I have often heard my old kinsman say the one aim of all people before our time was to avoid work, or at least they thought it was; so of course the work which their daily life forced them to do, seemed more like work than that which they seemed to choose for themselves." "True enough," said Morsom.

"Anyhow, they soon began to find out their mistake, and that only slaves and slave-holders could live solely by setting machines going." Clara broke in here, flushing a little as she spoke: "Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living ?--a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate--'nature,' as people used to call it--as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make 'nature' their slave, since they thought 'nature' was something outside them." "Surely," said Morsom; "and they were puzzled as to what to do, till they found the feeling against a mechanical life, which had begun before the Great Change amongst people who had leisure to think of such things, was spreading insensibly; till at last under the guise of pleasure that was not supposed to be work, work that was pleasure began to push out the mechanical toil, which they had once hoped at the best to reduce to narrow limits indeed, but never to get rid of; and which, moreover, they found they could not limit as they had hoped to do." "When did this new revolution gather head ?" said I.
"In the half-century that followed the Great Change," said Morsom, "it began to be noteworthy; machine after machine was quietly dropped under the excuse that the machines could not produce works of art, and that works of art were more and more called for.

Look here," he said, "here are some of the works of that time--rough and unskilful in handiwork, but solid and showing some sense of pleasure in the making." "They are very curious," said I, taking up a piece of pottery from amongst the specimens which the antiquary was showing us; "not a bit like the work of either savages or barbarians, and yet with what would once have been called a hatred of civilisation impressed upon them." "Yes," said Morsom, "you must not look for delicacy there: in that period you could only have got that from a man who was practically a slave.

But now, you see," said he, leading me on a little, "we have learned the trick of handicraft, and have added the utmost refinement of workmanship to the freedom of fancy and imagination." I looked, and wondered indeed at the deftness and abundance of beauty of the work of men who had at last learned to accept life itself as a pleasure, and the satisfaction of the common needs of mankind and the preparation for them, as work fit for the best of the race.

I mused silently; but at last I said-- "What is to come after this ?" The old man laughed.