The Gordons returned to their suburban Boston home wiser than they left it. And they are fully determined to take another trip next summer. (If they do, the readers of the _New England Magazine_ shall hear of it.)
_Socialism in America and Europe._ It is a spectacle quite too sad for laughter, and yet too comical for tears, which was offered a few weeks ago by the unemployed and hungry thousands who disturbed the quiet and alarmed the fears of the people of London. That strange and unlooked-for outbreak was probably only the first act in a drama the end of which we have not yet seen. If "coming events cast their shadows before," what has happened in England, and is constantly happening in other European countries and in America, bodes ill for the stability of governments and the peace of the world. Socialistic theories fill the air, disturb the minds, and inflame the passions of men. Socialism, in one or other of its forms, counts its disciples by tens of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. With the majority it is a dim and indistinct craving after an ideal condition of society, without any intelligent conception as to how it is to be reached and realized. The acknowledged lights and leaders of the movement, however, teach it as a philosophy, preach it as a gospel, advocate and practise it as a new style of social refinement, or labor for its adoption and establishment as a desirable scheme of social reform. There are philosophical socialists, and Christian socialists, and æsthetic socialists, and socialists whose dream can only be fulfilled by a general overturning of the existing order of things with a view to a more just and equitable distribution of wealth, labor, liberty, and happiness. They disagree in many things very radically, but they are all captured by one ideal and animated by one ambition, and it is a sublime and beautiful conception too, being nothing less than the consummation of human happiness--so far as such a thing is possible--and the creation of a heaven upon earth. Socialism contemplates a condition of society in which not only all shall share equally in work, profit, property, and enjoyment, but in which there will be no "capitalists, no middle-men, no rent-taking, and no interest-drawing, and if there is any wage-paying, only such wage as is a due and full equivalent for the portion of work done, which shall be measured by the exigencies of the community, and shall be so assessed and paid for as to leave no margin of profit to any but _actual_ workers;" a state of society, in a word, on which all kinds of toil, the lowest as well as the highest, will be so pleasant and agreeable as to be no toil at all. With so high and admirable an aim, it seems a pity that socialism can find no better way to fulfil itself than by a resort to lawlessness and violence. Notwithstanding all that has been said, sung, and written in its favor, especially in the two great English-speaking countries, it may still be described as "a thing with its head in the clouds and its feet in the intolerable mud." However, our business with our fellow-beings, as Spinoza said, is not to censure them, nor to deplore them, but simply to understand them.