occasion to make a volume of his short stories with the
assurance of a magnificent sale,--to all this he was strikingly
indifferent. Two or three public addresses, a few articles in the
reviews, and for a while the editorship of 'The New Nation,' a weekly
periodical which he established in Boston,--this was the sum of his
public activity until he should have made himself ready for a second
sustained effort. To all sordid incentives he was as indifferent as if
he had been a child of his new order, a century later. The hosts of
personal friends whom his work made for him knew him as a winsome
personality; and really to know him was to love him. His nature was
keenly sympathetic; his conversation ready and charming, quickly
responsive to suggestion, illuminated by gentle humor and occasionally
a flash of playful satire. He disliked controversy, with its waste of
energy in profitless discussion, and jestingly averred that if there
were any reformers living in his neighborhood he should move away.

The cardinal features of 'Looking Backward,' that distinguish it from
the generality of Utopian literature, lie in its definite scheme of
industrial organization on a national basis, and the equal share
allotted to all persons in the products of industry, or the public
income, on the same ground that men share equally in the free gifts of
nature, like air to breathe and water to drink; it being absolutely
impossible to determine any equitable ratio between individual
industrial effort and individual share in industrial product on a
graded basis. The book, however, was little more than an outline of
the system, and, after an interval devoted to continuous thought and
study, many points called for elaboration. Mr. Bellamy gave his last
years and his ripest efforts to an exposition of the economical and
ethical basis of the new order which he held that the natural course
of social evolution would establish.

'Equality' is the title of his last book. It is a more elaborate work
than 'Looking Backward,' and in fact is a comprehensive economic
treatise upon the subject that gives it its name. It is a sequel to
its famous predecessor, and its keynote is given in the remark that
the immortal preamble of the American Declaration of Independence
(characterized as the true constitution of the United States),
logically contained the entire statement of universal economic
equality guaranteed by the nation collectively to its members
individ