William Morris
News from Nowhere; Or, An Epoch of Rest
Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664109606
Table of Contents
CHAPTER III: THE GUEST HOUSE AND BREAKFAST THEREIN
CHAPTER IV: A MARKET BY THE WAY
CHAPTER V: CHILDREN ON THE ROAD
CHAPTER X: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
CHAPTER XI: CONCERNING GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER XII: CONCERNING THE ARRANGEMENT OF LIFE
CHAPTER XIII: CONCERNING POLITICS
CHAPTER XIV: HOW MATTERS ARE MANAGED
CHAPTER XV: ON THE LACK OF INCENTIVE TO LABOUR IN A COMMUNIST SOCIETY
CHAPTER XVI: DINNER IN THE HALL OF THE BLOOMSBURY MARKET
CHAPTER XVII: HOW THE CHANGE CAME
CHAPTER XVIII: THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE
CHAPTER XIX: THE DRIVE BACK TO HAMMERSMITH
CHAPTER XX: THE HAMMERSMITH GUEST-HOUSE AGAIN
CHAPTER XXI: GOING UP THE RIVER
CHAPTER XXII: HAMPTON COURT AND A PRAISER OF PAST TIMES
CHAPTER XXIII: AN EARLY MORNING BY RUNNYMEDE
CHAPTER XXIV: UP THE THAMES: THE SECOND DAY
CHAPTER XXV: THE THIRD DAY ON THE THAMES
CHAPTER XXVI: THE OBSTINATE REFUSERS
CHAPTER XXVII: THE UPPER WATERS
CHAPTER XXVIII: THE LITTLE RIVER
CHAPTER XXIX: A RESTING-PLACE ON THE UPPER THAMES
CHAPTER XXX: THE JOURNEY’S END
CHAPTER XXXI: AN OLD HOUSE AMONGST NEW FOLK
CHAPTER XXXII: THE FEAST’S BEGINNING—THE END
CHAPTER I: DISCUSSION AND BED
Up at the League, says a friend, there had been one night a brisk conversational discussion, as to what would happen on the Morrow of the Revolution, finally shading off into a vigorous statement by various friends of their views on the future of the fully-developed new society.
Says our friend: Considering the subject, the discussion was good-tempered; for those present being used to public meetings and after-lecture debates, if they did not listen to each others’ opinions (which could scarcely be expected of them), at all events did not always attempt to speak all together, as is the custom of people in ordinary polite society when conversing on a subject which interests them. For the rest, there were six persons present, and consequently six sections of the party were represented, four of which had strong but divergent Anarchist opinions. One of the sections, says our friend, a man whom he knows very well indeed, sat almost silent at the beginning of the discussion, but at last got drawn into it, and finished by roaring out very loud, and damning all the rest for fools; after which befel a period of noise, and then a lull, during which the aforesaid section, having said good-night very amicably, took his way home by himself to a western suburb, using the means of travelling which civilisation has forced upon us like a habit. As he sat in that vapour-bath of hurried and discontented humanity, a carriage of the underground railway, he, like others, stewed discontentedly, while in self-reproachful mood he turned over the many excellent and conclusive arguments which, though they lay at his fingers’ ends, he had forgotten in the just past discussion. But this frame of mind he was so used to, that it didn’t last him long, and after a brief discomfort, caused by disgust with himself for having lost his temper (which he was also well used to), he found himself musing on the subject-matter of discussion, but still discontentedly and unhappily. “If I could but see a day of it,” he said to himself; “if I could but see it!”
As he formed the words, the train stopped at his station, five minutes’ walk from his own house, which stood on the banks of the Thames, a little way above an ugly suspension bridge. He went out of the station, still discontented and unhappy, muttering “If I could but see it! if I could but see it!” but had not gone many steps towards the river before (says our friend who tells the story) all that discontent and trouble seemed to slip off him.
It was a beautiful night of