e lovers, and his resentment toward the unwritten law which they
outraged. I need not describe--for who has not read "Ruth Elton?"--how
different is the course which Berrian takes, and with what tremendous
effect he enforces the principle which he states: "Over the unborn our
power is that of God, and our responsibility like His toward us. As we
acquit ourselves toward them, so let Him deal with us."

[Footnote 5: I may say that Dr. Leete's warning has been fully
justified by my experience. The amount and intensity of amusement
which the young people of this day, and the young women especially,
are able to extract from what they are pleased to call the oddities of
courtship in the nineteenth century, appear unlimited.]

CHAPTER XXVI.

I think if a person were ever excusable for losing track of the days
of the week, the circumstances excused me. Indeed, if I had been told
that the method of reckoning time had been wholly changed and the days
were now counted in lots of five, ten, or fifteen instead of seven, I
should have been in no way surprised after what I had already heard
and seen of the twentieth century. The first time that any inquiry as
to the days of the week occurred to me was the morning following the
conversation related in the last chapter. At the breakfast table Dr.
Leete asked me if I would care to hear a sermon.

"Is it Sunday, then?" I exclaimed.

"Yes," he replied. "It was on Friday, you see, when we made the lucky
discovery of the buried chamber to which we owe your society this
morning. It was on Saturday morning, soon after midnight, that you
first awoke, and Sunday afternoon when you awoke the second time with
faculties fully regained."

"So you still have Sundays and sermons," I said. "We had prophets who
foretold that long before this time the world would have dispensed
with both. I am very curious to know how the ecclesiastical systems
fit in with the rest of your social arrangements. I suppose you have a
sort of national church with official clergymen."

Dr. Leete laughed, and Mrs. Leete and Edith seemed greatly amused.

"Why, Mr. West," Edith said, "what odd people you must think us. You
were quite done with national religious establishments in the
nineteenth century, and did you fancy we had gone back to them?"

"But how can voluntary churches and an unofficial clerical profession
be reconciled with national ownership of all buildings, and the
industrial service required of