Title:  Bohemian Society

Author:  Lydia Leavitt

Release Date:  December 4, 2005 [EBook #17220]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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BOHEMIAN SOCIETY.

BY

Lydia Leavitt.

Brockville: 

Times printing and publishing company.

BOHEMIAN SOCIETY.

             “She was not fair,
     Nor beautiful,—­those words express her not,
     But, O, her looks had something excellent
               That wants a name.”

In a country house near the city of B——­ lived a lady of cultivated mind and manners, “a noble woman nobly planned.”  Well read and familiar with such writers as Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer and other scientists, and being rather cosmopolitan in tastes, liked to gather about her, people who had—­as she termed it—­ideas.  At times there was a strange medley of artists, authors, religious enthusiasts, spiritualists, philanthropists and even philosophers.  On the evening of which I write there was the usual peculiar gathering, and each one is expressing his or her views freely and unrestrainedly.

* * * * *

The visionary and dreamer said:  “Let me describe a modern Utopia of which I have often dreamed and thought.

In a fertile valley, surrounded on all sides by high mountains, lived a community or body of people who had never been outside the valley.  To them the mountains proved an impassible barrier and they had no wish or desire to penetrate beyond.  For generations they had lived in this peaceful retreat happy and content.  The ground yielded sufficient for their wants and needs.  No one in this little world was richer than his neighbor and if one of the community fell ill each contributed something from their own supply for his or her support.  They knew nothing about the value of money, for here it was useless.  No one dreamed of possessing more than his neighbor, but each and all must share alike.  Time dealt kindly with these simple people, for they dealt kindly with time, and life flowed on smoothly and pleasantly.  Men and women of seventy years were hale and hearty, for it is not so much the number of years we live that leave their traces, as the events which transpire in those years; each event, each sorrow, each disappointment making an era and each one leaving a trace.  For the inhabitants of the valley there were few disappointments and fewer sorrows.  If the angel of death entered and took one of their number, each and all took the sorrow home for it was looked upon as a personal calamity when any one of the little community was taken from them.