ut short all useless circumlocution, suffer me to ask at
once an explanation of the system of enumeration by which you indicate
individuals? You are called No. 22,817, brown-study color--"

"Or Dr. Reasono. As you are an Englishman, you will perhaps understand
me better if I refer to a recent practice of the new London police. You
may have observed that the men wear letters in red or white, and numbers
on the capes of their coats. By the letters the passenger can refer to
the company of the officer, while the number indicates the individual.
Now, the idea of this improvement came, I make no doubt, from our
system, under which society is divided into castes, for the sake of
harmony and subordination, and these castes are designated by colors
and shades of colors that are significant of their stations and
pursuits--the individual, as in the new police, being known by the
number. Our own language being exceedingly sententious, is capable
of expressing the most elaborate of these combinations in a very few
sounds. I should add that there is no difference in the manner of
distinguishing the sexes, with the exception that each is numbered
apart, and each has a counterpart color to that of the same caste in
the other sex. Thus purple and violet are both noble, the former being
masculine and the latter feminine, and russet being the counterpart of
brown-study color."

"And--excuse my natural ardor to know more--and do you bear these
numbers and colors marked on your attire in your own region?"

"As for attire, Sir John, the monikins are too highly improved, mentally
and physically, to need any. It is known that in all cases extremes
meet. The savage is nearer to nature than the merely civilized being,
and the creature that has passed the mystifications of a middle state
of improvement finds himself again approaching nearer to the habits, the
wishes, and the opinions of our common mother. As the real gentleman is
more simple in manners than the distant imitator of his deportment; as
fashions and habits are always more exaggerated in provincial towns
than in polished capitals; or as the profound philosopher has less
pretensions than the tyro, so does our common genus, as it draws nearer
to the consummation of its destiny and its highest attainments, learn
to reject the most valued usages of the middle condition, and to return
with ardor towards nature as to a first love. It is on this principle,
sir, that the monikin family nev