law of decay, for the recuperative efforts of science. You
must create a radical reform in every department of life; in business,
in social habits, in the fashions, in the mode of living, in
everything, before you can hope to reach the Utopia of which you
speak. The outrages perpetrated upon nature by the conventionalities
of the world alone, would be an insurmountable barrier to the
realization of your idea. The necessity for excessive labor to satisfy
artificial wants hews away at one end of society, and the indulgence
of idleness and ease, at the other. Exposure to the elements, to heat
and cold, buries its millions; and too great seclusion, in pursuit of
comfort in heated rooms, and a confined and corrupted atmosphere,
buries its millions also. Lack of wholesome food fills thousands of
graves, and the results of abundance fill other thousands. Lack of
appropriate clothing, fitted for the constitution and the seasons,
engenders disease and death; and an excess of the same article,
fashioned as stupendous folly only can fashion it, engenders vastly
more disease and death. There are elements of decay and death
furnished to men and women, tempting their weakness, and forced upon
their adoption by the conventionalities of life, every day, every
hour, and everywhere. It is a part of our civilization, an offshoot of
the very progress of which you speak, a sort of necessity in practical
results, at least, that men _shall_ so live as to wage war against
nature, and against themselves; that they shall hurry themselves, or
be hurried by inevitable circumstances, into the grave at the earliest
possible moment. You may, therefore, dismiss from your mind, my
friend, the fanciful idea, that science will ever enable the world to
dispense with the cemeteries, or that the cities of the dead will,
through its agency, cease to flourish. You will find that as science
closes up one avenue to the grave, men will force a way to it through
another. We shall have to live as our fathers lived, be subject to
disease as they were, grow old as they grew old, and die as they died.
We must submit to the law which has written the doom of decay upon all
things, which has made us mortal, and when our time comes we must be
content to pass away as the countless millions who preceded us
have done."

"Well," said Spalding, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe, and rose
to retire, under the cover of the tent, for the night, "be it as you
say, what matt