Page:An Unfinished Song.djvu/143

138 The doctor continued,

"There is such a beautiful method of working there that one can accomplish a great deal without getting tired. Lives seem to move with the hands of the clock. Whether you go visiting or to meet anyone in business, you go about it as if you had to catch a train, time seems to be so strictly regarded. In the beginning this made me over anxious, and I was often half an hour ahead of the appointed time, lest I should be late, and so I would find myself loitering around the street to pass the time away."

I had been silent all along, but at last ventured to put in a word.

"Whenever I hear stories about England, I wish so much to go there."

"I think," replied the doctor, "all educated men and women should go there at least once. We are so moribund, it invigorates us to breathe the free air of liberty. There people are ever tearing down old institutions and building up new ones. Ideals which I dared not cherish here seemed to me there the legitimate object of aspiration. I became so bold in my fancies in that free land that I thought I could reform