by a man named Stanley, who--"

"Excuse me," said I, "but as you know, time presses; and I want to keep
our question on the straightest line possible; and I want at once to ask
this about these wares made for the World-Market--how about their
quality; these people who were so clever about making goods, I suppose
they made them well?"

"Quality!" said the old man crustily, for he was rather peevish at being
cut short in his story; "how could they possibly attend to such trifles
as the quality of the wares they sold? The best of them were of a lowish
average, the worst were transparent make-shifts for the things asked for,
which nobody would have put up with if they could have got anything else.
It was a current jest of the time that the wares were made to sell and
not to use; a jest which you, as coming from another planet, may
understand, but which our folk could not."

Said I: "What! did they make nothing well?"

"Why, yes," said he, "there was one class of goods which they did make
thoroughly well, and that was the class of machines which were used for
making things. These were usually quite 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 make-
shifts. In truth, the owners of the machines did not consider anything
which they made as wares, but simply as means for the enrichment of
themselves. Of course the only admitted test of utility in wares was the
finding of buyers for them--wise men or fools, as it might chance."

"And people put up with this?" said I.

"For a time," said he.

"And then?"

"And then the overturn," said the old man, smiling, "and the nineteenth
century saw itself as a man who has lost his clothes whilst bathing, and
has to walk naked through the town."

"You are very bitter about that unlucky nineteenth century," said I.

"Naturally," said he, "since I know so much about it."

He was silent a little, and then said: "There are traditions--nay, real
histories--in our family about it: my grandfather was one of its victims.
If you know something about it, you will 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: