I LEARNED to understand the immense material prosperity of the country much more easily than its social progress.

The exquisite agriculture which made millions of acres from raw farms and ranches into rich gardens, the forestry which had changed our straggling woodlands into great tree-farms, yielding their steady crops of cut boughs, thinned underbrush, and full-grown trunks, those endless orchard roads, with their processions of workers making continual excursions in their special cars, keeping roadway and bordering trees in perfect order — all this one could see.

There were, of course far more of the wilder, narrower roads, perfect as the road-bed, but not parked, with all untrimmed nature to travel through.

The airships did make a difference. To look down on the flowing, outspread miles beneath gave a sense of the unity and continuous beauty of our country, quite different from the streak views we used to get. An airship is a moving mountain-top.

The cities were even more strikingly beautiful, in that the change was greater, the contrast sharper. I never tired of wandering about on foot along the streets of cities, and I visited several, finding, as Nellie said, that it took no longer to improve twenty than one; the people in each could do it as soon as they chose to.

But what made them choose? What had got into the people? That was what puzzled me most. It did not show outside, like the country changes, and the rebuilt cities; the people did not look remarkable, though they were different, too. I watched and studied them, trying to analyze the changes that could be seen. Most visible was cleanliness, comfort, and beauty in dress.

I had never dreamed of the relief to the spectator in not seeing any poverty. We were used to it, of course; we had our excuses, religious and economic, we even found, or thought we found, artistic pleasure in this social disease. But now I realized what a nightmare it had been — the sights, the sounds, the smells of poverty — merely to an outside observer.

These people had good bodies, too. They were not equally beautiful, by any means; thirty years, of course, could not wholly return to the normal a race long stunted and overworked. But in the difference in the young generation I could see at a glance the world’s best hope, that the “long inheritance” is far deeper than the short.

Those of about twenty and under, those who were born after some of these changes had been made, were like another race. Big, sturdy, blooming creatures, boys and girls alike, swift and graceful, eager, happy, courteous — I supposed at first that these were the children of exceptionally placed people; but soon found, with a heart-stirring sort of shock, that all the children were like that.

Some of the old folk still carried the scars of earlier conditions, but the children were new people.

Then of my own accord I demanded reasons. Nellie laughed sweetly.

“I’m so glad you’ve come to your appetite,” she said. “I’ve been longing to talk to you about that, and you were always bored.”

“It’s a good deal of a dose, Nell; you’ll admit that. And one hates to be forcibly fed. But now I do want to get an outline, a sort of general idea, of what you do with children. Can you condense a little recent history, and make it easy to an aged stranger?”

“Aged I You are growing younger every day, John. I believe that comparatively brainless life you led in Tibet was good for you. That was all new impression on the brain; the first part rested. Now you are beginning where you left off. I wish you would recognize that.”

I shook my head. “Never mind me, I’m trying not to think of my chopped-off life; but tell me how you manufacture this kind of people.”

My sister sat still, thinking, for a little. “I want to avoid repetition if possible — tell me just how much you have in mind already.” But I refused to be catechised.

“You put it all together, straight; I want to get the whole of it — as well as I can.”

“All right. On your head be it. Let me see — first Oh, there isn’t any first, John! We were doing ever so much for children before you left — before you and I were born! It is the vision of all the great child-lovers; that children are people, and the most valuable people on earth. The most important thing to a child is its mother. We made new mothers for them — I guess that is ‘first.’

“Suppose we begin this way:

“a. Free, healthy, independent, intelligent mothers.

“b. Enough to live on — right conditions for child-raising.

“c. Specialized care.

“d. The new social consciousness, with its religion, its art, its science, its civics, its industry, its wealth, its brilliant efficiency. That’s your outline.”

I set down these points in my notebook.

“An excellent outline, Nellie. Now for details on ‘a.’ I will set my teeth till that’s over.”

My sister regarded me with amused tenderness. “How you do hate the new women, John — in the abstract! I haven’t seen you averse to any of them in the concrete!”

At the time I refused to admit any importance to this remark, but I thought it over later — and to good purpose. It was true. I did hate the new kind of human being who loomed so large in every line of progress. She jarred on every age-old masculine prejudice — she was not what woman used to be. And yet — as Nellie said — the women I met I liked.

“Get on with the lesson, my dear,” said I. “I am determined to learn and not to argue. What did your omnipresent new woman do to improve the human stock so fast?”

Then Nellie settled down in earnest and gave me all I wanted — possibly more.

“They wakened as if to a new idea, to their own natural duty as mothers; to the need of a high personal standard of health and character in both parents. That gave us a better start right away — clean-born, vigorous children, inheriting strength and purity.

“Then came the change in conditions, a change so great you've hardly glimpsed it yet. No more, never more again, please God, that brutal hunger and uncertainty, that black devil of want and fear. Everybody — everybody — sure of decent living! That one thing lifted the heaviest single shadow from the world, and from the children.

“Nobody is overworked now. Nobody is tired, unless they tire themselves unnecessarily. People live sanely, safely, easily. The difference to children, both in nature and nurture, is very great. They all have proper nourishment, and clothing, and environment — from birth.

“And with that, as advance in special conditions for child-culture, we build for babies now. We, as a community, provide suitably for our most important citizens.”

At this point I opened my mouth to say something, but presently shut it again.

“Good boy!” said Nellie. “I’ll show you later.”

“The next is specialized care. That one thing is enough, almost, to account for it all. To think of all the ages when our poor babies had no benefit at all of the advance in human intelligence!

“We had the best and wisest specialists we could train and hire in every other field of life — and the babies left utterly at the mercy of amateurs!

“Well, I mustn’t stop to rage at past history. We do better now. John, guess the salary of the head of the Baby Gardens in a city.”

“Oh, call it a million, and go on,” I said cheerfully; which somewhat disconcerted her.

“It’s as big a place as being head of Harvard College,” she said, “and better paid than that used to be. Our highest and finest people study for this work. Real geniuses, some of them. The babies, all the babies, mind you, get the benefit of the best wisdom we have. And it grows fast. We are learning by doing it. Every year we do better. ‘ Growing up’ is an easier process than it used to be.”

“I’ll have to accept it for the sake of argument,” I agreed. “It’s the last point I care most for, I think. All these new consciousnesses you were so glib about. I guess you can’t describe that so easily.”

She grew thoughtful, rocking to and fro for a few moments.

“No,” she said at length, “it’s not so easy. But I’ll try. I wasn’t very glib, really. I spoke of religion, art, civics, science, industry, wealth, and efficiency, didn’t I? Now let’s see how they apply to the children.

“This religion Dear me, John! am I to explain the greatest sunburst of truth that that ever was — in two minutes?”

“Oh, no,” I said loftily. “I’ll give you five! You’ve got to try, anyway.”

So she tried.

“In place of Revelation and Belief,” she said slowly, “we now have Facts and Knowledge. We used to believe in God — variously, and teach the belief as a matter of duty. Now we know God, as much as we know anything else — more than we know anything else — it is The Fact of Life.

“This is the base of knowledge, underlying all other knowledge, simple and safe and sure — and we can teach it to children! The child mind, opening to this lovely world, is no longer filled with horrible or ridiculous old ideas — it learns to know the lovely truth of life.”

She looked so serenely beautiful, and sat so still after she said this, that I felt a little awkward.

“I don’t mean to jar on you, Nellie,” I said. “I didn’t know you were so — religious.”

Then she laughed again merrily. “I’m not,” she said. “No more than anybody is. We don’t have ‘religious’ people any more, John. It’s not a separate thing; a ‘body of doctrine’ and set of observances — it is what all of us have at the bottom of everything else, the underlying basic fact of life. And it goes far, very far indeed, to make the strong good cheer you see in these children’s faces.

“They have never been frightened, John. They have never been told any of those awful things we used to tell them. There is no struggle with church-going, no gagging over doctrines, no mysterious queer mess — only life. Life is now open to our children, clear, brilliant, satisfying, and yet stimulating.

“Of course, I don’t mean that this applies equally to every last one. The material benefit does, that could be enforced by law where necessary; but this world-wave of new knowledge is irregular, of course. It has spread wider, and gone faster than any of the old religions ever did, but you can find people yet who believe things almost as dreadful as father did!”

I well remembered my father’s lingering Calvinism, and appreciated its horrors.

“Our educators have recognized a new duty to children,” Nellie went on; “to stand between them and the past. We recognize that the child mind should lift and lead the world; and we feed it with our newest, not our oldest ideas.

“Also we encourage it to wander on ahead, fearless and happy. I began to tell you the other day — and you snubbed me, John, you did really! — that we have a new literature for children, and have dropped the old.”

At this piece of information I could no longer preserve the attitude of a patient listener. I sat back and stared at my sister, while the full awfulness of this condition slowly rolled over me.

“Do you mean,” I said slowly, “that children are taught nothing of the past?”

“Oh, no, indeed; they are taught about the past from the earth’s beginning. In the mind of every child is a clear view of how Life has grown on earth.”

“And our own history?”

“Of course; from savagery to today — that is a simple story, endlessly interesting as they grow older.”

“What do you mean, then, by cutting off the past?”

“I mean that their stories, poems, pictures, and the major part of their instruction deals with the present and future — especially the future. The whole teaching is dynamic — not static. We used to teach mostly facts, or what we thought were facts. Now we teach processes. You’ll find out if you talk to children, anywhere.”

This I mentally determined to do, and in due course did. I may as well say right here that I found children more delightful companions than they used to be. They were polite enough, even considerate; but so universally happy, so overflowing with purposes, so skilful in so many ways, so intelligent and efficient, that it astonished me. We used to have a sort of race-myth about “happy childhood,” but none of us seemed to study the faces of the children we saw about us. Even among well-to-do families, the discontented, careworn, anxious, repressed, or rebellious faces of children ought to have routed our myth forever.

Timid, brow-beaten children, sulky children, darkly resentful; nervous, whining children, foolish, mischievous, hysterically giggling children, noisy, destructive, uneasy children — how well I remembered them.

These new ones had a strange air of being Persons, not subordinates and dependents, but Equals; their limitations frankly admitted, but not cast up at them, and their special powers fully respected. That was it!

I am wandering far ahead of that day’s conversation, but it led to wide study among children, analysis, and some interesting conclusions. When I hit on this one I began to understand. Children were universally respected, and they liked it. In city or country, place was made for them, permanent, pleasant, properly appointed place; to use, enjoy, and grow up in. They had their homes and families as before, losing nothing; but they added to this background their own wide gardens and houses, where part of each day was spent.

From earliest infancy they absorbed the idea that home was a place to come out from and go back to; the sweetest, dearest place — for there was mother, and father, and one’s own little room to sleep in; but the day hours were to go somewhere to learn and do, to work and play, to grow in.

I branched off from Nellie’s startling me with her “new-literature-for-children” idea. She went on to explain it further.

“The greatest artists work for children now, John,” she said. “In the child-gardens and child-homes they are surrounded with beauty. I do not mean that we hire painters and poets to manufacture beauty for them; but that painters and poets, architects and landscape artists, designers and decorators of all kinds, love and revere childhood, and delight to work for it.

“Remember that half of our artists are mothers now — a loving, serving, giving spirit has come into expression — a wider and more lasting expression than it was ever possible to put into doughnuts and embroidery! Wait till you see the beauty of our child-gardens!”

“Why don’t you call them schools? Don’t you have schools?”

“Some. We haven’t wholly outgrown the old academic habit. But for the babies there was no precedent, and they do not ‘go to school.’ ”

“You have a sort of central nursery?” I ventured.

“Not necessarily ‘central,’ John. And we have great numbers of them. How can I make it any way clear to you? See here. Suppose you were a mother, and a very busy one, like the old woman in the shoe; and suppose you had twenty or thirty permanent babies to be provided for? And suppose you were wise and rich — able to do what you wanted to? Wouldn’t you build an elaborate nursery for those children? Wouldn’t you engage the very best nurses and teachers? Wouldn’t you want the cleanest, quietest garden for them to play or sleep in? Of course you would.

“That is our attitude. We have at last recognized babies as a permanent class. They are always here, about a fifth of the population. And we, their mothers, have at last ensured to these, our babies, the best accommodation known to our time. It im proves as we learn, of course.”

“Mm!” I said. “I’ll go and gaze upon these Infant Paradises later — at the sleeping hour, please! But how about that new literature you frightened me with?”

“Oh. Why, we have tried to treat their minds as we do their stomachs — putting in only what is good for then. I mean the very littlest, understand. As they grow older they have wider range; we have not expunged the world’s past, my dear brother! But we do prepare with all the wisdom, love, and power we have, the mental food for little children. Simple, lovely music is about them always — you must have noticed how universally they sing?”

I had, and said so.

“The coloring and decoration of their rooms is beautiful — their clothes are beautiful — and simple — you’ve seen that, too?”

“Yes, dear girl. It’s because I’ve seen — and heard — and noticed the surprisingness of the N............