There were many stores and depots where anyone who wanted anything for wear, or consumption, or instruction, or pleasure, or any other use, could go, or send and get it, or get it made. He never had to ask “What’s the damage?” because in Common-sense Country damage was objected to. Everyone knew that no one had got what he did not want, because nobody was so insane as to cumber himself with the custody of anything that was of no use or pleasure to him; so that to ask him to give up what was of direct use or pleasure to him would damage him. No one was short of anything, because the world is very fruitful, and human beings are very numerous, very ingenious, and very industrious, and are able and eager to make it more and more fruitful. Wealth in Common-sense Country increased even faster than the population, so that there was more leisure for every new generation born. Whatever was not of direct use to the individuals who produced it, it was to the convenience of these individuals to place in care, and outside custody altogether, so that those to whom it was not superfluous might choose their own time and put it to their own uses. It is only in Lunatic Land that everybody (willingly or not) makes a practice of fining everybody else for the privilege of living alongside of him on the same planet. It takes a hereditary lunatic of many generations’ standing to go shamming about in the roundabout, nonsensically solemn effort to convert man’s natural home into a penal colony, by means of a cunningly devised system of fines all round for being alive and active and wanting to stop so. [Illustration: -ooo-] In Common-sense Country there were born ninety-five per cent. fewer idiots, cripples, and otherwise afflicted mortals than are born elsewhere. The few there were, were not felt as a burden; for those of tender hearts found a natural pleasure in doing what could be done to make life tolerable for these sad and ever diminishing exceptions; and of course they were no expense in a land of plenty, where access was free to whatever was wanted, without money and without price. [Illustration: -ooo-]