nd mother of drudges of past days could ever have had; or than
her sister of the upper classes, brought up in affected ignorance of
natural facts, reared in an atmosphere of mingled prudery and prurience."

"You speak warmly," I said, "but I can see that you are right."

"Yes," he said, "and I will point out to you a token of all the benefits
which we have gained by our freedom. What did you think of the looks of
the people whom you have come across to-day?"

Said I: "I could hardly have believed that there could be so many good-
looking people in any civilised country."

He crowed a little, like the old bird he was. "What! are we still
civilised?" said he. "Well, as to our looks, the English and Jutish
blood, which on the whole is predominant here, used not to produce much
beauty. But I think we have improved it. I know a man who has a large
collection of portraits printed from photographs of the nineteenth
century, and going over those and comparing them with the everyday faces
in these times, puts the improvement in our good looks beyond a doubt.
Now, there are some people who think it not too fantastic to connect this
increase of beauty directly with our freedom and good sense in the
matters we have been speaking of: they believe that a child born from the
natural and healthy love between a man and a woman, even if that be
transient, is likely to turn out better in all ways, and especially in
bodily beauty, than the birth of the respectable commercial marriage bed,
or of the dull despair of the drudge of that system. They say, Pleasure
begets pleasure. What do you think?"

"I am much of that mind," said I.

CHAPTER X: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

"Well," said the old man, shifting in his chair, "you must get on with
your questions, Guest; I have been some time answering this first one."

Said I: "I want an extra word or two about your ideas of education;
although I gathered from Dick that you let your children run wild and
didn't teach them anything; and in short, that you have so refined your
education, that now you have none."

"Then you gathered left-handed," quoth he. "But of course I understand
your point of view about education, which is that of times past, when
'the struggle for life,' as men used to phrase it (_i.e._, the struggle
for a slave's rations on one side, and for a bouncing share of the slave-
holders' privilege on the other), pinched 'education' for most people
into a niggardly