Perfection CityOrpen, Adela E. (Adela Elizabeth Richards)
General
Perfection City
Orpen, Adela E. (Adela Elizabeth Richards)
Communal living -- Fiction; Kansas -- Fiction; Utopias -- Fiction
“Quite right, quite right, couldn’t ha’ had a better reason.”
“Therefore it becomes our duty to impress upon our new sister the
principles which have been active in forming this Community,” said
Brother Wright, without paying any heed to Uncle David’s interruption.
“Perfection City has been founded to teach the world how to live. The
old civilization has been tried and found wanting. It is time for a new
one. Perfection City is the beginning of a new era. We are the Pioneers
of a new world. We shall show the old and worn-out world how to banish
evil from life. We cannot perhaps banish all physical evil, and for a
time at least there may be sickness even among us, but we shall at once
set about freeing ourselves from all the other troubles of life. There
is nobody in Perfection City who will get rich, and nobody will ever be
poor. We are all alike, and we shall none of us envy our neighbours his
belongings, simply because everything belongs to all. The lesson we have
to teach is the grandest the world ever saw, and when men know what it
is, I foresee a future before Perfection City greater than that of any
other city of the world. Rome lasted a good long while, but Rome didn’t
possess the vital spark of life: Rome wasn’t communistic, therefore Rome
fell. Perfection City won’t fall like that, but will go on teaching the
world after we, its founders, are all dead. But our memories will live
for the great things that we taught and through our example have made
possible.”
Brother Wright stopped for a few seconds, and Uncle David said
admiringly,
“You have a fine command of words, Brother Wright, and you have a way of
making things sound uncommon grand. It always does me good to hear you
talk of the grand future of our City; but we’ll have to get up some
houses, and bigger ones, ’fore folks ’ull believe us.”
Uncle David was as simple as a child, or some of his hearers might have
suspected a sarcasm in his words.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, as I’ve heard say,” remarked Brother Green,
with a strong English accent, “and I shall be glad if our little village
ever grows to half its power and honour.”
“Brother Green, I should refuse to have anything to say to the founding
of another city like Rome,” interrupted Brother Wright with
decisiveness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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