"You mean to say," replied Alfred, "that food most be raised and clothing furnished. True. But how many are employed in really useful labor, compared with those whose occupations might be dispensed with without loss to society, and those who are mere appendages of wealth--mere creatures of idleness--men who, by forestalling their master's wants, make _him_ dependent on themselves; who, by surrounding him with luxuries, effeminate him; and who, by pandering to his pleasures, surfeit him, at the same time that by doing these things they degrade themselves; for why should one man be a mere appendage to another?" "But if all must work," said Annie, "all cannot work in the same way. We most have hewers of wood and drawers of water, as well as poets and philosophers. A community needs a head, as well as hands and feet. Suppose you were elected head of a community, you would need servants to do the manual labor?" "True, but I would not badge them for it," answered Alfred, glancing at the liveried servants, who were then bringing in refreshments. "All men must work for the common weal; therefore, all labor is honorable; and no man need lord it over another, as if himself were made of porcelain, and the other of earthenware. An American philosopher has lately calculated that in order to supply the world with necessaries, if each grown individual were to work four hours a day, the whole population of the world might be far better provided for than it is now." "And what would they do with their spare time?" asked Annie. {39} "What but improve their minds, and employ their energies in loftier labors--what but grow out of the drudge into the man! Oh! we have yet to learn the wonders that are to be achieved by a well-regulated community. Men are scarcely men yet. Half of them are slaves to the mere bread-winning to support their bodies, and the other half are seeking phantoms--they are trying to find pleasure in lording it over their fellows, or they are driven to excess by the mere necessity of passing away time. It is an unfair position to place a man in, to set him above that reciprocal dependence which binds man to man as equals. It is a practical injustice to individuals to sever them thus from their kind, and prevent their feeling their brotherhood." Alfred continued, warming with his subject: "There are, deep seated in the human heart, A thousand thrilling, yearning sympathies-- A thousand ties that bind us to our kind-- A thousand pleasures only there enjoyed In cheering intercourse with fellow-man. 'Tis thus the voice of nature speaks aloud, Proclaims from pole to pole the heav'n-born truth: 'Ye are the children of one only God. Learn to acknowledge your fraternity.' I think you have not seen my poem on Human Brotherhood, Miss Annie?" "I have not, but to judge from the specimen you have just quoted, I should like very much to read it. These truths seem so evident now, it is wonderful they have not been discovered before."