“Oh, I see you don’t understand,” she answered; “you haven’t been here long enough to know how such things are arranged. Let me explain. The State scientists now regulate all such matters. Once a month our Officer of Hygiene comes and examines each member of the household. He then prescribes the kind of food he thinks you require for the next few weeks, whether it shall be more or less phosphates, or cereals, or carnivorous preparations. He leaves a paper with you. You then touch this spring--see?” and here she put her pretty white finger on a button in the wall. “You whistle through the aperture to the Culinary Board, put in the paper, and it is sent to the main office. You then receive supplies for the ensuing month.” “And where is this wonderful board?” “It is in Chicago, where all the great granaries are. You know Chicago supplies the food for the entire United Community.” “But Chicago is a thousand miles off. Isn’t all the food stale by the time it reaches you?” Here she laughed, although I could see she tried very hard not to do so. But my ignorance was evidently too amazingly funny. When she had regained composure she answered: “The food is sent to us by electricity through the culinary conduits. Every thing is blown to us in a few minutes’ time, if it be necessary, if the food is to be eaten hot. If the food be cereals or condensed meats, it is sent by pneumatic express, done up in bottles or in pellets. All such food is carried about in one’s pocket. We take our food as we drink water, wherever we may happen to be, when it’s handy and when we need it. Although,” she added with a sigh, “I sometimes do wish I had lived in the good old times, in the nineteenth century, for instance, when such dear old-fashioned customs were in vogue as having four-hour dinners, and the ladies were taken into dinner by the gentlemen and every one wore full dress--the dress of the period, and they used to flirt--wasn’t that the old word? over their wine and dessert. How changed every thing is now! However,” she quickly added, “if kitchens and cooking and long dinners hadn’t been abolished, the final emancipation of women could never have been accomplished. The perfecting of the woman movement was retarded for hundreds of years, as you know, doubtless, by the slavish desire of women to please their husbands by dressing and cooking to suit them. When the last pie was made into the first pellet, woman’s true freedom began. She could then cast off her subordination both to her husband and to her servants. Women were only free, indeed, when the State prohibited the hiring of servants. Of course, the hiring of servants at all was as degrading to the oppressed class as it was a clog to the progress of their mistresses’ freedom. The only way to raise the race was to put every one on the same level, to make even degrees of servitude impossible.”