life, and after a short time to the full vigor of youth which his
appearance had indicated. His shock on learning what had befallen him was
so great as to have endangered his sanity but for the medical skill of
Dr. Leete, and the not less sympathetic ministrations of the other
members of the household, the doctor's wife, and Edith the beautiful
daughter. Presently, however, the young man forgot to wonder at what had
happened to himself in his astonishment on learning of the social
transformation through which the world had passed while he lay sleeping.
Step by step, almost as to a child, his hosts explained to him, who had
known no other way of living except the struggle for existence, what were
the simple principles of national co-operation for the promotion of the
general welfare on which the new civilization rested. He learned that
there were no longer any who were or could be richer or poorer than
others, but that all were economic equals. He learned that no one any
longer worked for another, either by compulsion or for hire, but that all
alike were in the service of the nation working for the common fund,
which all equally shared, and that even necessary personal attendance, as
of the physician, was rendered as to the state like that of the military
surgeon. All these wonders, it was explained, had very simply come about
as the results of replacing private capitalism by public capitalism, and
organizing the machinery of production and distribution, like the
political government, as business of general concern to be carried on for
the public benefit instead of private gain.

But, though it was not long before the young stranger's first
astonishment at the institutions of the new world had passed into
enthusiastic admiration and he was ready to admit that the race had for
the first time learned how to live, he presently began to repine at a
fate which had introduced him to the new world, only to leave him
oppressed by a sense of hopeless loneliness which all the kindness of his