“Your schools are conducted on a wrong principle, as are so many of your homes. Your punishments are not strong enough, your prisons are too full. But if I talk thus I will help to drive the cloud away, which will almost make of me a traitor.”
“Not it,” cried Philemon, laughing. “You put it there between you, but it sticks by the law of gravity, which has not yet learned to smile without becoming irreverent.”
“I suppose then you would teach pure morality and leave out religion,” I said.
“It would be best,” Philemon declared.
“Ssh! Ssh! Don’t rouse the clergy,” Vestasian exclaimed.
“Why not? I could say the project came from hell.”
“Certainly.”
Passage omitted