cessary. She
intimated that it would be considered an extraordinary imbecility to
permit the weather to have any effect on the social movements of the
people.

Dr. Leete, who was walking ahead, overhearing something of our talk,
turned to say that the difference between the age of individualism and
that of concert was well characterized by the fact that, in the
nineteenth century, when it rained, the people of Boston put up three
hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth
century they put up one umbrella over all the heads.

As we walked on, Edith said, "The private umbrella is father's
favorite figure to illustrate the old way when everybody lived for
himself and his family. There is a nineteenth century painting at the
Art Gallery representing a crowd of people in the rain, each one
holding his umbrella over himself and his wife, and giving his
neighbors the drippings, which he claims must have been meant by the
artist as a satire on his times."

We now entered a large building into which a stream of people was
pouring. I could not see the front, owing to the awning, but, if in
correspondence with the interior, which was even finer than the store
I visited the day before, it would have been magnificent. My companion
said that the sculptured group over the entrance was especially
admired. Going up a grand staircase we walked some distance along a
broad corridor with many doors opening upon it. At one of these, which
bore my host's name, we turned in, and I found myself in an elegant
dining-room containing a table for four. Windows opened on a courtyard
where a fountain played to a great height and music made the air
electric.

"You seem at home here," I said, as we seated ourselves at table, and
Dr. Leete touched an annunciator.

"This is, in fact, a part of our house, slightly detached from the
rest," he replied. "Every family in the ward has a room set apart in
this great building for its permanent and exclusive use for a small
annual rental. For transient guests and individuals there is
accommodation on another floor. If we expect to dine here, we put in
our orders the night before, selecting anything in market, according
to the daily reports in the papers. The meal is as expensive or as
simple as we please, though of course everything is vastly cheaper as
well as better than it would be if prepared at home. There is actually
nothing which our people take more interest in than the per