Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/19

 women beautiful and graceful beyond any of their distant ancestresses of the present. Their beauty arose, not from any mere regularity of feature: countenances as fair may even now be seen among us. But long ages of intellectual culture had imparted a character to their beauty that rendered it as superior to mere insipid perfection of feature as a living flower is to a waxen imitation. Many a fashionable belle may display hands and feet more diminutive than those I there saw, but certainly rarely so perfect in form, so graceful in movement. Could they but see for once the free, elastic step of those rationally shod dames and damsels of the future, they would cast aside forever the unsightly casings in which they now consent to torture and distort their feet.

So interesting to me was the observation of the features and costumes of this magnificent race, that we proceeded for some distance before I had eyes for any thing else, or found leisure for questioning my companion.

"How is it," I inquired at last, that we meet but one class of the population? These. I suppose, belong to the aristocracy of your city,—a noble and handsome race indeed. But where are the working-classes? For some time I have been looking around for a specimen, but in vain. All seem to belong to a superior class."

"We have no aristocracy," was the reply, "if by that you mean a class living in idleness by the toil of others. Nor have we any working-class, if you mean a class that spends its life in toil that leaves no leisure for their development as intellectual beings. Such as these you so greatly admire compose the only class among us. You may call them an aristocracy if by that you mean