Equality | Page 3

his eyes. Looking from the window of his room, he saw Edith in the garden gathering flowers for the breakfast table, and hastened to descend to her and relate his experience. At this point we will leave him to continue the narrative for himself.
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CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I.--A SHARP CROSS-EXAMINER
II.--WHY THE REVOLUTION DID NOT COME EARLIER
III.--I ACQUIRE A STAKE IN THE COUNTRY
IV.--A TWENTIETH-CENTURY BANK PARLOR
V.--I EXPERIENCE A NEW SENSATION
VI.--HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE
VII.--A STRING OF SURPRISES
VIII.--THE GREATEST WONDER YET--FASHION DETHRONED
IX.--SOMETHING THAT HAD NOT CHANGED
X.--A MIDNIGHT PLUNGE
XI.--LIFE THE BASIS OF THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY
XII.--HOW INEQUALITY OF WEALTH DESTROYS LIBERTY
XIII.--PRIVATE CAPITAL STOLEN FROM THE SOCIAL FUND
XIV.--WE LOOK OVER MY COLLECTION OF HARNESSES
XV.--WHAT WE WERE COMING TO BUT FOR THE REVOLUTION
XVI.--AN EXCUSE THAT CONDEMNED
XVII.--THE REVOLUTION SAVES PRIVATE PROPERTY FROM MONOPOLY
XVIII.--AN ECHO OF THE PAST
XIX.--"CAN A MAID FORGET HER ORNAMENTS?"
XX.--WHAT THE REVOLUTION DID FOR WOMEN
XXI.--AT THE GYMNASIUM
XXII.--ECONOMIC SUICIDE OF THE PROFIT SYSTEM
XXIII.--"THE PARABLE OF THE WATER TANK"
XXIV.--I AM SHOWN ALL THE KINGDOMS OF THE EARTH
XXV.--THE STRIKERS
XXVI.--FOREIGN COMMERCE UNDER PROFITS; PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE, OR BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
XXVII.--HOSTILITY OF A SYSTEM OF VESTED INTERESTS TO IMPROVEMENT
XXVIII.--HOW THE PROFIT SYSTEM NULLIFIED THE BENEFIT OF INVENTIONS
XXIX.--I RECEIVE AN OVATION
XXX.--WHAT UNIVERSAL CULTURE MEANS
XXXI.--"NEITHER IN THIS MOUNTAIN NOR AT JERUSALEM"
XXXII.--ERITIS SICUT DEUS
XXXIII.--SEVERAL IMPORTANT MATTERS OVERLOOKED
XXXIV.--WHAT STARTED THE REVOLUTION
XXXV.--WHY THE REVOLUTION WENT SLOW AT FIRST BUT FAST AT LAST
XXXVI.--THEATER-GOING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
XXXVII.--THE TRANSITION PERIOD
XXXVIII.--THE BOOK OF THE BLIND
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EQUALITY.
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CHAPTER I.
A SHARP CROSS-EXAMINER.
With many expressions of sympathy and interest Edith listened to the story of my dream. When, finally, I had made an end, she remained musing.
"What are you thinking about?" I said.
"I was thinking," she answered, "how it would have been if your dream had been true."
"True!" I exclaimed. "How could it have been true?"
"I mean," she said, "if it had all been a dream, as you supposed it was in your nightmare, and you had never really seen our Republic of the Golden Rule or me, but had only slept a night and dreamed the whole thing about us. And suppose you had gone forth just as you did in your dream, and had passed up and down telling men of the terrible folly and wickedness of their way of life and how much nobler and happier a way there was. Just think what good you might have done, how you might have helped people in those days when they needed help so much. It seems to me you must be almost sorry you came back to us."
"You look as if you were almost sorry yourself," I said, for her wistful expression seemed susceptible of that interpretation.
"Oh, no," she answered, smiling. "It was only on your own account. As for me, I have very good reasons for being glad that you came back."
"I should say so, indeed. Have you reflected that if I had dreamed it all you would have had no existence save as a figment in the brain of a sleeping man a hundred years ago?"
"I had not thought of that part of it," she said smiling and still half serious; "yet if I could have been more useful to humanity as a fiction than as a reality, I ought not to have minded the--the inconvenience."
But I replied that I greatly feared no amount of opportunity to help mankind in general would have reconciled me to life anywhere or under any conditions after leaving her behind in a dream--a confession of shameless selfishness which she was pleased to pass over without special rebuke, in consideration, no doubt, of my unfortunate bringing up.
"Besides," I resumed, being willing a little further to vindicate myself, "it would not have done any good. I have just told you how in my nightmare last night, when I tried to tell my contemporaries and even my best friends about the nobler way men might live together, they derided me as a fool and madman. That is exactly what they would have done in reality had the dream been true and I had gone about preaching as in the case you supposed."
"Perhaps a few might at first have acted as you dreamed they did," she replied. "Perhaps they would not at once have liked the idea of economic equality, fearing that it might mean a leveling down for them, and not understanding that it would presently mean a leveling up of all together to a vastly higher plane of life and happiness, of material welfare and moral dignity than the most fortunate had ever enjoyed. But even if the rich had at first mistaken you for an enemy to their class, the poor, the great masses of the poor, the real nation, they surely from the first would have listened as for their lives, for to them your story would have