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occasion to make a volume of his short stories with the assurance of a magnificent sale,--to all this he was strikingly indifferent. Two or three public addresses, a few articles in the reviews, and for a while the editorship of 'The New Nation,' a weekly periodical which he established in Boston,--this was the sum of his public activity until he should have made himself ready for a second sustained effort. To all sordid incentives he was as indifferent as if he had been a child of his new order, a century later. The hosts of personal friends whom his work made for him knew him as a winsome personality; and really to know him was to love him. His nature was keenly sympathetic; his conversation ready and charming, quickly responsive to suggestion, illuminated by gentle humor and occasionally a flash of playful satire. He disliked controversy, with its waste of energy in profitless discussion, and jestingly averred that if there were any reformers living in his neighborhood he should move away. The cardinal features of 'Looking Backward,' that distinguish it from the generality of Utopian literature, lie in its definite scheme of industrial organization on a national basis, and the equal share allotted to all persons in the products of industry, or the public income, on the same ground that men share equally in the free gifts of nature, like air to breathe and water to drink; it being absolutely impossible to determine any equitable ratio between individual industrial effort and individual share in industrial product on a graded basis. The book, however, was little more than an outline of the system, and, after an interval devoted to continuous thought and study, many points called for elaboration. Mr. Bellamy gave his last years and his ripest efforts to an exposition of the economical and ethical basis of the new order which he held that the natural course of social evolution would establish. 'Equality' is the title of his last book. It is a more elaborate work than 'Looking Backward,' and in fact is a comprehensive economic treatise upon the subject that gives it its name. It is a sequel to its famous predecessor, and its keynote is given in the remark that the immortal preamble of the American Declaration of Independence (characterized as the true constitution of the United States), logically contained the entire statement of universal economic equality guaranteed by the nation collectively to its members individ
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