Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/102

 increase of the future. For centuries after his long-past day, the still thinly peopled world had food enough in the old accustomed natural food-raising ways, when its comparatively sparse inhabitants had successively occupied and ploughed up the many vacant areas which the world could still show during and for long after the nineteenth century. But, as we have already hinted, when these previously empty spaces got completely covered with human beings, and their cultivation was thus no longer possible, chemistry had already come to man's help, to give him food by much shorter and more convenient processes than the tedious roundabout of old-fashioned Nature.

Early in my retrospect, as indeed I have already said, the woman also was at full work for the world's progress, as well as the man. The sex had fought bravely and well the battle for this right—the right, which should be common to both sexes, to help on the ever-advancing world. And this battle being gained, the world had since experienced the difference of pace due to the augmented numbers and variety of the propellants at its wheels. There was also another important consequence to this victory. The two sexes, thus busily and usefully occupied, met each other more frequently in the walks of industry, especially in their earlier life, and thus formed attachments which kept them steady until terminated in marriage. Thus marriage, and mostly early