Mr. Brown. ‘The boy should be a genius when he comes, seeing that both parents are adepts in the business. Occasionally we have freaks of nature,—now, haven’t we? Rememberest thou those Percys, they were going to have a poet, forsooth! but, ha, ha, ha, he turned out a simpleton!! He now takes the pence for the man who lends out his flying machine to boys. So much for manufacturing poets beforehand.’
Mr. White. ‘It was a maxim of the ancients that poets must be born not made, and it still holds good in these days of light: for a great poet only comes once in an epoch. He is an intellectual giant, as it were, and the conditions under which he is formed are not yet fathomed. It is comparatively easy for a woman to take up any ordinary employment with a view of giving a certain bias to the child’s faculties, but how in the name of goodness can a person all at once simulate the poet, and expect her child to come into the world a ready-made bard—why it is preposterous!’
Mr. Brown. ‘We cannot limit the possibilities of the future: only a hundred years ago the possibility of arranging the sex of a child was laughed at as a simple absurdity. Now we arrange not only the number of our children but their sex also; and very properly too, for we can do greater justice to our progeny when we know what we are about, than if they came by blind chance, merely.’
Mr. White. ‘We are twenty-first century people, now—let us remember that fact, two thousand and two! Yea, verily, the world is growing very old and that blessed millennium hasn’t come yet!’
Mr. Brown. ‘This is the millennium. We shall get no better. Is not the prophecy fulfilled of the ancient poets—“The wolf and the lamb shall lie down together?” Where is war? It has ceased to exist. Civilisation and science have worked out the miracle, and given to war its quietus.’
It is necessary to explain that by this time such a perfect knowledge of physiology was attained that the sex of the desired offspring could be regulated by parents. As soon as the discovery was made, and fully and completely tested, it was not locked up as a professional secret, but was given to the people by order of the Government in a handbook of health that was issued yearly at a nominal cost, which contained up-to-date information on hygiene, or general management of Health, and Home. By this means at least two-thirds of the children born were males, which kept the balance fairly even of the sexes. For notwithstanding the fact that Nature had at all times given the predominance of number to the masculine sex, yet owing to the numerous accidents that befell men while in the pursuit of their calling; and also to the severer strain on their constitution as the breadwinners, the mortality was consequently greater. From these causes mainly the nations found themselves mostly, with a redundance of adult females.
But a complete metamorphosis had now set in, for the people had eagerly taken advantage of the information afforded them, availing themselves of it to such an extent that the succeeding generation of males found themselves with a very inadequate supply of wives.
This awkward dilemma was, however, remedied in course of time, and eventually a fairly even number of the sexes was obtained.
But there was still another factor that assisted in maintaining the balance—the opening of trades and professions to women, which custom had kept so long closed against them, causing parents to hesitate in sending their daughters to learn trades and professions. ‘Better have no daughters at all,’ thought many susceptible ones, ‘if they must toil for their living like men.’ But time works wonders: the day came when a daughter brought as much honour and credit to her family as ever a son could possibly have achieved.
What men in the first instance regarded as an invasion of their rights, proved in the end an inestimable blessing. A wife ceased to be a kind of encumbrance upon a struggling man, and became a helpmate in a very substantial sense; for marriage no longer incapacitating a woman from continuing her employment, the income of a couple was doubled: by this means the two were enabled to live in greater comfort and with less strain and worry to the husband. Thus the longevity of the male was increased by the more equal distribution of labour between the sexes, for the wear and tear to the nervous system in the battle of life being reduced, had its share in prolonging masculine life and sustaining an equality of number of the sexes.