. So if that be so in the days of wonder ye tell of (and I see
not how it can be otherwise), then shall men be but little holpen by
making all their wares so easily and with so little labour."

I smiled again and said: "Yea, but it shall not be so; not only shall
men be multiplied a hundred and a thousand fold, but the distance of
one place from another shall be as nothing; so that the wares which lie
ready for market in Durham in the evening may be in London on the
morrow morning; and the men of Wales may eat corn of Essex and the men
of Essex wear wool of Wales; so that, so far as the flitting of goods
to market goes, all the land shall be as one parish. Nay, what say I?
Not as to this land only shall it be so, but even the Indies, and far
countries of which thou knowest not, shall be, so to say, at every
man's door, and wares which now ye account precious and dear-bought,
shall then be common things bought and sold for little price at every
huckster's stall. Say then, John, shall not those days be merry, and
plentiful of ease and contentment for all men?"

"Brother," said he, "meseemeth some doleful mockery lieth under these
joyful tidings of thine; since thou hast already partly told me to my
sad bewilderment what the life of man shall be in those days. Yet will
I now for a little set all that aside to consider thy strange tale as
of a minstrel from over sea, even as thou biddest me. Therefore I say,
that if men still abide men as I have known them, and unless these folk
of England change as, the land changeth--and forsooth of the men, for
good and for evil, I can think no other than I think now, or behold
them other than I have known them and loved them--I say if the men be
still men, what will happen except that there should be all plenty in
the land, and not one poor man therein, unless of his own free will he
choose to lack and be poor, as a man in religion or such like; for
there would then be such abundance of all good things, that, as greedy
as the lords might be, there would be enough to satisfy their greed and
yet leave good living for all who laboured with their hands; so that
these should labour far less than now, and they would have time to
learn knowledge, so that there should be no learned or unlearned, for
all should be learned; and they would have time also to learn how to
order the matters of the parish and the hundred, and of the parliament
of the realm, so that the king should take no more t