In
America, the experimental laboratory of the future, the houses are
warmed from a common furnace. You do not light the fire, you turn
on the hot air. Your dinner is brought round to you in a travelling
oven. You subscribe for your valet or your lady's maid. Very soon
the private establishment, with its staff of unorganised,
quarrelling servants, of necessity either over or underworked, will
be as extinct as the lake dwelling or the sandstone cave."
"I hope," said the Woman of the World, "that I may live to see it."
"In all probability," replied the Minor Poet, "you will. I would I
could feel as hopeful for myself."
"If your prophecy be likely of fulfilment," remarked the
Philosopher, "I console myself with the reflection that I am the
oldest of the party. Myself; I never read these full and exhaustive
reports of the next century without revelling in the reflection that
before they can be achieved I shall be dead and buried. It may be a
selfish attitude, but I should be quite unable to face any of the
machine-made futures our growing guild of seers prognosticate. You
appear to me, most of you, to ignore a somewhat important
consideration--namely, that mankind is alive.
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