Nellie gave a funny little laugh, part sad, part tender, part amused. "I had no idea it would be so hard to tell you things," she said. "You'll have to just see for yourself, I guess." "Do go on, Nellie. I'll be good. You were going to tell me, in a nutshell, what had happened--please do." "The thing that has happened," said she, slowly, "is just this. The world has come alive. We are doing in a pleasant, practical way, all the things which we could have done, at any time before--only we never thought so. The real change is this: we have changed our minds. This happened very soon after you left. Ah! that was a time! To think that you should have missed it!" She gave my hand another sympathetic squeeze and went on. "After that it was only a question of time, of how soon we could do things. And we've been doing them ever since, faster and faster." This seemed rather flat and disappointing. "I don't see that you make out anything wonderful--so far. A new Religion which seems to consist only in behaving better; and a gradual improvement of social conditions--all that was going on when I left." Nellie regarded me with a considering eye. "I see how you interpret it," she said, "behaving better in our early days was a small personal affair; either a pathetically inadequate failure to do what one could not, or a Pharisaic, self-righteous success in doing what one could. All personal--personal!" "Good behavior has to be a personal affair, hasn't it?" I mildly protested. "Not by any means!" said Nellie with decision. "That was precisely what kept us so small and bad, so miserably confined and discouraged. Like a lot of well-meaning soldiers imagining that their evolutions were 'a personal affair'--or an orchestra plaintively protesting that if each man played a correct tune of his own choosing, the result would be perfect! Dear! dear! No, _Sir_," she continued with some fierceness, "that's just where we changed our minds! Humanity has come alive, I tell you and we have reason to be proud of our race!" She held her head high, there was a glad triumphant look in her eyes--not in the least religious. Said she: "You'll see results. That will make it clearer to you than anything I can say. But if I may remark that we have no longer the fear of death--much less of damnation, and no such thing as 'sin'; that the only kind of prison left is called a quarantine--that punishment is unknown but preventive means are of a drastic and sweeping nature such as we never dared think of before--that there is no such thing in the civilized world as poverty--no labor problem--no color problem--no sex problem--almost no disease--very little accident--practically no fires--that the world is rapidly being reforested--the soil improved; the output growing in quantity and quality; that no one needs to work over two hours a day and most people work four--that we have no graft--no adulteration of goods--no malpractice--no crime."