Edward Bellamy

Equality Edward Bellamy

With many expressions of sympathy and interest Edith listened to the story of my dream. When, finally, I had made an end, she remained musing."What are you thinking about?" I said."I was thinking," she answered, "how it would have been if your dream had been true.""True!" I exclaimed. "How could it have been true?""I mean," she said, "if it had all been a dream, as you supposed it was in your nightmare, and you had never really seen our Republic of the Golden Rule or me, but had only slept a night and dreamed the whole thing about us. And suppose you had gone forth just as you did in your dream, and had passed up and down telling men of the terrible folly and wickedness of their way of life and how much nobler and happier a way there was. Just think what good you might have done, how you might have helped people in those days when they needed help so much. It seems to me you must be almost sorry you came back to us.""You look as if you were almost sorry yourself," I said, for her wistful expression seemed susceptible of that interpretation."Oh, no," she answered, smiling. "It was only on your own account. As for me, I have very good reasons for being glad that you came back.""I should say so, indeed. Have you reflected that if I had dreamed it all you would have had no existence save as a figment in the brain of a sleeping man a hundred years ago?""I had not thought of that part of it," she said smiling and still half serious; "yet if I could have been more useful to humanity as a fiction than as a reality, I ought not to have minded the-the inconvenience."