ou 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 see some really fine building? or--what
shall it be?"

"Well," said I, "as I am a stranger, I must let you choose for me."

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 to my rescue at once, and said--

"Wait a bit, Dick; there is someone 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 as I know he has something else to ask
me. So go to your Welshmen, by all means; but first of all 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 gleaming on the red wine in our tall
quaint-shaped glasses. Then said Hammond:

"Does anything especially puzzle you about our way of living, now you
have heard a good deal and seen a little of it?"

Said I: "I think what puzzles me most is how it all came about."

"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,
despair--those 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 matter of course, like the rising and setting of
the sun--and indeed it was so."

"Tell me one thing, if you can," said I. "Did the change, the
'revolution' it used to be called, come peacefully?"

"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 actu