each one need do is very little, a few hours each day at the most, so that
every man and woman has abundant leisure and perfect spirits for the
higher pleasures which the education of their whole youth has fitted them
to enjoy. If you can understand a state of things where the sciences and
arts and letters are cultivated for their own sake, and not as a means of
livelihood--"

"No," said the lawyer, smiling, "I'm afraid we can't conceive of that. We
consider the pinch of poverty the highest incentive that a man can have.
If our gifted friend here," he said, indicating me, "were not kept like a
toad under the harrow, with his nose on the grindstone, and the poorhouse
staring him in the face--"

"For Heaven's sake," I cried out, "don't mix your metaphors so, anyway!"

"If it were not for that and all the other hardships that literary men
undergo--

'Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail'--

his novels probably wouldn't be worth reading."

"Ah!" said the Altrurian, as if he did not quite follow this joking; and,
to tell the truth, I never find the personal thing in very good taste.
"You will understand, then, how extremely difficult it is for me to
imagine a condition of things like yours--although I have it under my very
eyes--where the money consideration is the first consideration."

"Oh, excuse me," urged the minister; "I don't think that's quite the
case."