The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1920-02-13
A Vision of
the Better Day
BY MICHAEL MONOGRAM
(From Good Hardware Co., Courtesy
of Charles E. Peck

Sometimes | see as in a vision a
fairer and better world than this, in
which man is still the prey of man
and the race ever travails under the
primal cause. A fairer and better
world, and yet the same.
The same green plains and rolling
rivers, the same hammered forests and
flowerdecked meadows, the same
happy orchards and smiling fields, the
same succession. of seed-time and
harvest, the same professional Of
the seasons, with the blue sky over
all.
But not the same faces and forms
of men and women and children
not the same their life in the thronged
cities where labor, wolf-like, feeds on
labor, poverty devours poverty, and
the many toll hopelessly for the few
not the same in the meagre villages
where the strong man pines in his un-
fruitful strength and old age is a
mendicant, nor in the wide country,
rich with corn and wheat, whose
wealth is not for the tillers not the
same wherever human destiny is
cast.
l look, and 10! I see beautiful
and ordered cities occupying large
spaces, with homes of comfort and
beauty for all the dwellers therein.
l mark no divisions of rich and poor,
of proud and humble, of vicious and
viltuous, of law-abiding and disor-
derby. / see no gallows for the felon,
no Jail for the criminal, no court for
crime, no brothel for the prostitute,
no workhouse for the poverty, no
hospital for disease-none of all the
nameless refugees into which society
casts the rejected, the fallen, and
the despised.
Instead of these terrible and ia
miliar things, see health universal
as the air, virtue that needs no police
man, honesty that goes unmatched
and unsupported, content and COM
potency for all. l see many and
noble schools, some in spacious
buildings, others in the open parks
and pleasure places, and teachers
freely with the eager happy
and l note with joy that
there is an end of the old instruction
of constraint and fear.
see with greater joy and thankful
ness that among all these children of
the Better Day there is no defect of
mind, no deformity of body; that
they were conceived and begotten in
the love that can not libel itself. And
| rejoice that there should be an
end of that old blaspheny declaring
he idiot, the halt and the blind, the
ven, the harelip and the ulcer to have
been made in the image of God.
see churches of more liberal and
humane religion, temples of a higher
irt, theatres of nobler drama, Or
,heons of a grander music, recrea-
ions Of better and more elevating |
Kind, open to all the people. am
stricken with wonder at the demeanor
If these worthy citizens, at their |
age and just observations, their I'M
,rring sense of artistic beauty and
illness, the culture and largeness of |
Jew, common to all, which accom-
,any their better lot.
/ see on every hand, unhurried,
killful industry that seems to me SUI
'erior to much Of the SO called art of
'ur own day. / mark the fine proper
ions of the private dwellings, the
eroic symmetry of the public struc-
ures, the true harmony in which all
re co-ordinated. | see carpenters
nd housesmiths working with the
ignity of sculptors, mechanics proud
f. their artizanry, a new honor in all
rades. I see labor enforced, erect,
everywhere. l hear no
rutal commands, ! see no servile OF
ullen obedience. l perceive only the
,ill of free men in voluntary action,
elightful to serve and adorn the city
f their homes. And in all these
rand cities l see no pampered idle
ess, no useless hands, no listless
|aves of luxury, no swollen drones
bsorbing the riches of the hive, no
arasites whose ease is purchased by
he blood and sweat of thousands.
ut / see there is labor and leisure
nough for all.
Now looking to the country, I see
; it were vast and variegated gar
en- made up of multitudes of smiling
INNS, with every acre yielding its
ne produce, every rood under tillage,
I'd labor here, as in the cities, con-
mt and self-sustaining. l see that
!; last the city and country live for,
1t to prey upon and devour each
her. look upon such population
the world has never seen, filing
e earth with Joy and mirth, with
We and useful labor, with the bless
gs of peace, the trophies of art, the
of industry.
see no idle, menaciHg armies, no
sts of men withdrawn from the pur-
its of peace, no cannoneers waiting
tn match and fuse, no quarrel
cached on sea or land, no priests
rayed to bless and sanction slaugh-
:, no sword unsheather, no whip up
sed, no covering tortured form, no
ople bowed beneath oppression, no
spot defiant of justice-nothing to