es. How much they have missed in these days of the barring
out all hospitality! Is it perchance one reason, if not the chief, why
manners have degenerated?

This meal will not have more than four courses of food carefully selected
and perfectly cooked, whether in the house or out matters not so it is
served fresh and of just the right temperature. No kind of cooking will be
permitted which "meets the guest in the hall and stays with him in the
street"; therefore the dishes may be washed by neatly dressed maids or by
the children, who thus learn to care for the fitness of things; plenty of
towels and hot water, with all hands doing a little, leaves everything
snug and no one too tired. We will let Mr. H.G. Wells describe the bedroom
of the future house:[1]

[Footnote 1: A Modern Utopia, p. 103.]

"The room is, of course, very clear and clean and simple: not by any means
cheaply equipped, but designed to economize the labor of redding and
repair just as much as possible.

"It is beautifully proportioned and rather lower than most rooms I know on
earth. There is no fireplace, and I am perplexed by that until I find a
thermometer beside six switches on the wall. Above this switchboard is a
brief instruction: one switch warms the floor, which is not carpeted, but
covered by a substance like soft oilcloth; one warms the mattress (which
is of metal with resistance coils threaded to and fro in it); and the
others warm the wall in various degrees, each directing current through a
separate system of resistances. The casement does not open, but above,
flush with the ceiling, a noiseless rapid fan pumps air out of the room.
The air enters by a Tobin shaft.

"There is a recess dressing-room, equipped with a bath and all that is
necessary to one's toilet; and the water, one remarks, is warmed, if one
desires it warm, by passing it through an electrically-heated spiral of
tubing. A cake of soap drops out of a store-machine on the turn of a
handle, and when you have done with it, you drop that and your soiled
towels, etc., which are also given you by machines, into a little box,
through the bottom of which they drop at once and sail down a smooth
shaft. [Better stay in the box and not infect the shaft.--Author.]

"A little notice tells you the price of the room, and you gather the
price is doubled if you do not leave the toilet as you find it. Beside
the bed, and to be lit at night by a handy switch over the pillow, is a
little c