ually. "The corner-stone of our state is economic equality, and
is not that the obvious, necessary, and only adequate pledge of these
three rights,--life, liberty, and happiness? What is life without its
material basis, and what is an equal right to life but a right to an
equal material basis for it? What is liberty? How can men be free who
must ask the right to labor and to live from their fellow-men and seek
their bread from the hands of others? How else can any government
guarantee liberty to men save by providing them a means of labor and
of life coupled with independence; and how could that be done unless
the government conducted the economic system upon which employment and
maintenance depend? Finally, what is implied in the equal right of all
to the pursuit of happiness? What form of happiness, so far as it
depends at all upon material facts, is not bound up with economic
conditions; and how shall an equal opportunity for the pursuit of
happiness be guaranteed to all save by a guarantee of economic
equality?"

The book is so full of ideas, so replete with suggestive aspects, so
rich in quotable parts, as to form an arsenal of argument for apostles
of the new democracy. As with 'Looking Backward,' the humane and
thoughtful reader will lay down 'Equality' and regard the world about
him with a feeling akin to that with which the child of the tenement
returns from his "country week" to the foul smells, the discordant
noises, the incessant strife of the wonted environment.

But the writing of 'Equality' was a task too great for the physical
strength and vitality of its author. His health, never robust, gave
way completely, and the book was finished by an indomitable and
inflexible dominion of the powerful mind over the failing body which
was nothing short of heroic. Consumption, that common New England
inheritance, developed suddenly, and in September of 1897 Mr. Bellamy
went with his family to Denver, willing to seek the cure which he
scarcely hoped to find.

The welcome accorded to him in the West, where his work had met with
widespread and profound attention, was one of his latest and greatest
pleasures. Letters came from mining camps, from farms and villages,
the writers all longing to do something for him to show their love.

The singular modesty already spoken of as characterizing Mr. Bellamy,
and an entire unwillingness to accept any personal and public
recognition, had perhaps kept him from a realization o