"Come," he said, "this is the day when we meet together."
"Together," said Matthew, and without knowing why he liked what he felt when he said that.
They went first to the market-place, trodden of many feet, and about it a fair green common planted in gracious lines. Here Matthew found men in shops that were built simply and like one another in fashion, but with pleasant devices of difference, and he found many selling together and many buying, and no one was being robbed.
"How can these things be?" he asked. "Here every man stands with the others."
"Inside of all things," the citizen answered, "you will find that it is so written."
On the common many were assembled to name certain projects and purposes: the following of paths to still clearer spaces, the nurturing of certain people, ways of cleanliness, purity of water, of milk, wide places for play, the fashioning of labour so that the shrines within be not foregone, the freeing of fountains, the planting of green things.
"Why will all this be?" asked Matthew. "For these things a man does in his own garden or for his own house, and no other interferes."
"Nay, but look deep within all things, Friend," the citizen said, "and you will never find it written so."
"Friend," repeated Matthew, "friend...."