which turn out
beautiful under their hands,--there are many, like the housekeepers I was
speaking of, whose delight is in administration and organisation, to use
long-tailed words; I mean people who like keeping things together,
avoiding waste, seeing that nothing sticks fast uselessly. Such people
are thoroughly happy in their business, all the more as they are dealing
with actual facts, and not merely passing counters round to see what
share they shall have in the privileged taxation of useful people, which
was the business of the commercial folk in past days. Well, what are you
going to ask me next?"

CHAPTER XIII: CONCERNING POLITICS

Said I: "How do you manage with politics?"

Said Hammond, smiling: "I am glad that it is of _me_ that you ask that
question; I do believe that anybody else would make you explain yourself,
or try to do so, till you were sickened of asking questions. Indeed, I
believe I am the only man in England who would know what you mean; and
since I know, I will answer your question briefly by saying that we are
very well off as to politics,--because we have none. If ever you make a
book out of this conversation, put this in a chapter by itself, after the
model of old Horrebow's Snakes in Iceland."

"I will," said I.

CHAPTER XIV: HOW MATTERS ARE MANAGED

Said I: "How about your relations with foreign nations?"

"I will not affect not to know what you mean," said he, "but I will tell
you at once that the whole system of rival and contending nations which
played so great a part in the 'government' of the world of civilisation
has disappeared along with the inequality betwixt man and man in
society."

"Does not that make the world duller?" said I.

"Why?" said the old man.

"The obliteration of national variety," said I.

"Nonsense," he said, somewhat snappishly. "Cross the water and see. You
will find plenty of variety: the landscape, the building, the diet, the
amusements, all various. The men and women varying in looks as well as
in habits of thought; the costume far more various than in the commercial
period. How should it add to the variety or dispel the dulness, to
coerce certain families or tribes, often heterogeneous and jarring with
one another, into certain artificial and mechanical groups, and call them
nations, and stimulate their patriotism--_i.e._, their foolish and
envious prejudices?"

"Well--I don't know how," said I.

"That's right," said Ha