ered, faltering, 'I have always held
that law and order were necessary things; and the lawlessness of
that--that place--I don't know its name--if there is such a place,' I
cried, 'I thought it was a dream.'

He laughed in his mocking way. 'Perhaps it is all a dream; who knows?' he
said.

'Sir,' said I, 'you have been longer here than I--'

'Oh,' cried he, with a laugh that was dry and jarred upon the air almost
like a shriek, 'since before your forefathers were born!' It seemed to me
that he spoke like one who, out of bitterness and despite, made every
darkness blacker still. A kind of madman in his way; for what was this
claim of age?--a piece of bravado, no doubt, like the rest.

'That is strange,' I said, assenting, as when there is such a
hallucination it is best to do. 'You can tell me, then, whence all this
authority comes, and why we are obliged to obey.'

He looked at me as if he were thinking in his mind how to hurt me most.
Then, with that dry laugh, 'We make trial of all things in this world,'
he said, 'to see if perhaps we can find something we shall
like.--discipline here, freedom in the other place. When you have gone
all the round like me, then perhaps you will be able to choose.'

'Have you chosen?' I asked.

He only answered with a laugh. 'Come,' he said, 'there is amusement to be
had too, and that of the most elevated kind. We make researches here into
the moral nature of man. Will you come? But you must take the risk,' he
added with a smile which afterwards I understood.

We went on together after this till we reached the centre of the place,
in which stood an immense building with a dome, which dominated the city,
and into a great hall in the centre of that, where a crowd of people were
assembled. The sound of human speech, which murmured all around, brought
new life to my heart. And as I gazed at a curious apparatus erected on a
platform, several people spoke to me.

'We have again,' said one, 'the old subject to-day.'

'Is it something about the constitution of the place?' I asked in the
bewilderment of my mind. My neighbors looked at me with alarm, glancing
behind them to see what officials might be near.

'The constitution of the place is the result of the sense of the
inhabitants that order must be preserved,' said the one, who had spoken
to me first. 'The lawless can find refuge in other places. Here we have
chosen to have supervision, nuisances removed, and order kept. That is
eno