Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/910

 there used to be such lunatic affairs as divorce courts; but just consider, all the cases that came into them were matters of property quarrels; and I think, dear guest, that though you do come from another planet, you can see from the mere outside look of our world that quarrel about private property could not go on among us in our days."

Indeed, my drive from Hammersmith to Bloomsbury, and all the quiet, happy life I had seen so many hints of, even apart from my shopping, would have been enough to tell me that "the sacred rights of property," as we used to think of them, were now no more. So I sat silent while the old man took up the thread of the discourse again

"You must understand once for all that we have changed these matters; or rather, that our way of looking at them has changed within the last two hundred years. We do not deceive ourselves, indeed, or believe that we can get rid of all the trouble that besets the dealings between the sexes. We know that we must face the unhappiness that comes of man and woman confusing the relations between natural passion and sentiment, and the friendship which, when things go well, softens the awakening from passing illusions; but we are not so mad as to pile up degradation on that unhappiness by engaging in sordid squabbles about livelihood and position, and the power of tyrannizing over the children who have been the results of love or lust."

He was silent for some time, and I would not interrupt him. At last he began again: "But you must know that we of these generations are strong and healthy of body, and live easily; we pass our lives in reasonable strife with nature, exercising not one side of ourselves only,