“How densely your population huddles together in your cities and towns, eking out a bare existence in garrets and tenement houses which are totally unfit for an abode of a human being; and how lamely and single-handed your agriculturist toils, early and late, for the support of himself, his so-called family, and the army of city unproductive and destructive laborers. What a slave a wife is who has to live either in a city garret or tenement house, or in a lonely country home! How little intellectual culture she can attain! How financially dependent she is on her ‘master’--the so-called husband! How his children are working themselves crooked, stiff, and otherwise deformed from the long, heavy day’s toil! How little room there is for intellectual development under such social and industrial burdens! All is toil, slavery, and obedience. No parks, no fine walks, no pleasant rides, no greenhouses where a flower or green plant can be picked during the cold winter day when something green cheers the heart and delights the eye. Your gardens are rudely laid out, and mostly full of weeds and poultry, and sometimes hogs and cattle. Your orchards are planted with a few varieties of trees which often bear a better crop of caterpillars than fruit; your shrubbery is largely choked to death in some fence corner or under some larger trees, for want of sunshine and moisture. Your lawn is often an ash-pile, and not unfrequently a rubbish-heap.” CHAPTER XI. EXTERIOR OF “BIG-HOUSE.” [_Continued._] “Now, I do not wish to be understood that I am ridiculing your social and industrial institutions, or that I blame any one for these poor, pitiable conditions we find existing here on earth. We passed through the same woful stages. Every well-informed person knows that your world, as a whole, is better to-day than it ever was before. You enjoy more security, more kindness, more intelligence and more freedom than you ever did in any preceding age. The conditions which we find on earth are, as a whole, undoubtedly nearly in tune with your social and industrial culture; and the only known power in the universe that can substitute a higher and nobler order of things is additional intelligence. Acts, as we have seen, are always in harmony with the intelligence of the actor. “We can not hope to find much good work done in a world where the division of labor is so imperfect as it is here with you. Your so-called farmer is, as a rule, at the same time agriculturist, horticulturist, stockbreeder, butcher, dairyman, shepherd, carpenter and poultry raiser. On the other hand, your city laborer must frequently be idle, or accept any kind of labor he can get, whether he is proficient in it or whether he is a bungler at it.” “There must be a great difference between our institutions and yours,” said Mrs. Uwins.