the temple, there were
smaller abodes, less luxurious, but still comfortable, all of which
would in a few short years be inhabited,--if the Fixed Period could
be carried out in accordance with my project. And foundations had
been made for others still smaller,--for a whole township of old men
and women, as in the course of the next thirty years they might come
hurrying on to find their last abode in the college. I had already
selected one, not by any means the finest or the largest, for myself
and my wife, in which we might prepare ourselves for the grand
departure. But as for Mrs Neverbend, nothing would bring her to
set foot within the precincts of the college ground. "Before those
next ten years are gone," she would say, "common-sense will have
interfered to let folks live out their lives properly." It had been
quite useless for me to attempt to make her understand how unfitting
was such a speech for the wife of the President of the Republic. My
wife's opposition had been an annoyance to me from the first, but I
had consoled myself by thinking how impossible it always is to imbue
a woman's mind with a logical idea. And though, in all respects of
domestic life, Mrs Neverbend is the best of women, even among women
she is the most illogical.

I now inspected the buildings in a sad frame of mind, asking myself
whether it would ever come to pass that they should be inhabited for
their intended purpose. When the Assembly, in compliance with my
advice, had first enacted the law of the Fixed Period, a large sum
had been voted for these buildings. As the enthusiasm had worn off,
men had asked themselves whether the money had not been wasted, and
had said that for so small a community the college had been planned
on an absurdly grand scale. Still I had gone on, and had watched
them as they grew from day to day, and had allowed no shilling to
be spared in perfecting them. In my earlier years I had been very
successful in the wool trade, and had amassed what men called a large
fortune. During the last two or three years I had devoted a great
portion of this to the external adornment of the college, not without
many words on the matter from Mrs Neverbend. "Jack is to be ruined,"
she had said, "in order that all the old men and women may be killed
artistically." This and other remarks of the kind I was doomed to
bear. It was a part of the difficulty which, as a great reformer, I
must endure. But now, as I walked mournfully among