Other Worlds

In a country place near a town called Lake View, on the planet Herschel, lived a family of the name of Vivian. They were known all over the country for their hospitality, wealth and their beautiful daughters. For generations the name Vivian had been associated with brave deeds, honest lives and intellect. The girls were even known as “those very clever Vivian girls.” Mira, the youngest of the four girls, just sixteen as this story opens, was a bright, winsome girl, tall and graceful, with large hazel eyes, a pink and white complexion, and an abundance of golden hair.

On a bright autumn afternoon Mira was on the lawn watching the birds and listening to their clatter as they collected in large numbers to take their yearly journey to a warmer climate. “How wise they are,” she pondered; “though so small, they know more than the people do. Away they go to another part of the world. I wish I could go with them. I am so weary of always staying in one place.” She gazed after them as they took their onward flight, and her mother, who had been watching her from the window, seemed to catch the thought, for she said aloud: “I am afraid, like the birds, she will soon be leaving me alone.”

“Why, mother,” said a young man, approaching her; “you are actually talking to yourself. I thought Helen or Mira was with you. I want one of them to go on the lake with me.”

“Tom, look at Mira,” the mother exclaimed. “She is quite grown up. I have never realized it till now. But before you call either of the girls, I want to talk to you about the society you young people have been organizing. The ideas are strange to me. When I was young, married women didn’t take positions. Is it possible that you cannot support your wife?”

“Why, of course I could,” the young man replied; “but when you were young you had no Trusts to absorb your income as we have in this generation. Nellie and I are dedicating ourselves to this undertaking. We intend to work together to free ourselves and all who join us from their tyranny.”

“It is quite an undertaking,” his mother replied. “I don’t see how you are going to succeed without capital. It takes so much money now to start anything to what it did when your father was young, and he inherited the property.”

“The world hasn’t shrunk,” Tom replied, “since father’s time. The only difficulty is in our knowing how to meet the situation in a new way. The industry of the masses in every way, is how wealth has been collected, and the people are as willing to work now as they ever have been. But here is Mira.”

“Will you take a row with me, Mira?” he asks as she approaches them. “I will tell you all about the society, mother, when we come back. I want to rest my brain for a while out on the water. You don’t mind, do you, mother?” he inquired.

“Oh, no,” she replied; “there is time enough before you return to the city.”

Mrs. Vivian, her eldest son Geron and his family, besides Mira, lived on the Vivian estate. The rest of the family had gone to the city to live, after their father died; as their wealth had decreased it was necessary. Tom was a lawyer; Libra had married a banker, and Scoris and Helen had employment. The next day the rest of the family arrived at the old homestead, for it was the mother’s birthday.