ated by a system which expended every drop to
the best advantage, if the world were to be supported in abundance. But
how far from any system was the actual practice! Every man wasted the
precious fluid as he wished, animated only by the equal motives of
saving his own crop and spoiling his neighbor's, that his might sell
the better. What with greed and what with spite some fields were
flooded while others were parched, and half the water ran wholly to
waste. In such a land, though a few by strength or cunning might win
the means of luxury, the lot of the great mass must be poverty, and of
the weak and ignorant bitter want and perennial famine.

Let but the famine-stricken nation assume the function it had
neglected, and regulate for the common good the course of the
life-giving stream, and the earth would bloom like one garden, and none
of its children lack any good thing. I described the physical felicity,
mental enlightenment, and moral elevation which would then attend the
lives of all men. With fervency I spoke of that new world, blessed with
plenty, purified by justice and sweetened by brotherly kindness, the
world of which I had indeed but dreamed, but which might so easily be
made real. But when I had expected now surely the faces around me to
light up with emotions akin to mine, they grew ever more dark, angry,
and scornful. Instead of enthusiasm, the ladies showed only aversion
and dread, while the men interrupted me with shouts of reprobation and
contempt. "Madman!" "Pestilent fellow!" "Fanatic!" "Enemy of society!"
were some of their cries, and the one who had before taken his eyeglass
to me exclaimed, "He says we are to have no more poor. Ha! ha!"

"Put the fellow out!" exclaimed the father of my betrothed, and at the
signal the men sprang from their chairs and advanced upon me.

It seemed to me that my heart would burst with the anguish of finding
that what was to me so plain and so all important was to them
meaningless, and that I was powerless to make it other. So hot had been
my heart that I had thought to melt an iceberg with its glow, only to
find at last the overmastering chill seizing my own vitals. It was not
enmity that I felt toward them as they thronged me, but pity only, for
them and for the world.

Although despairing, I could not give over. Still I strove with them.
Tears poured from my eyes. In my vehemence I became inarticulate. I
panted, I sobbed, I groaned, and immediately afterward fo