“Indeed, no!” they answered again, with a merry peal of laughter at so dire a possibility. “We have no ‘poor’ as you call them. The government is the friend of everyone.”
With a skeptical sniff, and a suspicion that we were in the heart of one of those “Ideal communities,” of whose birth, growth and early collapse we had read, we asked:
“Where are the other schools, or are those enough for your population?”
“On Bald Hill, toward the east—you can see the brick buildings and scaffoldings—are the schools for Mechanics; where those who are so fitted by heredity, learn the use of tools and machinery.”
“The children of mechanics, must then follow their father’s calling?”
“Not necessarily: If a carpenter-man does not wish to raise carpenter-children, he seeks a wife among the farmers, philosophers, professions or wherever his preferences tend. Their united desire calls to their home souls harmonious, in development with their intentions.
“Your people have not yet learned this law—in Natural History;” with a roguish twinkle, “it is taught in our lowest grades.”
“Taught to children?” we asked horrified at this depravity.
“To little children. Your people ignorantly imagine marriage and birth a game of chance, attended by much nonsense and immorality; in which parents may draw anything from a blank or a monstrosity to a saint. You are here to learn the beautiful truth;—or as much of it as you are capable of grasping.”
Their conversation seemed so illy fitted to their years, that we asked their age.