quite disordered battle, in which each of the wretched prisoners seemed
animated by no desire but the destruction of as many as possible of his
hated rivals, until at last every soul of these detestable creatures had
left its puny body and the State was rid of all.

A law which carried to the universities the rule of the primary
schools--to wit, that men should be taught to read but not to
write--completed the good work. And there was peace.




The Eye-Openers


Without any doubt whatsoever, the one characteristic of the towns is
the lack of reality in the impressions of the many: now we live in
towns: and posterity will be astounded at us! It isn't only that we get
our impressions for the most part as imaginary pictures called up by
printer's ink--that would be bad enough; but by some curious perversion
of the modern mind, printer's ink ends by actually preventing one from
seeing things that are there; and sometimes, when one says to another
who has not travelled, "Travel!" one wonders whether, after all, if he
does travel, he will see the things before his eyes? If he does, he will
find a new world; and there is more to be discovered in this fashion
to-day than ever there was.

I have sometimes wished that every Anglo-Saxon who from these shores has
sailed and seen for the first time the other Anglo-Saxons in New York or
Melbourne, would write in quite a short letter what he really felt.