| Chapter 13
| 0 | |
| As Edith had promised he should do, Dr. Leete accompanied
me to my bedroom when I retired, to instruct me as to the
adjustment of the musical telephone. He showed how, by turning
a screw, the volume of the music could be made to fill the
room, or die away to an echo so faint and far that one could
scarcely be sure whether he heard or imagined it. If, of two
persons side by side, one desired to listen to music and the other
to sleep, it could be made audible to one and inaudible to
another.
| 1 | |
| "I should strongly advise you to sleep if you can to-night, Mr.
West, in preference to listening to the finest tunes in the
world," the doctor said, after explaining these points. "In the
trying experience you are just now passing through, sleep is a
nerve tonic for which there is no substitute."
| 2 | |
| Mindful of what had happened to me that very morning, I
promised to heed his counsel.
| 3 | |
| "Very well," he said, "then I will set the telephone at eight
o'clock."
| 4 | |
| "What do you mean?" I asked.
| 5 | |
| He explained that, by a clock-work combination, a person
could arrange to be awakened at any hour by the music.
| 6 | |
| It began to appear, as has since fully proved to be the case,
that I had left my tendency to insomnia behind me with the
other discomforts of existence in the nineteenth century; for
though I took no sleeping draught this time, yet, as the night
before, I had no sooner touched the pillow than I was asleep.
| 7 | |
| I dreamed that I sat on the throne of the Abencerrages in the
banqueting hall of the Alhambra, feasting my lords and generals,
who next day were to follow the crescent against the Christian
dogs of Spain. The air, cooled by the spray of fountains, was
heavy with the scent of flowers. A band of Nautch girls,
round-limbed and luscious-lipped, danced with voluptuous grace
to the music of brazen and stringed instruments. Looking up to
the latticed galleries, one caught a gleam now and then from the
eye of some beauty of the royal harem, looking down upon the
assembled flower of Moorish chivalry. Louder and louder clashed
the cymbals, wilder and wilder grew the strain, till the blood of
the desert race could no longer resist the martial delirium, and
the swart nobles leaped to their feet; a thousand scimetars were
bared, and the cry, "Allah il Allah!" shook the hall and awoke
me, to find it broad daylight, and the room tingling with the
electric music of the "Turkish Reveille."
| 8 | |
| At the breakfast-table, when I told my host of my morning's
experience, I learned that it was not a mere chance that the
piece of music which awakened me was a reveille. The airs
played at one of the halls during the waking hours of the
morning were always of an inspiring type.
| 9 | |
| "By the way," I said, "I have not thought to ask you anything
about the state of Europe. Have the societies of the Old World
also been remodeled?"
| 10 | |
| "Yes," replied Dr. Leete, "the great nations of Europe as
well as Australia, Mexico, and parts of South America, are now
organized industrially like the United States, which was the
pioneer of the evolution. The peaceful relations of these nations
are assured by a loose form of federal union of world-wide
extent. An international council regulates the mutual intercourse
and commerce of the members of the union and their joint
policy toward the more backward races, which are gradually
being educated up to civilized institutions. Complete autonomy
within its own limits is enjoyed by every nation."
| 11 | |
| "How do you carry on commerce without money?" I said. "In
trading with other nations, you must use some sort of money,
although you dispense with it in the internal affairs of the
nation."
| 12 | |
| "Oh, no; money is as superfluous in our foreign as in our
internal relations. When foreign commerce was conducted by
private enterprise, money was necessary to adjust it on account
of the multifarious complexity of the transactions; but nowadays
it is a function of the nations as units. There are thus only a
dozen or so merchants in the world, and their business being
supervised by the international council, a simple system of book
accounts serves perfectly to regulate their dealings. Customs
duties of every sort are of course superfluous. A nation simply
does not import what its government does not think requisite for
the general interest. Each nation has a bureau of foreign
exchange, which manages its trading. For example, the American
bureau, estimating such and such quantities of French goods
necessary to America for a given year, sends the order to the
French bureau, which in turn sends its order to our bureau. The
same is done mutually by all the nations."
| 13 | |
| "But how are the prices of foreign goods settled, since there is
no competition?"
| 14 | |
| "The price at which one nation supplies another with goods,"
replied Dr. Leete, "must be that at which it supplies its own
citizens. So you see there is no danger of misunderstanding. Of
course no nation is theoretically bound to supply another with
the product of its own labor, but it is for the interest of all to
exchange some commodities. If a nation is regularly supplying
another with certain goods, notice is required from either side of
any important change in the relation."
| 15 | |
| "But what if a nation, having a monopoly of some natural
product, should refuse to supply it to the others, or to one of
them?"
| 16 | |
| "Such a case has never occurred, and could not without doing
the refusing party vastly more harm than the others," replied Dr.
Leete. "In the fist place, no favoritism could be legally shown.
The law requires that each nation shall deal with the others, in
all respects, on exactly the same footing. Such a course as you
suggest would cut off the nation adopting it from the remainder
of the earth for all purposes whatever. The contingency is one
that need not give us much anxiety."
| 17 | |
| "But," said I, "supposing a nation, having a natural monopoly
in some product of which it exports more than it consumes,
should put the price away up, and thus, without cutting off the
supply, make a profit out of its neighbors' necessities? Its own
citizens would of course have to pay the higher price on that
commodity, but as a body would make more out of foreigners
than they would be out of pocket themselves."
| 18 | |
| "When you come to know how prices of all commodities are
determined nowadays, you will perceive how impossible it is that
they could be altered, except with reference to the amount or
arduousness of the work required respectively to produce them,"
was Dr. Leete's reply. "This principle is an international as well
as a national guarantee; but even without it the sense of
community of interest, international as well as national, and the
conviction of the folly of selfishness, are too deep nowadays to
render possible such a piece of sharp practice as you apprehend.
You must understand that we all look forward to an eventual
unification of the world as one nation. That, no doubt, will be
the ultimate form of society, and will realize certain economic
advantages over the present federal system of autonomous
nations. Meanwhile, however, the present system works so nearly
perfectly that we are quite content to leave to posterity the
completion of the scheme. There are, indeed, some who hold
that it never will be completed, on the ground that the federal
plan is not merely a provisional solution of the problem of
human society, but the best ultimate solution."
| 19 | |
| "How do you manage," I asked, "when the books of any two
nations do not balance? Supposing we import more from France
than we export to her."
| 20 | |
| "At the end of each year," replied the doctor, "the books of
every nation are examined. If France is found in our debt,
probably we are in the debt of some nation which owes France,
and so on with all the nations. The balances that remain after
the accounts have been cleared by the international council
should not be large under our system. Whatever they may be,
the council requires them to be settled every few years, and may
require their settlement at any time if they are getting too large;
for it is not intended that any nation shall run largely in debt to
another, lest feelings unfavorable to amity should be engendered.
To guard further against this, the international council inspects
the commodities interchanged by the nations, to see that they
are of perfect quality."
| 21 | |
| "But what are the balances finally settled with, seeing that you
have no money?"
| 22 | |
| "In national staples; a basis of agreement as to what staples
shall be accepted, and in what proportions, for settlement of
accounts, being a preliminary to trade relations."
| 23 | |
| "Emigration is another point I want to ask you about," said I.
"With every nation organized as a close industrial partnership,
monopolizing all means of production in the country, the
emigrant, even if he were permitted to land, would starve. I
suppose there is no emigration nowadays."
| 24 | |
| "On the contrary, there is constant emigration, by which I
suppose you mean removal to foreign countries for permanent
residence," replied Dr. Leete. "It is arranged on a simple
international arrangement of indemnities. For example, if a man
at twenty-one emigrates from England to America, England
loses all the expense of his maintenance and education, and
America gets a workman for nothing. America accordingly makes
England an allowance. The same principle, varied to suit the
case, applies generally. If the man is near the term of his labor
when he emigrates, the country receiving him has the allowance.
As to imbecile persons, it is deemed best that each nation should
be responsible for its own, and the emigration of such must be
under full guarantees of support by his own nation. Subject to
these regulations, the right of any man to emigrate at any time is
unrestricted."
| 25 | |
| "But how about mere pleasure trips; tours of observation?
How can a stranger travel in a country whose people do not
receive money, and are themselves supplied with the means of
life on a basis not extended to him? His own credit card cannot,
of course, be good in other lands. How does he pay his way?"
| 26 | |
| "An American credit card," replied Dr. Leete, "is just as good
in Europe as American gold used to be, and on precisely the
same condition, namely, that it be exchanged into the currency
of the country you are traveling in. An American in Berlin takes
his credit card to the local office of the international council, and
receives in exchange for the whole or part of it a German credit
card, the amount being charged against the United States in
favor of Germany on the international account."
| 27 | |
| "Perhaps Mr. West would like to dine at the Elephant
to-day," said Edith, as we left the table.
| 28 | |
| "That is the name we give to the general dining-house in our
ward," explained her father. "Not only is our cooking done at
the public kitchens, as I told you last night, but the service and
quality of the meals are much more satisfactory if taken at the
dining-house. The two minor meals of the day are usually taken
at home, as not worth the trouble of going out; but it is general
to go out to dine. We have not done so since you have been
with us, from a notion that it would be better to wait till you
had become a little more familiar with our ways. What do you
think? Shall we take dinner at the dining-house to-day?"
| 29 | |
| I said that I should be very much pleased to do so.
| 30 | |
| Not long after, Edith came to me, smiling, and said:
| 31 | |
| "Last night, as I was thinking what I could do to make you
feel at home until you came to be a little more used to us and
our ways, an idea occurred to me. What would you say if I were
to introduce you to some very nice people of your own times,
whom I am sure you used to be well acquainted with?"
| 32 | |
| I replied, rather vaguely, that it would certainly be very
agreeable, but I did not see how she was going to manage it.
| 33 | |
| "Come with me," was her smiling reply, "and see if I am not
as good as my word."
| 34 | |
| My susceptibility to surprise had been pretty well exhausted
by the numerous shocks it had received, but it was with some
wonderment that I followed her into a room which I had not
before entered. It was a small, cosy apartment, walled with cases
filled with books.
| 35 | |
| "Here are your friends," said Edith, indicating one of the
cases, and as my eye glanced over the names on the backs of the
volumes, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson,
Defoe, Dickens, Thackeray, Hugo, Hawthorne, Irving, and a
score of other great writers of my time and all time, I understood
her meaning. She had indeed made good her promise in a sense
compared with which its literal fulfillment would have been a
disappointment. She had introduced me to a circle of friends
whom the century that had elapsed since last I communed with
them had aged as little as it had myself. Their spirit was as high,
their wit as keen, their laughter and their tears as contagious, as
when their speech had whiled away the hours of a former
century. Lonely I was not and could not be more, with this
goodly companionship, however wide the gulf of years that
gaped between me and my old life.
| 36 | |
| "You are glad I brought you here," exclaimed Edith, radiant,
as she read in my face the success of her experiment. "It was a
good idea, was it not, Mr. West? How stupid in me not to think
of it before! I will leave you now with your old friends, for I
know there will be no company for you like them just now; but
remember you must not let old friends make you quite forget
new ones!" and with that smiling caution she left me.
| 37 | |
| Attracted by the most familiar of the names before me, I laid
my hand on a volume of Dickens, and sat down to read. He had
been my prime favorite among the bookwriters of the century,--I
mean the nineteenth century,--and a week had rarely
passed in my old life during which I had not taken up some
volume of his works to while away an idle hour. Any volume
with which I had been familiar would have produced an extraordinary
impression, read under my present circumstances, but my
exceptional familiarity with Dickens, and his consequent power
to call up the associations of my former life, gave to his writings
an effect no others could have had, to intensify, by force of
contrast, my appreciation of the strangeness of my present
environment. However new and astonishing one's surroundings,
the tendency is to become a part of them so soon that almost
from the first the power to see them objectively and fully
measure their strangeness, is lost. That power, already dulled in
my case, the pages of Dickens restored by carrying me back
through their associations to the standpoint of my former life.
| 38 | |
| With a clearness which I had not been able before to attain, I
saw now the past and present, like contrasting pictures, side by
side.
| 39 | |
| The genius of the great novelist of the nineteenth century,
like that of Homer, might indeed defy time; but the setting of
his pathetic tales, the misery of the poor, the wrongs of power,
the pitiless cruelty of the system of society, had passed away as
utterly as Circe and the sirens, Charybdis and Cyclops.
| 40 | |
| During the hour or two that I sat there with Dickens open
before me, I did not actually read more than a couple of pages.
Every paragraph, every phrase, brought up some new aspect of
the world-transformation which had taken place, and led my
thoughts on long and widely ramifying excursions. As meditating
thus in Dr. Leete's library I gradually attained a more clear and
coherent idea of the prodigious spectacle which I had been so
strangely enabled to view, I was filled with a deepening wonder
at the seeming capriciousness of the fate that had given to one
who so little deserved it, or seemed in any way set apart for it,
the power alone among his contemporaries to stand upon the
earth in this latter day. I had neither foreseen the new world nor
toiled for it, as many about me had done regardless of the scorn
of fools or the misconstruction of the good. Surely it would have
been more in accordance with the fitness of things had one of
those prophetic and strenuous souls been enabled to see the
travail of his soul and be satisfied; he, for example, a thousand
times rather than I, who, having beheld in a vision the world I
looked on, sang of it in words that again and again, during these
last wondrous days, had rung in my mind:
| 41 | |
| For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were
furled.
In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world.
| 42 | |
| Then the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
| 43 | |
| For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
| 44 | |
| What though, in his old age, he momentarily lost faith in his
own prediction, as prophets in their hours of depression and
doubt generally do; the words had remained eternal testimony to
the seership of a poet's heart, the insight that is given to faith.
| 45 | |
| I was still in the library when some hours later Dr. Leete
sought me there. "Edith told me of her idea," he said, "and I
thought it an excellent one. I had a little curiosity what writer
you would first turn to. Ah, Dickens! You admired him, then!
That is where we moderns agree with you. Judged by our
standards, he overtops all the writers of his age, not because his
literary genius was highest, but because his great heart beat for
the poor, because he made the cause of the victims of society his
own, and devoted his pen to exposing its cruelties and shams.
No man of his time did so much as he to turn men's minds to
the wrong and wretchedness of the old order of things, and open
their eyes to the necessity of the great change that was coming,
although he himself did not clearly foresee it."
| 46 | |
|