with a vivid impression that if the men of the twentieth century should
prove incapable of preserving their liberties, the women might be trusted
to do so.

"Really, doctor," I said, "you ought to be greatly obliged to your
daughter. She has saved you lots of time and effort."

"How so, precisely?"

"By rendering it unnecessary for you to trouble yourself to explain to me
any further how and why you came to set up your nationalized industrial
system and your economic equality. If you have ever seen a desert or sea
mirage, you remember that, while the picture in the sky is very clear and
distinct in itself, its unreality is betrayed by a lack of detail, a sort
of blur, where it blends with the foreground on which you are standing.
Do you know that this new social order of which I have so strangely
become a witness has hitherto had something of this mirage effect? In
itself it is a scheme precise, orderly, and very reasonable, but I could
see no way by which it could have naturally grown out of the utterly
different conditions of the nineteenth century. I could only imagine that
this world transformation must have been the result of new ideas and
forces that had come into action since my day. I had a volume of
questions all ready to ask you on the subject, but now we shall be able
to use the time in talking of other things, for Edith has shown me in ten
minutes' time that the only wonderful thing about your organization of
the industrial system as public business is not that it has taken place,
but that it waited so long before taking place, that a nation of rational
beings consented to remain economic serfs of irresponsible masters for
more than a century after coming into possession of absolute power to
change at pleasure all social institutions which inconvenienced them."