Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/206

 The upper story contained extensive apartments for public meetings, committee-rooms, and a large library. In the lower was a spacious dining-hall, with magnificent panelled ceiling and walls. Numerous pieces of statuary were disposed in appropriate positions throughout the hall, and paintings of great merit adorned the walls. Each was the masterpiece of a native artist. Each had considered the artistic labor of a lifetime well bestowed if its crowning result could achieve the honor of being thought worthy to grace the walls of the public hall, there to meet the gaze of cultivated appreciation, or kindle, perchance, the spark of slumbering genius.

When we entered, most of the space was occupied by numerous round tables, similar to that with which I had become familiar in the home of Utis. By a special mechanism, however, each of these tables, with its cebin, could be made to sink till the upper surface of the table formed the bottom of a shallow recess. These recesses being filled with closely fitting covers, there was left an unencumbered hall of magnificent proportions. Such was the apartment in which the entire community now sat down to dine.