"
"And how are they pleased with your system?"
"Why, I cannot better answer than by saying that they mostly refuse to
leave us."
"Ah, just as Bacon reports!" cried the professor.
"You mean in the _New Atlantis_?" returned the Altrurian. "Yes; it is
astonishing how well Bacon in that book, and Sir Thomas More in his
_Utopia_, have divined certain phases of our civilization and polity."
"I think he rather _has_ you, professor," the banker whispered, with a
laugh.
"But all those inspired visionaries," the Altrurian continued, while the
professor sat grimly silent, watching for another chance, "who have borne
testimony of us in their dreams, conceived of states perfect without the
discipline of a previous competitive condition. What I thought, however,
might specially interest you Americans in Altruria is the fact that our
economy was evolved from one so like that in which you actually have your
being. I had even hoped you might feel that, in all these points of
resemblance, America prophesies another Altruria. I know that to some of
you all that I have told of my country will seem a baseless fabric, with
no more foundation, in fact, than More's fairy-tale of another land where
men dealt kindly and justly by one another, and dwelt, a whole nation, in
the unity and equality of a family.
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