Diary of a Pilgrimage by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome
page 18 of 154 (11%)
page 18 of 154 (11%)
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for me.
The family entreat me to hurry home. I ate a very fair dinner--"laid in a good stock of ballast," as my seafaring friend would have said; wished "Good-bye!" to everybody, and kissed Aunt Emma; promised to take care of myself--a promise which, please Heaven, I will faithfully keep, cost me what it may-- hailed a cab and started. I reached Victoria some time before B. I secured two corner seats in a smoking-carriage, and then paced up and down the platform waiting for him. When men have nothing else to occupy their minds, they take to thinking. Having nothing better to do until B. arrived, I fell to musing. What a wonderful piece of Socialism modern civilisation has become!- -not the Socialism of the so-called Socialists--a system modelled apparently upon the methods of the convict prison--a system under which each miserable sinner is to be compelled to labour, like a beast of burden, for no personal benefit to himself, but only for the good of the community--a world where there are to be no men, but only numbers--where there is to be no ambition and no hope and no fear,--but the Socialism of free men, working side by side in the common workshop, each one for the wage to which his skill and energy entitle him; the Socialism of responsible, thinking individuals, not of State-directed automata. |
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