"Probably not," I replied. "If you were to take away the obligation of over-stuffing themselves with food and their houses with furniture, and give them servants they could order about, I should think they would consider themselves well-off." "I am afraid you are right," said Edward, with a sigh. "I verily believe that if we had offered to take money from all the people we have visited, instead of asking them to bestir themselves to gain their own freedom, our morning would have been a triumphant success." "Well, shall we try?" I suggested. "There is still time." But Edward scoffed at the idea of mere indiscriminate charity. "It would only be tinkering at the disease," he said. "I want to cure it." CHAPTER XXIV Edward now announced his intention of going in to Culbut to call on a Cabinet Minister of advanced Radical views. "I have great hopes of him," he said. "The poor hate him, because they say he is trying to foist property on to them by removing their taxes one after the other, and piling them on the rich, and that if he goes on in this way much longer he will wreck the Constitution, and that that is really what he wishes to do. They say he is on the side of capital because he has none himself; but, as a matter of fact, he has sprung from the rich, and has a very tender heart for their sufferings; I have often heard him say so. If he will put himself at the head of this movement its success will be assured." I wished Edward good luck, and when I had seen him safely round the corner set out to find Mr. Hobson's house. According to Upsidonian ideas, this unfortunate man had certainly been brought to a pass of great misery. He lived in a large and handsome mansion surrounded by some acres of ground, and kept up an imposing establishment. I was shown into a library very richly furnished, but in far better taste than any of the rooms I had been in on my visits that morning. The effect was somewhat spoiled to my eye by a plain deal-topped table and three or four Windsor chairs, which were mixed up with the rest of the furniture; but tears came into my eyes--or should have done--when I reflected that these were probably the few articles that Mr. Hobson had been able to save from the wreck of his fortunes, and must be very dear to him as reminders of his former simple and happy life. Probably they would have to go soon, for he would not be able to take up room with them which might be filled with more expensive articles. I was sitting in one of the Windsor chairs when Mr. Hobson came into the room. He was a dejected-looking man of middle age, with refined features and courteous manners, and my heart leapt as I thought of the solace I was about to bring to his over-burdened mind.