“Bathe your eyes in Truth; open them to His everlasting and all-powerful Love, and wash away the putrefaction that threatens your Eternal welfare, your planet’s existence.” A radiant light enveloped them, an invisible choir flooded the air with celestial harmonies; we bowed ourselves, reverently, before an unseen but overpowering presence, and covering our faces answered, fervidly: “With Thy help, Lord, we will.” “After the third year?” “The recently married men receive the graduating Buds into the Youth’s department, and devote their first year to them; their work is also in the open air and completes the Field course. “After these young benedicts promote a class of Youth, they receive their full certificates of Fatherhood. They are then of age, as you would call it.” “Are not many of these young people unfit for the responsibilities, the custody of children, the field work or—” “You have forgotten that marriage-licenses are granted only after the Applicants are fully qualified. Our Committee on Generation thoroughly investigate every case.” “The five-year-olds?” “Are taken in groups of ten, by teachers, who, during the following two years, instruct them in the first principles of birth, growth and change as presented by plant and animal life in field, forest, garden and home: This includes much you would classify as rudiments of Physiology, Chemistry, Astronomy, Psychology, Paleontology, Arithmetic, Language, Geography, History and Agriculture, besides Cleaning and Cooking. It is accomplished however without books or tablets, and, much of it outside the class-rooms. “Flowers, fruits, vegetables and grains; birds, fish, reptiles and many other forms of animal life, are germinated and developed to maturity; nurtured and experimented upon; but ever to the benefit of the life involved.” “Are your teachers men or women?” “Both; always in pairs; the government believing that by constant and familiar association, only, can the present standard of purity and liberty be maintained.” A strain of flute-like music interrupted us. “A sick call,” explained the guides. “You see the flags floating from occasional nursery knolls; they locate ailing babes, and demand attention from any passing mother; while every staff-whistle is distinctive and quickly recognized by the mother whose offspring has special need of her presence. Knowing this, each is free from that harrowing anxiety experienced by Earth mothers, who must watch constantly over their teething or otherwise ailing little ones; or suffer untold agonies with apprehension, during an absence; thus poisoning the nourishment, in preparation, which Nature intends to serve as a cure for every infantile ill.” “But it seems positively cruel to force mothers with sick children into the field.” We were really indignant about it.