'In the future, dear child, there shall be no poverty and no riches. To have nothing will be the common lot. To have all will be the common inheritance. Oh! there will be differences: men shall be as unlike then as now: we shall not all desire the same things. You and such as you will desire Art of every kind. You shall have what you desire. In our world, as in this, like will to like. You shall have the use for yourselves of pictures, of musical instruments, of everything that you want. The rest of the world will not want these things. If they do, more can be made. You shall have dainty food--the rest of the world will always like coarse and common fare. Think not that we shall level up or level down. All will be left to rise or to sink. Only they shall not starve, they shall not thieve, they shall not be sweated. Oh! I know they paint our society as attempts to make all equal. And they think that we expect men no longer to desire the good things in the world. They will desire them--they will hunger after them--but there will be enough for all. The man who is contented with a dinner of herbs may go to a Carthusian convent, which is his place, for we shall have no place for him in a world which recognises all good gifts and assigns to every man his share.' Then spoke the other Voice, but sadly: 'Dreams! Dreams! There are not enough of the good things to go round--good things would become less instead of more. Without the spur there is no work. Without the desire of creating Property, all that is worth anything in life will perish--all but the things that are lowest and the meanest and the commonest. Men will not work unless they must. By necessity alone can the finest work be ordered and executed. As men have been, so will men always be. The thing that hath been, that shall be again.' 'You have learned some of the lessons of Poverty Lane, Scholar,' said the Master.--'Let us now go home.' CHAPTER XXVII 'I KNOW THE MAN' 'Another evening of mystery, Elsie?' said Athelstan. 'Yes. Another, and perhaps another. But we are getting to an end. I shall be able to tell you all to-day or to-morrow. The thing is becoming too great for me alone.' 'You shall tell us when you please. Meantime, nothing new has been found out, I believe. Checkley still glares, George tells me. But the opinion of the clerks seems on the whole more favourable, he believes, than it was. Of that, however, he is not perhaps a good judge.' 'They shall all be turned out,' cried Elsie. 'How dare they so much as to discuss----' 'My sister, it is a very remarkable thing, and a thing little understood, but it is a true thing. People, people--clerks and _le Service_ generally--are distinctly a branch of the great human tribe. They are anthropoid. Therefore, they are curious and prying and suspicious. They have our own faults, my dear.'