de out of wood, anyhow," answered Adam, "and
the ash that grows here in any quantity was considered particularly
fine for that purpose."

"'God made man upright, but he hath sought out many inventions,'"
quoted Robin, "and now we are going to seek them over again. I can't
imagine how anyone could ever make a lineotype, but the type and the
hand-press are easy enough, and if you can make paper, we may yet live
to read our 'published works.' You probably do not know that I used to
have a Wegg-like facility for dropping into poetry."

"Did you? That is another of the things you never told me; but your
speaking of Thoreau," answered Adam, "recalls what he said of the
amount of work necessary to sustain life beside Walden Pond. It took
six weeks out of the year, and that was in a most forbidding country.
In such a valley as this two months ought to be sufficient to more
than feed and clothe us; but then he didn't have to make his own
clothing."

"And out of nothing particular," interrupted Robin.

Adam laughed and went on. "Did you ever hear of a man called Hertzka?
He was an eminent Austrian sociologist, and he figured it out, that if
five million men should work a little less than an hour and three
quarters a day they could produce all the necessities of life for the
twenty-two million people of Austria. By working two hours and twelve
minutes daily for two months beside, they could have all the luxuries
also. And that not for a few, not for the Court and the nobility, but
for all. There could have been music and pictures and books and
theatres, and sufficient food and clothing. Isn't it strange that when
we might have been so happy we preferred to be so wretched? For even
if we had all we wanted ourselves, we could not escape the sights and
sounds that told of abject misery."

"It was always so," Robin answered moodily. "The poor we had always
with us. History always repeated itself."

"Still, it didn't exactly repeat itself," Adam said. "Our dark age
would have done for a golden age in the past. Greece was glorious for
a little while, but her literature tells us of her ideals. The isles
of Greece, where Byron contracted his last illness, would have left
him to die among the rocks twenty-five hundred years earlier, because
he had a lame foot. We at least were kinder to animals, and that means
a great deal."

"I don't know," she answered. "Perhaps; it seems to me I have read of
a hospital for sick animals on the i