or ignorance of individuals,
since otherwise there would be famine. To this end its use was
strictly regulated and systematized, and individuals of their mere
caprice were not permitted to dam it or divert it, or in any way to
tamper with it.

The labor of men, I explained, was the fertilizing stream which alone
rendered earth habitable. It was but a scanty stream at best, and its
use required to be regulated by a system which expended every drop to
the best advantage, if the world were to be supported in abundance.
But how far from any system was the actual practice! Every man wasted
the precious fluid as he wished, animated only by the equal motives of
saving his own crop and spoiling his neighbor's, that his might sell
the better. What with greed and what with spite some fields were
flooded while others were parched, and half the water ran wholly to
waste. In such a land, though a few by strength or cunning might win
the means of luxury, the lot of the great mass must be poverty, and of
the weak and ignorant bitter want and perennial famine.

Let but the famine-stricken nation assume the function it had
neglected, and regulate for the common good the course of the
life-giving stream, and the earth would bloom like one garden, and
none of its children lack any good thing. I described the physical
felicity, mental enlightenment, and moral elevation which would then
attend the lives of all men. With fervency I spoke of that new world,
blessed with plenty, purified by justice and sweetened by brotherly
kindness, the world of which I had indeed but dreamed, but which might
so easily be made real. But when I had expected now surely the faces
around me to light up with emotions akin to mine, they grew ever more
dark, angry, and scornful. Instead of enthusiasm, the ladies showed
only aversion and dread, while the men interrupted me with shouts of
reprobation and contempt. "Madman!" "Pestilent fellow!" "Fanatic!"
"Enemy of society!" were some of their cries, and the one who had
before taken his eyeglass to me exclaimed, "He says we are to have no
more poor. Ha! ha!"

"Put the fellow out!" exclaimed the father of my betrothed, and at the
signal the men sprang from their chairs and advanced upon me.

It seemed to me that my heart would burst with the anguish of finding
that what was to me so plain and so all-important was to them
meaningless, and that I was powerless to make it other. So hot had
been my heart that I had t