced to meet it by a measure hostile to the masters, the establishment

of government factories for the production of necessary wares, and markets for their sale. These measures

taken altogether did do something: they were in fact of the nature of regulations made by the commander of a

beleaguered city. But of course to the privileged classes it seemed as if the end of the world were come when

"Nor was that altogether without a warrant: the spread of communistic theories and the partial practice of

State Socialism had at first disturbed, and at last almost paralysed the marvellous system of commerce under

which the old world had lived so feverishly, and had produced for some few a life of gambler's pleasure, and

for many, or most, a life of mere misery: over and over again came `bad times' as they were called, and

indeed they were bad enough for the wageslaves. The year 1952 was one of the worst of these times; the

workmen suffered dreadfully: the partial, inefficient government factories, which were terribly jobbed, all but

broke down, and a vast part of the population had for the time being to be fed on undisguised `charity' as it

"The Combined Workers watched the situation with mingled hope and anxiety. They had already formulated

their general demands; but now by a solemn and universal vote of the whole of their federated societies, they

insisted on the first step being taken toward carrying out their demands: this step would have led directly to

handing over the management of the whole natural resources of the country, together with the machinery for

using them into the power of the Combined Workers, and the reduction of the privileged classes into the

position of pensioners obviously dependent on the pleasure of the workers. The `Resolution', as it was called,

which was widely published in the newspapers of the day was in fact a declaration of war, and was so

accepted by the master class. They began henceforward to prepare for a firm stand against the `brutal and

ferocious communism of the day', as they phrased it. And as they were in many ways still very powerful, or

seemed to be, they still hoped by means of brute force to regain some of what they had lost, and perhaps in

the end the whole of it. It was said amongst them on all hands that it had been a great mistake of the various

governments not to have resisted sooner; and the liberals and radicals (the name as perhaps you may know of

the more democratically inclined part of the ruling classes) were much blamed for having led the world to

this pass by their mistimed pedantry and foolish sentimentality: and one Gladstone, or Gledstein (probably,

judging by this name, of Scandinavian descent), a notable politician of the nineteenth century, was especially

singled out for reprobation in this respect. I need scarcely point out to you the absurdity of all this. But

terrible tragedy lay hidden behind this grinning through a horsecollar of the reactionary party. `The

insatiable greed of the lower classes must be repressed'`The people must be taught a lesson'these were

the sacramental phrases current amongst the reactionists, and ominous enough they were."

The old man stopped to look keenly at my attentive and wondering face, and then said:

"I know, dear guest, that I have been using words and phrases which few people amongst us could understand

without long and laborious explanation; and not even then perhaps. But since you have not yet gone to sleep,

and since I am speaking to you as to a being from another planet, I may venture to ask you if you have

"O yes," said I, "I quite understand: pray go on; a great deal of what you have been saying was

"Yes," said he gravely, "when you were dwelling in the other planet. Well, now for the crash aforesaid."

"On some comparatively trifling occasion a great meeting was summoned by the workmen leaders to meet in

Trafalgar Square (about the right to meet in which place there had for years and years been bickering). The

civic bougeois guard (called the police) attacked the said meeting with bludgeons, according to their custom;

many people were hurt in the _m l e_, of whom five in all died, either trampled to death on the spot, or from

the effects of their cudgeling; the meeting was scattered, and some hundreds of prisoners cast into gaol. A

similar meeting had been treated in the same way a few days before at a place called Manchester, which has

now disappeared. Thus the `lesson' began. The whole country was thrown into a ferment by this; meetings

were held which attempted some rough organisation for the holding of another meeting to retort on the

authorities. A huge crowd assembled in Trafalgar Square and the neighborhood (then a place of crowded

streets), and was too big for the bludgeonarmed police to cope with; there was a good deal of dryblow

fighting; three or four of the people were killed, and half a score of policemen were crushed to death in the

throng, and the rest got away as they could. This was a victory for the people as far as it went. The next day

all London (remember what it was in those days) was in a state of turmoil. Many of the rich fled into the

country; the executive got together soldiery, but did not dare to use them; and the police could not be massed

in any one place, because riots or threats of riots were everywhere. But in Manchester, where the people were

not so courageous or not so desperate as in London, several of the popular leaders were arrested. In London a

convention of leaders was got together from the Federation of Combined Workmen, and sat under the old

revolutionary name of the Committee of Public Safety; but as they had no drilled and armed body of men to

direct, they attempted no aggressive measures, but only placarded the walls with somewhat vague appeals to

the workmen not to allow themselves to be trampled upon. However, they called a meeting on Trafalgar

"Meantime the town grew no quieter, and business came pretty much to an end. The newspapersthen, as

always hitherto, almost entirely in the hands of the mastersclamored 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, wellfed, fullblooded young men, and had plenty of stomach for fighting; but

the Government did not dare to use them, and contented itself with getting full powers voted to it by the

Parliament for suppressing any revolt, and bringing up more and more soldiers to London. Thus passed the

week after the great meeting; almost as large a one was held on the Sunday, which went off peaceably on the

whole, as no opposition to it was offered, and again the people cried `victory'. But on the Monday the people

woke up to find that they were hungry. During the last few days there had been groups of men parading the

streets asking (or, if you please, demanding) money to buy food; and what for goodwill, what for fear, the

richer people gave them a good deal. The authorities of the parishes also (I haven't time to explain that phrase

at present) gave willynilly what provisions they could to wandering people; and the Government, by means

of its feeble national workshops, also fed a good number of halfstarved folk. But in addition to this, several

bakers' shops and other provision stores had been emptied without a great deal of disturbance. So far, so

good. But on the Monday in question the Committee of Public Safety, on the one hand afraid of general

unorganised pillage, and on the other emboldened by the wavering conduct of the authorities, sent a

deputation provided with carts and all necessary gear to clear out two or three big provision stores in the

centre of town, leaving papers with the shop managers promising to pay the price of them: and also in the part

of the town where they were strongest they took possession of several bakers' shops and set men at work in

them for the benefit of the people;all of which was done with little or no disturbance, the police assisting in

keeping order at the sack of the stores, as they would have done at a big fire."

"But at this last stroke, the reactionaries were so alarmed, that they were determined to force the executive

into action. The newspapers next day all blazed into the fury of frightened people, and threatened the people,

the Government, and everybody they could think of, unless `order were at once restored'. A deputation of

leading commercial people waited on the Government and told them that if they did not at once arrest the

Committee of Public Safety, they themselves would gather a body of men, arm them, and fall on `the

"They, together with a number of the newspaper editors, had a long interview with the heads of the

Government and two or three military men, the deftest in their art that the country could furnish. The

deputation came away from that interview, says a contemporary eyewitness, smiling and satisfied, and said

no more about raising an antipopular army, but that afternoon left London with their families for their

"The next morning the government proclaimed a state of siege in London,a thing common enough

amongst the absolutist governments on the Continent, but unheard of in England in those days. They

appointed the youngest and cleverest of their generals to command the proclaimed district; a man who had

won a certain sort of reputation in the disgraceful wars in which the country had been long engaged from time

to time. The newspapers were in ecstacies, and all the most fervent of the reactionaries now came to the front;

men who in ordinary times were forced to keep their opinions to themselves or their immediate circle; but

who began to look forward to crushing once for all the Socialist, and even the democratic tendencies, which,

said they had been treated with such foolish indulgence for the last sixty years.

"But the clever general took no visible action; and yet only a few of the minor newspapers abused him;

thoughtful men gathered from this that a plot was hatching. As for the Committee of Public Safety, whatever

they thought of their position, they had now gone too far to draw back; and many of them, it seems, thought

the Government would not act. They went on quietly organising their food supply, which was a miserable

driplet when all is said; and also as a retort to the state of siege, they armed as many men as they could in the

quarter where they were strongest, but did not attempt to drill or organise them, thinking, perhaps, that they

could not at 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 weekend; though there were riots in many places of the provinces, which were quelled by the

authorities without much trouble. The most serious of these were at Glasgow and Bristol.

"Well, the Sunday of the meeting came, and great crowds came to Trafalgar Square in procession, the greater

part of the Committee amongst them, surrounded by their band of men armed somehow or other. The streets

were quite peaceful and quiet, though there were many spectators to see the procession pass. Trafalgar Square

had no body of police in it; the people took quiet possession of it, and the meeting began. The armed men

stood round the principal platform, and there were a few others armed amidst the general crowd; but by far

"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

"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 redcoats; the armed men of the Committee stood undecided, not knowing what to do; and indeed this

new influx so jammed the crowd together that, unorganised as they were, they had little chance of working

through it. They had scarcely grasped the fact of their enemies being there, when another column of soldiers,

pouring out of the streets which led into the great southern road going down to Parliament House (still

existing, and called the Dung Market), and also from the embankment by the side of the Thames, marched

up, pushing the crowd into a denser and denser mass, and formed along the south side of the Square. Then

any of those who could see what was going on, knew at once that they were in a trap, and could only wonder

"The closelypacked 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 amongst them) it seemed as if the end of the world had come, and today

seemed strangely different from yesterday. No sooner were the soldiers drawn up aforesaid than, says an

eyewitness, `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 a legal right to fire on the crowd

else, and that he would do so. The crowd took it as a challenge of some sort, and a hoarse threatening roar

went up from them; and after that there was comparative silence for a little, till the officer had got back into

the ranks. I was near the edge of the crowd, towards the soldiers,' says this eyewitness, `and I saw three little

machines being wheeled out in front of the ranks, which I knew for mechanical guns. I cried out, "Throw

yourselves down! they are going to fire!" But no one scarcely could throw himself down, so tight as the

crowds were packed, I heard a sharp order given, and wondered where I should be the next minute; and

thenIt was as if the earth had opened, and hell had come up bodily amidst us. It is no use trying to describe

the scene that followed. Deep lanes were mowed amidst the thick crowd; the dead and dying covered the

ground, and the shrieks and wails and cries of horror filled all the air, till it seemed as if there was nothing

else in the world but murder and death. Those of our armed men who were still unhurt cheered wildly and

opened a scattering fire on the soldiers. One or two soldiers fell; and I saw the officers going up and down the

ranks uurging 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 machinegun 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

horrorstricken 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,

"So says our eyewitness. 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

I listened, trembling with excitement. The old man's eyes glittered and his face flushed as he spoke, and told

the tale of what I had often thought might happen. Yet I wondered that he should have got so elated about a

"How fearful! And I suppose that this massacre put an end to the whole revolution for that time?"

He filled his glass and mine, and stood up and cried out, "Drink this glass to the memory of those who died

"That massacre of Trafalgar Square began the civil war, though, like all such events, it gathered head slowly,

"Terrible as the massacre was, and hideous and overpowering as the first terror had been, when the people

had time to think about it, their feeling was one of anger rather than fear; although the military organisation

of the state of siege was now carried out without shrinking by the clever young general. For though the

rulingclasses 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 socalled `liberal' paper (the Government of the day was of that complexion), which, after a preamble

in which it declared its undeviating sympathy with the cause of labor, proceeded to point out that in times of

revolutionary disturbance 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 _acm _

of human wisdom and mercy, and exulted in the inauguration of an epoch of reasonable democracy free from

"The other exception was a paper thought to be one of the most violent opponents of democracy, and so it

was; but the editor of it found his manhood, and spoke for himself and not for his paper. In a few simple,

indignant words he asked people to consider what a society was worth which had to be defended by the

massacre of unarmed citizens, and called on the Government to withdraw their state of siege and put the

general and his officers who fired on the people on their trial for murder. He went further, and declared that

whatever his opinion might be as to the doctrine of the Socialists, he for one should throw in his lot with the

people, until the Government atoned for their atrocity by showing that they were prepared to listen to the

demands of men who knew what they wanted, and whom the decrepitude of society forced into pushing their

"Of course, this editor was immediately arrested by the military power; but his bold words were already in

the hands of the public, and produced a great effect: so great an effect that the Government, after some

vacillation, withdrew the state of siege; though at the same time it strengthened the military organisation and

made it more stringent. Three of the Committee for Public Safety had been slain in Trafalgar Square: of the

rest, the greater part went back to their old place of meeting, and there awaited the event calmly. They were

arrested there on the Monday morning, and would have been shot at once by the general, who was a mere

military machine, if the Government had not shrunk before the responsibility of killing men without any trial.

There was at first a talk of trying them by a special commission of judges, as it was called_i.e._, before a

set of men bound to find them guilty and whose business it was to do so. But with the Government the cold

fit had succeeded to the hot one; and the prisoners were brought before a jury at the assizes. There a fresh

blow awaited the Government; for in spite of the judge's charge, which distinctly instructed the jury to find

the prisoners guilty, they were acquitted, and the jury added to their verdict a presentment, in which they

condemned the action of the soldiery, in the queer phraseology of the day, as `rash, unfortunate, and

unnecessary'. The Committee of Public Safety renewed its sittings, and from thenceforth was a popular

rallyingpoint in opposition to the Parliament. The Government now gave way on all sides, and made a show

of yielding to the demands of the people, though there was a widespread plot for effecting a _coup d' tat_ set

on foot between the leaders of the two socalled opposing parties in the parliamentary faction fight. The

wellmeaning part of the public was overjoyed, and thought that all danger of a civil war was over. The

victory of the people was celebratedd by huge meetings held in the parks and elsewhere, in memory of the

"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 wiithout legality to back them. although the Government and

Parliament had the lawcourts, 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 selfseekers and traitors, they were honest, courageous men, and many of

them were endowed with considerable talent of other kinds. But now that the times called for immediate

action, came forward the men capable of setting it on foot; and a new network of workmen's associations

grew up very speedily, whose avowed single object was the tiding over of the ship of the community into a

simple condition of Communism; and as they practically undertook also the management of the ordinary

labourwar, they soon became the mouthpiece and intermediary of the whole of the working classes; and the

manufacturing profitgrinders now found themnselves powerless before this combination; unless _their_

committee, Parliament, plucked up courage to begin the civil war again, and to shoot right and left, they were

bound to yield to the demands of the men whom they employed, and pay higher and higher wages for shorter

and shorter day's work. Yet one ally they had, and that was the rapidly approaching breakdown of the whole

system founded on the WorldMarket and its supply; which now became so clear to all people, that the

middle classes, shocked for the moment into condemnation of the Government for the great massacre, turned

round nearly in a mass, and called on the Government to look to matters, and put an end to the tyranny of the

"Thus stimulated, the reactionist plot exploded probably before it was ripe; but this time the people and their

leaders were forewarned, and, before the reactionaries could get under way, had taken the steps they thought

"The Liberal Government (clearly by collusion) was beaten by the Conservatives, though the latter were

nominally much in the minority. The popular representatives in the House understood pretty well what this

meant, and after an attempt to fight the matter out by divisions in the House of Commons, they made a

protest, left the House, and came in a body to the Committee of Public Safety: and the civil war began again

"Yet its first act was not one of mere fighting. The new Tory Government determined to act, yet durst not

reenact the state of siege, but it sent a body of soldiers and police to arrest the Committee of Public Safety in

the lump. They made no resistance, though they might have done so, as they had now a considerable body of

men who were quite prepared for extremities. But they were determined to try first a weapon which they

"The members of the Committee went off quietly to prison; but they had left their soul and their organisation

behind them. For they depended not on a carefully arranged centre with all kinds of checks and

counterchecks about it, but on a huge mass of people in thorough sympathy with the movement, bound

together by a great number of small centres with very simple instructions. These instructions were now

"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 publicno newspapers appeared; and it was only towards

noon that a few straggling sheets, about the size of the gazettes of the seventeenth century, worked by

policemen, soldiers, managers, and presswriters, were dribbled through the streets. They were greedily

seized on and read; but by this time the serious part of their news was stale, and people did not need to be told

that the GENERAL STRIKE had begun. The railways did not run, the telegraphwires were unserved; flesh,

fish, and green stuff brought to market was allowed to lie there still packed and perishing; the thousands of

middleclass 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 amongst those of them who could

throw off the fear of what was to follow, there was, I am told, a certain enjoyment of this unexpected

"So passed the first day, and towards evening the Government grew quite distracted. They had but one

resource for putting down any popular movementto wit, mere bruteforce; but there was nothing for them

against which to use their army and police: no armed bodies appeared in the streets; the offices of the

Federated Workmen were now, in appearance, at least, turned into places for the relief of people thrown out

of work and under the circumstances, they durst not arrest the men engaged in such business, all the more, as

even that night many quite respectable people applied at these offices for relief, and swallowed down the

charity of the revolutionists along with their supper. So the Government massed soldiers and police here and

thereand sat still for that night, fully expecting on the morrow some manifesto from the `rebels', as they

now began to be called which would give them an opportunity of acting in some way or another. They were

disappointed. The ordinary newspapers gave up the struggle that morning, and only one very violent

reactionary paper (called the _Daily Telegraph_) attempted an appearance, and rated `the rebels' in good set

terms for their folly and ingratitude in tearing out the bowels of their `common mother', the English Nation,

for the benefit of a few greedy paid agitators, and the fools whom they were deluding. On the other hand, the

Socialist papers (of which three only, representing somewhat different schools, were published in London)

came out full to the throat of wellprinted matter. They were greedily bought by the whole public who, of

course, like the Government, expected a manifesto in them. But they found no word of reference to the great

subject. It seemed as if their editors had ransacked their drawers for articles which would have been in place

forty years before, under the technical name of educational articles. Most of these were admirable and

straightforward expositions of the doctrines and practice of Socialism, free from haste and spite and hard

words, and came upon the public with a kind of Mayday freshness, amidst the worry and terror of the

moment; and though the knowing well understood that the meaning of this move in the game was mere

defiance, and a token of irreconcilable hostility to the then rulers of society, and though, also, they were

meant for nothing else by `the rebels', yet they really had their effect as `educational articles'. However,

`education' of another kind was acting upon the public with irresistible power, and probably cleared their

" As to the Government, they were absolutely terrified by this act of `boycotting'(the slang word then current

for such acts of abstention). Their counsels became wild and vacillating to the last degree: one hour they were

for giving way for the present till they could hatch another plot; the next they all but sent an order for the

arrest in the lump of all the workmen's committees; the next they were on the point of ordering their brisk

young general to take any excuse that offered for another massacre. But when they called to mind that the

soldiery in that `Battle' of Trafalgar Square were so daunted by the slaughter which they had made, that they

could not be got to fire a second volley, they shrank back again from the dreadful courage necessary for

carrying out another massacre. Meantime, the prisoners, brought the second time before the magistrates under

"The strike went on this day also. The workmen's committees were extended and gave relief to great numbers

of people, for they had organised a considerable amount of production of food by men whom they could

depend upon. Quite a number of welltodo people were now compelled to seek relief of them. But another

curious thing happened: a band of young men of the upper classes armed themselves and coolly went

marauding in the streets, taking what suited them of such eatables and portables that they came across in the

shops which had ventured to open. This operation they carried out in Oxford Street, then a great street of

shops of all kinds. The Government, being at that hour in one of their yielding moods, thought this a fine

opportunity for showing their impartiality in the maintenance of `order' and sent to arrest these hungry rich

youths; who, however, surprised the police by a valiant resistance,so that all but three escaped. The

Government did not gain the reputation for impartiality which they expected from this move; for they forgot

that there were no evening papers; and the account of the skirmish spread wide indeed but in a distorted form;

for it was mostly told simply as an exploit of the starving people from the Eastend; and everybody thought it

"That evening the rebel prisoners were visited in their cells by _very_ polite and sympathetic persons, who

pointed out to them what a suicidal course they were following, and how dangerous these extreme courses

were for the popular cause. Says one of the prisoners: `It was great sport comparing notes when we came out

anent the attempt of the Government to "get at" us separately in prison, and how we answered the

blandishments of the highly "intelligent and refined" persons set on to pump us. One laughed; another told

extravagant longbow stories to the envoy; a third held a sulky silence; a fourth damned the polite spy and

"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 illconcealed terror was unendurable. The ruling classes and the

middleclass nonpoliticians who had been their real strength and support, were as sheep lacking a shepherd;

"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 for Public Safety appeared again

before the magistrate, they found themselves treated with the greatest possible courtesyin fact, rather as

envoys and ambassadors than prisoners. In short, the magistrate had received his orders; and with no more to

do than might come of a long stupid speech, which might have been written by Dickens in mockery, he

discharged the prisoners, who went back to their meetingplace and at once began a due sitting. It was high

time. For this third day the mass was fermenting indeed. There was, of course, a vast number of working

people who were not organised in the least in the world; men who had been used to act as their masters drove

them, or rather as the system drove, of which their masters were a part. That system was now falling to

pieces, and the old pressure of the master having been taken off these poor men, it seemed likely that nothing

but the mere animal necessities and passions of men would have any hold on them and that mere general

overturn would be the result. Doubtless this would have happened if it had not been that the huge mass had

been leavened by Socialist opinion in the first place, and in the second place by actual contact with declared

Socialists, many or indeed most of whom were members of those bodies of workmen above said."

"If anything of this kind had happened some years before, when the masters of labour were still looked upon

as the natural rulers of the people and even the poorest and most ignorant man leaned upon them for support,

while they submitted to their fleecing, the entire breakup of all society would have followed. But the long

series of years during which the workmen had learned to despise their rulers, had done away with their

dependence upon them, and they were now beginning to trust (somewhat dangerously, as events proved) in

the nonlegal leaders whom events had thrust forward; and though most of these were now become mere

figureheads, their names and reputations were useful in this crisis as a stopgap."

"The effect of the news, therefore, of the release of the Committee gave the Government some breathing

time: for it was received with the greatest joy by the workers, and even the welltodo 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

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

Said he: "I think from all I have heard that they would have done so if they had met bodies of men armed

however badly, and however badly they had been organised. It seems also as if before the Trafalgar Square

massacre they might as a whole have been depended upon to fire upon an unarmed crowd, though they were

much honeycombed by Socialism. The reason for this was that they dreaded the use by apparently unarmed

men of an explosive called dynamite of which many loud boasts were made by the workers on the eve of

these events; although it turned out to be of little use as a material for war in the way that was expected. Of

course the officers of the soldiery fanned this fear to the utmost, so that the rank and file probably thought on

that occasion that they were being led into a desperate battle with men who were really armed, and whose

weapon was the more dreadful, because it was concealed. After that massacre, however, it was at all times

doubtful if the regular soldiers would fire upon an unarmed or halfarmed crowd."

Said I:"The regular soldiers? Then there were other combatants against the people?"

"Certainly," I said, "you had better go on straight with your story. I see that time is wearing."

Said Hammond: "The Government lost no time in coming to terms with the Committee of Public Safety; for

indeed they could think of nothing else than the danger of the moment. They sent a duly accredited envoy to

treat with these men, who somehow had obtained dominion over people's minds, while the formal rulers had

no hold except over their bodies. There is no need at present to go into the details of the truce (for such it

was) between these high contracting parties, the Government of the empire of Great Britain and a handful of

workingmen (as they were called in scorn in those days), amongst whom, indeed, were some very capable

and `squareheaded' persons, though, as aforesaid the abler men were not then the recognised leaders. The

upshot of it was that all the definite claims of the people had to be granted. We can now see that most of these

claims were of themselves not worth either demanding or resisting; but they were looked on at that time as

most important, and they were at least tokens of revolt against the miserable system of life which was then

beginning to tumble to pieces. One claim, however, was of the utmost immediate importance, and this the

Government tried hard to evade; but as they were not dealing with fools, they had to yield at last. This was

the claim of recognition and formal status for the Committee of Public Safety, and all the associations which

it fostered under its wing. This it is clear meant two things: first, amnesty for the `rebels', great and small,

who, without a distinct act of civil war, could no longer be attacked; and next, a continuance of the organised

revolution. Only one point the Government could gain, and that was a name. The dreadful revolutionary title

was dropped and the body with its branches, acted under the respectable name of the `Board of Conciliation

and its local offices'. Carrying this name, it became the leader of the people in the civil war which soon

"O," said I, somewhat startled, "so the civil war went on, in spite of all that had happened?"

"So it was," said he. "In fact, it was this very legal recognition which made the civil war possible in the

ordinary sense of war; it took the struggle out of the element of mere massacres on one side, and endurance

"Yes," he said; "we have records and to spare of all that; and the essence of them I can give you in a few

words. As I told you, the rank and file of the army was not to be trusted by the reactionists; but the officers

generally were prepared for anything, for they were mostly the very stupidest men in the country. Whatever

the Government might do, a great part of the upper and middle classes were determined to set on foot a

counter revolution; for the Communism which now loomed ahead seemed quite unendurable to them. Bands

of young men, like the marauders in the great strike of whom I told you just now, armed themselves and

drilled and began on any opportunity or pretence to skirmish with the people in the streets. The Government

neither helped them nor put them down, but stood by, hoping that something might come of it. These

`Friends of Order', as they were called, had some successes at first, and grew bolder; they got many officers

of the regular army to help them, and by their means laid hold of munitions of war of all kinds. One part of

their tactics consisted in their guarding and even garrisoning the big factories of the period: they held at one

time, for instance, the whole of that place called Manchester which I spoke of just now. A sort of irregular

war was carried on with varied success all over the country; and at last the Government, which at first

pretended to ignore the struggle, or treat it as mere rioting, definitely declared for `the Friends of Order', and

joined to their bands whatsoever of the regular army they could get together and made a desperate effort to

overwhelm `the rebels',as they were now once more called, and as indeed they called themselves."

"It was too late. All ideas of peace on a basis of compromise had disappeared on either side. The end, it was

seen clearly, must be either absolute slavery for all but the privileged, or a system of life founded on equality

and Communism. The sloth, the hopelessness, and, if I may say so, the cowardice of the last century, had

given place to the eager, restless heroism of a declared revolutionary period. I will not say that the people of

that time foresaw the life we are leading now, but there was a general instinct amongst them towards the

essential part of that life, and many men saw clearly beyond the desperate struggle of the day into the peace

which it was to bring about. The men of that day who were on the side of freedom were not unhappy, I think,

though they were harrassed by hopes and fears, and sometimes torn by doubts, and the conflict of duties hard

"But how did the people, the revolutionists, carry on the war? What were the elements of success on their

I put this question, because I wanted to bring the old man back to the definite history, and take him out of the

He answered: "Well, they did not lack organisers; for the very conflict itself, in days when, as I told you, men

of any strength of mind cast away all consideration for the ordinary business of life, developed the necessary

talent amongst them. Indeed, from all I have read and heard, I much doubt whether, without this seemingly

dreadful civil war, the due talent for administration would have been developed amongst the working men.

Anyhow, it was there, and they soon got leaders far more than equal to the best men amongst the

reactionaries. For the rest, they had no difficulty about the material of their army; for that revolutionary

instinct so acted on the ordinary soldier in the ranks that the greater part, certainly the best part, of the

soldiers joined the side of the people. But the main element of their success was this, that wherever the

working people were not coerced, they worked, not for the reactionists, but for `the rebels'. The reactionists

could get no work done for them outside districts where they were allpowerful: and even in those districts

they were harassed by continual risings; and in all cases and everywhere got nothing done without

obstruction and black looks and sulkiness; so that not only were their armies quite worn out with the

difficulties which they had to meet but the noncombatants 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 became clear to all men that the cause which was once hopeless, was now triumphant, and that

"Well,"said I, "so you got clear out of all your trouble. Were people satisfied with the new order of things

"People?" he said. "Well, surely all must have been glad of peace when it came; especially when they found,

as they must have found, that after all, theyeven the once richwere not living very badly. As to those

who had been poor, all through the war, which lasted about two years, their condition had been bettering, in

spite of the struggle; and when peace came at last, in a very short time they made great strides towards a

decent life. The great difficulty was that the oncepoor had such a feeble conception of the real pleasure of

life: so to say, they did not know how to ask enough, from the new state of things. It was perhaps rather a

good than 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

"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

"It was as I have told you, however," said he. "The party of order, when they recovered from their first

cowardice of surpriseor, if you please, when they fairly saw that, whatever happened, they would be

ruined, fought with great bittereness, and cared little what they did, so long as they injured the enemies who

had destroyed the sweets of life for them. As to `the rebels,' I have told you that the outbreak of actual war

made them careless of trying to save the wretched scraps of wealth that they had. It was a common saying

amongst them, let the country be cleared of everything except valiant living men, rather than that we fall into

"When the conflict was once really begun, it was seen how little of any value there was in the old world of

slavery and inequality. Don't you see what it means? In the times which you are thinking of, and of which

you seem to know so much, there was no hope; nothing but the dull jog of the millhorse under compulsion o

c collar and whip; but in that fightingtime that followed, all was hope: `the rebels' at least felt themselves

strong enough to build up the world again from its dry bones,and they did it too!" said the old man, his

eyes glittering under his beetling brows. He went on: " And their opponents at least and at last learned

something abaout the reality of life, and its sorrows, which theytheir class, I meanhad once known

nothing of. In short, the two combatants, the workman and the gentleman, between them"

"Yes, yes, YES," said he; "that is it. Nor could it have been destroyed otherwise; except, perhaps, bu the

whole of society gradually falling into lower depths, till it should at last reach a condition as rude as

"Yes," said the old man, "the world was being brought to its second birth; how could that take place without a

tragedy? Moreover, think of it. The spirit of the new days, of our days, was to be delight in the life of the

world; intense and overweening love of the very skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells, such as a

lover has in the fair flesh of the woman he loves; this, I say, ws to be the new spirit of the time. All other

moods save this had been exhausted: the unceasing criticism, the boundless curiosity in the ways and

thoughts of man, which was the mood of the ancient Greek, to whom these things were not so much a means,

as an end, was gone past recovery; nor had there been really any shadow of it in the socalled science of the

nineteenth century, which, as you must know, was in the main an appendage to the commercial system; nay,

not seldom an appendage to the police of that system. In spite of appearances, it waslimited and cowardly,

because it did not really believe in itself. It was the outcome, as it was the sole relief, of the unhappiness of

the period which made life so bitter even to the rich, and which, as you may see with your bodily eyes, the

great change has swept away. More akin to our way of looking at life was the spirit of the Middle Ages, to

whom heaven and the life of the next world was such a reality, that it became to them a part of the life upon

the earth; which accordingly they loved and adorned, in spite of the ascetic doctrines of their formal creed

"But that also, with its assured belief in heaven and hell as two countries in which to live, has gone, and now

we do, both in word and in deed, believe in the continuous life of the world of men, and as it were, add every

day of that common life to the little stock of days which our own mere individual experience wins for us: and

consequently we are happy. Do you wonder at it? In times past, indeed, men were told to love their kind, to

believe in the religion of humanity and so forth. But look you, just in the degree that a man had elevation of

mind and refinement enough to be able to value this idea, was he repelled by the obvious aspect of the

individuals composing the mass which he was to worship; and he could only evade that repulsion by making

a conventional abstraction of mankind that had litle actual or historical relation to the race; which to his eyes

was divided into blind tyrants on the one hand and apathetic degraded slaves on the other. But now, where is

the difficulty in accepting the religion of humanity, when the men and women who go to make up humanity

are free, happy, and energetic at least and most commonly beautiful of body also, and surrounded by

beautiful things of their own fashioning, and a nature bettered and not worsened by contact with mankind?

"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

Said he: "I could easily tell you more than you have time to listen to; but I can at least hint at one of the chief

difficulties which had to be met: and that was, that when men began to settle down after the war, and their

labour had pretty much filled up the gap in wealth caused by the destruction of that war, a kind of

disappointment seemed coming over us, and the prophecies of some of the reactionists of past times seemed

as if they would come true, and a dull level of utilitarian comfort be the end for a while of our aspirations and

success. The loss of the competitive spirit to exertion had not indeed, done anything to interfere with the

necessary production of the community, but how if it should make men dull by giving them too much time

for thought or idle musing? But, after all, this dull thundercloud 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 producedslavewares for the poor and mere

wealthwasting wares for the richceased to be made. That remedy was, in short, the production of what

used to be called art, but which has no name amongst us now, because it has become a necessary part of the

Said I: "What! had men any time or opportunity for cultivating the fine arts amidst the desperate struggle for

Said Hammond: "You must not suppose that the new form of art was founded chiefly on the memory of the

art of the past; although, strange to say, the civil war was much less destructive of art than of other things,

and though what of art existed under the old forms, revived in a wonderful way during the latter part of the

struggle, especially as regards music and poetry. The art or workpleasure, as one ought to call it, of which I

am now speaking, sprung up almost spontaneously, it seems, from a kind of instinct amongst people, no

longer driven desperately to painful and terrible overwork, to do the best they could with the work in

handto 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 aboliton of

the squalor which our immediate ancestors put up with so coolly; and by the leisurely, but not stupid,

countrylife which now grew (as I told you before) to be common amongst us. Thus at last and by slow

degrees we got pleasure into our work; then we became conscious of that pleasure, and cultivated it, and took

care that we had our fill of it; and then all was gained and we were happy. So may it be for ages and ages!"

The old man fell into a reverie, not altogether without melancholy I thought; but I would not break it.

Suddenly he started, and said: "Well, dear guest, here are come Dick and Clara to fetch you away, and there

is an end of my talk; which I daresay you will not be sorry for; the long day is coming to an end, and you will

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 could understand something at least of my

wonted ways of looking at life, whereas, with the youger people, in spite of their kindness, I really was a

being from another planet. However, I made the best of it, and smiled as amiably as I could on the young

couple; and Dick returned the smile by saying, "well, guest, I am glad to have you again, and to find that you

and my kinsman have not quite talked yourselves into another world; I was half suspecting as I was listening

to the Welshmen yonder that you would presently be vanishing away from us, and began to picture my

kinsman sitting in the hall staring at nothing and finding that he had been talking a while past to nobody."

I felt rather uncomfortable at this speech, for suddenly the picture of the sordid squabble, the dirty and

miserable tragedy of the life I had left for a while, came before my eyes; and I had, as it were, a vision of all

my longings for rest and peace in the past, and I loathed the idea of going back to it again. But the old man

"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

Dick looked puzzled, and said: "Well, gaffer, I do not quite understand what you mean. All I can say is, that I

hope he will not leave us: for don't you see, he is another kind of man to what we are used to, and somehow

he makes us think of all kind of things; and already I feel as if I could understand Dickens the better for

"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

The old man shook his head, and looked earnestly at me, but did not answer her, and for a moment or two we

"Kinsman, I don't like this: something or another troubles me, and I feel as if something untoward were going

to happen. You have been talking of past miseries to the guest, and have been living in past unhappy times,

and it is in the air all round us, and makes us feel as if we were longing for something we cannot have."

The old man smiled on her kindly, and said: "Well, my child, if that be so, go and live in the present, and you

will soon shake it off." Then he turned to me, and said: "Do you remember anything like that, guest, in the

The lovers had turned aside now, and were talking together softly, and not heeding us; so I said, but in a low

voice: "Yes, when I was a happy child on a sunny holiday, and had everything that I could think of."

"So it is," said he. "You remember just now you twitted me with living in the second childhood of the world.

Again I did not like his scarcely veiled threat, and was beginning to trouble myself with trying to remember

how I had got amongst this curious people, when the old man called out in a cheery voice: "Now, my

children, take your guest away, and make much of him; for it is your business to make him sleek of skin and

peaceful of mind: he has by no means been as lucky as you have. Farewell, guest!" and he grasped my hand

"Goodbye," said I, "and thank you very much for all that you have told me. I will come and see you as soon

"It won't be for some time yet," quoth Dick, in his cheery voice; "for when the hay is in up the river, I shall be

for taking him a round through the country between hay and wheat harvest, to see how our friends live in the

north country. Then in the wheat harvest we shall do a good stroke of work, I should hope,in Wiltshire by

preference; for he will be getting a little hard with all the openair living, and I shall be tough as nails."

"But you will take me along, won't you, Dick?" said Clara, laying her pretty hand on his shoulder.

"Will I not?" said Dick, somewhat boisterously, "And we will manage to send you to bed pretty tired every

night; and you will look so beautiful with your neck all brown, and your hands too, and you under your gown

as white as privet, that you will get some of those strange discontented whims out of your head, my dear.

The girl reddened very prettily, and not for shame but for pleasure; and the old man laughed, and said:

"Guest, I see that you will be as comfortable as need be; for you need not fear that those two will be too

officious with you: they will be so busy with each other, that they will leave you a good deal to yourself, I am

sure, and that is a real kindness to a guest, after all. O, you need not be afraid of being one too many either: it

is just what these birds in a nest like, to have a good convenient friend to turn to, so that they mey 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. Goodbye

Clara went up to old Hammond, threw her arms about his neck and kissed him heartily, and said: "You are a

dear old man, and may have your jest about me as much as you please; and it won't be long before we see you

again; and you may be sure we shall make our guest happy; though, mind you, there is some truth in what

Then I shook hands again, and we went out of the hall and into the cloisters, and so in the street found

Greylocks in the shafts waiting for us. He was well looked after; for a little lad of about seven years old had

his hand on the rein and was solemnly looking up into his face; on his back, withal, was a girl of fourteen,

holding a threeyearold sister on before her; while another girl, about a year older than the boy hung on

behind. The three were occuupied partly with eating cherries, partly with patting and punching Greylocks,

who took all their caresses in good part, but pricked up his ears when Dick made his appearance. The girls

got off quietly, and going up to Clara, made much of her and snuggled up to her. And then we got into the

carriage, Dick shook the reins, and we got under way at once, Greylocks trotting soberly between the lovely

trees of the London streets, that were sending floods of fragrance into the cool evening air; for it was now

We could hardly go but fair and softly all the way, as there were a great many people abroad in that cool

hour. Seeing so many people made me notice their looks the more; and I must say my taste cultivated in the

sombre greyness, or rather brownness, of the nineteenth century, was rather apt to condemn the gaiety and

brightness of the raiment; and I even ventured to say as much to Clara. She seemed rather surprised, and even

slightly indignant, and said: "Well, well, what's the matter? They are not about any dirty work; they are only

amusing themselves in the fine evening; there is nothing to foul their clothes. Come, doesn't it all look very

Indeed that was true; for many of the people were clad in colours that were sober enough, though beautiful,

I said, "Yes, that is so; but how can everybody afford such costly garments? Look! there goes a middleaged

man in a sober grey dress; but I can see from here that it is made of very fine woollen stuff, and is covered

Said Clara: "He could wear shabby clothes if he pleased,that is, if he didn't think he would hurt people's

As soon as I had spoken I perceived that I had got back to my old blunder; for I saw Dick's shoulders shaking

with laughter; but he wouldn't say a word, but handed me over to the tender mercies of Clara, who said:

"Why, I don't know what you mean. Of course we can afford it, or else we shouldn't do it. It would be easy

enough for us to say, we will only spend our labour on making our clothes comfortable: but we don't choose

to stop there. Why do you find fault with us? Does it seem to you as if we starved ourselves of food in order

to make ourselves fine clothes? or do you think there is anything wrong in liking to see the coverings of our

bodies beautiful like our bodies are?just as a deer's or an otter's skin has been made beautiful from the

I bowed before the storm, and mumbled out some excuse or other. I must say, I might have known that

people who were so fond of architecture generally, would not be backward in ornamenting themselves; all the

more as the shape of their raiment, apart from its colour was both beautiful and reasonableveiling the form,

Clara was soon mollified; and as we drove along toward the wood before mentioned, she said to Dick:

"I tell you what, Dick: now that our kinsman Hammond the Elder has seen our guest in his queer clothes, I

think we ought to find him something decent to put on for our journey tomorrow: especially since, if we do

not, we shall have to answer all sorts of questions as to his clothes and where they came from. Besides," she

said slyly, "when he is clad in handsome garments he will not be so quick to blame us for our childishness in

"All right, Clara," said Dick; "he shall have everything that youthat he wants to have. I will look

Amidst such talk, driving quietly through the balmy evening, we came to Hammersmith, and were well

received by our friends there. Boffin, in a fresh suit of clothes, welcomed me back with stately courtesy; the

weaver wanted to buttonhole me and get out of me what old Hammond had said, but was very friendly and

cheerful when Dick warned him off; Annie shook hands with me, and hoped I had had a pleasant dayso

kindly, that I felt a slight pang as our hands parted; for to say the truth, I liked her better than Clara, who

seemed to be always a little on the defensive, whereas Annie was as frank as could be, and seemed to get

honest pleasure from everything and everybody about her without the least effort.

We had quite a little feast that evening, partly in my honour, and partly, I suspect, though nothing was said

about it, in honour of Dick and Clara coming together again. The wine was of the best; the hall was redolent

of rich summer flowers; and after supper we not only had music (Annie, to my mind, surpassing all the others

for sweetness and clearness of voice, as well as for feeling and meaning), but at last we even got to telling

stories, and sat there listening with no other light but that of the summer moon streaming through the

beautiful traceries of the windows, as if we had belonged to time long passed, when books were scarce and

the art of reading somewhat rare. Indeed, I may say here, that, though, as you will have noted, my friends had

mostly something to say about books, yet they were not great readers, considering the refinement of their

manners and the great amount of leisure which they obviously had. In fact, when Dick, especially, mentioned

a book, he did so with an air of a man who has accomplished an achievement; as much as to say, "There, you

The evening passed all too quickly for me; since that day, for the first time in my life, I was having my fill of

pleasure of the eyes without any of that sense of incongruity, that dread of approaching ruin, which had

always beset me hitherto when I had been amongst the beautiful works of art of the past, mingled with the

lovely nature of the present; both of them, in fact, the result of the long centuries of tradition, which had

compelled men to produce the art, and compelled nature to run into the mould of the ages. Here I could enjoy

everything without an afterthought of the injustice and miseraable 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 bedtime 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.

When I did wake, to a beautiful sunny morning, I leapt out of bed with my overnight 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 purecoloured figures painted on the plaster of the wall, with verses written

underneath them which I knew somewhat overwell. I dressed speedily, in a suit of blue laid ready for me, so

handsome that I quite blushed when I had got into it, feeling as I did so that excited pleasure of anticipation

of a holiday, which, wellremembered as it was, I had not felt since I was a boy, new come home for the

It seemed quite early in the morning, and I expected to have the hall to myself when I came into it our of the

corridor wherein was my sleeping chamber; but I met Annie at once, who let fall her broom and gave me a

kiss, quite meaningless I fear, except as betokening friendship, though she reddened as she did it, not from

shyness, but from friendly pleasure, and then stood and picked up her broom again, and went on with her

sweeping, nodding to me as if to bid me stand out of the way and look on; which, to say the truth, I thought

amusing enoughm, as there were five other girls helping her, and their graceful figures engaged in the

leisurely work were worth going a long way to see, and their merry talk and laughing as they swept in quite a

scientific manner was worth going a long way to hear. But Annie presently threw me back a word or two as

she went on to the other end of the hall: "Guest," she said, "I am glad that you are up early, though we

wouldn't disturb you; for our Thames is a lovely river at halfpast six on a June morning: and as it would be a

pity for you to lose it, I am told just to give you a cup of milk and a bit of bread outside there, and put you

into the boat: for Dick and Clara are all ready now. Wait half a minute till I have swept down this row."

So presently she let her broom drop again, and came and took me by the hand and led me out on to the terrace

above the river to a little table under the boughs, where my bread and milk took the form of as dainty a

breakfast as any one could desire, and then sat by me as I ate. And in a minute or two Dick and Clara came to

me, the latter looking most fresh and beautiful in a light silk embroidered gown, which to my unused eyes

was extravagantly gay and bright; while Dick was also handsomely dressed in white flannel prettily

embroidered. Clara raised her gown in her hands as she gave me the morning greeting, and said laughingly:

"Look, guest! you see we are at least as fine as any of the people you felt inclined to scold last night; you see

we are not going to make the bright day and the flowers feel ashamed of themselves. Now scold me!"

Quoth I: "No, indeed; the pair of you seem as if you were born out of the summer day itself; and I will scold

"Well, you know," said Dick, "this is a special dayall these days are, I mean. The hayharvest is in some

ways better than cornharvest 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."

Dick was going to answer me soberly; but Clara put her hand over his mouth, and said, "No, no, Dick; not too

much information for him, or I shall think that you are your old kinsman again. Let him find out for himself:

"Yes," quoth Annie, "don't make your description of the picture too fine, or else he will be disappointed when

the curtain is drawn. I don't want him to be disappointed. But now it's time for you to be gone, if you are to

She kissed me in her frank friendly wasy, and almost took away from me my desire for the expedition

thereby; but I had to get over that, as it was clear that so delightful a woman would hardly be without a due

lover of her own age. We went down the steps of the landingstage, and got into a pretty boat, not too light to

hold us and our belongings comfortable, and handsomely ornamented; and just as we got in, down came

Boffin and the weaver to see us off. The former had now veiled his 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 oldSpanishlike

courtesy. Then Dick pushed off into the stream, and bent, vigorously to his sculls, and Hammersmith, with its

As we went, I could not help putting beside his promised picture of the hayfield as it was then the pictureof

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, flatbreasted, ugly, without a grace of form or face about them; dressed in

wretched skimpy print print gowns, and hideous flapping sunbonnets, moving their rakes in a listless

mechanical way. How often had that marred the loveliness of the June day to me; hopw often had I longed to

see the hayfields peopled with men and women worthy of the sweet abundance of midsummer, of its

endless wealth of beautiful sights, and delicious scents. Wnd now, the world had grown old and wiser, and I

So on we went, Dick rowing in an easy tireless way, and Clara sitting by my side admiring his manly beauty

and heartily goodnatured face, and thinking, I fancy, of nothing else. As we went higher up the river, there

was less difference between the Thames of that day and Thames as I remembered it; for setting aside the

hideous vulgarity of the codkney villas of the welltodo, stockbrokers and other such, which in older time

marred the beauty of the boughhung 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 used to enjoy so much in the days when I was too

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 elmbeset

meadows ended in a fringe of tall willows, while on the right hand went the towpath and a clear space

before a row of trees, which rose up behind huge and ancient, the ornaments of a great parkP 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 redbrick pile of

building, partly of the latest Gothic, partly of the style of Dutch William, but so blended together by the

bright sun and beautiful surroundings, including the bright blue river, which it looked down upon, that even

amidst the beautiful buildings of that new happy time it had a strange charm about it. A great wave of

fragrancem amidst which the limetree blossom was clearly to be distinguished, came down to us from its

"O Dick, dear, couldn't we stop at Hampton court for today, and take the guest about the park a little and

show him those sweet old buildings? Somehow, I suppose because you have lived so near it, you have

Dick rested on his oars a little, and said: "Well,well, Clara, you are lazy today. I didn't feel like stopping short

of Shepperton for the night; suppose we just go and have our dinner at the Court, and go on again about five

"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 Thamesside is a park this time of the year; and for my part, I had

rather lie under and elmtree on the borders of a wheatfield, with the bees h umming about me and the

"Besides," said she, "you want to get on to your dearlyloved upper Thames, and show your prowess down

She looked at him fondly, and I could tell that she was seeing him in her mind's eye showing his splendid

form at its best amidst the rhymed strokes of the scythes; and she looked down at her own pretty feet with a

half sigh, as though she were contrasting her slight woman's beauty with his man's beauty; as women will

As for Dick, he looked at her admiringly a while, and then said at last: "Well, Clara, I do wish we were there!

But, hilloa! we are getting back way." And he set to work sculling again, and in two minutes we were all

standing on a gravelly strand below the bridge, which as you may imagine, was no longer the old hideous

We went into the Court and staight into the great hall, so well remembered, where there were tables spread

for dinner, and everything arranged much as in Hammersmith Guest Hall. Dinner over, we sauntered through

the ancient rooms, where the pictures and tapestry were still preserved, and nothing was much changed,

except that the people whom we met there had an indefinable kind of look of being at home and at ease,

which communicated itself to me so that I felt that the beautiful old place was mine in the best sense of the

word; and my pleasure of past days seemed to add itself to that of today, and filled my whole soul with

Dick (who, in spite of Clara's gibe, knew the place very well) told me that the beautiful old Tudor rooms

which I remembered had been the dwellings of the lesser fry of Court flunkies, were now much used by

people coming and going; for, beautiful as architecture had now become and although the whole face of the

country had quite recovered its beauty there was still a sort of tradition of pleasure and beauty which clung to

that group of buildings, and people thought going to Hampton court a necessary summer outing, as they did

in the days when London was so grimy and miserable. We went into some of the rooms looking into the old

garden and were well received by the people in them, who got speedily into talk with us, and looked with

politely halfconcealed 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 pleasureloving people

were fond of tentlife, with all its inconveniences, which, indeed, they turned into pleasure also.

We left this old friend by the time appointed, and I made some feeble show of taking the sculls but Dick

repulsed me, not much to my grief, I must say, as I found I had quite enough to do between the enjoyment of

As to Dick, it was quite right to let him pull, for he was as strong as a horse, and had the greatest delight in

bodily exercise, whatever it was. We really had some difficulty in getting him to stop when it was getting

rather more than dusk, and the moon was brightening just as we were off Runnymede. We landed there, and

were looking about for a place whereon to pitch our tents (for we had brought two with us), when an old man

came up to us, bade us good evening, and asked if we were housed for the night; and finding that we were not

bade us home to his house. Nothing loth, we went with him, and Clara took his hand in a coaxing way which

I noticed she used with old menpp and as we went on our way, made some commonplace remark about the

beauty of the day. The old man stopped short and looked at her and said: "You really like it then?"

"Well," said he, "perhaps I do. I did, at any rate, when I was younger; but now I think I should like it cooler."

She said nothing, and went on, the night growing about as dark as it would be; till just at the rise of the hill

we came to a hedge with a gate in it, which the old man unlatched and led us into a garden at the end of

which we could see a little house, one of whose little windows was already yellow with candlelight. We

could see even under the doubtful light of the moon and the last of the western glow that the garden was

stuffed full of flowers; and the fragrance it agave out in the gathering coolness was so wonderfully sweet, that

it seemed the very heart of the delight of the June dusk; so that we three stopped instinctively and Clara gave

"What's the matter?" said the old man, a little testily, and pulling at her hand. "There's no dog; or have you

She laughed out musically, and we followed suit in our gruffer voices; and then she said: "of course I do,

"Well, I don;t know," quoth the old fellow; then he added, as if somewhat ashamed of himself: "Besides, you

know, when the waters are out and all Runnymede is flooded, it's none so pleasant."

"_I_ should like it,"quoth Dick. "What a jolly sail one would get about here on the floods on a bright frosty

"_Would_ you like it?" said our host. " Well, I won't argue with you, neighbour; it isn't worth while. Come in

We went up a paved path between the roses, and straight into a very pretty room, panelled and carved, and as

clean as a new pin; but the chief ornament of which was a young woman, lighthaired and greyeyed, but

with her face and hands and bare feet tanned quite brown with the sun. Though she was very lightly clad, that

was clearly from choice, not from poverty, though these were the first cottagedwellers I had come across;

for her gown was of silk, and on her wrists were bracelets that seemed to me of great value. She was lying on

a sheepskin near the window, but jumped up as soon as we entered, and when she saw the guests behind the

old man, she clapped her hands and cried out with pleasure, and when she got us into the middle of the room,

The girl danced up to him and threw her arms round him, and said: "Yes I am, and so ought you to be,

"Well, well, I am," said he, "as much as I can be pleased. Guests, please be seated."

This seemed rather strange to us; stranger, I suspect, to my friends than to me; but Dick took the opportunity

of both the host and his granddaughter being out of the room to say to me softly: "A grynbler: there are a

The old man came in as he spoke and sat down beside us with a sigh, which, indeed, seemed fetched up as if

he wanted us to take notice of it; but just then the girl came in with the victuals, and the carle missed his mark

what between our hunger generally and that I was pretty busy watching the granddaughter moviing about as

Everything to eat and drink, though it was somewhat different to what we had had in London, was better than

good, but the old man eyed rather sulkily the chief dish on the table, on which lay a leash of fine perch, and

"H'm, perch! I am sorry we can't do better for you, guests. The time was when we might have had a good

piece of salmon up from London for you; but the times have grown mean and petty."

"Yes, but y ou might have had it now," said the girl, giggling, "if you had known that they were coming."

"It's our fault for not bringing it with us, neighbours,"said Dick, goodhumouredlyl "But if the times have

grown petty, at any rate the perch haven't; that fellow in the middle there must have weighed a good two

pounds when he was showing his dark stripes and red fins to the minnows yonder. And as to the salmon,

why, neighbour, my friend here, who comes from the outlands, ws quite surprised yesterday morning when I

told him we had plenty of salmon at Hammersmith. I am sure I have heard nothing of the times worsening."

He looked a little uncomfortable. And the old man, turning to me, said very courteously:

"Well, sir, I am happy to see a man from over the water; but I really must appeal to you to say whether on the

whole you are not better off in your country; where I suppose, from what our guest says, you are brisker and

more alive, because you have not wholly got rid of competition. You see, I have read not a few books of the

past days, and certainly _they_ are much more alive than those which are written now; and good sound

unlimited competition was the condition under which they were written,if we didn't know that from the

record book of history, we should know it from the books themselves. There is a spirit of adventure in them

and signs of a capacity to extract good out of evil which our literature quite lacks now; and I cannot help

thinking that our moralists and historians exaggerate hugely the unhappiness of the past days, in which such

Clara listened to him with restless eyes, as if she were excited and pleased; Dick knitted his brow and looked

still more uncomfortable, but said nothing. Indeed, the old man gradually, as he warmed to his subject,

dropped his sneering manner, and both spoke and looked very seriously. But the girl broke out before I could

"Books, books! always books, grandfather! When will you understand that after all it is the world we live in

which interests us; the world of which we are a part and which we can never love too much? Look!" she saud,

throwing popoen the casement wider and showing us the white light sparkling between the black shadows of

the moonlit garden, through which ran a little shiver of the summer nightwind, "look! these are our books

these days!Land these,"she said, stepping lightly up to the two lovers and laying a hand on each of their

shoulders; "and the guest there, with his oversea knowledge and experience;yes, and even you, grandfather

"(a smile ran over her face as she spoke), "with all your grumbling and wishing yourself back again in the

good old days,in which,as far as I can make outk, a harmnless and lazy old man like you would either have

pretty nearly starved, or have had to pay soldiers and people to take the folk's victuals and clothes and houses

away from them by force. Yes, these are our books; and if we want morek, can we not find work to do in the

beautiful buildings that we raise up all over the country (and I know there was nothing like them in past

times), wherein a man can put forth whatever is in him, and make his hands set forth his mind and his soul."

She paused a little, and I for my part could not help staring at her, and thinking that if she were a book, the

pictures in it were most lovely . The colouriiii mantled in her delicate sunburnt cheeks; her grey eyes, light

amidst the tan of her face, kindly looked on us all as she spoke. She paused, and said again:

"As for your books, they were well enough for times when intelligent people had but little else in which they

could take pleasure, and when they must needs supplement athe sordid miseries of their own lives with

imaginations of the lives of other people. But I say flatly that in spite of all their cleverness and vigour, and

capacity for storytelling, there is something loathsome about them. Some of them, indeed, do here and there

show some feeling for those whom the historybooks call `poor,' and of the misery of whose lives we have

some inkling; but presently they give it up, and towards the end of the story we must be contented to see the

hero and heroine living happily in an island of bliss on other people's troubles; and that after a long series of

sham troubles (or mostly sham) of their own making, illustrated by dreary introspective nonsense about their

feelings and aspirations, and all the rest of it; while the world must even then have gone on its way, and dug

and sewed and baked and built and carpentered round about these uselessanimals."

"There!" said the old man, reverting to his dry sulky manner again. "There's eloquence! I suppose you like

"Well," said he, "now the storm of eloquence has lulled for a little, suuppose you answer my question?:that

"What question>"said I. For I must confess that Ellen's strange and almost wild beauty had put it out of my

Said he: "First of all(excuse my catechising), is there competition in life, after the old kiind, in the country

"Yes," said I, "it is the rule there."And I wondered as I spoke what fresh complications I should get into as a

"Question two," said the carle: "Are you not on the whole much freer, more energeticin a word, healthier

I smiled. "YOu wouldn'[t talk so if you had any idea of our life. To me you seem here as if you were living in

"Yes," said Isnappishly, I am afraid; for I was beginning rather to resent his formula.

"Well, I am far from sure that I do," quoth he. "I think one may do more with one's life than sitting on a damp

I was rather nettled by this inconsequence, and said: "Well, neighbour, to be short, and without using

meteaphors, in the land whence I come, where the competition which produced those literary works which

you admire so much is still the rule, most people are thoroughly unhappy; here, to me at least, most people

"No offence, guestno offence," said he; "but let me ask you; you like that, do you?"

His formula, put with such obstinate persistence, made us all laugh heartily; and even the old man joined in

the laughter on the sly. However, he was by no means beaten, and said presently:

"From all I can hear, I should judge that a young woman so beautiful as my dear Ellen yonder would have

been a lady, as they called it in the old time, and wouldn't have had to wear a few rags of silk as she does

now, or to have browned herself in the sun as she has to do now. What do you say to that, eh? "

Here Clara, who had been pretty much silent hitherto, struck in, and said: "Well, really I don't think that you

would have mended matters, or that they want mending. Don't you see that she is dressed deliciously for this

beautiful weather? And as for the sunburning of your hayfields, why, I hope to pick up some of that for

myself when we get a little higher up the river. Look if I don't need a little sun on my pasty white skin!"

And she stripped up the sleeve from her arm and laid it beside Ellen's who was now sitting next her. To say

the truth, it was rather amusing to me to see Clara putting herself forward as a town bred fine lady, for she

was as wellknit and cleanskinned a girl as might be met with anywhere at the best. Dick stroked the

beautiful arm rather shyly, and pulled down the sleeve again, while she blushed at his touch; and the old man

Ellen kissed her new friend, and we all sat silent for a little, till she broke out into a sweet shrill song, and

held us all entranced with the wonder of her clear voice; and the old grumbler sat looking at her lovingly. The

other young people sang also in due time; and then Ellen showed us to our beds in small cottage chambers,

fragrant and clean as the ideal of the old pastoral poets; and the pleasure of the evening quite extinguished my

fear of the last night, that I should wake up inthe old miserable world of wornout pleasures, and hopes that

Though there were no rough noises to wake me, I could not lie long abed the next morning, where the world

seemed so well awake, and, despite the old grumbler, so happy; so I got up, and found that, early as it was,

some one had been stirring, since all was trim and in its place in the little parlour, and the table laid for the

morning meal. Nobody was afoot in the house as then, however, so I went out adoors, and after a turn or

two round the superabundant garden, I wandered down over the meadow to the riverside, where lay our

boat, looking quite familiar and friendly to me. I walked upstream a little, watching the light mist curling up

from the river till the sun gained power to draw it all away; saw the bleak speckling the water under the

willow boughs, whence the tiny flies they fed on were falling in myriads; heard the great chub splashing here

and there at some belated moth or other, and felt almost back again in my boyhood. Then I went back again

to the boat, and loitered there a minute or two, and then walked slowly up the meadow towards the little

house. I noted now that there were four more houses of about the same size on the slope away from the river.

The meadow in which I was going was not up for hay; but a row of flakehurdles ran up the slope not far

from me on each side, and in the field so parted off from ours on the left they were making hay busily by

now, in the simple fashion of the days when I was a boy. My feet turned that way instinctively, as I wanted to

see how haymakers looked in these new and better times, and also I rather expected to see Ellen there. I came

to the hurdles and stood looking over into the hayfield, and was close to the end of the long line of

haymakers who were spreading the low ridges to dry off the night des. The majority of these were young

women clad much like Ellen last night, though not mostly in silk, but in light woollen most gaily embroidered

in bright colours. The meadow looked like a gigantic tulipbed because of them. All hands were working

deliberately but well and steadily, though they were as noisy with merry talk as a grove of autumn starlings.

Half a dozen of them, men and women, came up to me and shook hands, gave me the sele of the morning,

and asked a few questions as to whence and whither, and wishing me good luck, went back to their work.

Ellen, to my disappointment, was not amongst them, but presently I saw a light figure come out of the

hayfield higher up the slope, and make for our house; and that was Ellen, holding a basket in her hand. But

before she had come to the garden gate, out came Dick and Clara, who, after a minute's pause, came down to

meet me, leaving Ellen in the garden; then we three went down to the boat, talking mere morning prattle. We

stayed there a little, Dick arranging some of the matters in her, for we had only taken up to the house such

things as we thought the dew might damage; and then we went toward the house again; but when we came

I looked, and over the low hedge saw Ellen, shading her eyes against the sun as she looked toward the

hayfield, a light wind stirring in her tawny hair, her eyes like light jewels amidst her sunburnt face, which

"Look, guest," said Dick; "doesn't it all look like one of those very stories out of Grimm that we were talking

about up in Bloomsbury? Here are we two lovers wandering about in the world, and we have come to a fairy

garden, and there is the very fairy herself amidst of it; I wonder what she will do for us."

"O yes," said he; "and according to the card, she would do better, if it were not for the gnome or woodspirit,

We laughed at this; and I said, "I hope you see that you have left me out of the tale."

"Well," said he, "that's true. You had better consider that you have got the cap of darkness, and are seeing

That touched me on my weak side of not feeling sure of my position in this beautiful new country; so in order

not to make matters worst, I held my tongue, and we all went into the garden and up to the house together. I

noticed by the way that Clara must really rather have felt the contrast between herself as a town madam and

this piece of summer country that we all admired so, for she had rather dressed after Ellen that morning as to

The old man greeted us kindly in the parlour, and said: "Well, guests, so you have been looking about to

search into the nakedness of the land: I suppose your illusions of last night have given way a bit before the

"Very much," said I, doggedly; "it is one of the prettiest places on the lower Thames."

I reddened, for I saw Dick and Clara looking at me, and scarcely knew what to say. However, since I had said

in our early intercourse with my Hammersmith friends that I had known Epping Forest, I thought a hasty

generalisation might be better in avoiding complications than a downright lie; so I said:

"I have been in this country before; and I have been on the Thames in those days."

"O,"said the old man, eagerly, "so you have been in this country before. Now really, don't you _find_ it(apart

"Ah," quoth he, "I fear that you have been prejudiced by some theory or another. However, of course the time

when you were here before must have been so near our own days that the deterioration might not be very

great: as then we were, of course, living under the same customs as we are now I was thinking of earlier days

"In short," said Clara, "you have _theories_ about the change which has taken place.

"I have facts as well," said he. "Look here! from this hill you can see just four little houses, including this

one. Well, I know for certain that in old times, even in the summer, when the leaves were thickest, you could

see from the same place six quite big and fine houses; and higher up the water, garden joined garden right up

to Windsor; and there were big houses in all the gardens. Ah! England was an important place in those days."

I was getting nettled, and said: "What you mean is that you decockneyised the place, and sent the damned

flunkies packing, and that everybody can live comfortably and happily, and not a few damned thieves only,

who were centres of vulgrarity and corruption wherever they were, and who, as to this lovely river, destroyed

its beauty morally, and had almmost destroyed it physically, when they were thrown out of it."

There was silence after this outburst, which for the life of me I could not help, remembering how I had

suffered from cockneyism and its cause on those same waters of old time. But at last the old man said, quite

"My dear guest, I really don't know what you mean by either cockneys, or flunkies, or thieves or damned; or

how only a few people could live happily and comfortably in a wealthy country. All I can see is that you are

I thought this kind and hospitable in him, considering his obstinacy about his theory; and hastened to say that

I did not mean to be angry, only emphatic. He bowed gravely, and I thought the storm was over, when

"Grandfather, our guest is reticent from courtesy; but really what he has in mind to say to you ought to be

said; so as I know pretty well what it is, I will say it for him; for as you knnow, I have been taught these

"Yes," said she, "and other people too, as my grandfather says, and they have taught me things: and this is the

upshot of it. We live in a little house now, not because we have nothing grander to do than working in the

fields, but because we please; for if we liked, we could go and live in a big house amongst pleasant

Grumbled the old man: "Just so! As if I would live amongst those conceited fellows; all of them looking

She smiled on him kindly, but went on as if he had not spoken. "In the past times, when those big houses of

which grandfather speaks were so plenty, we _must_ have lived in a cottage whether we liked it or not; and

the said cottage, instead of having in it everything we want, would have been bare and empty. We should not

have got enough to eat; our clothes would have been ugly to look at, dirty and frowsy. You, grandfather, have

done no hard work for years now, but wander about and read your books and have nothing to worry you; and

as for me, I work hard when I like it, because I like it, and think it does me good, and knits up my muscles,

and makes me prettier to look at, and healthier and happier. But in those past days you, grandfather, would

have had to work hard after you were old; and would have been always afraid of having to be shut up in a

kind of prison wlong with other old men, halfstarved and without amusement. And as for me, I am twenty

years old. In those days my middle age would be beginning now, and in a few years I should be pinched, thin,

and haggard, beset with troubles and miseries,so that no one could have guessed that I was once a beautiful

"Is this what you have had in your mind, guest?" said she, the tears in her eyes at thought of the past miseries

"Yes," said I, much moved; "that and more. oftenin my country I have seen that wretched change you have

spoken of, from the fresh handsome country lass to the poor draggletailed country woman."

The old man sat silent for a little, but presently recovered himself and took comfort in his old phrase of

"O, you do, do you?" said he. "Well, for my part I like reading a good old book with plenty of fun in it, like

Thackeray's `Vanity Fair.' Why don't you write books like that now? Ask that question of your Bloomsbury

Seeing Dick's cheeks reddening a little at this sally, and noting that silence followed, I thought I had better do

something. So I said: "I am only the guest, friends; but I know you want to show me your river at its best, so

don't you think we had better be moving presently, as it is certainly going to be a hot day?"

They were not slow to take my hint; and indeed, as to the mere time of day, it was best for us to be off, as it

was past seven o'clock, and the day promised to be very hot. So we got up and went down to our boatEllen

thoughtful and abstracted; the old man very kind and courteous, as if to make up for his crabbedness of

opinion. Clara was cheerful and natural, but a little more subdued, I thought; and she at least was not sorry to

be gone, and often looked shyly and timidly at Ellen and her strange wild beauty. So we got into the boat,

Dick saying as he took his place, "Well, it _is_ a fine day!" and the old man answering, "What! you like that,

do you?" once more; and presently Dick was sending the bows swiftly through the slow weedchecked

stream. I turned round as we got into midstream, and waving my hand to our hosts, saw Ellen leaning on the

old man's shoulder, and caressing his healthy applered cheek, and quite a keen pang smote me as thought

how I should never see the beautiful girl again. Presently I insisted on taking the sculls, and I rowed a good

deal that day; which no doubt accounts for the fact that we got very late to the place which Dick had aimed at.

Clara was particularly affectionate to Dick, as I noticed from the rowing thwart; but as for him, he was as

frankly kind and merry as ever; and I was glad to see it, as a man of his temperament could not have taken

her caresses cheerfully and without embarrassment if he had been at all entangled by the fairy of our last

I need say little about the lovely reaches of the river here. I duly noted that absence of cockney villas which

the old man had lamented and I saw with pleasure that my old enemies the "Gothic" castiron bridges had

been replaced by handsome oak and stone ones. Also the banks of the forest that we passed through had lost

their courtly gamekeeperish trimness, and were as wild and beautiful as need be, though the trees were

clearly well seen to. I thought it best, in order to get the most direct information, to play the innocent about

Eton and Windsor; but Dick volunteered his knowledge to me as we lay in Datchet lock about the first. Quoth

"Up yonder are some beautiful old buildings, which were built for a great college or teachingplace by one of

the mediaevial kingsEdward the Sixth, I think" (I rather smiled to myself at his rather natural blunder). "He

meant poor people's sons to be taught there what knowledge was going in his days; but it was a matter of

course that in the times of which you seem to know so much they spoilt whatever good there was in the

founder's intentions. My old kinsman says that they treated them in a very simple way, and instead of

teaching poor men's sons to know something, they taught rich men's sons to know nothing. It seems from

what he says that it was a place for the `aristocracy '(if you know what that means; I have been told its

meaning) to get rid of their male children for a great part of the year. I daresay old Hammond would give you

"Well," said he, "the buildings were a good deal spoilt by the last few generations of aristocrats, who seem to

have had a great hatred against beautaiful old buildings, and indeed all records of past history; but it is still a

delightful place. Of course we cannot use it quite as the founder intended, since our ideas about teaching

young people are so changed from the ideas of his time; so it is used now as a dwelling for people engaged in

learning; and folk from round about come and get taught things that they want to learn; and there is a great

library there of the best books. So that I don't think that the old dead king would be much hurt if he were to

"Not always, my dear," said Dick, "for there are often plenty of boys there, who come to get taught; and

also," said he, smiling, "to learn boating and swimming. I wish we could stop there: but perhaps we had better

The lockgates opened as he spoke, and out we went, and on. And as for Windsor, he said nothing till I lay

on my oars (for I was sculling then) in Clewer reach, and looking up, said, "What is all that building up

Said he: "There, I thought I would wait till you asked, yourself. That is Windsor Castle: that also I thought I

would keep for you till we come down the water. It looks fine from here, doesn't it? But a great deal of it has

been built or skinned in the time of the Degradation, and we wouldn't pull the buildinga down, since they

were there; just as with the buildings of the Dung Market. You know, of course, that it was the palace of your

old mediaeval kings, and was used later on for the same purpose by the parliamentary commercial

"A great many people live there," said he, "as, with all drawbacks, it is a pleasant place; there is also a

wellarranged store of antiquities of various kinds that have seemed worth keepinga museum, it would

I drew my sculls through the water at that last word, and pulled as if I were fleeing from those times which I

understood so well and we were soon going up the once sorely becockneyed reaches of the river about

The morning was now getting on, the morning of a jewel of a summer day; one of those days which, if they

were commoner in these islands, would make our climate the best of all climates, without dispute. A light

wind blew from the west; the little clouds that had arisen at about our breakfast time had seemed to get higher

and higher in the heavens; and in spite of the burning sun we no more longed for rain than we feared it.

Burning as the sun was, there was a fresh feeling in the air that almost set us alonging for the rest of the hot

afternoon, and the stretch of blossoming wheat seen from the shadow of the boughs. No one unburdened with

very heavy anxieties could have felt otherwise than happy that morning: and it must be said that whatever

anxieties might lie beneath the surface of things, we didn't seem to come across any of them.

We passed by several fields where haymaking was going on, but Dick, and especially Clara, were so jealous

of our upriver festival that they would not allow me to have much to say to them. I could only notice that

the people in the fields looked strong and handsome, both men and women, and that so far from there being

any appearance of sordidness about their attire, they seemed to be dressed specially for the occasionlightly,

Both on this day as well as yesterday we had, as you may think, met and passed and been passed by many

craft of one kind and another. The most part of these were being rowed like ourselves, or were sailing, in the

sort of way that sailing is managed on the upper reaches of the river; but every now and then we came on

barges, laden with hay or other country produce, or carrying bricks, lime, timber, and the like, and these were

going on their way without any means of propulsion visible to mejust a man at the tiller, with often a

friend or two laughing and talking with him. Dick, seeing on one occasion this day that I was looking rather

hard on one of these, said "That is one of our forcebarges; it is quite as easy to work vehicles by water as by

I understood pretty well that these "forcevehicles" had taken the place of our old steampower carrying; but

I took good care not to ask any questions about them, as I knew well enough both that I should never be able

to understand how they were worked, and that in attempting to do so I should betray myself, or get into some

complication impossible to explain; so I merely said, "Yes, of course, I understand."

We went ashore at Bisham, where the remains of the old Abbey and the Elizabethan house that had been

added to them yet remained, none the worse for many years of careful and appreciative habitation. The folk

of the place, however, were mostly in the fields that day, both men and women; so we met only two old men

there, and a younger one who had stayed at home to get on with some literary work, which I imagine we

considerably interrupted. Yet I also think that the hardworking man who received us was not very sorry for

the interruption. Anyhow, he kept on pressing us to stay over and over again, till at last we did not get away

However, that mattered little to us; the nights were light, for the moon was shining in her third quarter, and it

was all one to Dick whether he sculled or sat quiet in the boat: so we went away a great pace. The evening

sun shone bright on the remains of the old buildings at Medmenham; close beside which arose an irregular

pile of building which Dick told us was a very pleasant house; and there were plenty of houses visible on the

wide meadows opposite, under the hill; for, as it seems that the beauty of Hurley had compelled people to

build and live there a good deal. The sun very low down showed us Henley little altered in outward aspect

from what I remembered it. Actual daylight failed us as we passed through the lovely reaches of Wargrave

and Shiplake; but the moon rose behind us presently. I should like to have seen with my eyes what success

the new order of things had had in getting rid of the sprawling mess with which commercialism had littered

the banks of the wide stream about Reading and Caversham: certainly everything smelt too deliciously in the

early night for there to be any of the old careless sordidness of socalled manufacture; and in answer to my

"O, a nice town enough in its way; mostly rebuilt within the last hundred years; and there are a good many

houses, as you can see by the lights just down under the hills yonder. In fact, it is one of the most populous

places on the Thames round about here. Keep up your spirits, guest! we are close to our jounrney's end for the

night. I ought to ask your pardon for not stopping at one of the houses here or higher up; but a friend who is

living in a very pleasant house in the MapleDurham meads, particularly wanted me and Clara to come and

see him on our way up the Thames; and I thought you wouldn't mind this bit of night travelling."

He need not have adjured me to keep up my spirits, which were as high as possible; though the strangeness

and excitement of the happy and quiet life which I saw everywhere around me was, it is true, a little wearing

off, yet a deep content, as different as possible from languid acquiescence, was taking its place, and I was, as

We landed presently just where I remembered the river making an elbow to the north towards the ancient

house of the Blunts; with the wide meadows spreading on the righthand side, and on the left the long line of

beautiful trees overhanging the water. As we got out of the boat, I said to Dick:

"No," he said, "though that is standing still in green old age, and is well inhabited. I see, by the way, that you

know your Thames well. But my friend Walter Allen, who asked me to stop here, lives in a house, not very

big, which has been built here lately, because these meadows are so much liked, especially in summer, that

there was getting to be rather too much of tenting in the open field; so the parishes here about, who rather

objected to that, built three houses between this and Caversham, and quite a large one at Basildon, a little

So we walked over the grass of the meadows under a flood of moonlight, and soon came to the house, which

was low and built around a quadrangle big enough to get plenty of sunshine in it. Walter Allen, Dick's friend,

was leaning against the jamb of the doorway waiting for us, and took us into the hall without overplus of

words. There were not many people in it, as some of the dwellers there were away at the haymaking in the

neighbourhood, and some, as Walter told us, were wandering about the meadow enjoying the beautiful

moonlit night. Dick's friend looked to be a man of about forty; tall, blackhaired, very kindlooking and

thoughtful; but rather to my surprise there was a shade of melancholy on his face, and he seemed a little

Dick looked on him from time to time, and seemed troubled; and at last he said: "I say, old fellow, if there is

anything the matter which we didn't know of when you wrote to me, don't you think you had better tell us

about it at once? or else we shall think we have come at an unlucky time, and are not quite wanted."

Walter turned red, and seemed to have some difficulty in restraining his tears, but said at last: "Of course

everybody here is very glad to see you, Dick, and your friends; but it is true that we are not at our best, in

"Yes," walter said, "but this was a death by violence, and it seems likely to lead to at least one more; and

somehow it makes us feel rather shy of one another; and to say the truth, that is one reason why there are so

"Tell us the story, Walter," said Dick; "perhaps telling it will help you to shake off your sadness."

Said Walter: "Well, I will; and I will make it short enough, though I daresay it might be spun out into a long

one, as used to be done with such subjects in the old novels. There is a very charming girl here whom we all

like, and whom some of us do more than like; and she very naturally liked one of us better than anybody else.

And another of us (I won't name him) got fairly bitten with lovemadness, and used to go about making

himself as unpleasant as he couldnot of malice prepense, of course; so that the girl, who liked him well

enough at first, though she didn't love him, began fairly to dislike him. of course, those of us who knew him

bestmyself amongst othersadvised him to go away, as he was making matters worse and worse for

himself every day. Well, he wouldn't take our advice (that also, I suppose, was a matter of course), so we had

to tell him that he _must_ go, or the inevitable sending to Coventry would follow; for his individual trouble

"He took that better than we expected, when something or otheran interview with the girl, I think, and

some hot words with the successful lover following close upon itthrew him quite off his balance; and he

got hold of an axe and fell upon his rival when there was no one by; and in the struggle that followed the man

attacked hit him an unlucky blow and killed him. And now the slayer in his turn is so upset that he is so upset

that he is like to kill himself; and if he does, the girl will do as much, I fear. And all this we could no more

"It is very unhappy," said Dick; "but since the man is dead, and cannot be brought back to life again, and

since the slayer had no malice in him, I cannot for the life of me see why he shouldn't get over it before long.

Besides, it was the right man that was killed and not the wrong. Why should a man brood over a mere

"As to her," said Walter, "the whole thing seems to have inspired her with terror rather than grief. What you

say about the man is true, or it should be; but then, you see, the excitement and jealousy that was the prelude

to this tragedy had made an evil and feverish element about him, from which he does not seem able to escape.

However, we have advised him to go awayin fact, to cross the seas; but he is in such a state that I do not

think it will fall to my lot to do so; which is scarcely a cheerful outlook for me."

"O, you will find a certain kind of interest in it," said Dick. "And of course he _must_ soon look upon the

"Well, at any rate," quoth Walter, "now that I have eased my mind by making you uncomfortable, let us have

an end of the subject for the present. Are you going to take your guest to Oxford?"

"Why, of course we must pass through it," said Dick, smiling, "as we are going into the upper waters: but I

thought that we wouldn't stop there, or we shall be belated as to the haymaking up our way. So Oxford and

my learned lecture on it all got at secondhand from my old kinsman, must wait till we come down the water

I listened to this story with much surprise, and could not help wondering at first that the man who had slain

the other had not been put in custody till it could be proved that he killed his rival in selfdefence only.

However, the more I thought of it the plainer it grew to me that no amount of examination of witnesses, who

had witnessed nothing but the illblood between the two rivals, would have done anything to clear up the

case. I could not help thinking, also, that the remorse of this homicide gave point to what old Hammersmith

had said to me about the way in which this strange people dealt with what I had been used to hear called

crimes. Truly, the remorse was exaggerated; but it was quite clear that the slayer took the whole

consequences of the act upon himself, and did not expect society to whitewash him by punishing him. I had

no fear any longer that "the sacredness of human life" was likely to suffer amongst my friends from the

As we went down to the boat next morning, Walter could not keep off the subject of last night, though he was

more hopeful than he had been then, and seemed to think that if the unlucky homicide could not be got to go

oversea, he might at any rate go and live somewhere in the neighbourhood pretty much by himself; at any

rate, that was what he himself had proposed. To Dick and I must say to me also, this seemed a strange

"Friend Walter, don't set the man brooding on the tragedy by letting him live alone. That will only strengthen

his idea that he had committed a crime, and you will have him killing himself in good earnest."

Said Clara: "I don't know. If I may say what I think of it, it is that he had better have his fill of gloom now,

and, so to say, wake up presently to see how little need there has been for it; and then he will live happily

afterwards. As for his killing himself, you need not be afraid of that; for, from all you tell me, he is really

very much in love with the woman; and to speak plainly, until his love is satisfied, he will not only stick to

life as tightly as he can, but will also make the most of every event of his lifewill, so to say, hug himself up

in it; and I think that this is the real explanation of his taking the whole matter with such an excess of

Walter looked thoughtful, and said: "Well, you may be right; and perhaps we should have treated it all more

lightly: but you see, guest" (turning to me), "such things happen so seldom, that when they do happen, we

cannot help being much taken up with it. For the rest, we are all inclined to excuse our poor friend for making

us so unhappy, on the ground that he does it out of an exaggerated respect for human life and happiness.

Well, I will say no more about it; only this: will you give me a cast upstream, as I want to look after a lonely

habitation for the poor fellow, since he will have it so and I hear that there is one which would suit us very

well on the downs beyond Streatley; so if you will put me ashore there I will walk up the hill and look to it."

"No," said Walter, "but the man who lives there will go out of it, of course, when he hears that we want it.

You see, we think that the fresh air of the downs and the very emptiness of the landscape will do our friend

"Yes," said Clara, smiling, "and he will not be so far from his beloved that they cannot easily meet if they

This talk had brought us down to the boat, and we were presently afloat on the beautiful broad stream, Dick

driving the prow swiftly through the windless water of the early summer morning, for it was not yet six

o'clock. We were at the lock in a very little time; and as we lay rising and rising on the incoming water, I

could not help wondering that my old friend the poundlock, and that of the very simplest and most rural

"I have been wondering, as we passed lock after lock, that you people, so prosperous as you are, and

especially since you are so anxious for pleasant work to do, have not invented something which would get rid

Dick laughed. "My dear friend," said he, "as long as water has the clumsy habit of running downhill, I fear

we must humour it by going upstairs when we have our faces turned from the sea. And really I don't see why

There was no doubt about the latter assertion, I thought, as I looked uup at the overhanging boughs of the

great trees, with the sun coming glittering through the leaves, and listened to the song of the summer

blackbirds as it mingled with the sound of the backwater near us. So not being able to say why I wanted the

"You see,guest, this is not an age of inventions. The last epoch did all that for us, and we are now content to

use such of its inventions as we find handy and leaving those alone which we don't want. I believe, as a

matter of fact, that some time ago (I can't give you a date) some elaborate machinery was used for the locks,

though people did not go so far as try to make water run uphill. However it was troublesome, I suppose, and

the simple hatches, and the gates, with a big counterpoising beam, were found to answer every purpose, and

were easily mended when wanted with material always to hand: so here they are, as you see."

"Besides," said Dick, "this kind of lock is pretty, as you see; and I can't help thinking that your machinelock,

winding up like a watch, would have been ugly and would have spoiled the look of the river: and that is

surely reason enough for keeping such locks as these. Goodbye, old fellow!" said he to the lock, as he

pushed us out through the now open gates by a vigorous stroke of the boathook. "May you live long, and

On we went; and the water had the familiar aspect to me of the days before Pangbourne had been thoroughly

decockneyfied, as I have seen it. It (Pangbourne) was distinctly a village still_i.e._ a definite group of

houses, and as pretty as might be. The beechwoods still covered the hill that rose above Basildon; but the

flat fields beneath them were much more populous than I remembered them, as there were five large houses

in sight, very carefully designed so as not to hurt the character of the country. Down on the green lip of the

river, just where the water turns toward the Goring and Streatley reaches were half a dozen girls playing

about on the grass. They hailed us as we were about passing them, as they noted we were travellers, and we

stopped a minute to talk with them. They had been bathing, and were light clad and barefooted, and were

bound for the meadows on the Berkshire side, where the haymaking had begun, and were passing the time

merrily enough till the Berkshire folk came in their punt to fetch them. At first nothing would content them

but we must go with them into the hayfield, and breakfast with them; but Dick put forward his theory of

beginning the hayharvest higher up the water, and not spoiling my pleasure therein by giving me a taste of it

elsewhere, and they gave way though unwillingly. In revenge they asked me a great many questions about the

country I came from and the manners of life there, which I found rather puzzling to answer; and doubtless

what answers I did give were puzzling enough to them. I noticed both with these pretty girls and with

everybody else we met, that in default of serious news, such as we had heard at MapleDurham, they were

eager to discuss all the little details of life; the weather, the haycrop, the last new house, the plenty or lack of

such and such birds, and so on; and they talked of these things not in a fatuous and conventional way, but as

taking, I say, real interest in them. Moreover, I found that the women knew as much about all these things as

the men: could name a flower, and knew its qualities; could tell you the habitat of such and such birds and

It is almost strange what a difference this intelligence made in my esimate of the country life of that day; for

it used to be said in past times, and on the whole truly, that outside their daily work country people knew

little of the country, and at least could tell you nothing about it; while here were these people as eager about

all the goings on in the fields and woods and downs as if they had been Cockneys newly escaped from the

I may mention as a detail worth noting that not only did there seem to be a great many more birds about of

the nonpredatory kinds, but their enemies the birds of prey were also commoner. A kite hung over our heads

as we passed Medmenham yesterday; magpies were quite common in the hedgerow; I saw several

sparrowhawks, and I think a merlin; and now just as we were passing the pretty bridge which had taken the

place of Basildon railwaybridge, a couple of ravens croaked above our boat, as they sailed of to the higher

ground of the downs. I concluded from all this that the days of the gameskeeper were over, and did not even

Before we parted from these girls we saw two sturdy young men and a woman putting off from the Berkshire

shore, and then Dick bethought him of a little banter of the girls, and asked them how it was that there was

nobody of the male kind to go with them across the water, and where their boats were gone to. Said one, the

youngest of the party: "O, they have got the big punt to lead stone from up the water."

Said an older girl, laughing: "You had better go and see them. Look there," and she pointed northwest,

"Yes," said Dick, "and I am rather surprised at this time of the year; why are they not haymaking with you?"

The girls all laughed at this, and before their laugh was over, the Berkshire boat had run on to the grass and

the girls stepped in lightly, still sniggering, while the newcomers gave us the sele of the day. But before they

were under way again, the tall girl said: "Excuse us for laughing, dear neighbours, but we have had some

friendly bickering with the builders up yonder, and as we have no time to tell you the story, you had better go

They all laughed again at that, and waved us a pretty farewell as the punters set them over toward the other

"Let us go and see them," said Clara; "that is, if you are not in a hurry to get to Streatley, Walter?"

"Ok no," said Walteer, "I shall be glad of the excuse to have a little more of your company."

So we left the boat moored there, and went on up the slow slope of the hill; but I said to Dick on the way,

being somewhat mystified: "What was all that laughing about? What was the joke?"

"I can guess pretty well," said Dickk; "some of them up there have got a piece of work which interests them,

and they won't go to the haymaking, which doesn't matter at all, because there are plenty of people to do such

easyhard work as that; only, since haymaking is a regular festival, the neighbours find it amusing to jeer

"I see," said I, "much as in Dickens's time some young people were so wrapped up in their work that they

Quoth Dick: "Did I say that? I mean work that tries the muscles and hardens them and sends you pleasantly

weary to bed, but which isn't trying in other ways: doesn't harrass you in short. Such work is always pleasant

if you don't overdo it. Only, mind you, good mowing requires some little skill. I'm a pretty good mower."

This talk brought us up to the house that was abuilding, not a large one, which stood at the end of a beautiful

"O yes, I see," said Dick; "I remember, a beautiful place for a house: but a starveling of a nineteenth century

house stood there: I am glad they are rebuilding: it's all stone too, though it need not have been in this part

of the country: my word, though, they are making a neat job of it: but I wouldn't have made it all ashlar."

Walter and Clara were already talking to a tall man clad in his mason's blouse, who looked about forty, but

was, I daresay, older, who had his mallet and chisel in hand; there were at work in the shed and on the

scaffold about half a dozen men and two women, blouseclad like the carles, while a very pretty woman who

was not in the work but was dressed in an elegant suit of blue linen came sauntering up to us with her knitting

in her hand. She welcomed us and said, smiling: "So you are come up from the water to see the Obstinate

"O, right up above Oxford,cq. said Dick; "it is rather a late country. But what share have you got with the

Said she, with a laugh: "O, I am the lucky one who doesn't want to work; though sometimes I get it, for I

serve as a model to Mistress Philippa there when she wants one: she is our head carver; come and see her."

She led us up to the door of the unfinished house, where a rather little woman was working with mallet and

chisel on the wall nearby. She seemed very intent on what she was doing, and did not turn round when we

came up; but a taller woman, quite a girl she seemed, who was at work nearby, had already knocked off, and

was standing looking from Clara to Dick with delighted eyes. None of the others paid much heed to us.

The blueclad girl laid her hand on the carver's shoulder and said: "Now, Philippa, if you gobble up your

work like that, you will soon have none to do and what will become of you then?"

The carver turned round hurriedly and showed us the face of a woman of forty (or so she seemed), and said

"Don't talk nonsense, Kate, and don't interrupt me if you can help it." She stopped short when she saw us,

then went on with the kind of smile of welcome which never failed us. "Thank you for coming to see us,

neighbours; but I am sure that you won't think me unkind if I go on with my work, especially when I tell you

that I was ill and unable to do anything all throughi April and May; and this open air and the sun and the

work together, and my feeling well again too, make a mere delight of every hour to me; and excuse me, I

She fell to work accordingly on a carving in low relief of flowers and figures, but talked on amidst her mallet

strokes: "You see, we all think this the prettiest place for a house up and down these reaches; and the site has

been so long encumbered with an unworthy one, that we masons were determined to pay off fate and destiny

Here she lapsed into mere carving, but the tall foreman came up and said: "Yes, neighbours, that is it: so it is

going to be all ashlar because we want to carve a kind of wreath of flowers and figures all round it; and we

have been much hindered by one thing or other Philippa's illness amongst others,and though we could

"Well, at any rate, she is our best carver, and it would not have been kind to begin the carving without her. So

you see," said he, looking at Dick and me, "we really couldn't go haymaking, could we, neighbours? But you

see, we are getting on so fast now with this splendid weather, that I think we may well spare a week or ten

days at wheatharvest and won't we go at _that_ work then! Come down then to the acres that lie north and

"Hurrah, for a good brag!" called a voice from the scaffold above us; "our foreman thinks that an easier job

There was a general laugh at this sally, in which the tall forman joined; and with that we saw a lad bringing

out a little table into the shadow of the stoneshed, which he set down there, and then going back, came out

again with the inevitable big wickered flask and tall glasses, whereon the foreman led us up to due seats on

"Well, neighbours, drink to my brag coming true, or I shall think you don't believe me! Up there!" said he,

hailing the scaffold, "are you coming down for a glass?" Three of the workmen came running down the

ladder as men with good "building legs" will do; but the others didn't answer except the joker (if he must so

be called), who called out without turning round: "Excuse me, neighbours, for not getting down. I must get

on: my work is not superintending, like the gaffer's yonder; but, you fellows, send us up a glass to drink the

haymakers' health." Of course, Philippa would not turn away from her beloved work; but the other woman

server came; she turned out to be Philippa's daughter but was a tall strong girl, blackhaired and gypseylike

of face and curiously solemn of manner. The rest gathered round us and clinked glasses, and the men on the

scaffold turned about and drank to our healths; but the busy little woman by the door would have none of it

all but only shrugged her shoulders when her daughter came up to her and touched her.

So we shook hands and turned our backs on the Obstinate Refusers, went down the slope to our boat, and

before we had gone many steps heard the full tune of tinkling trowels mingle with the humming of the bees

We set Walter ashore on the Berkshire side, amidst all the beauties of Streatley, and so went our ways into

what once would have been the deeper country under the foothills of the White Horse; and though the

contrast between halfcockneyfied and wholly unsophisticated country existed no longer, a feeling of

exultation rose within me (as it used to do) at sight of the familiar and still unchanged hills of the Berkshire

We stopped at Wallingford for our midday meal; of course, all signs of squalor and poverty had disappeared

from the streets of the ancient town, and many ugly houses had been taken down and many pretty new ones

built, but I thought it curious, that the town still looked like the old place I remembered so well; for indeed it

At dinner we fell in with an old, but very bright and intelligent man, who seemed in a country way to be

another edition of old Hammond. He had an extraordinary detailed knowledge of the ancient history of the

countryside from the time of Alfred to the days of the Parliamentary Wars, many events of which, as you may

know, were enacted round about Wallingford. But, what was more interesting to us, he had detailed record of

the period of the change to the present state of things, and told us a great deal about it, and especially of that

exodus of the people from the town to the country, and the gradual recovery by the townbred people on one

side, and the countrybred people on the other, of those arts of life which they had each lost; which loss, as

he told us had at one time gone so far that not only was it impossible to find a carpenter or a smith in a village

or a small country town, but that people in such places had even forgotten how to bake bread, and that at

Wallingford, for instance, the bread came down with the newspapers by an early train from London, worked

in some way, the explanation of which I could not understand. He told us also that the townspeople who came

into the country used to pick up the agricultural arts by carefully watching the way in which the machines

worked, gathering an idea of handicraft from machinery; because at that time almost everything was done by

elaborate machines used quite unintelligently by the labourers. On the other hand, the old men amongst the

labourers managed to teach the younger ones gradually a little artisanship, such as the use of the saw and the

plane, the work of the smithy, and so forth; for once more by that time it was as much asor rather, more

than a man could do to fix an ash pole to a rake by handiwork; so that it would take a machine worth a

thousand pounds, a group of workmen, and a half a day's travelling, to do five shillings' worth of work. He

showed us, among other things, an account of a certain village council who were working hard at all this

business; and the record of their intense earnestness in getting to the bottom of some matter which in time

past would have been thought quite trivial, as, for example, the due proportions of alkali and oil for

soapmaking for the village wash, or the exact heat of the water into which a leg of mutton should be

plunged for boilingall this joined to the utter absence of anything like the party feeling, which even in a

village assembly would certainly have made its appearance in an earlier epoch, was very amusing, and at the

This old man, whose name was Henry Morsom, took us, after our meal and a rest, into a biggish hall which

contained a large collection of articles of manufacture and art from the last days of the machine period to that

day; and he went over them with us, and explained them with great care. They also were very interesting,

showing the transition from the makeshift work of the machines (which was at about its worst a little after

the Civil War before told of) into the first years of the new handicraft period. Of course, there was much

"You must remember," said the old antiquary, "that the handicraft was not the result of what used to be called

material necessity: on the contrary, by that time the machines had been so much improved that almost all

necessary work might have been done by them: and indeed many people at that time, and before it, used to

think that machinery would entirely supersede handicraft; which certainly, on the face of it, seemed more

than likely. But there was another opinion, far less logical, prevalent amongst the rich people before the days

of freedom, which did not die out at once after that epoch had begun. This opinion, which from all I can learn

seemed as natural then, as it seems absurd now, was, that while the ordinary daily work of the world would

be done entirely by automatic machinery, the energies of the more intelligent part of mankind would be set

free to follow the higher forms of the arts, as well as science and the study of history. It was strange, was it

not, that they should thus ignore that aspiration after complete equality which we now recognise as the bond

"Strange, neighbour? Well, I don't know. I have often heard my old kinsman say the one aim of all people

before our time was to avoid work, or at least they thought it was; so of course the work which their daily life

_forced_ them to do, seemed more like work than that which they _seemed_ to choose for themselves."

"True enough," said Morsom. "Anyhow, they soon began to find out their mistake, and that only slaves and

Clara broke in here, flushing a little as she spoke: "Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery

that they had been living?a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and

inanimate'nature,' as people used to call itas one thing, and mankind as another. It was natural to people

thinking in this way, that they should try to make 'nature' their slave, since they thought 'nature' was

"Surely," said Morsom; "and they were puzzled as to what to do, till they found the feeling against a

mechanical life, which had begun before the Great Change amongst people who had leisure to think of such

things, was spreading insensibly; till at last under the guise of pleasure that was not supposed to be work,

work that was pleasure began to push out the mechanical toil, which they had once hoped at the best to

reduce to narrow limits indeed, but never to get rid of; and which, moreover, they found they could not limit

"In the halfcentury that followed the Great Change," said Morsom, "it began to be noteworthy; machine

after machine was quietly dropped under the excuse that machines could not produce works of art, and that

works of art were more and more called for. Look here," he said, "here are some of the works of that

timerough and unskilful in handiwork, but solid and showing some sense of pleasure in the making."

"They are very curious," said I, taking up a piece of pottery from amongst the specimens which the antiquary

was showing us; "not a bit like the work of either savages or barbarians, and yet with what would once have

"Yes," said Morsom, "You must not look for delicacy there: in that period you could only have got that from

a man who was practically a slave. But now, you see," said he, leading me on a little, "we have learned the

trick of handicraft, and have added the utmost refinement of workmanship to the freedom of fancy and

I looked, and wondered indeed at the deftness and abundance of beauty of the work of men who had at last

learned to accept life itself as a pleasure, and the satisfaction of the common needs of mankind and the

preparation for them, as work fit for the best of the race. I mused silently; but at last I said:

"Meanwhile," quoth Dick, "we have got to meet the rest of our day's journey; so out into the street and down

to the strand! Will you come a turn with us, neighbour? Our friend is greedy of your stories."

"I will go as far as Oxford with you," said he; "I want a book or two out of the Bodleian Library. I suppose

"No," said Dick, "we are going higher up; the hay is waiting us there, you know."

Morsom nodded, and we all went into the street together, and got into the boat a little above the town bridge.

But just as Dick was getting the sculls into the rowlocks, the bows of another boat came thrusting through the

low arch. Even at first sight it was a gay little craft indeedbright green, and painted over with elegantly

drawn flowers. As it cleared the arch, a figure as bright and gayclad as the boat rose up in it; a slim girl

dressed in light blue silk that fluttered in the draughty wind of the bridge. I thought I knew the figure, and

sure enough, as she turned her head to us, and showed her beautiful face, I saw with joy that it was none other

We all stopped to receive her. Dick rose in the boat and cried out a genial good morrow; I tried to be as genial

as Dick, but failed; Clara waved a delicate hand to her; and Morsom nodded and looked on with interest. As

to Ellen, the beautiful brown of her face was deepened by a flush, as she brought the gunwale of her boat

"You see, neighbours, I had some doubt if you would all three come back past Runnymede, or if you did,

whether you would stop there; and besides, I am not sure whether wemy father and Ishall not be away

in a week or two, for he wants to see a brother of his in the north country, and I should not like him to go

without me. So I thought I might never see you again, and that seemed uncomfortable to me, andand so I

"Well," said Dick, "I am sure we are all very glad of that; although you may be sure that as for Clara and me,

we should have made a point of coming to see you, and of coming the second time, if we had found you away

at first. But, dear neighbour, there you are alone in the boat, and you have been sculling pretty hard, I should

think, and might find a little quiet sitting pleasant; so we had better part our company into two."

"Yes," said Ellen, "I thought you would do that, so I have brought a rudder for my boat: will you help me to

And she went aft in her boat and pushed along our side till she had brought the stern close to Dick's hand. He

knelt down in our boat and she in hers, and the usual fumbling took place over hanging the rudder on its

hooks; for, as you may imagine, no change had taken place in the arrangement of such an unimportant matter

as the rudder of a pleasure boat. As the two beautiful young faces bent over the rudder, they seemed to me to

be very close together, and though it lasted only a moment, a sort of pang shot through me as I looked on.

Clara sat in her place and did not look round, but presently she said, with just the least stiffness in her tone:

"How shall we divide? Won't you go into Ellen's boat, Dick, since, without offence to our guest, you are the

Dick stood up and laid his hand on her shoulder, and said:"No, no; let Guest try what he can dohe ought to

be getting into training now. Besides, we are in no hurry: we are not going far above Oxford; and even if we

are benighted, we shall have the moon, which will give us nothing worse of night than a greyer day"

"Besides," said I, "I may manage to do a little more with my sculling than merely keeping the boat from

They all laughed at this, as if it had been a very good joke; and I thought that Ellen's laugh, even amongst the

To be short, I got into the newcome boat, not a little elated, and taking the sculls, set to work to show off a

little. Formust I say i?I felt as if even that happy world were made happier for my being so near this

strange girl; although I must say that of all persons I had seen in that world renewed, she was the most

unfamiliar to me, the most unlike what I could have though of. Clara, for instance, beautiful and bright as she

was, was not unlike a _very_ pleasant and unaffected young lady; and the other girls also seemed nothing

more than specimens of very much improved types which I had known in other times. But this girl was not

only beautiful with a beauty quite different from that of "a young lady," but was in all ways so strangely

interesting; so that I kept wondering what she would say or do next to surprise and please me. Not, indeed,

that there was anything startling in what she actually said or did; but it was all done in a new way, and always

with that indefinable interest and pleasure of life, which I had noticed more or less in everybody, but which in

We were soon under way and going at a fair pace through the beautiful reaches of the river, between

Bensington and Dorchester. It was now about the middle of the afternoon, warm rather than hot, and quite

windless; the clouds high up and light, pearly white, and gleaming, softened by the sun's burning, but did not

hide the pale blue in most places, though they seemed to give it height and consistency; the sky, in short,

looked really like a vault, as poets have someteimes called it, and not like mere limitless air, but a vault so

vast and full of light that it did not in any way oppress the spirits. It was the sort of afternoon that Tennyson

must have been thinking about, when he said of the LotosEaters' land that it was a land where it was always

Ellen leaned back in the stern and seemed to enjoy herself thoroughly I could see that she was really looking

at things and let nothing escape her, and as I watched her, an uncomfortable feeling that she had been a little

touched by love of the deft, ready, and handsome Dick, and that she had been constrained to follow us

because of it, faded out of my mind; since if it had been so, she surely could not have been so excitedly

pleased, even with the beautiful scenes we were passing through. For some time she did not say much, but at

last, as we had passed under Shillingford Bridge (new built, but somewhat on its old lines), she bade me hold

the boat while she had a good look at the landscape through the graceful arch. Then she turned about to me

"I do not know whether to be sorry or glad that this is the first time that I have been in these reaches. It is true

that it is a great pleasure to see all this for the first time; ;but if I had had a year or two of memory of it, how

sweetly it would all have mingled with my life, waking or dreaming! I am so glad Dick has been pulling

slowly, so as to linger out the time here. How do you feel about your first visit to these waters?"

I do not suppose she meant a trap for me, but anyhow I fell into it, and said: "My first visit! It is not my first

visit by many a time. I know these reaches well; indeed, I may say that I know every yard of the Thames

I saw the complications that might follow, as her eyes fixed mine with a curious look in them, that I had seen

before at Runnymede, when I had said something which made it difficult for others to understand my present

position amongst these people. I reddened, and said, in order to cover my mistake: "I wonder you have never

been up so high as this, since you live on the Thames, and moreover row so well that it would be no great

labour to you. Let alone," quoth I, insinuatingly,"that anybody would be glad to row you."

She laughed, clearly not at my compliment (as I am sure she need not have done, since it was a very

commonplace fact), but at something which was stirring in her mind; and she still looked at me kindly, but

"Well, perhaps it is strange, though I have a good deal to do at home, what with looking after my father, and

dealing with two or three young men who have taken a special liking to me, and all of whom I cannot please

at once. But you, dear neighbour; it seems to me stranger that you should know the upper river, than that I

should not know it; for, as I understand, you have only been in England a few days. But perhaps you mean

that you have read about it in books, and seen pictures of it?though that does not come to much either,"

"Truly," said I. "Besides, I have not read any books about the Thames: it was one of the minor stupidities of

our time that no one thought fit to write a decent book about what may fairly be called our only English

The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I saw that I had made another mistake; and I felt really

annoyed with myself, as I did not want to go into a long explanation just then, or begin another series of

Odyssean lies. Somehow, Ellen seemed to see this, and she took no advantage of my slip; her piercing look

"Well, anyhow I am glad that I am travelling these waters with you, since you know our river so well, and I

know little of it past Pangbourne, for you can tell me all I want to know about it." She paused a minute, and

then said: "Yet you must understand that the part I do know, I know as thoroughly as you do. I should be

sorry for you to think that I am careless of a thing so beautiful and interesting as the Thames."

She said this quite earnestly, and with an air of affectionate appeal to me which pleased me very much; but I

Presently we came to Day's Lock, where Dick and his two sitters had waited for us. He would have me go

ashore, as if to show me something which I had never seen before; and nothing loth I followed him, Ellen by

my side, to the wellremembered Dykes, and the long church beyond them, which was still used for various

purposes by the good folk of Dorchester: where, by the way, the village guesthouse still had the sign of the

Fleurdeluce which it used to bear in the days when hospitality had to be bought and sold. This time,

however, I made no sign of all this being familiar to me: though as we sat for a while on the mound of the

Dykes looking up at Sinodun and its clearcut trench, and its sister _mamelon_ of Whittenham, I felt

somewhat uncomfortable under Ellen's serious attentive look, which almost drew from me the cry, "How

We stopped again at Abington, which, like Wallingford, was in a way both old and new to me, since it had

been lifted out of its nineteenthcentury degradation, and otherwise was as little altered as might be.

Sunset was in the sky as we skirted Oxford by Oseney; we stopped a minute or two hard by the ancient castle

to put Henry Morsom ashore. It was a matter of course that so far as they could be seen from the river, I

missed none of the towers and spires of that once donberidden city; but the meadows all round which, when

I had last passed through them, were getting daily more and more squalid, more and more impressed with the

seal of the "stir and intellectual life of the nineteenth century," were no longer intellectual, but had once again

become as beautiful as they should be, and the little hill of Hinksey, with two or three very pretty stone

houses newgrown on it (I use the word advisedly; for they seemed to belong to it) looked down happily on

the full streams and waving grass, grey now, but for the sunset, with its fastripening seeds.

The railway having disappeared, and therewith the various level bridges over the streams of Thames, we were

soon through Medley Lock and in the wide water that washes Port Meadow, with its numerous population of

geese nowise diminished; and I thought with interest how its name and use had survived from the older

imperfect communal period, through the time of the confused struggle and tyranny of the rights of property,

I was taken ashore again at Godstow, to see the remains of the old nunnery, pretty nearly in the same

condition as I had remembered them; and from the high bridge over the cut close by, I could see, even in the

twilight, how beautiful the little village with its grey stone houses had become; for we had now come into the

stonecountry, in which every house must be either built, walls and roof, of grey stone or be a blot on the

We still rowed on after this, Ellen taking the sculls in my boat; we passed a weir a little higher up, and about

three miles beyond it came by moonlight again to a little town, where we slept at a house thinly inhabited, as

We started before six o'clock the next morning, as we were still twentyfive miles from our restingplace,

and Dick wanted to be there before dusk. The journey was pleasant, though to those who do not know the

upper Thames, there is little to say about it. Ellen and I were once more together in her boat, though Dick, for

fairness' sake, was for having me in his, and letting the two women scull the green toy. Ellen, however, would

not allow this, but claimed me as the interesting person of the company. "After having come so far," said she,

"I will not be put off with a companion who will always be thinking of somebody else than me: the guest is

the only person who can amuse me properly. I mean that really," said she, turning to me, "and have not said it

Clara blushed and looked very happy at all this; for I think up to this time she had been rather frightened of

Ellen. As for me I felt young again, and strange hopes of my youth were mingling with the pleasure of the

As we passed through the short and winding reaches of the now quickly lessening stream, Ellen said: "How

pleasant this little river is to me, who am used to a great wide wash of water; it almost seems as if we shall

have to stop at every reachend. I expect before I get home this evening I shall have realised what a little

"Yes," she said, "and don't you find it difficult to imagine the times when this pretty country was treated by

its folk as if it had been an ugly characterless waste, with no delicate beauty to be guarded, with no heed

taken of the ever fresh pleasure of the recurring seasons, and changeful weather, and diverse quality of the

"And to each other," said I. Then a sudden resolution took hold of me, and I said: "Dear neighbour, I may as

well tell you at once that I find it easier to imagine all that ugly past than you do, because I myself have been

part of it. I see both that you have divined something of this in me; and also I think you will believe me when

She was silent a little, and then she said: "My friend, you have guessed right about me; and to tell you the

truth I have followed you up from Runnymede in order that I might ask you many questions, and because I

saw that you were not one of us; and that interested and pleased me, and I wanted to make you as happy as

you could be. To say the truth, there was a risk in it," said she, blushing"I mean as to Dick and Clara; for I

must tell you, since we are going to be such close friends, that even amongst us, where there are so many

beautiful women, I have often troubled men's minds disastrously. That is one reason why I was living alone

with my father in the cottage at Runnymede. But it did not answer on that score; for of course people came

there, as the place is not a desert, and they seemed to find me all the more interesting for living alone like

that, and fell to making stories of me to themselveslike I know you did, my friend. Well, let that pass. This

evening, or tomorrow morning, I shall make a proposal to you to do something which would please me very

I broke in eagerly, saying that I would do anything in the world for her; for indeed, in spite of my years and

the too obvious signs of them (though that feeling of renewed youth was not a mere passing sensation, I

think)in spite of my years, I say, I felt altogether too happy in the company of this delightful girl, and was

She laughed now, but looked very kindly on me. "Well," she said, "meantime for the present we will let it be;

for I must look at this new country that we are passing through. See how the river has changed character

again: it is broad now, and the reaches are long and very slowrunning. And look, there is a ferry!"

I told her the name of it, as I slowed off to put the ferrychain over our heads; and on we went passing by a

bank clad with oak trees on our left hand, till the stream narrowed again and deepened and we rowed on

between walls of tall reeds, whose population of reed sparrows and warblers were delighfully restless,

twittering and chuckling as the wash of the boats stirred the reeds from the water upward in the still, hot

She smiled with pleasure, and her lazy enjoyment of the new scene seemed to bring out her beauty doubly as

she leaned back amidst the cushions, though she was far from languid; her idleness being the idleness of a

"Look!" she said, springing up suddenly from her place without any obvious effort, and balancing herself

"I need scarcely look at that," said I, not turning my head away from her beauty. "I know what it is;

She looked on me kindly, and said, "How well we get on now you are no longer on your guard against me!"

And she stood looking thoughtfully at me still, till she had to sit down as we passed under the middle one of

"O the beautiful fields!" she said; "I had no idea of the charm of a very small river like this. The smallness of

the scale of everything, the short reaches, and the speedy change of the banks, give one a feeling of going

somewhere, of coming to something strange, a feeling of adventure which I have not felt in bigger waters."

I looked at her delightedly; for her voice, saying the very thing that I was thinking, was like a caress to me.

"I must tell you, my friend, that when my father leaves the Thames this summer he will take me away to a

place near the Roman wall in Cumberland; so that this voyage of mine is farewell to the south; of course with

my goodwill in a way; and yet I am sorry for it. I hadn't the heart to tell Dick yesterday that we were as good

"I must say that I don't like moving about from one home to another; one gets so pleasantly used to all the

detail of the life about one; it fits so harmoniously and happily into one's own life, that beginning again, even

in a small way, is a kind of pain. But I daresay in the country which you come from, you would think this

She smiled at me caressingly as she spoke, and I made haste to answer: "O no, indeed; again you echo my

very thoughts. But I hardly expected to hear you speak so. I gathered from all I have heard that there was a

"Well," she said, "of course people are free to move about; but except for pleasureparties, especially in

harvest and haytime, like this of ours, I don't think they do so much. I admit that I also have other moods

than that of stayathome, as I hinted just now, and I should like to go with you all through the west

Presently at a place where the river flowed round a headland of the meadows, we stopped a while for rest and

victuals, and settled ourselves on a beautiful bank which almost reached the dignity of a hillside: the wide

meadows spread before us, and already the scythe was busy amidst the hay. One change I noticed amidst the

quiet beauty of the fieldsto wit, that they were planted with trees here and there, often fruittrees, and that

there was none of the niggardly begrudging of space to a handsome tree which I remembered too well; and

though the willows were often polled (or shrowded, as they call it in the countryside), this was done with

some regard to beauty: I mean that there was no polling of rows on rows so as to destroy the pleasantness of

half a mile of country, but a thoughtful sequence in the cutting, that prevented a sudden bareness anywhere.

To be short, the fields were everywhere treated as a garden made for the pleasure as well as the livelihood of

On this bank or bent of the hill, then, we had our midday meal; somewhat early for dinner, if that mattered,

but we had been stirring early: the slender stream of the Thames winding below us between the garden of a

country I have been telling of; a furlong from us was a beautiful little islet begrown with graceful trees; on

the slopes westward of us was a wood of varied growth overhanging the narrow meadow on the south side of

the river; while to the north was a wide stretch of mead rising very gradually from the river's edge. A delicate

spire of an ancient building rose up from out of the trees in the middle distance, with a few grey houses

clustered about it; while nearer to us, in fact not half a furlong from the water was a quite modern stone

housea wide quadrangle of one story, the buildings that made it being quite low. There was no garden

between it and the river, nothing but a row of peartrees still quite young and slender; and though there did

not seem to be much ornament about it, it had a sort of natural elegance, like that of the trees themselves.

As we sat looking down on all this in the sweet June day, rather happy than merry, Ellen, who sat next me,

her hand clasped about one knee, leaned sideways to me, and said in a low voice which Dick and Clara might

have noted if they had not been busy in happy wordless lovemaking: "Friend, in your country were the

I said: "Well, at any rate the houses of our rich men were not; they were mere blots upon the face of the

"I find that hard to understand," she said. "I can see why the workmen, who were so oppressed, should not

have been able to live in beautiful houses; for it takes time and leisure, and minds not overburdened with

care, to make beautiful dwellings; and I quite understand that these poor people were not allowed to live in

such a way as to have these (to us) necessary good things. But why the rich men who had the time and the

leisure and the materials for building, as it would be in this case, should not have housed themselves well, I

do not understand as yet. I know what you are saying to me," she said, looking me full in the eyes and

blushing, "to wit that their houses and all belonging to them were generally ugly and base, unless they

chanced to be ancient like yonder remnant of our forefathers' work" (pointing to the spire); "that they

"Vulgar," said I. "We used to say," said I, "that the ugliness and vulgarity of the rich men's dwellings was a

necessary reflection from the sordidness and bareness of life which they forced upon the poor people."

She knit her brows as in thought; then turned a brightened face on me, as if she had caught the idea, and said:

"Yes, friend, I see what you mean. We have sometimesthose of us who look into these thingstalked this

very matter over; because, to say the truth, we have plenty of record of the socalled arts of the time before

Equality of Life; and there are not wanting people who say that the state of that society was not the cause of

all that ugliness; that they were ugly in their life because they liked to be, and could have had beautiful things

about them if they had chosen; just as a man or a body of men now may, if they please, make things more or

"Yes," she said; "you are answering me, teaching me, in some way or another, although you have not spoken

the words aloud. You are going to say that in times of inequality it was an essential condition of the life of

these rich men that they should not themselves make what they wanted for the adornment of their lives, but

should force those to make them whom they forced to live pinched and sordid lives; and that as a necessary

consequence the sordidness and pinching, the ugly barrenness of those ruined lives, were worked up into the

adornment of the lives of the rich, and art died out amongst men? Was that what you would say, my friend?"

"Yes, yes," I said, looking at her eagerly; for she had risen and was standing on the edge of the bent, the light

wind stirring her dainty raiment, one hand laid on her bosom, the other arm stretched downward and clenched

I think amidst mysomething more than interest in her, and admiration for her, I was beginning to wonder

how it would all end. I had a glimmering of fear of what might follow; of anxiety as to the remedy which this

new age might offer for the missing of something one might set one's heart on. But now Dick rose to his feet

and cried out in his hearty manner: "Neighbour Ellen, are you quarreling with the guest, or are you worrying

"Neither, dear neighbour," she said. "I was so far from quarreling with him that I think I have been making

him good friends both with himself and me. Is that so, dear guest?" she said, looking down at me with a

"Well, moreover," she said, "I must say for him that he has explained himself to me very well indeed, so that

"All right," quoth Dick. "When I first set eyes on you at Runnymede I knew that there was something

wonderful in your keenness of wits. I don't say that as a mere pretty speech to please you," said he quickly,

"but because it is true; and it made me want to see more of you. But, come, we ought to be going; for we are

And therewith he took Clara's hand, and led her down the bent. But Ellen stood thoughtfully looking down

for a little, and as I took her hand to follow Dick, she turned round to me and said:

"You might tell me a great deal and make many things clear to me, if you would."

"Yes," said I, "I am pretty well fit for that,and for nothing elsean old man like me."

She did not notice the bitterness which, whether I liked it or not, was in my voice as I spoke, but went on: "It

is not so much for myself; I should be quite content to dream about past times, and if I could not idealise

them, yet at least idealise some of the people who lived in them. But I think sometimes people are too

careless of the history of the pasttoo apt to leave it in the hands of old learned men like Hammond. Who

knows? happy as we are, times may alter; we may be bitten with some impulse towards change, and many

things may seem too wonderful for us to resist, too exciting not to catch at, if we do not know that they are

As we went slowly down toward the boats she said again: "Not for myself alone, dear friend; I shall have

children; perhaps before the end a good many;I hope so. And though of course I cannot force any special

kind of knowledge upon them, yet, my friend, I cannot help but thinking that just as they might be like me in

body, so I might impress upon them some part of my ways of thinking; that is, indeed, some of the essential

part of myself; that part which was not mere moods, created by matters and events round about me. What do

Of one thing I was sure, that her beauty and kindness and eagerness combined, forced me to think as she did,

when she was not earnestly laying herself open to receive my thoughts. I said, what at the time was true, that

I thought it most important; and presently stood entranced by the wonder of her grace as she stepped into the

light boat and held out her hand to me. And so on we went up the Thames stillor whither?

On we went. In spite of my newborn excitement about Ellen, and my gathering fear of where it would land

me I could not help taking abundant interest in the condition of the river and its banks; all the more as she

never seemed weary of the changing picture, but looked at every yard of flowery bank and gurgling eddy

with the same affectionate interest which I myself once had so fully, as I used to think, and perhaps had not

altogether lost even in this strangely changed society with all its wonders. Ellen seemed delighted with my

pleasure at this, that, or the other piece of carefulness in dealing with the river: the nursing of pretty corners;

the ingenuity in dealing with difficulties of waterengineering so that the most obviously useful works

looked beautiful and natural also. All this, I say, pleased me hugely, and she was pleased at my pleasurebut

"You seem astonished," she said, just after we had passed a mill* which spanned all the stream save the

waterway for traffic, but which was as beautiful in its way as a Gothic cathedral"you seem astonished at

* I should have said that all along the Thames there were abundance of mills used for various purposes; none

of which were in any degree unsightly, and many strikingly beautiful; and the gardens about them marvels of

"Ah!" she said, looking at me admiringly, yet with a lurking smile in her face, "you know all about the

history of the past. Were they not always careful about this little stream which now adds so much

pleasantness to the countryside? It would always be easy to manage this little river. Ah! I forgot, though," she

said, as her eye caught mine, "in the days we are thinking of pleasure was wholly neglected in such matters.

But how did they manage the river in the days that you" Lived in was what she was going to say; but

"They _mis_managed it," quoth I. "Up to the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was still more or

less of a highway for the country people, some care was taken of the river and its banks; and though I don't

suppose any one troubled himself about its aspect, yet it was trim and beautiful. But when the railwaysof

which no doubt you have heardcame into power, they would not allow the people of the country to use

either the natural or artificial waterways, of which the latter there were a great many. I suppose when we get

higher up we shall see one of these; a very important one, which one of these railways entirely closed to the

public, so that they might force people to send their goods by their private road, and so tax them as heavily as

Ellen laughed heartily. "Well,", she said, "that is not stated clearly enough in our historybooks, and it is

worth knowing. But certainly the people of those days must have been a curiously lazy set. We are not either

fidgety or quarrelsome now, but if any one tried such a piece of folly on us, we should use the said

waterways, whoever gainsayed us: surely that would be simple enough. However, I remember other cases of

this stupidity: when I was on the Rhine two years ago, I remember they showed us ruins of old castles, which,

according to what we heard, must have been made for pretty much the same purpose as the railways were.

"It is both short and stupid enough," said I. "The river having lost its practical or commercial valuethat is

"Yes," quoth Ellen, "I understand: like the railways and the robber baron knights. Yes?"

"So then they turned the makeshift business on to it, and handed it over to a body up in London, who from

time to time, in order to show that they had something to do, did some damage here and there,cut down

trees, destroying the banks thereby; dredged the river (where it was not needed always), and threw the

dredglings on the fields so as to spoil them; and so forth. But for the most part they practised `masterly

inactivity,' as it was then calledthat is, they drew their salaries, and let things alone."

"Drew their salaries," she said. "I know that means that they were allowed to take an extra lot of other

people's goods for doing nothing. And if that had been all, it really might have been worth while to let them

do so, if you couldn't find any other way of keeping them quiet; but it seems to me that being so paid, they

could not help doing something, and that something was bound to be mischief,because," said she, kindling

with sudden anger, "the whole business was founded on lies and false pretensions. I don't mean only those

"Yes,"said I, "how happy you are to have got out of the parsimony of oppression!"

"Why do you sigh?" she said, kindly and somewhat anxiously. "You seem to think that it will not last?"

"But why not for you?" said she. "Surely it is for all the world; and if your country is somewhat backward, it

will come into line before long. Or," she said quickly, "are you thinking that you must soon go back again? I

will make my proposal which I told you of at once, and so perhaps put an end to your anxiety. I was going to

propose that you should live with us where we are going. I feel quite old friends with you, and should be

sorry to lose you." Then she smiled on me, and said: "Do you know, I begin to suspect you of wanting to

nurse a sham sorrow, like the ridiculous characters in some of those queer old novels that I have come across

I really had almost begun to suspect it myself, but I refused to admit so much; so I sighed no more but fell to

giving my delightful companion what little pieces of history I knew about the river and its borderlands; and

the time passed pleasantly enough; and between the two of us (she was a better sculler than I was, and

seemed quite tireless) we kept up fairly well with Dick, hot as the afternoon was, and swallowed up the way

at a great rate. At last we passed under another ancient bridge; and through meadows bordered at first with

huge elmtrees mingled with sweet chestnut of younger but very elegant growth; and the meadows widened

out so much that it seemed as if the trees must now be on the bents only, or about the houses except for the

growth of willows on the immediate banks; so that the wide stretch of grass was little broken here. Dick got

very much excited now, and often stood up in the boat to cry out to us that this was such and such a field and

so forth; and we caught fire at his enthusiasm for the hayfield and its harvest, and pulled our best.

At last we were passing through a reach of the river where on the side of the towingpath was a highish bank

with a thick whispering bed of reeds before it, and on the other side a higher bank, clothed with willows that

dipped into the stream and crowned by ancient elmtrees, we saw bright figures coming along close to the

bank, as if they were looking for something; as, indeed, they were, and wethat is, Dick and his

companywere what they were looking for. Dick lay on his oars, and we followed his example. He gave a

joyous shout to the people on the bank, which was echoed back from it in many voices, deep and sweetly

shrill; for there were above a dozen persons, both men, women, and children. A tall handsome woman, with

black wavy hair and deepset grey eyes, came forward on the bank and waved her hand gracefully to us, and

"Dick, my friend, we have almost had to wait for you? What excuse have you to make for your slavish

"O," said Dick, with an almost imperceptible jerk of his head toward our boat, "we didn;t want to come too

quickly up the water; there is so much to see for those who have not been up here before."

"True, true," said the stately lady, for stately is the word that must be used for her; "and we want them to get

to know the wet way from the east thoroughly well, since they must often use it now. But come ashore at

once, Dick, and you, dear neighbours; there is a break in the reeds and a good landingplace just round the

"No, no," said Dick; "it is easier going by water, though it is but a step. Besides, I want to bring my friend

here to the proper place. We will go on to the Ford; and you can talk to us from the bank as we paddle along."

He pulled his sculls through the water, and on we went, turning a sharp angle and going north a little.

Presently we saw before us a bank of elmtrees, which told us of a house amidst them, though looked in vain

for the grey walls that I expected to see there. As we went, the folk on the bank talked indeed, mingling their

kind voices with the cuckoo's song, the sweet strong whistle of the blackbirds and the ceaseless note of the

corncrake as he crept through the long grass of the mowingfield; whence came the waves of fragrance

In a few minutes we had passed through a deep eddying pool into the sharpstream that ran from the ford, and

beached our craft on a tiny strand of limestonegravel, and stepped ashore into the arms of our upriver

I disentangled myself from the merry throng, and mounting on the cartroad that ran along the river some

feet above the water, I looked round about me. The river came down through a wide meadow on my left,

which was grey now with the ripened seeding grasses; the gleaming water was lost presently by a turn of the

bank, but over the meadow I could see the mingled gables of a building where I knew the lock must be, and

which now seemed to combine a mill with it. A low wooded ridge bounded the riverplain to the south and

southeast, whence we had come, and a few low houses lay about its feet and up its slope. I turned a little to

my right, and through the hawthorn sprays and long shoots of the wild roses could see the flat country

spreading out far away under the sun of the calm evening, till something that might be called hills with a look

of sheeppastures about them bounded it with a soft blue line. Before me, the elmboughs still hid most of

what houses there might be in this riverside dwelling of men; but to the right of the cartroad a few grey

There I stood in a dreamy mood, and rubbed my eyes as if I were not wholly awake, and half expected to see

the gayclad company of beautiful men and women change to two or three spindlelegged backbowed men

and haggard, holloweyed, illfavoured women, who once wore down the soil of this land with their heavy

hopeless feet, from day to day, and season to season, and year to year. But no change came as yet, and my

heart swelled with joy as I thought of all the beautiful grey villages, from the river to the plain to the uplands,

which I could picture to myself so well, all peopled now with this happy and lovely folk, who had cast away

As I stood there Ellen detached herself from our happy friends who still stood on the little strand and came up

to me. She took me by the hand, and said softly, "Take me on to the house at once; we need not wait for the

I had a mind to say that I did not know the way thither, and that the riverside dwellers should lead; but

almost without my will my feet moved on along the road they knew. The raised way led us into a little field

bounded by a backwater of the river on one side; on the right hand we could see a cluster of small houses and

barns, new and old, and before us a grey stone barn and a wall partly overgrown with ivy, over which a few

grey gables showed. The village road ended in the shallow of the aforesaid backwater. We crossed the road,

and again almost without my will my hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and we stood presently on a

stone path which led up to the old house to which fate in the shape of Dick had so strangely brought me in

this new world of men. My companion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment; nor did I wonder, for

the garden between the wall and the house was redolent of the June flowers, and the roses were rolling over

one another with that delicious superabundance of small welltended gardens which at first sight takes

away all thought from the beholder save that of beauty. The blackbirds were singing their loudest, the doves

were cooing on the roofridge, the rooks in the high elmstrees beyond were garrulous among the young

leaves, and the swifts wheeled whining about the gables. And the house itself was a fit guardian for all the

Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as she said: "Yes, friend, this is what I came out for to see; this

manygabled old house built by the simplest of countryfolk of the longpast times, regardless of all the

turmoil that was going on in cities and courts, is lovely still amidst all the beauty which these latter days have

created; and I do not wonder at our friends tending it carefully and making much of it. It seems to me as if it

had waited for these happy days, and held in it the gathered crumbs of happiness of the confused and

She led me up close to the house, and laid her shapely sunbrowned hand and arm on the lichened wall as if

to embrace it and cried out, "O me! O me! How I love the earth, and the seasons, and weather, and all things

I could not answer her, or say a word. Her exultation and pleasure were so keen and exquisite, and her

beauty, so delicate, yet so interfused with energy, expressed it so fully, that any added word would have been

commonplace and futile. I dreaded lest the others should come in suddenly and break the spell she had cast

about me; but we stood there a while by the corner of the big gable of the house, and no one came. I heard the

merry voices some way off presently, and knew that they were going along the river to the great meadow on

We drew back a little, and looked up at the house: the door and the windows were open to the fragrant

suncured air; from the upper windowsills hung festoons of flowers in honour of the festival, as if the others

"Come in," said Ellen. "I hope nothing will spoil it inside; but I don't think it will. Come! we must go back

presently to the others. They have gone on to the tents pitched for the haymakersthe house would not hold

She led me to the door, murmuring little above her breath as she did so, "The earth and the growth of it and

We went in, and found no soul in any room as we wandered from room to room,from the rosecovered

porch to the strange and quaint garrets amongst the great timbers of the roof, where of old time the tillers and

herdsmen of the manor slept, but which anights seemed now, by the small size of the beds, and the litter of

useless and disregarded mattersbunches of drying flowers, feathers of birds, shells of starlings' eggs,

caddis worms in mugs, and the likeseemed to be inhabited for the time by children.

Everywhere there was but little furniture, and that only the most necessary, and of the simplest forms. The

extravagant love of ornament which I had noted in this people elsewhere seemed here to have given place to

the feeling that the house itself and its associations was the ornament of the country life amidst which it had

been left stranded from old times, and that to reornament it would but take away its use as a piece of natural

We sat down at last in a room over the wall which Ellen had caressed, and which was still hung with old

tapestry, originally of no artistic value, but now faded into pleasant grey tones which harmonised thoroughly

well with the quiet of the place, and which would have been ill supplanted by brighter and more striking

I asked a few random questions of Ellen as we sat there, but scarcely listened to her answers and presently

became silent, and then scarce conscious of anything, but that I was there in that old room, the doves

crooning from the roofs of the barn and dovecot beyond the window opposite to me.

My thought returned to me after what I think was but a minute or two, but which, as in a vivid dream, seemed

as if it had lasted a long time, when I saw Ellen sitting, looking all the fuller of life and pleasure and desire

from the contrast with the grey faded tapestry with its futile design, which was now only bearable because it

She looked at me kindly, but as if she read me through and through. She said:"You have begun again your

"True," said I. "I was thinking of what you, with your capacity and intelligence, joined to your love of

pleasure, and your impatience of unreasonable restraintof what you would have been in that past. And

even now, when all is won and has been for a long time, my heart is sickened with thinking of all the waste of

She rose up and said: "Come, I must not let you go off into a dream again so soon. If we must lose you, I

"Lose me?" I said"go back again? Am I not to go up to the North with you? What do you mean?"

She smiled somewhat sadly, and said: "Not yet; we will not talk of that yet. Only, what were you thinking of

I said falteringly: "I was saying to myself, The past, the present? Should she not have said the contrast of the

"I knew it," she said. Then she caught my hand and said excitedly, "Come while there is yet time! Come!"

and she led me out of the room; and as we were going downstairs and out of the house into the garden by a

little side door which opened out of a curious lobby, she said in a calm voice, as if she wished me to forget

her sudden nervousness: "Come! we ought to join the others before they come in here looking for us. And let

me tell you, my friend, that I can see you are too apt to fall into dreamy musing: no doubt because you are not

yet used to our life of repose amidst of energy; of work which is pleasure and pleasure which is work."

She paused a little, and as we came out into the lovely garden again, she said: "My friend, you were saying

that you wondered what I should have been if I had lived in those past days of turmoil and oppression. Well, I

think I have studied the history of them to know pretty well. I should have been one of the poor, for my father

when he was working was a mere tiller of the soil. Well, I could not have borne that; therefore my beauty and

cleverness and brightness" (she spoke with no blush or simper of false shame) "would have been sold to rich

men, and my life would have been wasted indeed; for I know enough of that to know that I should have had

no choice, no power of will over my life; and that I should never have bought pleasure from the rich men, or

even opportunity of action, whereby I might have won some true excitement. I should have wrecked and

She was going to say something else, when a little gate in the fence, which led into a small elmshaded field,

was opened, and Dick came with hasty cheerfulness up the garden path, and was presently standing between

us, a hand laid on the shoulder of each. He said: "Well, neighbours, I thought you two would like to see the

old house quietly without a crowd in it. Isn't it a jewel of a house after its kind? Well, come along, for it is

getting towards dinnertime. Perhaps you, guest, would like a swim before we sit down to what I fancy will

"Well, goodbye for the present, neighbour Ellen," said Dick. "Here comes Clara to take care of you, as I

Clara came out of the fields as he spoke; and with one look at Ellen I turned and went with Dick, doubting, if

Dick brought me at once into the little field which, as I had seen from the garden, was covered with

gailycoloured tents arranged in orderly lanes, about which were sitting and lying in the grass some fifty or

sixty men, women, and children, all of them in the height of good temper and enjoymentwith their holiday

"You are thinking that we don't make a great show as to numbers," said Dick; "but you must remember that

we shall have more tomorrow; because in this haymaking work there is room for a great many people who

are not overskilled in country matters: and there are many who lead sedentary lives, whom it would be

unkind to deprive of their pleasure in the hayfieldscientific men and close students generally: so that the

skilled workmen, outside those who are wanted as mowers, and foremen of the haymaking, stand aside, and

take a little downright rest, which you know is good for them, whether they like it or not: or else they go to

other countrysides, as I am doing here. You see, the scientific men and historians, and students generally, will

not be wanted till we are fairly in the midst of tedding, which of course will not be till the day after

tomorrow." With that he brought me out of the little field on to a kind of causeway above the riverside

meadow, and thence turning to the left on to a path through the mowing grass, which was thick and very tall,

led on till we came to the river above the weir and its mill. There we had a delightful swim in the broad piece

of water above the lock, where the river looked much bigger than its natural size from its being dammed up

"Now we are in a fit mood for dinner," said Dick, when we had dressed and were going through the grass

again; "and certainly of all the cheerful meals in the year, this one of haysel is the cheerfullest; not even

excepting the cornharvest feast; for then the year is beginning to fail, and one cannot help having a feeling

behind all the gaiety, of the coming of the dark days, and the shorn fields and empty gardens; and the spring

is almost too far off to look forward to. It is, then, in the autumn, when one almost believes in death."

"How strangely you talk," said I, "of such a constantly recurring and consequently commonplace matter as

the sequence of the seasons." And indeed these people were like children about such things, and had what

seemed to me a quite exaggerated interest in the weather, a fine day, a dark night, or a brilliant one, and the

"Strangely?" said he. "Is it strange to sympathise with the year and its gains and losses?"

"At any rate," said I, "if you look upon the course of the year as a beautiful and interesting drama, which is

what I think you do, you should be as much pleased and interested with the winter and its trouble and pain as

"And am I not?" said Dick, rather warmly; "only I can't look upon it as if I were sitting in a theatre seeing the

play going on before me, myself taking no part of it. It is difficult," said he, smiling goodhumouredly, "for a

nonliterary man like me to explain myself properly, like that dear girl Ellen would; but I mean that I am part

of it all, and feel the pain was well as the pleasure in my own person. It is not done for me by somebody else,

In his way also, as Ellen in hers, I could see that Dick had that passionate love of the earth which was

common to but few people at least, in the days I knew; in which the prevailing feeling amongst intellectual

persons was a kind of sour distaste for the changing drama of the year, for the life of earth and its dealings

with men. Indeed, in those days it was thought poetic and imaginative to look upon life as a thing to be borne,

So I mused till Dick's laugh brought me back into the Oxfordshire hayfields. "One thing seems strange to

me," said he"that I must needs trouble myself about the winter and its scantiness, in the midst of the

summer abundance. If it hadn't happened to me before, I should have thought it was your doing, guest; that

you had thrown a kind of evil charm over me. Now, you know," said he, suddenly, "that's only a joke, so you

"All right," said I; "I don't." Yet I did feel somewhat uneasy at his words, after all.

We crossed the causeway this time, and did not turn back to the house, but went along a path beside a field of

wheat now almost ready to blossom. I said: "We do not dine in the house or garden, then? for I can see that

"Yes," said Dick, "you are right, they are small in this countryside: there are so many good old houses left,

that people dwell a good deal in such small detached houses. As to our dinner, we are going to have our feast

in the church. I wish, for your sake, it were as big and handsome as that of the old Roman town to the west,

or the forest town to the north;* but, however, it will hold us all; and though it is a little thing, it is beautiful

This was somewhat new to me, this dinner in a church, and I thought of the churchales of the Middle Ages;

but I said nothing, and presently we came out into the road which ran through the village. Dick looked up and

down it, and seeing only two straggling groups before us, said: "It seems as if we must be somewhat late;

they are all gone on; and they will be sure to make a point of waiting for you, as the guest of guests, since you

He hastened as he spoke, and I kept up with him, and presently we came to a little avenue of limetrees

which led us straight to the church porch, from whose open door came the sound of cheerful voices and

"Yes," said Dick, "it's the coolest place for one thing, this hot evening. Come along; they will ge glad to see

Indeed, inspite of my bath, I felt the weather more sultry and oppressive than on any day of our journey yet.

We went into the church, which was a simple little building with one little aisle divided from the nave by

three rounded arches, a chancel, and a rather roomy transept for so small a building, the windows mostly of

the graceful Oxfordshire fourteenthcentury type. There was no modern architectural decoration in it; it

looked, indeed, as if none had been attempted since the Puritans whitewashed the mediaeval saints and

histories on the wall. It was, however, gaily dressed up for this latterday festival, with festoons of flowers

from arch to arch and great pitchers of flowers standing about on the floor; while under the west windoe hung

two cross scythes, their blades polished white, and gleaming from out of the flowers that wreathed them. But

its best ornament was the crowd of handsome, happylooking men and women that were set down to table,

and who, with their bright faces and rich hair over their gay holiday raiment, looked, as the Persian poet puts

it, like a bed of tulips in the sun. Though the church was a small one, there was plenty of room; for a small

church makes a biggish house; and on this evening there was no need to set cross tables along the transepts;

though doubtless these would be wanted next day, when the learned men of whom Dick has been speaking

I stood on the threshold with the expectant smile on my face of a man who is going to take part in a festivity

which he is really prepared to enjoy. Dick, standing by me, was looking round the company with an air of

proprietorship in them, I thought. Opposite me sat Clara and Ellen, with Dick's place open between them:

they were smiling, but their beautiful faces were each turned towards the neighbours on either side, who were

talking to them, and they did not seem to see me. I turned to Dick, expecting him to lead me forward, and he

turned his face to me; but strange to say, though it was as smiling and cheerful as ever, it made no response to

my glancenay, he seemed to take no heed at all of my presence, and I noticed that none of the company

looked at me. A pang shot through me, as of some disaster long expected and suddenly realised. Dick moved

on a little without a word to me. I was not three yards from the two women who, though they had been my

companions for such a short time, had really, as I thought, become my friends. Clara's face was turned full

upon me now, but she also did not seem to see me, though I know I was trying to catch her eye with an

appealing look. I turned to Ellen, and she _did_ seem to recognise me for an instant; but her bright face

turned sad directly, and she shook her head with a mournful look, and the next moment all consciousness of

I felt lonely and sick at heart past the power of words to describe. I hung about a minute longer, and then

turned and went out of the porch again and through the limeavenue into the road while blackbirds sang their

Once more without any conscious effort of will I set my face toward the old house by the ford, but as I turned

round the corner which led to the remains of the village cross, I came upon a figure strangely contrasting with

the joyous, beautiful people I had left behind in the church. It was a man who looked old, but whom I knew

from habit, now halfforgotten, was really not much more than fifty. His face was rugged, and grimed rather

than dirty; his eyes dull and bleared; his body bent, his calves thin and spindly, his feet dragging and limping.

His clothing was a mixture of dirt and rags long overfamiliar to me. As I passed him he touched his hat with

Inexpressibly shocked, I hurried past him and hastened along the road that led to the river and the lower end

of the village; but suddenly I saw as it were a black cloud rolling along to meet me, like a nightmare of my

childish days; and for a while I was conscious of nothing else than being in the dark, and whether I was

I lay in my bed in my house at dingy Hammersmith thinking about it all; and trying to consider if I was

overwhelmed with despair at finding I had been dreaming a dream; and strange to say, I found that I was not

Or indeed _was_ it a dream? If so, why was I so conscious all along that I was really seeing all that new life

from the outside, still wrapped up in the prejudices, the anxieties the distrust of this time of doubt and

All along, though those friends were so real to me, I had been feeling as if I had no business amongst them:

as though the time would come when they would reject me, and say, as Ellen's last mournful look seemed to

say, "No, it will not do; you cannot be of us; you belong so entirely to the unhappiness of the past that our

happiness even would weary you. Go back again, now you have seen us, and your outward eyes have learned

that in spite of all the infallible maxims of your day there is yet a time of rest in store for the world, when

mastery has changed into fellowshipbut not before. Go back again, then, and while you live you will see

all round you people engaged in making others live lives which are not their own, while they themselves care

nothing for their own real livesmen who hate life though they fear death. Go back and be the happier for

having seen us, for having added a little hope to your struggle. Go on living while you may, striving, with

whatsoever pain and labour needs must be, to build up little by little the new day of fellowship, and rest, and

Yes, surely! and if others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream.