tates. According to their theory, every
child, male or female, on attaining the marriageable age, and there
terminating the period of labour, should have acquired enough for an
independent competence during life. As, no matter what the disparity of
fortune in the parents, all the children must equally serve, so all
are equally paid according to their several ages or the nature of their
work. Where the parents or friends choose to retain a child in their
own service, they must pay into the public fund in the same ratio as the
state pays to the children it employs; and this sum is handed over to
the child when the period of service expires. This practice serves, no
doubt, to render the notion of social equality familiar and agreeable;
and if it may be said that all the children form a democracy, no less
truly it may be said that all the adults form an aristocracy. The
exquisite politeness and refinement of manners among the Vril-ya, the
generosity of their sentiments, the absolute leisure they enjoy for
following out their own private pursuits, the amenities of their
domestic intercourse, in which they seem as members of one noble order
that can have no distrust of each other's word or deed, all combine to
make the Vril-ya the most perfect nobility which a political disciple
of Plato or Sidney could conceive for the ideal of an aristocratic
republic.

Chapter XX.

From the date of the expedition with Taee which I have just narrated,
the child paid me frequent visits. He had taken a liking to me, which I
cordially returned. Indeed, as he was not yet twelve years old, and
had not commenced the course of scientific studies with which childhood
closes in that country, my intellect was less inferior to his than to
that of the elder members of his race, especially of the Gy-ei, and most
especially of the accomplished Zee. The children of the Vril-ya,
having upon their minds the weight of so many active duties and grave
responsibilities, are not generally mirthful; but Taee, with all
his wisdom, had much of the playful good-humour one often finds the
characteristic of elderly men of genius. He felt that sort of pleasure
in my society which a boy of a similar age in the upper world has in the
company of a pet dog or monkey. It amused him to try and teach me the
ways of his people, as it amuses a nephew of mine to make his poodle
walk on his hind legs or jump through a hoop. I willingly lent myself to
such experiments, but