power is that of God, and our responsibility like His toward us. As we
acquit ourselves toward them, so let Him deal with us."

[1] I may say that Dr. Leete's warning has been fully justified by my
experience. The amount and intensity of amusement which the young
people of this day, and the young women especially, are able to extract
from what they are pleased to call the oddities of courtship in the
nineteenth century, appear unlimited.

Chapter 26

I think if a person were ever excusable for losing track of the days of
the week, the circumstances excused me. Indeed, if I had been told that
the method of reckoning time had been wholly changed and the days were
now counted in lots of five, ten, or fifteen instead of seven, I should
have been in no way surprised after what I had already heard and seen
of the twentieth century. The first time that any inquiry as to the
days of the week occurred to me was the morning following the
conversation related in the last chapter. At the breakfast table Dr.
Leete asked me if I would care to hear a sermon.

"Is it Sunday, then?" I exclaimed.

"Yes," he replied. "It was on Friday, you see, when we made the lucky
discovery of the buried chamber to which we owe your society this
morning. It was on Saturday morning, soon after midnight, that you
first awoke, and Sunday afternoon when you awoke the second time with
faculties fully regained."

"So you still have Sundays and sermons," I said. "We had prophets who
foretold that long before this time the world would have dispensed with
both. I am very curious to know how the ecclesiastical systems fit in
with the rest of your social arrangements. I suppose you have a sort of
national church with official clergymen."

Dr. Leete laughed, and Mrs. Leete and Edith seemed greatly amused.

"Why, Mr. West," Edith said, "what odd people you must think us. You
were quite done with national religious establishments in the
nineteenth century, and did you fancy we had gone back to them?"

"But how can voluntary churches and an unofficial clerical profession
be reconciled with national ownership of all buildings, and the
industrial service required of all men?" I answered.

"The religious practices of the people have naturally changed
considerably in a century," replied Dr. Leete; "but supposing them to
have remained unchanged, our social system would accommodate them
perfectly. The nation supplies any person or number of persons with
b