News From Nowhere : Or An Epoch of Rest Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance

Chapter 32 : The Feast's Beginning - The End
XXXII. The Feast's Beginning - The End Dick brought me at once into the little field which, as I had seen from the garden, was covered with gaily-colored tents arranged in orderly lanes, about which were sitting and lying in the grass some fifty or sixty men, women, and children, all of them in the height of good temper and enjoyment - with their holiday mood on, so to say. "You are thinking that we don't make a great show as to numbers," said Dick; "but you must remember that we shall have more to-morrow; because in this haymaking work there is room for a great many people who are not over-skilled in country matters: and there are many who lead sedentary lives, whom it would be unkind to deprive of their pleasure in the hay-field - scientific men and close students generally: so that the skilled workmen, outside those who are wanted as... (From : Marxists.org.)

Chapter 31 : An Old House Amongst New Folk
XXXI. An Old House Among New Folk As I stood there Ellen detached herself from our happy friends who still stood on the little strand and came up to me. She took me by the hand, and said softly, "Take me on to the house at once; we need not wait for the others: I had rather not." I had a mind to say that I did not know the way thither, and that the river-side dwellers should lead; but almost without my will my feet moved on along the road they knew. The raised way led us into a little field bounded by a backwater of the river on one side; on the right hand we could see a cluster of small houses and barns, new and old, and before us a gray stone barn and a wall partly overgrown with ivy, over which a few gray gables showed. The village road ended in the shallow of the aforesaid backwater. We crossed the road, and again almost without... (From : Marxists.org.)

Chapter 30 : The Journey's End
XXX. The Journey's End On we went. In spite of my new-born excitement about Ellen, and my gathering fear of where it would land me I could not help taking abundant interest in the condition of the river and its banks; all the more as she never seemed weary of the changing picture, but looked at every yard of flowery bank and gurgling eddy with the same affectionate interest which I myself once had so fully, as I used to think, and perhaps had not altogether lost even in this strangely changed society with all its wonders. Ellen seemed delighted with my pleasure at this, that, or the other piece of carefulness in dealing with the river: the nursing of pretty corners; the ingenuity in dealing with difficulties of water-engineering so that the most obviously useful works looked beautiful and natural also. All this, I say, pleased me hugely, and she was pleased at my... (From : Marxists.org.)

Chapter 29 : A Resting-Place on the Upper Thames
XXIX. A Resting-Place on the Upper Thames Presently at a place where the river flowed round a headland of the meadows, we stopped a while for rest and victuals, and settled ourselves on a beautiful bank which almost reached the dignity of a hill-side: the wide meadows spread before us, and already the scythe was busy amid the hay. One change I noticed amid the quiet beauty of the fields - to wit, that they were planted with trees here and there, often fruit-trees, and that there was none of the niggardly begrudging of space to a handsome tree which I remembered too well; and though the willows were often polled (or shrowded, as they call it in the countryside), this was done with some regard to beauty: I mean that there was no polling of rows on rows so as to destroy the pleasantness of half a mile of country, but a thoughtful sequence in the cutting, tha... (From : Marxists.org.)

Chapter 28 : The Little River
XXVIII. The Little River We started before six o'clock the next morning, as we were still twenty-five miles from our resting-place, and Dick wanted to be there before dusk. The journey was pleasant, though to those who do not know the upper Thames, there is little to say about it. Ellen and I were once more together in her boat, though Dick, for fairness’ sake, was for having me in his, and letting the two women scull the green toy. Ellen, however, would not allow this, but claimed me as the interesting person of the company. "After having come so far," said she, "I will not be put off with a companion who will always be thinking of somebody else than me: the guest is the only person who can amuse me properly. I mean that really," said she, turning to me, "and have not said it merely as a pretty saying." Clara blushed and looked very happ... (From : Marxists.org.)

Concerning Government
XI. Concerning Government "Now," said I, "I have come to the point of asking questions which I suppose will be dry for you to answer and difficult for you to explain; but I have foreseen for some time past that I must ask them, will I 'nill I. What kind of a government have you? Has republicanism finally triumphed? or have you come to a mere dictatorship, which some persons in the nineteenth century used to prophesy as the ultimate outcome of democracy? Indeed, this last question does not seem so very unreasonable, since you have turned your Parliament House into a dung-market. Or where do you house your present Parliament?" The old man answered my smile with a hearty laugh, and said: "Well, well, dung is not the worst kind of corruption; f... (From : Marxists.org.)

How Matters are Managed
XIV.How Matters are Managed Said I: "How about your relations with foreign nations?" "I will not affect not to know what you mean," said he, "but I will tell you at once that the whole system of rival and contending nations which played so great a part in the ‘government’ of the world of civilization has disappeared along with the inequality betwixt man and man in society." "Does not that make the world duller?" said I. "Why?" said the old man. "The obliteration of national variety," said I. "Nonsense," he said, somewhat snappishly. "Cross the water and see. You will find plenty of variety: the landscape the building, the diet, the amusements, all various. The men and women varying in looks as well as in habits of thought; the c... (From : Marxists.org.)

Concerning Politics
XIII. Concerning Politics Said I: "How do you manage with politics?" Said Hammond, smiling: "I am glad that it is of me that you ask that question; I do believe that anybody else would make you explain yourself, or try to do so, till you were sick of asking questions. Indeed, I believe I am the only man in England who would know what you mean; and since I know, I will answer your question briefly by saying that we are very well off as to politics, - because we have none. If ever you make a book out of this conversation, put this in a chapter by itself, after the model of old Horrebow's Snakes in Iceland." "I will," said I. (From : Marxists.org.)

Hampton court and a Praiser of Past Times
XXII. Hampton court and a Praiser of Past Times So on we went, Dick rowing in an easy tireless way, and Clara sitting by my side admiring his manly beauty and heartily good-natured face, and thinking, I fancy, of nothing else. As we went higher up the river, there was less difference between the Thames of that day and Thames as I remembered it; for setting aside the hideous vulgarity of the cockney villas of the well-to-do, stockbrokers and other such, which in older time marred the beauty of the bough-hung banks, even this beginning of the country Thames was always beautiful; and as we slipped between the lovely summer greenery, I almost felt my youth come back to me, and as if I were on one of those water excursions which used to enjoy so... (From : Marxists.org.)

The Third Day on The Thames
XXV. The Third Day on The Thames As we went down to the boat next morning, Walter could not keep off the subject of last night, though he was more hopeful than he had been then, and seemed to think that if the unlucky homicide could not be got to go over-sea, he might at any rate go and live somewhere in the neighborhood pretty much by himself; at any rate, that was what he himself had proposed. To Dick and I must say to me also, this seemed a strange remedy; and Dick said as much. Quoth he: "Friend Walter, don't set the man brooding on the tragedy by letting him live alone. That will only strengthen his idea that he had committed a crime, and you will have him killing himself in good earnest." Said Clara: "I don't know. If I may say what I... (From : Marxists.org.)