ant alongside their other plants, or
whether they would better work out their own salvation, a little at a
time, by main strength and awkwardness. I was thinking how strange our
books would seem to men and women who knew nothing of the--the late
earth." He held out to her what looked something like a needle
threaded with coarse white linen thread. "Will your Majesty deign to
look at this?"

She took it, and looked at it wonderingly, and then ran in and brought
back a torn towel, and began mending it. "Why, it sews very well," she
said; "who taught you that?"

"The mother of inventions generally," he answered. "If you ever had
gone on the round-up, you might have had occasion for a needle and
thread when there wasn't any nearer than a hundred miles. But you
haven't answered my question."

"About inventions and so on? It seems to me you have to consider the
_raison d'etre_ of a people before you can tell the answer. What is
the use of labor-saving inventions, if the time saved isn't of some
great value? What is to be the chief end of man in a dispensation that
has no catechism as a guide-post?"

"A very different end from the old one," answered Adam, half sternly.
"Work should not come to him as a curse, nor as his greatest boon; at
least, not hard, manual labor. There should be work enough to insure
ease and comfort, and every one should work freely and gladly. I
should educate the individual; he should be strong of body and keen of
mind, and should feel that his talents were given him for use, not for
concealment; he should use his hands, both of them, and find delight
in their work. It is a beautiful world, it always was, but I don't
know that the steam-engine brought men's souls closer together, or
that the electric light let in any more radiance upon our minds, or
that the great telescopes made heaven any nearer. It should be a
happier and a healthier world, if it was no more."

"Adam," she said abruptly, "if we had children, in what religious
faith would you bring them up?"

"I don't know; I never thought about it very much," he answered
honestly. "I have an ideal in my mind, but I can't explain it. I
believe in one source of life, and therefore a common divinity."

Robin laughed quietly. "That is like the Hindoo proverb, 'That which
exists is one; sages call it variously.' That has been called
pantheism, and for that belief the Jews expelled Baruch Benedict
Spinoza from their synagogue. In our time there w