* * * * *

The visionary and dreamer said: "Let me describe a modern Utopia of
which I have often dreamed and thought.

In a fertile valley, surrounded on all sides by high mountains, lived a
community or body of people who had never been outside the valley. To
them the mountains proved an impassible barrier and they had no wish or
desire to penetrate beyond. For generations they had lived in this
peaceful retreat happy and content. The ground yielded sufficient for
their wants and needs. No one in this little world was richer than his
neighbor and if one of the community fell ill each contributed something
from their own supply for his or her support. They knew nothing about
the value of money, for here it was useless. No one dreamed of
possessing more than his neighbor, but each and all must share alike.
Time dealt kindly with these simple people, for they dealt kindly with
time, and life flowed on smoothly and pleasantly. Men and women of
seventy years were hale and hearty, for it is not so much the _number_
of years we live that leave their traces, as the events which transpire
in those years; each event, each sorrow, each disappointment making an
era and each one leaving a trace. For the inhabitants of the valley
there were few disappointments and fewer sorrows. If the angel of death
entered and took one of their number, each and all took the sorrow home
for it was looked upon as a personal calamity when any one of the little
community was taken from them.

The sun seemed to shine brighter, the water to be clearer and more
limpid, the foliage more brilliant in this little world than elsewhere.
Perhaps because the eyes of the people were undimmed by sorrow, perhaps