A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA

Romance

By W. D. HOWELLS

Author of "THE COAST OF BOHEMIA", "THE QUALITY OF MERCY", "A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES" etc. 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERSNEW YORK AND LONDON1908

A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA

I

I confess that with all my curiosity to meet an Altrurian, I was in nohospitable mood toward the traveler when he finally presented himself, pursuant to the letter of advice sent me by the friend who introduced him. It would be easy enough to take care of him in the hotel; I had merely toengage a room for him, and have the clerk tell him his money was not goodif he tried to pay for anything. But I had swung fairly into my story; itspeople were about me all the time; I dwelt amid its events and places, andI did not see how I could welcome my guest among them, or abandon them forhim. Still, when he actually arrived, and I took his hand as he steppedfrom the train, I found it less difficult to say that I was glad to seehim than I expected. In fact, I was glad, for I could not look upon hisface without feeling a glow of kindness for him. I had not the leasttrouble in identifying him, for he was so unlike all the Americans whodismounted from the train with him, and who all looked hot, worried, andanxious. He was a man no longer young, but in what we call the heyday oflife, when our own people are so absorbed in making provision for thefuture that they may be said not to live in the present at all. ThisAltrurian's whole countenance, and especially his quiet, gentle eyes, expressed a vast contemporaneity, with bounds of leisure removed to theend of time; or, at least, this was the effect of something in them whichI am obliged to report in rather fantastic terms. He was above the middleheight, and he carried himself vigorously. His face was sunburned, orsea-burned, where it was not bearded; and, although I knew from myfriend's letter that he was a man of learning and distinction in his owncountry, I should never have supposed him a person of scholarly life, hewas so far from sicklied over with anything like the pale cast of thought. When he took the hand I offered him in my half-hearted welcome he gave ita grasp that decided me to confine our daily greetings to something muchless muscular. 

"Let me have your bag, " I said, as we do when we meet people at the train, and he instantly bestowed a rather heavy valise upon me, with a smile inhis benignant eyes, as if it had been the greatest favor. "Have you gotany checks?" I asked. 

"Yes, " he said, in very good English, but with an accent new to me, "Ibought two. " He gave them to me, and I passed them to our hotel porter, who was waiting there with the baggage-cart. Then I proposed that weshould walk across the meadow to the house, which is a quarter of a mileor so from the station. We started, but he stopped suddenly and lookedback over his shoulder. "Oh, you needn't be troubled about your trunks, " Isaid. "The porter will get them to the house all right. They'll be in yourroom by the time we get there. "

"But he's putting them into the wagon himself, " said the Altrurian. 

"Yes; he always does that. He's a strong young fellow. He'll manage it. You needn't--" I could not finish saying he need not mind the porter; hewas rushing back to the station, and I had the mortification of seeing himtake an end of each trunk and help the porter toss it into the wagon; somelighter pieces he put in himself, and he did not stop till all the baggagethe train had left was disposed of. 

I stood holding his valise, unable to put it down in my embarrassment atthis eccentric performance, which had been evident not to me alone, but toall the people who arrived by the train, and all their friends who camefrom the hotel to meet them. A number of these passed me on the tally-hocoach; and a lady, who had got her husband with her for over Sunday, andwas in very good spirits, called gayly down to me: "Your friend seems fondof exercise!"

"Yes, " I answered, dryly; the sparkling repartee which ought to have cometo my help failed to show up. But it was impossible to be vexed with theAltrurian when he returned to me, unruffled by his bout with the baggageand serenely smiling. 

"Do you know, " he said, "I fancied that good fellow was ashamed of myhelping him. I hope it didn't seem a reflection upon him in any way beforeyour people? I ought to have thought of that. "

"I guess we can make it right with him. I dare say he felt more surprisedthan disgraced. But we must make haste a little now; your train was halfan hour late, and we shall not stand so good a chance for supper if we arenot there pretty promptly. "

"No?" said the Altrurian. "Why?"

"Well, " I said, with evasive lightness, "first come, first served, youknow. That's human nature. "

"Is it?" he returned, and he looked at me as one does who suspects anotherof joking. 

"Well, isn't it?" I retorted; but I hurried to add: "Besides, I want tohave time after supper to show you a bit of our landscape. I think you'llenjoy it. " I knew he had arrived in Boston that morning by steamer, and Inow thought it high time to ask him: "Well, what do you think of America, anyway?" I ought really to have asked him this the moment he stepped fromthe train. 

"Oh, " he said, "I'm intensely interested, " and I perceived that he spokewith a certain reservation. "As the most advanced country of its time, I've always been very curious to see it. "

The last sentence raised my dashed spirits again, and I said, confidently:"You must find our system of baggage-checks delightful. " I said thisbecause it is one of the first things we brag of to foreigners, and I hadthe habit of it. "By-the-way, " I ventured to add, "I suppose you meant tosay you _brought_ two checks when I asked you for them at the train justnow? But you really said you _bought_ them. "

"Yes, " the Altrurian replied, "I gave half a dollar apiece for them at thestation in Boston. I saw other people doing it, " he explained, noting mysurprise. "Isn't it the custom?"

"I'm happy to say it isn't yet, on most of our roads. They were tippingthe baggage-man, to make sure that he checked their baggage in time andput it on the train. I had to do that myself when I came up; otherwise itmight have got along here some time next day. But the system is perfect. "

"The poor man looked quite worn out, " said the Altrurian, "and I am glad Igave him something. He seemed to have several hundred pieces of baggage tolook after, and he wasn't embarrassed like your porter by my helping himput my trunks into the car. May I confess that the meanness of thestation, its insufficient facilities, its shabby waiting-rooms, and itswhole crowded and confused appearance gave me rather a bad impression?"

"I know, " I had to own, "it's shameful; but you wouldn't have foundanother station in the city so bad. "

"Ah, then, " said the Altrurian, "I suppose this particular road is toopoor to employ more baggage-men or build new stations; they seemed rathershabby all the way up. "

"Well, no, " I was obliged to confess, "it's one of the richest roads inthe country. The stock stands at about 180. But I'm really afraid we shallbe late to supper if we don't get on, " I broke off; though I was notaltogether sorry to arrive after the porter had disposed of the baggage. Idreaded another display of active sympathy on the part of my strangecompanion; I have often felt sorry myself for the porters of hotels, but Ihave never thought of offering to help them handle the heavy trunks thatthey manage. 

The Altrurian was delighted with the hotel; and in fact it did lookextremely pretty, with its branching piazzas full of well-dressed people, and its green lawns where the children were playing. I led the way to theroom which I had taken for him next my own; it was simply furnished, butit was sweet with matting, fresh linen, and pure whitewashed walls. Iflung open the window-blinds and let him get a glimpse of the mountainspurpling under the sunset, the lake beneath, and the deeply foliagedshores. 

"Glorious! glorious!" he sighed. 

"Yes, " I modestly assented. "We think that's rather fine. " He stoodtranced before the window, and I thought I had better say: "Well, now Ican't give you much time to get the dust of travel off; the dining-roomdoors close at eight, and we must hurry down. "

"I'll be with you in a moment, " he said, pulling off his coat. 

I waited impatiently at the foot of the stairs, avoiding the question Imet on the lips and in the eyes of my acquaintance. The fame of myfriend's behavior at the station must have spread through the whole place;and everybody wished to know who he was. I answered simply he was atraveler from Altruria; and in some cases I went further and explainedthat the Altrurians were peculiar. 

In much less time than it seemed my friend found me; and then I had alittle compensation for my suffering in his behalf. I could see that, whatever people said of him, they felt the same mysterious liking atsight of him that I had felt. He had made a little change in his dress, and I perceived that the women thought him not only good-looking butwell-dressed. They followed him with their eyes as we went into thedining-room, and I was rather proud of being with him, as if I somehowshared the credit of his clothes and good looks. The Altrurian himselfseemed most struck with the head-waiter, who showed us to our places, andwhile we were waiting for our supper I found a chance to explain that hewas a divinity student from one of the fresh-water colleges, and wasserving here during his summer vacation. This seemed to interest my friendso much that I went on to tell him that many of the waitresses, whom hesaw standing there subject to the order of the guests, were countryschool-mistresses in the winter. 

"Ah, that is as it should be, " he said; "that is the kind of thing Iexpected to meet with in America. "

"Yes, " I responded, in my flattered national vanity, "if America meansanything at all it means the honor of work and the recognition of personalworth everywhere. I hope you are going to make a long stay with us. Welike to have travelers visit us who can interpret the spirit of ourinstitutions as well as read their letter. As a rule Europeans never quiteget our point of view. Now a great many of these waitresses are ladies, inthe true sense of the word--selfrespectful, intelligent, refined, and fitto grace--"

I was interrupted by the noise my friend made in suddenly pushing back hischair and getting to his feet. "What's the matter?" I asked. "You're notill, I hope?"

But he did not hear me. He had run half down the dining-hall toward theslender young girl who was bringing us our supper. I had ordered rathergenerously, for my friend had owned to a good appetite, and I was hungrymyself with waiting for him, so that the tray the girl carried was piledup with heavy dishes. To my dismay I saw, rather than heard at thatdistance, the Altrurian enter into a polite controversy with her, andthen, as if overcoming all her scruples by sheer strength of will, possesshimself of the tray and make off with it toward our table. The poor childfollowed him, blushing to her hair; the head-waiter stood lookinghelplessly on; the guests, who at that late hour were fortunately few, were simply aghast at the scandal; the Altrurian alone seemed to thinkhis conduct the most natural thing in the world. He put the tray on theside-table near us, and in spite of our waitress's protests insisted uponarranging the little bird-bath dishes before our plates. Then at last hesat down, and the girl, flushed and tremulous, left the room, as I couldnot help suspecting, to have a good cry in the kitchen. She did not comeback, and the head-waiter, who was perhaps afraid to send another in herplace, looked after our few wants himself. He kept a sharp eye on myfriend, as if he were not quite sure he was safe, but the Altrurianresumed the conversation with all that lightness of spirits which Inoticed in him after he helped the porter with the baggage. I did notthink it the moment to take him to task for what he had just done; I wasnot even sure that it was the part of a host to do so at all, and betweenthe one doubt and the other I left the burden of talk to him. 

"What a charming young creature!" he began. "I never saw anything prettierthan the way she had of refusing my help, absolutely without coquetry oraffectation of any kind. She is, as you said, a perfect lady, and shegraces her work, as I am sure she would grace any exigency of life. Shequite realizes my ideal of an American girl, and I see now what the spiritof your country must be from such an expression of it. "

I wished to tell him that while a country school-teacher who waits attable in a summer hotel is very much to be respected in her sphere, she isnot regarded with that high honor which some other women command among us;but I did not find this very easy, after what I had said of our esteem forlabor; and while I was thinking how I could hedge, my friend went on. 

"I liked England greatly, and I liked the English, but I could not likethe theory of their civilization or the aristocratic structure of theirsociety. It seemed to me iniquitous, for we believe that inequality andiniquity are the same in the last analysis. "

At this I found myself able to say: "Yes, there is something terrible, something shocking, in the frank brutality with which Englishmen affirmthe essential inequality of men. The affirmation of the essential equalityof men was the first point of departure with us when we separated fromthem. "

"I know, " said the Altrurian. "How grandly it is expressed in yourglorious Declaration!"

"Ah, you have read our Declaration of Independence, then?"

"Every Altrurian has read that, " answered my friend. 

"Well, " I went on smoothly, and I hoped to render what I was going to saythe means of enlightening him without offence concerning the littlemistake he had just made with the waitress, "of course we don't take thatin its closest literality. "

"I don't understand you, " he said. 

"Why, you know it was rather the political than the social traditions ofEngland that we broke with, in the Revolution. "

"How is that?" he returned. "Didn't you break with monarchy and nobility, and ranks and classes?"

"Yes, we broke with all those things. "

"But I found them a part of the social as well as the political structurein England. You have no kings or nobles here. Have you any ranks orclasses?"

"Well, not exactly in the English sense. Our ranks and classes, such as wehave, are what I may call voluntary. "

"Oh, I understand. I suppose that from time to time certain ones among youfeel the need of serving, and ask leave of the commonwealth to subordinatethemselves to the rest of the state and perform all the lowlier offices init. Such persons must be held in peculiar honor. Is it something likethat?"

"Well, no, I can't say it's quite like that. In fact I think I'd betterlet you trust to your own observation of our life. "

"But I'm sure, " said the Altrurian, with a simplicity so fine that it wasa long time before I could believe it quite real, "that I shall approachit so much more intelligently with a little instruction from you. You saythat your social divisions are voluntary. But do I understand that thosewho serve among you do not wish to do so?"

"Well, I don't suppose they would serve if they could help it, " I replied. 

"Surely, " said the Altrurian, with a look of horror, "you don't mean thatthey are slaves. "

"Oh no! oh no!" I said; "the war put an end to that. We are all free now, black and white. "

"But if they do not wish to serve, and are not held in peculiar honor forserving--"

"I see that my word 'voluntary' has misled you, " I put in. "It isn't theword exactly. The divisions among us are rather a process of naturalselection. You will see, as you get better acquainted with the workings ofour institutions, that there are no arbitrary distinctions here but thefitness of the work for the man and the man for the work determines thesocial rank that each one holds. "

"Ah, that is fine!" cried the Altrurian, with a glow of enthusiasm. "ThenI suppose that these intelligent young people who teach school in winterand serve at table in the summer are in a sort of provisional state, waiting for the process of natural selection to determine whether theyshall finally be teachers or waiters. "

"Yes, it might be stated in some such terms, " I assented, though I was notaltogether easy in my mind. It seemed to me that I was not quite candidwith this most candid spirit. I added: "You know we are a sort offatalists here in America. We are great believers in the doctrine that itwill all come out right in the end. "

"Ah, I don't wonder at that, " said the Altrurian, "if the process ofnatural selection works so perfectly among you as you say. But I am afraidI don't understand this matter of your domestic service yet. I believe yousaid that all honest work is honored in America. Then no social slightattaches to service, I suppose?"

"Well, I can't say that, exactly. The fact is, a certain social slightdoes attach to service, and that is one reason why I don't quite like tohave students wait at table. It won't be pleasant for them to remember itin after-life, and it won't be pleasant for their children to rememberit. "

"Then the slight would descend?"

"I think it would. One wouldn't like to think one's father or mother hadbeen at service. "

The Altrurian said nothing for a moment. Then he remarked: "So it seemsthat while all honest work is honored among you, there are some kinds ofhonest work that are not honored so much as others. "

"Yes. "

"Why?"

"Because some occupations are more degrading than others. "

"But why?" he persisted, as I thought, a little unreasonably. 

"Really, " I said, "I think I must leave you to imagine. "

"I am afraid I can't, " he said, sadly. "Then, if domestic service isdegrading in your eyes, and people are not willing servants among you, mayI ask why any are servants?"

"It is a question of bread-and-butter. They are obliged to be. "

"That is, they are forced to do work that is hateful and disgraceful tothem because they cannot live without?"

"Excuse me, " I said, not at all liking this sort of pursuit, and feelingit fair to turn even upon a guest who kept it up. "Isn't it so with you inAltruria?"

"It was so once, " he admitted, "but not now. In fact, it is like a wakingdream to find one's self in the presence of conditions here that weoutlived so long ago. "

There was an unconscious superiority in this speech that nettled me, andstung me to retort: "We do not expect to outlive them. We regard them asfinal, and as indestructibly based in human nature itself. "

"Ah, " said the Altrurian, with a delicate and caressing courtesy, "have Isaid something offensive?"

"Not at all, " I hastened to answer. "It is not surprising that you did notget our point of view exactly. You will by-and-by, and then, I think, youwill see that it is the true one. We have found that the logic of ourconvictions could not be applied to the problem of domestic service. It iseverywhere a very curious and perplexing problem. The simple old solutionof the problem was to own your servants; but we found that this was notconsistent with the spirit of our free institutions. As soon as it wasabandoned the anomaly began. We had outlived the primitive period when thehousekeeper worked with her domestics and they were her help, and werecalled so; and we had begun to have servants to do all the household work, and to call them so. This state of things never seemed right to some ofour purest and best people. They fancied, as you seem to have done, thatto compel people through their necessities to do your hateful drudgery, and to wound and shame them with a name which every American instinctivelyresents, was neither republican nor Christian. Some of our thinkers triedto mend matters by making their domestics a part of their families; and inthe life of Emerson you'll find an amusing account of his attempt to havehis servant eat at the same table with himself and his wife. It wouldn'twork. He and his wife could stand it, but the servant couldn't. "

I paused, for this was where the laugh ought to have come in. TheAltrurian did not laugh, he merely asked, "Why?"

"Well, because the servant knew, if they didn't, that they were a wholeworld apart in their traditions, and were no more fit to associate thanNew-Englanders and New-Zealanders. In the mere matter of education--"

"But I thought you said that these young girls who wait at table here wereteachers. "

"Oh, I beg your pardon; I ought to have explained. By this time it hadbecome impossible, as it now is, to get American girls to take serviceexcept on some such unusual terms as we have in a summer hotel; and thedomestics were already ignorant foreigners, fit for nothing else. In sucha place as this it isn't so bad. It is more as if the girls worked in ashop or a factory. They command their own time, in a measure, their hoursare tolerably fixed, and they have one another's society. In a privatefamily they would be subject to order at all times, and they would have nosocial life. They would be in the family, out not of it. American girlsunderstand this, and so they won't go out to service in the usual way. Even in a summer hotel the relation has its odious aspects. The system ofgiving fees seems to me degrading to those who have to take them. To offera student or a teacher a dollar for personal service--it isn't right, or Ican't make it so. In fact, the whole thing is rather anomalous with us. The best that you can say of it is that it works, and we don't know whatelse to do. "

"But I don't see yet, " said the Altrurian, "just why domestic service isdegrading in a country where all kinds of work are honored. "

"Well, my dear fellow, I have done my best to explain. As I intimatedbefore, we distinguish; and in the different kinds of labor we distinguishagainst domestic service. I dare say it is partly because of the loss ofindependence which it involves. People naturally despise a dependant. "

"Why?" asked the Altrurian, with that innocence of his which I wasbeginning to find rather trying. 

"Why?" I retorted. "Because it implies weakness. "

"And is weakness considered despicable among you?" he pursued. 

"In every community it is despised practically, if not theoretically, " Itried to explain. "The great thing that America has done is to offer therace an opportunity--the opportunity for any man to rise above the restand to take the highest place, if he is able. " I had always been proud ofthis fact, and I thought I had put it very well, but the Altrurian did notseem much impressed by it. 

He said: "I do not see how it differs from any country of the past inthat. But perhaps you mean that to rise carries with it an obligationto those below 'If any is first among you, let him be your servant. ' Is itsomething like that?"

"Well, it is not quite like that, " I answered, remembering how very littleour self-made men as a class had done for others. "Every one is expectedto look out for himself here. I fancy that there would be very littlerising if men were expected to rise for the sake of others, in America. How is it with you in Altruria?" I demanded, hoping to get out of acertain discomfort I felt in that way. "Do your risen men generally devotethemselves to the good of the community after they get to the top?"

"There is no rising among us, " he said, with what seemed a perception ofthe harsh spirit of my question; and he paused a moment before he asked inhis turn: "How do men rise among you?"

"That would be rather a long story, " I replied. "But, putting it in therough, I should say that they rose by their talents, their shrewdness, their ability to seize an advantage and turn it to their own account. "

"And is that considered noble?"

"It is considered smart. It is considered at the worst far better than adead level of equality. Are all men equal in Altruria? Are they all alikegifted or beautiful, or short or tall?"

"No, they are only equal in duties and in rights. But, as you said justnow, that is a very long story. Are they equal in nothing here?"

"They are equal in opportunities. "

"Ah!" breathed the Altrurian, "I am glad to hear that. "

I began to feel a little uneasy, and I was not quite sure that this lastassertion of mine would hold water. Everybody but ourselves had now leftthe dining-room, and I saw the head-waiter eying us impatiently. I pushedback my chair and said: "I'm sorry to seem to hurry you, but I should liketo show you a very pretty sunset effect we have here before it is toodark. When we get back, I want to introduce you to a few of my friends. Ofcourse, I needn't tell you that there is a good deal of curiosity aboutyou, especially among the ladies. "

"Yes, I found that the case in England, largely. It was the women whocared most to meet me. I understand that in America society is managedeven more by women than it is in England. "

"It's entirely in their hands, " I said, with the satisfaction we all feelin the fact. "We have no other leisure class. The richest men among us aregenerally hard workers; devotion to business is the rule; but, as soon asa man reaches the point where he can afford to pay for domestic service, his wife and daughters expect to be released from it to the cultivation oftheir minds and the enjoyment of social pleasures. It's quite right. That is what makes them so delightful to foreigners. You must have heardtheir praises chanted in England. The English find our men rather stupid, I believe; but they think our women are charming. "

"Yes, I was told that the wives of their nobility were sometimesAmericans, " said the Altrurian. "The English think that you regard suchmarriages as a great honor, and that they are very gratifying to yournational pride. "

"Well, I suppose that is so in a measure, " I confessed. "I imagine that itwill not be long before the English aristocracy derives as largely fromAmerican millionaires as from kings' mistresses. Not, " I added, virtuously, "that we approve of aristocracy. "

"No, I understand that, " said the Altrurian. "I shall hope to get yourpoint of view in this matter more distinctly by-and-by. As yet, I'm alittle vague about it. "

"I think I can gradually make it clear to you, " I returned. 

II

We left the hotel, and I began to walk my friend across the meadow towardthe lake. I wished him to see the reflection of the afterglow in its stillwaters, with the noble lines of the mountain-range that glassed itselfthere; the effect is one of the greatest charms of that lovely region, thesojourn of the sweetest summer in the world, and I am always impatient toshow it to strangers. 

We climbed the meadow wall and passed through a stretch of woods to a pathleading down to the shore, and, as we loitered along in the tender gloomof the forest, the music of the hermit-thrushes rang all round us likecrystal bells, like silver flutes, like the drip of fountains, like thechoiring of still-eyed cherubim. We stopped from time to time andlistened, while the shy birds sang unseen in their covert of shadows; butwe did not speak till we emerged from the trees and suddenly stood uponthe naked knoll overlooking the lake. 

Then I explained: "The woods used to come down to the shore here, and wehad their mystery and music to the water's edge; but last winter the ownercut the timber off. It looks rather ragged now. " I had to recognize thefact, for I saw the Altrurian staring about him over the clearing in akind of horror. It was a squalid ruin, a graceless desolation, which noteven the pitying twilight could soften. The stumps showed their hideousmutilation everywhere; the brush had been burned, and the fires hadscorched and blackened the lean soil of the hill-slope and blasted it withsterility. A few weak saplings, withered by the flames, drooped andstraggled about; it would be a century before the forces of nature couldrepair the waste. 

"You say the owner did this?" said the Altrurian. "Who is the owner?"

"Well, it does seem too bad, " I answered, evasively. "There has been agood deal of feeling about it. The neighbors tried to buy him off beforehe began the destruction, for they knew the value of the woods as anattraction to summer-boarders; the city cottagers, of course, wanted tosave them, and together they offered for the land pretty nearly as much asthe timber was worth. But he had got it into his head that the land hereby the lake would sell for building lots if it was cleared, and he couldmake money on that as well as on the trees; and so they had to go. Ofcourse, one might say that he was deficient in public spirit, but I don'tblame him, altogether. "

"No, " the Altrurian assented, somewhat to my surprise, I confess. 

I resumed: "There was no one else to look after his interests, and it wasnot only his right but his duty to get the most he could for himself andhis own, according to his best light. That is what I tell people when theyfall foul of him for his want of public spirit. "

"The trouble seems to be, then, in the system that obliges each man to bethe guardian of his own interests. Is that what you blame?"

"No, I consider it a very perfect system. It is based upon individuality, and we believe that individuality is the principle that differencescivilized men from savages, from the lower animals, and makes us a nationinstead of a tribe or a herd. There isn't one of us, no matter how much hecensured this man's want of public spirit, but would resent the slightestinterference with his property rights. The woods were his; he had theright to do what he pleased with his own. "

"Do I understand you that, in America, a man may do what is wrong with hisown?"

"He may do anything with his own. "

"To the injury of others?"

"Well, not in person or property. But he may hurt them in taste andsentiment as much as he likes. Can't a man do what he pleases with his ownin Altruria?"

"No, he can only do right with his own. "

"And if he tries to do wrong, or what the community thinks is wrong?"

"Then the community takes his own from him. " Before I could think ofanything to say to this he went on: "But I wish you would explain to mewhy it was left to this man's neighbors to try and get him to sell hisportion of the landscape?"

"Why, bless my soul!" I exclaimed, "who else was there? You wouldn't haveexpected to take up a collection among the summer-boarders?"

"That wouldn't have been so unreasonable; but I didn't mean that. Wasthere no provision for such an exigency in your laws? Wasn't the stateempowered to buy him off at the full value of his timber and his land?"

"Certainly not, " I replied. "That would be rank paternalism. "

It began to get dark, and I suggested that we had better be going backto the hotel. The talk seemed already to have taken us away from allpleasure in the prospect; I said, as we found our way through the rich, balsam-scented twilight of the woods, where one joy-haunted thrush wasstill singing: "You know that in America the law is careful not to meddlewith a man's private affairs, and we don't attempt to legislate personalvirtue. "

"But marriage, " he said--"surely you have the institution of marriage?"

I was really annoyed at this. I returned, sarcastically; "Yes, I am gladto say that there we can meet your expectation; we have marriage, not onlyconsecrated by the church, but established and defended by the state. What has that to do with the question?"

"And you consider marriage, " he pursued, "the citadel of morality, thefountain of all that is pure and good in your private life, the source ofhome and the image of heaven?"

"There are some marriages, " I said, with a touch of our national humor, "that do not quite fill the bill, but that is certainly our ideal ofmarriage. "

"Then why do you say that you have not legislated personal virtue inAmerica?" he asked. "You have laws, I believe, against theft and murder, and slander and incest, and perjury and drunkenness?"

"Why, certainly. "

"Then it appears to me that you have legislated honesty, regard for humanlife, regard for character, abhorrence of unnatural vice, good faith, andsobriety. I was told on the train coming up, by a gentleman who wasshocked at the sight of a man beating his horse, that you even had lawsagainst cruelty to animals. "

"Yes, and I am happy to say that they are enforced to such a degree that aman cannot kill a cat cruelly without being punished for it. " TheAltrurian did not follow up his advantage, and I resolved not to beoutdone in magnanimity. "Come, I will own that you have the best of me onthose points. I must say you've trapped me very neatly, too; I can enjoy athing of that kind when it's well done, and I frankly knock under. But Ihad in mind something altogether different when I spoke. I was thinking ofthose idealists who want to bind us hand and foot and render us the slavesof a state where the most intimate relations of life shall be penetratedby legislation and the very hearthstone shall be a tablet of laws. "

"Isn't marriage a rather intimate relation of life?" asked the Altrurian. "And I understood that gentleman on the train to say that you had lawsagainst cruelty to children, and societies established to see themenforced. You don't consider such laws an invasion of the home, do you, ora violation of its immunities? I imagine, " he went on, "that thedifference between your civilization and ours is only one of degree, afterall, and that America and Altruria are really one at heart. "

I thought his compliment a bit hyperbolical, but I saw that it washonestly meant, and as we Americans are first of all patriots, and vainfor our country before we are vain for ourselves, I was not proof againstthe flattery it conveyed to me civically if not personally. 

We were now drawing near the hotel, and I felt a certain glow of pleasurein its gay effect on the pretty knoll where it stood. In its artless andaccidental architecture it was not unlike one of our immense coastwisesteamboats. The twilight had thickened to dusk, and the edifice wasbrilliantly lighted with electrics, story above story, which streamed intothe gloom around like the lights of saloon and state-room. The corner ofwood making into the meadow hid the station; there was no other buildingin sight; the hotel seemed riding at anchor on the swell of a placid sea. I was going to call the Altrurian's attention to this fanciful resemblancewhen I remembered that he had not been in our country long enough to haveseen a Fall River boat, and I made toward the house without wasting thecomparison upon him. But I treasured it up in my own mind, intending someday to make a literary use of it. 

The guests were sitting in friendly groups about the piazzas or in rowsagainst the walls, the ladies with their gossip and the gentlemen withtheir cigars. The night had fallen cool after a hot day, and they all hadthe effect of having cast off care with the burden of the week that waspast, and to be steeping themselves in the innocent and simple enjoymentof the hour. They were mostly middle-aged married folk, but some were oldenough to have sons and daughters among the young people who went and camein a long, wandering promenade of the piazzas, or wove themselves throughthe waltz past the open windows of the great parlor; the music seemed onewith the light that streamed far out on the lawn flanking the piazzas. Every one was well-dressed and comfortable and at peace, and I felt thatour hotel was in some sort a microcosm of the republic. 

We involuntarily paused, and I heard the Altrurian murmur: "Charming, charming! This is really delightful!"

"Yes, isn't it?" I returned, with a glow of pride. "Our hotel here is atype of the summer hotel everywhere; it's characteristic in not havinganything characteristic about it; and I rather like the notion of thepeople in it being so much like the people in all the others that youwould feel yourself at home wherever you met such a company in such ahouse. All over the country, north and south, wherever you find a group ofhills or a pleasant bit of water or a stretch of coast, you'll find somesuch refuge as this for our weary toilers. We began to discover some timeago that it would not do to cut open the goose that laid our golden eggs, even if it looked like an eagle, and kept on perching on our banners justas if nothing had happened. We discovered that, if we continued to killourselves with hard work, there would be no Americans pretty soon. "

The Altrurian laughed. "How delightfully you put it! How quaint! Howpicturesque! Excuse me, but I can't help expressing my pleasure in it. Ourown humor is so very different. "

"Ah, " I said; "what is your humor like?"

"I could hardly tell you, I'm afraid; I've never been much of a humoristmyself. "

Again a cold doubt of something ironical in the man went through me, but Ihad no means of verifying it, and so I simply remained silent, waiting forhim to prompt me if he wished to know anything further about our nationaltransformation from bees perpetually busy into butterflies occasionallyidle. "And when you had made that discovery?" he suggested. 

"Why, we're nothing if not practical, you know, and as soon as we madethat discovery we stopped killing ourselves and invented the summerresort. There are very few of our business or professional men now whodon't take their four or five weeks' vacation. Their wives go off early inthe summer, and, if they go to some resort within three or four hours ofthe city, the men leave town Saturday afternoon and run out, or come up, and spend Sunday with their families. For thirty-eight hours or so a hotellike this is a nest of happy homes. "

"That is admirable, " said the Altrurian. "You are truly a practicalpeople. The ladies come early in the summer, you say?"

"Yes, sometimes in the beginning of June. "

"What do they come for?" asked the Altrurian. 

"What for? Why, for rest!" I retorted, with some little temper. 

"But I thought you told me awhile ago that as soon as a husband couldafford it he relieved his wife and daughters from all household work. "

"So he does. "

"Then what do the ladies wish to rest from?"

"From care. It is not work alone that kills. They are not relieved fromhousehold care even when they are relieved from household work. There isnothing so killing as household care. Besides, the sex seems to be borntired. To be sure, there are some observers of our life who contend thatwith the advance of athletics among our ladies, with boating and bathing, and lawn-tennis and mountain-climbing and freedom from care, and theselong summers of repose, our women are likely to become as superior to themen physically as they now are intellectually. It is all right. We shouldlike to see it happen. It would be part of the national joke. "

"Oh, have you a national joke?" asked the Altrurian. "But, of course! Youhave so much humor. I wish you could give me some notion of it. "

"Well, it is rather damaging to any joke to explain it, " I replied, "andyour only hope of getting at ours is to live into it. One feature of it isthe confusion of foreigners at the sight of our men's willingness tosubordinate themselves to our women. "

"Oh, I don't find that very bewildering, " said the Altrurian. "It seems tome a generous and manly trait of the American character. I'm proud to saythat it is one of the points at which your civilization and our own touch. There can be no doubt that the influence of women in your public affairsmust be of the greatest advantage to you; it has been so with us. "

I turned and stared at him, but he remained insensible to my astonishment, perhaps because it was now too dark for him to see it. "Our women have noinfluence in public affairs, " I said, quietly, after a moment. 

"They haven't? Is it possible? But didn't I understand you to imply justnow that your women were better educated than your men?"

"Well, I suppose that, taking all sorts and conditions among us, the womenare as a rule better schooled, if not better educated. "

"Then, apart from the schooling, they are not more cultivated?"

"In a sense you might say they were. They certainly go in for a lot ofthings: art and music, and Browning and the drama, and foreign travel andpsychology, and political economy and Heaven knows what all. They havemore leisure for it; they have all the leisure there is, in fact; ouryoung men have to go into business. I suppose you may say our women aremore cultivated than our men; yes, I think there's no questioning that. They are the great readers among us. We poor devils of authors would bebadly off if it were not for our women. In fact, no author could make areputation among us without them. American literature exists becauseAmerican women appreciate it and love it. "

"But surely your men read books?"

"Some of them; not many, comparatively. You will often hear a complacentass of a husband and father say to an author: 'My wife and daughters knowyour books, but I can't find time for anything but the papers nowadays. Iskim them over at breakfast, or when I'm going in to business on thetrain. ' He isn't the least ashamed to say that he reads nothing but thenewspapers. "

"Then you think that it would be better for him to read books?"

"Well, in the presence of four or five thousand journalists with drawnscalping-knives I should not like to say so. Besides, modesty forbids. "

"No, but, really, " the Altrurian persisted, "you think that the literatureof a book is more carefully pondered than the literature of a dailynewspaper?"

"I suppose even the four or five thousand journalists with drawnscalping-knives would hardly deny that. "

"And it stands to reason, doesn't it, that the habitual reader ofcarefully pondered literature ought to be more thoughtful than the readersof literature which is not carefully pondered and which they merely skimover on their way to business?"

"I believe we began by assuming the superior culture of our women, didn'twe? You'll hardly find an American that isn't proud of it. "

"Then, " said the Altrurian, "if your women are generally better schooledthan your men, and more cultivated and more thoughtful, and are relievedof household work in such great measure, and even of domestic cares, whyhave they no part in your public affairs?"

I laughed, for I thought I had my friend at last. "For the best of allpossible reasons: they don't want it. "

"Ah, that's no reason, " he returned. "Why don't they want it?"

"Really, " I said, out of all patience, "I think I must let you ask theladies themselves, " and I turned and moved again toward the hotel, but theAltrurian gently detained me. 

"Excuse me, " he began. 

"No, no, " I said. "'The feast is set, the guests are met, May'st hear the merry din. 'Come in and see the young people dance. "

"Wait, " he entreated; "tell me a little more about the old people first. This digression about the ladies has been very interesting, but I thoughtyou were going to speak of the men here. Who are they, or, rather, whatare they?"

"Why, as I said before, they are all business men and professional men;people who spend their lives in studies and counting-rooms and offices, and have come up here for a few weeks or a few days of well-earned repose. They are of all kinds of occupations: they are lawyers and doctors, andclergymen and merchants, and brokers and bankers. There's hardly anycalling you Won't find represented among them. As I was thinkingjust now, our hotel is a sort of microcosm of the American republic. "

"I am most fortunate in finding you here, where I can avail myself of yourintelligence in making my observations of your life under suchadvantageous circumstances. It seems to me that with your help I mightpenetrate the fact of American life, possess myself of the mystery of yournational joke, without stirring beyond the piazza of your hospitablehotel, " said my friend. I doubted it, but one does not lightly put aside acompliment like that to one's intelligence, and I said I should be veryhappy to be of use to him. He thanked me, and said: "Then, to begin with, I understand that these gentlemen are here because they are alloverworked. "

"Of course. You can have no conception of how hard our business men andour professional men work. I suppose there is nothing like it anywhereelse in the world. But, as I said before, we are beginning to find that wecannot burn the candle at both ends and have it last long. So we put oneend out for a little while every summer. Still, there are frightful wrecksof men strewn all along the course of our prosperity, wrecks of mind andbody. Our insane asylums are full of madmen who have broken under thetremendous strain, and every country in Europe abounds in our dyspeptics. "I was rather proud of this terrible fact; there is no doubt but weAmericans are proud of overworking ourselves; Heaven knows why. 

The Altrurian murmured: "Awful! Shocking!" But I thought somehow he hadnot really followed me very attentively in my celebration of our nationalviolation of the laws of life and its consequences. "I am glad, " he wenton, "that your business men and professional men are beginning to realizethe folly and wickedness of overwork. Shall I find some of your otherweary workers here, too?"

"What other weary workers?" I asked in turn, for I imagined I had goneover pretty much the whole list. 

"Why, " said the Altrurian, "your mechanics and day laborers, youriron-moulders and glass-blowers, your miners and farmers, your printersand mill-operatives, your trainmen and quarry-hands. Or do they prefer togo to resorts of their own?"

III

It was not easy to make sure of such innocence as prompted this inquiry ofmy Altrurian friend. The doubt whether he could really be in earnest wassomething that I had already felt; and it was destined to beset me, as itdid now, again and again. My first thought was that, of course, he wastrying a bit of cheap irony on me, a mixture of the feeble sarcasm andfalse sentiment that makes us smile when we find it in the philippics ofthe industrial agitators. For a moment I did not know but I had fallenvictim to a walking delegate on his vacation, who was employing his summerleisure in going about the country in the guise of a traveler fromAltruria, and foisting himself upon people who would have had nothing todo with him in his real character. But in another moment I perceived thatthis was impossible. I could not suppose that the friend who hadintroduced him to me would be capable of seconding so poor a joke, and, besides, I could not imagine why a walking delegate should wish to addresshis clumsy satire to me particularly. For the present, at least, there wasnothing for it but to deal with this inquiry as if it were made in goodfaith and in the pursuit of useful information. It struck me as grotesque;but it would not have been decent to treat it as if it were so. I wasobliged to regard it seriously, and so I decided to shirk it. 

"Well, " I said, "that opens up rather a large field, which lies somewhatoutside of the province of my own activities. You know, I am a writer ofromantic fiction, and my time is so fully occupied in manipulating thedestinies of the good old-fashioned hero and heroine, and trying always tomake them end in a happy marriage, that I have hardly had a chance to lookmuch into the lives of agriculturists or artisans; and, to tell you thetruth, I don't know what they do with their leisure. I'm pretty certain, though, you won't meet any of them in this hotel; they couldn't afford it, and I fancy they would find themselves out of their element among ourguests. We respect them thoroughly; every American does, and we know thatthe prosperity of the country rests with them; we have a theory that theyare politically sovereign, but we see very little of them, and we don'tassociate with them. In fact, our cultivated people have so littleinterest in them socially that they don't like to meet them, even infiction; they prefer refined and polished ladies and gentlemen, whom theycan have some sympathy with; and I always go to the upper classes for mytypes. It won't do to suppose, though, that we are indifferent to theworking classes in their place. Their condition is being studied a gooddeal just now, and there are several persons here who will be able tosatisfy your curiosity on the points you have made, I think. I willintroduce you to them. "

The Altrurian did not try to detain me this time. He said he should bevery glad indeed to meet my friends, and I led the way toward a littlegroup at the corner of the piazza. They were men whom I particularlyliked, for one reason or another; they were intelligent and open-minded, and they were thoroughly American. One was a banker; another was aminister; there was a lawyer, and there was a doctor; there was aprofessor of political economy in one of our colleges; and there was aretired manufacturer--I do not know what he used to manufacture: cotton oriron, or something like that. They all rose politely as I came up with myAltrurian, and I fancied in them a sensation of expectancy created by therumor of his eccentric behavior which must have spread through the hotel. But they controlled this if they had it, and I could see, as the lightfell upon his face from a spray of electrics on the nearest pillar, thatsort of liking kindle in theirs which I had felt myself at first sight ofhim. 

I said, "Gentlemen, I wish to introduce my friend, Mr. Homos, " and then Ipresented them severally to him by name. We all sat down, and I explained:"Mr. Homos is from Altruria. He is visiting our country for the firsttime, and is greatly interested in the working of our institutions. He hasbeen asking me some rather hard questions about certain phases of ourcivilization; and the fact is that I have launched him upon you because Idon't feel quite able to cope with him. "

They all laughed civilly at this sally of mine, but the professor asked, with a sarcasm that I thought I hardly merited, "What point in our politycan be obscure to the author of 'Glove and Gauntlet' and 'Airs andGraces'?"

They all laughed again, not so civilly, I felt, and then the banker askedmy friend: "Is it long since you left Altruria?"

"It seems a great while ago, " the Altrurian answered, "but it is reallyonly a few weeks. "

"You came by way of England, I suppose?"

"Yes; there is no direct line to America, " said the Altrurian. 

"That seems rather odd, " I ventured, with some patriotic grudge. 

"Oh, the English have direct lines everywhere, " the banker instructed me. 

"The tariff has killed our shipbuilding, " said the professor. No one tookup this firebrand, and the professor added: "Your name is Greek, isn't it, Mr. Homos?"

"Yes; we are of one of the early Hellenic families, " said the Altrurian. 

"And do you think, " asked the lawyer, who, like most lawyers, was a loverof romance, and was well read in legendary lore especially, "that there isany reason for supposing that Altruria is identical with the fabledAtlantis'?"

"No, I can't say that I do. We have no traditions of a submergence of thecontinent, and there are only the usual evidences of a glacial epoch whichyou find everywhere to support such a theory. Besides, our civilization isstrictly Christian, and dates back to no earlier period than that of thefirst Christian commune after Christ. It is a matter of history with usthat one of these communists, when they were dispersed, brought the Gospelto our continent; he was cast away on our eastern coast on his way toBritain. "

"Yes, we know that, " the minister intervened, "but it is perfectlyastonishing that an island so large as Altruria should have been lost tothe knowledge of the rest of the world ever since the beginning of ourera. You would hardly think that there was a space of the ocean's surfacea mile square which had not been traversed by a thousand keels sinceColumbus sailed westward. "

"No, you wouldn't. And I wish, " the doctor suggested in his turn, "thatMr. Homos would tell us something about his country, instead of asking usabout ours. "

"Yes, " I coincided, "I'm sure we should all find it a good deal easier. Atleast I should; but I brought our friend up in the hope that the professorwould like nothing better than to train a battery of hard facts upon adefenceless stranger. " Since the professor had given me that little stab, I was rather anxious to see how he would handle the desire for informationin the Altrurian which I had found so prickly. 

This turned the laugh on the professor, and he pretended to be as curiousabout Altruria as the rest, and said he would rather hear of it. But theAltrurian said: "I hope you will excuse me. Sometime I shall be glad totalk of Altruria as long as you like; or, if you will come to us, I shallbe still happier to show you many things that I couldn't make youunderstand at a distance. But I am in America to learn, not to teach, andI hope you will have patience with my ignorance. I begin to be afraid thatit is so great as to seem a little incredible. I have fancied in my friendhere, " he went on, with a smile toward me, "a suspicion that I was notentirely single in some of the inquiries I have made, but that I had someulterior motive, some wish to censure or satirize. "

"Oh, not at all, " I protested, for it was not polite to admit a conjectureso accurate. "We are so well satisfied with our condition that we havenothing but pity for the darkened mind of the foreigner, though we believein it fully: we are used to the English tourist. "

My friends laughed, and the Altrurian continued: "I am very glad to hearit, for I feel myself at a peculiar disadvantage among you. I am not onlya foreigner, but I am so alien to you in all the traditions and habitudesthat I find it very difficult to get upon common ground with you. Ofcourse, I know theoretically what you are, but to realize it practicallyis another thing. I had read so much about America and understood solittle that I could not rest without coming to see for myself. Some of theapparent contradictions were so colossal--"

"We have everything on a large scale here, " said the banker, breaking offthe ash of his cigar with the end of his little finger, "and we ratherpride ourselves on the size of our inconsistencies, even. I know somethingof the state of things in Altruria, and, to be frank with you, I will saythat it seems to me preposterous. I should say it was impossible, if itwere not an accomplished fact; but I always feel bound to recognize thething done. You have hitched your wagon to a star, and you have made thestar go; there is never any trouble with wagons, but stars are not easilybroken to harness, and you have managed to get yours well in hand. As Isaid, I don't believe in you, but I respect you. " I thought this charming, myself; perhaps because it stated my own mind about Altruria so exactlyand in terms so just and generous. 

"Pretty good, " said the doctor, in a murmur of satisfaction, at my ear, "for a bloated bond-holder. "

"Yes, " I whispered back, "I wish I had said it. What an American way ofputting it! Emerson would have liked it himself. After all, he was ourprophet. "

"He must have thought so from the way we kept stoning him, " said thedoctor, with a soft laugh. 

"Which of our contradictions, " asked the banker, in the same tone ofgentle bonhomie, "has given you and our friend pause just now?"

The Altrurian answered, after a moment: "I am not sure that it is acontradiction, for as yet I have not ascertained the facts I was seeking. Our friend was telling me of the great change that had taken placein regard to work, and the increased leisure that your professional peopleare now allowing themselves; and I was asking him where your working-menspent their leisure. "

He went over the list of those he had specified, and I hung my head inshame and pity; it really had such an effect of mawkish sentimentality. But my friends received it in the best possible way. They did not laugh;they heard him out, and then they quietly deferred to the banker, who madeanswer for us all:

"Well, I can be almost as brief as the historian of Iceland in his chapteron snakes: those people have no leisure to spend. "

"Except when they go out on a strike, " said the manufacturer, with acertain grim humor of his own; I never heard anything more dramatic thanthe account he once gave of the way he broke up a labor union. "I haveseen a good many of them at leisure then. "

"Yes, " the doctor chimed in, "and in my younger days, when I necessarilyhad a good deal of charity practice, I used to find them at leisure whenthey were 'laid off. ' It always struck me as such a pretty euphemism. Itseemed to minify the harm of the thing so. It seemed to take all thehunger and cold and sickness out of the fact. To be simply 'laid off' wasso different from losing your work and having to face beggary orstarvation. "

"Those people, " said the professor, "never put anything by. They arewasteful and improvident, almost to a man; and they learn nothing byexperience, though they know as well as we do that it is simply a questionof demand and supply, and that the day of overproduction is sure to come, when their work must stop unless the men that give them work are willingto lose money. "

"And I've seen them lose it, sometimes, rather than shut down, " themanufacturer remarked; "lose it hand over hand, to keep the men at work;and then as soon as the tide turned the men would strike for higher wages. You have no idea of the ingratitude of those people. " He said this towardthe minister, as if he did not wish to be thought hard; and, in fact, hewas a very kindly man. 

"Yes, " replied the minister, "that is one of the most sinister features ofthe situation. They seem really to regard their employers as theirenemies. I don't know how it will end. "

"I know how it would end if I had my way, " said the professor. "Therewouldn't be any labor unions, and there wouldn't be any strikes. "

"That is all very well, " said the lawyer, from that judicial mind which Ialways liked in him, "as far as the strikes are concerned, but I don'tunderstand that the abolition of the unions would affect the impersonalprocess of 'laying off. ' The law of demand and supply I respect as much asany one--it's something like the constitution; but, all the same, I shouldobject extremely to have my income stopped by it every now and then. I'mprobably not so wasteful as a working-man generally is; still, I haven'tlaid by enough to make it a matter of indifference to me whether my incomewent on or not. Perhaps the professor has. " The professor did not say, andwe all took leave to laugh. The lawyer concluded: "I don't see how thosefellows stand it. "

"They don't, all of them, " said the doctor. "Or their wives and childrendon't. Some of them die. "

"I wonder, " the lawyer pursued, "what has become of the good old Americanfact that there is always work for those who are willing to work? I noticethat wherever five thousand men strike in the forenoon, there are fivethousand men to take their places in the afternoon--and not men who areturning their hands to something new, but men who are used to doing thevery thing the strikers have done. "

"That is one of the things that teach the futility of strikes, " theprofessor made haste to interpose, as if he had not quite liked to appearaverse to the interests of the workman; no one likes to do that. "If therewere anything at all to be hoped from them, it would be another matter. "

"Yes, but that isn't the point, quite, " said the lawyer. 

"By-the-way, what is the point?" I asked, with my humorous lightness. 

"Why, I supposed, " said the banker, "it was the question how the workingclasses amused their elegant leisure. But it seems to be almost anythingelse. "

We all applauded the neat touch, but the Altrurian eagerly entreated:"No, no; never mind that now. That is a matter of comparatively littleinterest. I would so much rather know something about the status of theworking-man among you. "

"Do you mean his political status? It's that of every other citizen. "

"I don't mean that. I suppose that in America you have learned, as we havein Altruria, that equal political rights are only means to an end, and asan end have no value or reality. I meant the economic status of theworking-man, and his social status. "

I do not know why we were so long girding up our loins to meet this simplequestion. I myself could not have hopefully undertaken to answer it; butthe others were each in their way men of affairs, and practicallyacquainted with the facts, except perhaps the professor; but he haddevoted a great deal of thought to them, and ought to have been qualifiedto make some sort of response. But even he was silent; and I had a vaguefeeling that they were all somehow reluctant to formulate their knowledge, as if it were uncomfortable or discreditable. The banker continued tosmoke quietly on for a moment; then he suddenly threw his cigar away. 

"I like to free my mind of cant, " he said, with a short laugh, "when I canafford it, and I propose to cast all sorts of American cant out of it inanswering your question. The economic status of the working-man among usis essentially the same as that of the working-man all over the civilizedworld. You will find plenty of people here, especially about electiontime, to tell you differently, but they will not be telling you the truth, though a great many of them think they are. In fact, I suppose mostAmericans honestly believe because we have a republican form ofgovernment, and manhood suffrage, and so on, that our economic conditionsare peculiar, and that our working-man has a status higher and better thanthat of the working-man anywhere else. But he has nothing of the kind. Hiscircumstances are better, and provisionally his wages are higher, but itis only a question of years or decades when his circumstances will be thesame and his wages the same as the European working-man's. There isnothing in our conditions to prevent this. "

"Yes, I understood from our friend here, " said the Altrurian, noddingtoward me, "that you had broken only with the political tradition ofEurope in your Revolution; and he has explained to me that you do not holdall kinds of labor in equal esteem; but--"

"What kind of labor did he say we did hold in esteem?" asked the banker. 

"Why, I understood him to say that if America meant anything at all itmeant the honor of work, but that you distinguished and did not honor somekinds of work so much as others; for instance, domestic service, orpersonal attendance of any kind. "

The banker laughed again. "Oh, he drew the line there, did he? Well, weall have to draw the line somewhere. Our friend is a novelist, and I willtell you in strict confidence that the line he has drawn is imaginary. Wedon't honor any kind of work any more than any other people. If a fellowgets up, the papers make a great ado over his having been a woodchopper ora bobbin-boy, or something of that kind, but I doubt if the fellow himselflikes it; he doesn't if he's got any sense. The rest of us feel that it's_infra dig. _, and hope nobody will find out that we ever worked with ourhands for a living. I'll go further, " said the banker, with the effect ofwhistling prudence down the wind, "and I will challenge any of you togainsay me from his own experience or observation. How does esteem usuallyexpress itself? When we wish, to honor a man, what do we do?"

"Ask him to dinner, " said the lawyer. 

"Exactly. We offer him some sort of social recognition. Well, as soon as afellow gets up, if he gets up high enough, we offer him some sort ofsocial recognition; in fact, all sorts; but upon condition that he hasleft off working with his hands for a living. We forgive all you please tohis past on account of the present. But there isn't a working-man, Iventure to say, in any city or town, or even large village, in the wholelength and breadth of the United States who has any social recognition, ifhe is still working at his trade. I don't mean, merely, that he isexcluded from rich and fashionable society, but from the society of theaverage educated and cultivated people. I'm not saying he is fit for it;but I don't care how intelligent and agreeable he might be--and some ofthem are astonishingly intelligent, and so agreeable in their tone of mindand their original way of looking at things that I like nothing betterthan to talk with them--all of our invisible fences are up against him. "

The minister said: "I wonder if that sort of exclusiveness is quitenatural? Children seem to feel no sort of social difference amongthemselves. "

"We can hardly go to children for a type of social order, " the professorsuggested. 

"True, " the minister meekly admitted. "But somehow there is a protest inus somewhere against these arbitrary distinctions--something thatquestions whether they are altogether right. We know that they must be, and always have been, and always will be, and yet--well, I will confessit--I never feel at peace when I face them. "

"Oh, " said the banker, "if you come to the question of right and wrong, that is another matter. I don't say it's right. I'm not discussing thatquestion; though I'm certainly not proposing to level the fences; I shouldbe the last to take my own down. I say simply that you are no more likelyto meet a working-man in American society than you are to meet a coloredman. Now you can judge, " he ended, turning directly to the Altrurian, "howmuch we honor labor. And I hope I have indirectly satisfied your curiosityas to the social status of the working-man among us. "

We were all silent. 

Perhaps the others were occupied like myself in trying to recall someinstance of a working-man whom they had met in society, and perhaps wesaid nothing because we all failed. 

The Altrurian spoke at last. 

"You have been so very full and explicit that I feel as if it were almostunseemly to press any further inquiry; but I should very much like to knowhow your working-men bear this social exclusion. "

"I'm sure I can't say, " returned the banker. "A man does not care much toget into society until he has something to eat, and how to get that isalways the first question with the working-man. "

"But you wouldn't like it yourself?"

"No, certainly, I shouldn't like it myself. I shouldn't complain of notbeing asked to people's houses, and the working-men don't; you can't dothat; but I should feel it an incalculable loss. We may laugh at theemptiness of society, or pretend to be sick of it, but there is no doubtthat society is the flower of civilization, and to be shut out from it isto be denied the best privilege of a civilized man. There are societywomen--we have all met them--whose graciousness and refinement of presenceare something of incomparable value; it is more than a liberal educationto have been admitted to it, but it is as inaccessible to the working-manas--what shall I say? The thing is too grotesquely impossible for any sortof comparison. Merely to conceive of its possibility is something thatpasses a joke; it is a kind of offence. "

Again we were silent. 

"I don't know, " the banker continued, "how the notion of our socialequality originated, but I think it has been fostered mainly by theexpectation of foreigners, who argued it from our political equality. As a matter of fact, it never existed, except in our poorest and mostprimitive communities, in the pioneer days of the West and among thegold-hunters of California. It was not dreamed of in our colonial society, either in Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York or Massachusetts; and thefathers of the republic, who were mostly slave-holders, were practicallyas stiff-necked aristocrats as any people of their day. We have not apolitical aristocracy, that is all; but there is as absolute a divisionbetween the orders of men and as little love, in this country as in anycountry on the globe. The severance of the man who works for his livingwith his hands from the man who does not work for his living with hishands is so complete, and apparently so final, that nobody even imaginesanything else, not even in fiction. Or, how is that?" he asked, turning tome. "Do you fellows still put the intelligent, high-spirited, handsomeyoung artisan, who wins the millionaire's daughter, into your books? Iused sometimes to find him there. "

"You might still find him in the fiction of the weekly story-papers; but, "I was obliged to own, "he would not go down with my readers. Even in thestory-paper fiction he would leave off working as soon as he married themillionaire's daughter, and go to Europe, or he would stay here and becomea social leader, but he would not receive working-men in his gildedhalls. "

The others rewarded my humor with a smile, but the banker said: "Then Iwonder you were not ashamed of filling our friend up with that stuff aboutour honoring some kinds of labor. It is true that we don't go about openlyand explicitly despising any kind of honest toil--people don't do thatanywhere now; but we contemn it in terms quite as unmistakable. Theworking-man acquiesces as completely as anybody else. He does not remain aworking-man a moment longer that he can help; and after he gets up, if heis weak enough to be proud of having been one, it is because he feels thathis low origin is a proof of his prowess in rising to the top againstunusual odds. I don't suppose there is a man in the whole civilizedworld--outside of Altruria, of course---who is proud of working at atrade, except the shoemaker Tolstoy, and is a count, and he does not makevery good shoes. "

We all laughed again: those shoes of Count Tolstoy's are always such aninfallible joke. 

The Altrurian, however, was cocked and primed with another question; heinstantly exploded it: "But are all the working-men in America eager torise above their condition? Is there none willing to remain among the massbecause the rest could not rise with him, and from the hope of yetbringing labor to honor?"

The banker answered: "I never heard of any. No, the American ideal is notto change the conditions for all, but for each to rise above the rest ifhe can. "

"Do you think it is really so bad as that?" asked the minister, timidly. 

The banker answered: "Bad? Do you call that bad? I thought it was verygood. But, good or bad, I don't think you'll find it deniable, if youlook into the facts. There may be working-men willing to remain so forother working-men's sake, but I have never met any--perhaps because theworking-man never goes into society. "

The unfailing question of the Altrurian broke the silence which ensued:"Are there many of your working-men who are intelligent and agreeable--ofthe type you mentioned a moment since?"

"Perhaps, " said the banker, "I had better refer you to one of our friendshere, who has had a great deal more to do with them than I have. He is amanufacturer, and he has had to do with all kinds of work-people. "

"Yes, for my sins, " the manufacturer assented; and he added: "They areoften confoundedly intelligent, though I haven't often found them veryagreeable, either in their tone of mind or their original way of lookingat things. "

The banker amiably acknowledged his thrust, and the Altrurian asked: "Ah, they are opposed to your own?"

"Well, we have the same trouble here that you must have heard of inEngland. As you know now that the conditions are the same here, you won'tbe surprised at the fact. "

"But the conditions, " the Altrurian pursued--"do you expect them always tocontinue the same?"

"Well, I don't know, " said the manufacturer. "We can't expect them tochange of themselves, and I shouldn't know how to change them. It wasexpected that the rise of the trusts and the syndicates would break theunions, but somehow they haven't. The situation remains the same. Theunions are not cutting one another's throats now any more than we are. Thewar is on a larger scale--that's all. "

"Then let me see, " said the Altrurian, "whether I clearly understand thesituation as regards the working-man in America. He is dependent upon theemployer for his chance to earn a living, and he is never sure of this. Hemay be thrown out of work by his employer's disfavor or disaster, and hiswillingness to work goes for nothing; there is no public provision of workfor him; there is nothing to keep him from want nor the prospect ofanything. "

"We are all in the same boat, " said the professor. 

"But some of us have provisioned ourselves rather better and can generallyweather it through till we are picked up, " the lawyer put in. 

"I am always saying the working-man is improvident, " returned theprofessor. 

"There are the charities, " the minister suggested. 

"But his economical status, " the Altrurian pursued, "is in a state ofperpetual uncertainty, and to save himself in some measure he hasorganized, and so has constituted himself a danger to the public peace?"

"A very great danger, " said the professor. 

"I guess we can manage him, " the manufacturer remarked. 

"And socially he is non-existent?"

The Altrurian turned with this question to the banker, who said: "He iscertainly not in society. "

"Then, " said my guest, "if the working-man's wages are provisionally somuch better here than in Europe, why should they be discontented? What isthe real cause of their discontent?"

I have always been suspicious, in the company of practical men, of anatmosphere of condescension to men of my calling, if nothing worse. Ifancy they commonly regard artists of all kinds as a sort of harmlesseccentrics, and that literary people they look upon as something droll, asweak and soft, as not quite right. I believed that this particular group, indeed, was rather abler to conceive of me as a rational person than mostothers, but I knew that if even they had expected me to be as reasonableas themselves they would not have been greatly disappointed if I were not;and it seemed to me that I had put myself wrong with them in imparting tothe Altrurian that romantic impression that we hold labor in honor here. Ihad really thought so, but I could not say so now, and I wished toretrieve myself somehow. I wished to show that I was a practical man, too, and so I made answer: "What is the cause of the working-man's discontent?It is very simple: the walking delegate. "

IV

I suppose I could not have fairly claimed any great originality for mynotion that the walking delegate was the cause of the labor troubles: heis regularly assigned as the reason of a strike in the newspapers, and isreprobated for his evil agency by the editors, who do not fail to read theworking-men many solemn lessons and fervently warn them against him, assoon as the strike begins to go wrong--as it nearly always does. Iunderstand from them that the walking delegate is an irresponsible tyrant, who emerges from the mystery that habitually hides him and from time totime orders a strike in mere rancor of spirit and plenitude of power, andthen leaves the working-men and their families to suffer the consequences, while he goes off somewhere and rolls in the lap of luxury, careless ofthe misery he has created. Between his debauches of vicious idleness andhis accesses of baleful activity he is employed in poisoning the mind ofthe working-men against his real interests and real friends. This isperfectly easy, because the American working-man, though singularly shrewdand sensible in other respects, is the victim of an unaccountableobliquity of vision which keeps him from seeing his real interests andreal friends--or, at least, from knowing them when he sees them. 

There could be no doubt, I thought, in the mind of any reasonable personthat the walking delegate was the source of the discontent among ourproletariate, and I alleged him with a confidence which met the approvalof the professor, apparently, for he nodded, as if to say that I had hitthe nail on the head this time; and the minister seemed to be freshlyimpressed with a notion that could not be new to him. The lawyer and thedoctor were silent, as if waiting for the banker to speak again; but hewas silent, too. The manufacturer, to my chagrin, broke into a laugh. "I'mafraid, " he said, with a sardonic levity which surprised me, "you'll haveto go a good deal deeper than the walking delegate. He's a symptom; heisn't the disease. The thing keeps on and on, and it seems to be alwaysabout wages; but it isn't about wages at the bottom. Some of those fellowsknow it and some of them don't, but the real discontent is with the wholesystem, with the nature of things. I had a curious revelation on thatpoint the last time I tried to deal with my men as a union. They werealways bothering me about this and about that, and there was no end to thebickering. I yielded point after point, but it didn't make any difference. It seemed as if the more I gave the more they asked. At last I made up mymind to try to get at the real inwardness of the matter, and I didn't waitfor their committee to come to me--I sent for their leading man, and saidI wanted to have it out with him. He wasn't a bad fellow, and when I gotat him, man to man that way, I found he had sense, and he had ideas--it'sno use pretending those fellows are fools; he had thought about his sideof the question, anyway. I said: 'Now what does it all mean? Do you wantthe earth, or don't you? When is it going to end?' I offered him somethingto take, but he said he didn't drink, and we compromised on cigars. 'Nowwhen is it going to end?' said I, and I pressed it home, and wouldn't lethim fight off from the point. 'Do you mean when is it all going to end?'said he. 'Yes, ' said I, 'all. I'm sick of it. If there's any way out I'dlike to know it. ' 'Well, ' said he, 'I'll tell you, if you want to know. It's all going to end when you get the same amount of money for the sameamount of work as we do. '"

We all laughed uproariously. The thing was deliciously comical; andnothing, I thought, attested the Altrurian's want of humor like hisfailure to appreciate this joke. He did not even smile in asking: "Andwhat did you say?"

"Well, " returned the manufacturer, with cosey enjoyment, "I asked him ifthe men would take the concern and run it themselves. " We laughed again;this seemed even better than the other joke. "But he said, 'No'; theywould not like to do that. And then I asked him just what they would like, if they could have their own way, and he said they would like to have merun the business, and all share alike. I asked him what was the sense ofthat, and why, if I could do something that all of them put togethercouldn't do, I shouldn't be paid more than all of them put together; andhe said that if a man did his best he ought to be paid as much as the bestman. I asked him if that was the principle their union was founded on, andhe said, 'Yes, ' that the very meaning of their union was the protection ofthe weak by the strong and the equalization of earnings among all who dotheir best. "

We waited for the manufacturer to go on, but he made a dramatic pause atthis point, as if to let it sink into our minds; and he did not speakuntil the Altrurian prompted him with the question, "And what did youfinally do?"

"I saw there was only one way out for me, and I told the fellow I did notthink I could do business on that principle. We parted friends, but thenext Saturday I locked them out and smashed their union. They came back, most of them--they had to--but I've treated with them ever since 'asindividuals. '"

"And they're much better off in your hands than they were in the union, "said the professor. 

"I don't know about that, " said the manufacturer, "but I'm sure I am. "

We laughed with him, all but the minister, whose mind seemed to havecaught upon some other point, and who sat absently by. 

"And is it your opinion, from what you know of the working-man generally, that they all have this twist in their heads?" the professor asked. 

"They have, until they begin to rise. Then they get rid of it mighty soon. Let a man save something--enough to get a house of his own, and take aboarder or two, and perhaps have a little money at interest--and he seesthe matter in another light. "

"Do you think he sees it more clearly?" asked the minister. 

"He sees it differently. "

"What do you think?" the minister pursued, turning to the lawyer. "You areused to dealing with questions of justice--"

"Rather more with questions of law, I'm afraid, " the other returned, pleasantly, putting his feet together before him and looking down at themin a way he had. "But, still, I have a great interest in questions ofjustice, and I confess that I find a certain wild equity in thisprinciple, which I see nobody could do business on. It strikes me asidyllic--it's a touch of real poetry in the rough-and-tumble prose of oureconomic life. "

He referred this to me as something I might appreciate in my quality ofliterary man, and I responded in my quality of practical man: "There'scertainly more rhyme than reason in it. "

He turned again to the minister:

"I suppose the ideal of the Christian state is the family?"

"I hope so, " said the minister, with the gratitude that I have seen peopleof his cloth show when men of the world conceded premises which the worldusually contests; it has seemed to me pathetic. 

"And if that is the case, why, the logic of the postulate is that theprosperity of the weakest is the sacred charge and highest happiness ofall the stronger. But the law has not recognized any such principle, ineconomics at least, and if the labor unions are based upon it they areoutlaw, so far as any hope of enforcing it is concerned; and it is bad formen to feel themselves outlaw. How is it, " the lawyer continued, turningto the Altrurian, "in your country? We can see no issue here, if the firstprinciple of organized labor antagonizes the first principle of business. "

"But I don't understand precisely yet what the first principle of businessis, " returned my guest. 

"Ah, that raises another interesting question, " said the lawyer. "Ofcourse, every business man solves the problem practically according to histemperament and education, and I suppose that on first thoughts everybusiness man would answer you accordingly. But perhaps the personalequation is something you wish to eliminate from the definition. "

"Yes, of course. "

"Still, I would rather not venture upon it first, " said the lawyer. "Professor, what should you say was the first principle of business?"

"Buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, " the professorpromptly answered. 

"We will pass the parson and the doctor and the novelist as witnesses ofno value. They can't possibly have any cognizance of the first principleof business; their affair is to look after the souls and bodies andfancies of other people. But what should you say it was?" he asked thebanker. 

"I should say it was an enlightened conception of one's own interests. "

"And you?"

The manufacturer had no hesitation in answering: "The good of Number One, first, last, and all the time. There may be a difference of opinion aboutthe best way to get at it; the long way may be the better, or the shortway; the direct way or the oblique way, or the purely selfish way, or thepartly selfish way; but if you ever lose sight of that end you might aswell shut up shop. That seems to be the first law of nature, as well asthe first law of business. "

"Ah, we mustn't go to nature for our morality, " the minister protested. 

"We were not talking of morality, " said the manufacturer; "we were talkingof business. "

This brought the laugh on the minister, but the lawyer cut it short:"Well, then, I don't really see why the trades-unions are not asbusiness-like as the syndicates in their dealings with all those outsideof themselves. Within themselves they practise an altruism of the highestorder, but it is a tribal altruism; it is like that which prompts a Siouxto share his last mouthful with a starving Sioux, and to take the scalp ofa starving Apache. How is it with your trades-unions in Altruria?" heasked my friend. 

"We have no trades-unions in Altruria, " he began. 

"Happy Altruria!" cried the professor. 

"We had them formerly, " the Altrurian went on, "as you have them now. Theyclaimed, as I suppose yours do, that they were forced into existence bythe necessities of the case; that without union the working-man was unableto meet the capitalist on anything like equal terms, or to withstand hisencroachments and oppressions. But to maintain themselves they had toextinguish industrial liberty among the working-men themselves, and theyhad to practise great cruelties against those who refused to join them orwho rebelled against them. "

"They simply destroy them here, " said the professor. 

"Well, " said the lawyer, from his judicial mind, "the great syndicateshave no scruples in destroying a capitalist who won't come into them orwho tries to go out. They don't club him or stone him, but they under-sellhim and freeze him out; they don't break his head, but they bankrupt him. The principle is the same. "

"Don't interrupt Mr. Homos, " the banker entreated. "I am very curious toknow just how they got rid of labor unions in Altruria. "

"We had syndicates, too, and finally we had the _reductio ad absurdum_--wehad a federation of labor unions find a federation of syndicates, thatdivided the nation into two camps. The situation was not only impossible, but it was insupportably ridiculous. "

I ventured to say: "It hasn't become quite so much of a joke with us yet. "

"Isn't it in a fair way to become so?" asked the doctor; and he turned tothe lawyer: "What should you say was the logic of events among us for thelast ten or twenty years?"

"There's nothing so capricious as the logic of events. It's like a woman'sreasoning--you can't tell what it's aimed at, or where it's going to fetchup; all that you can do is to keep out of the way if possible. We may cometo some such condition of things as they have in Altruria, where the faithof the whole nation is pledged to secure every citizen in the pursuit ofhappiness; or we may revert to some former condition, and the master mayagain own the man; or we may hitch and joggle along indefinitely, as weare doing now. "

"But come, now, " said the banker, while he laid a caressing touch on theAltrurian's shoulder, "you don't mean to say honestly that everybody workswith his hands in Altruria?"

"Yes, certainly. We are mindful, as a whole people, of the divine law--'Inthe sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread. '"

"But the capitalists? I'm anxious about Number One, you see. "

"We have none. "

"I forgot, of course. But the lawyers, the doctors, the parsons, thenovelists?"

"They all do their share of hand-work. "

The lawyer said: "That seems to dispose of the question of the working-manin society. But how about your minds? When do you cultivate your minds?When do the ladies of Altruria cultivate their minds, if they have to dotheir own work, as I suppose they do? Or is it only the men who work, ifthey happen to be the husbands and fathers of the upper classes?"

The Altrurian seemed to be sensible of the kindly scepticism whichpersisted in our reception of his statements, after all we had read ofAltruria. He smiled indulgently, and said: "You mustn't imagine that workin Altruria is the same as it is here. As we all work, the amount thateach one need do is very little, a few hours each day at the most, so thatevery man and woman has abundant leisure and perfect spirits for thehigher pleasures which the education of their whole youth has fitted themto enjoy. If you can understand a state of things where the sciences andarts and letters are cultivated for their own sake, and not as a means oflivelihood--"

"No, " said the lawyer, smiling, "I'm afraid we can't conceive of that. Weconsider the pinch of poverty the highest incentive that a man can have. If our gifted friend here, " he said, indicating me, "were not kept like atoad under the harrow, with his nose on the grindstone, and the poorhousestaring him in the face--"

"For Heaven's sake, " I cried out, "don't mix your metaphors so, anyway!"

"If it were not for that and all the other hardships that literary menundergo--

 'Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail'--

his novels probably wouldn't be worth reading. "

"Ah!" said the Altrurian, as if he did not quite follow this joking; and, to tell the truth, I never find the personal thing in very good taste. "You will understand, then, how extremely difficult it is for me toimagine a condition of things like yours--although I have it under my veryeyes--where the money consideration is the first consideration. "

"Oh, excuse me, " urged the minister; "I don't think that's quite thecase. "

"I beg your pardon, " said the Altrurian, sweetly; "you can see how easilyI go astray. "

"Why, I don't know, " the banker interposed, "that you are so far out inwhat you say. If you had said that money was always the first motive, Ishould have been inclined to dispute you, too; but when you say that moneyis the first consideration, I think you are quite right. Unless a mansecures his financial basis for his work, he can't do his work. It'snonsense to pretend otherwise. So the money consideration is the firstconsideration. People here have to live by their work, and to live theymust have money. Of course, we all recognize a difference in thequalities, as well as in the kinds, of work. The work of the laborer maybe roughly defined as the necessity of his life; the work of the businessman as the means, and the work of the artist and scientist as the end. We might refine upon these definitions and make them closer, but theywill serve for illustration as they are. I don't think there can beany question as to which is the highest kind of work; some truths areself-evident. He is a fortunate man whose work is an end, and everybusiness man sees this, and owns it to himself, at least when he meetssome man of an aesthetic or scientific occupation. He knows that thisluckier fellow has a joy in his work which he can never feel in business;that his success in it can never be embittered by the thought that it isthe failure of another; that if he does it well, it is pure good; thatthere cannot be any competition in it--there can be only a nobleemulation, as far as the work itself is concerned. He can always look upto his work, for it is something above him; and a business man often hasto look down upon his business, for it is often beneath him, unless he isa pretty low fellow. "

I listened to all this in surprise; I knew that the banker was acultivated man, a man of university training, and that he was a reader anda thinker; but he had always kept a certain reserve in his talk, which henow seemed to have thrown aside for the sake of the Altrurian, or becausethe subject had a charm that lured him out of himself. "Well, now, " hecontinued, "the question is of the money consideration, which is the firstconsideration with us all: does it, or doesn't it degrade the work, whichis the life, of those among us whose work is the highest? I understandthat this is the misgiving which troubles you in view of our conditions?"

The Altrurian assented, and I thought it a proof of the banker's innatedelicacy that he did not refer the matter, so far as it concerned theaesthetic life and work, to me; I was afraid he was going to do so. But hecourteously proposed to keep the question impersonal, and he went on toconsider it himself: "Well, I don't suppose any one can satisfy you fully. But I should say that it put such men under a double strain, and perhapsthat is the reason why so many of them break down in a calling that iscertainly far less exhausting than business. On one side, the artist iskept to the level of the working-man, of the animal, of the creature whosesole affair is to get something to eat and somewhere to sleep. This isthrough his necessity. On the other side, he is exalted to the height ofbeings who have no concern but with the excellence of their work, whichthey were born and divinely authorized to do. This is through his purpose. Between the two, I should say that he got mixed, and that his work showsit. "

None of the others said anything, and, since I had not been personallyappealed to, I felt the freer to speak. "If you will suppose me to bespeaking from observation rather than experience--" I began. 

"By all means, " said the banker, "go on;" and the rest made haste invarious forms to yield me the word. 

"I should say that such a man certainly got mixed, but that his work keptitself pure from the money consideration, as it were, in spite of him. Apainter or actor, or even a novelist, is glad to get all he can for hiswork, and, such is our fallen nature, he does get all he knows how to get:but, when he has once fairly passed into his work, he loses himself in it. He does not think whether it will pay or not, whether it will be popularor not, but whether he can make it good or not. "

"Well, that is conceivable, " said the banker. "But wouldn't he rather dosomething he would get less for, if he could afford it, than the thing heknows he will get more for? Doesn't the money consideration influence hischoice of subject?"

"Oddly enough, I don't believe it does, " I answered, after a moment'sreflection. "A man makes his choice once for all when he embraces theaesthetic life, or, rather, it is made for him; no other life seemspossible. I know there is a general belief that an artist does the kind ofthing he has made go because it pays; but this only shows the prevalenceof business ideals. If he did not love to do the thing he does, he couldnot do it well, no matter how richly it paid. "

"I am glad to hear it, " said the banker, and he added to the Altrurian:"So, you see, we are not so bad as one would think. We are illogicallybetter, in fact. "

"Yes, " the other assented. "I knew something of your literature as well asyour conditions before I left home, and I perceived that by some anomalythe one was not tainted by the other. It is a miraculous proof of thedivine mission of the poet. "

"And the popular novelist, " the lawyer whispered in my ear, but loudenough for the rest to hear, and they all testified their amusement at mycost. 

The Altrurian, with his weak sense of humor, passed the joke. "It shows nosigns of corruption from greed, but I can't help thinking that, fine as itis, it might have been much finer if the authors who produced it had beenabsolutely freed to their work, and had never felt the spur of need. "

"Are they absolutely freed to it in Altruria?" asked the professor. "Iunderstood you that everybody had to work for his living in Altruria. "

"That is a mistake. Nobody works for his living in Altruria; he works forothers' living. "

"Ah, that is precisely what our working-men object to doing here, " saidthe manufacturer. "In that last interview of mine with the walkingdelegate he had the impudence to ask me why my men should work for myliving as well as their own. "

"He couldn't imagine that you were giving them the work to do--the verymeans of life, " said the professor. 

"Oh no, that's the last thing those fellows want to think of. "

"Perhaps, " the Altrurian suggested, "they might not have found it such ahardship to work for your living if their own had been assured, as it iswith us. If you will excuse my saying it, we should think it monstrous inAltruria for any man to have another's means of life in his power; and inour condition it is hardly imaginable. Do you really have it in your powerto take away a man's opportunity to earn a living?"

The manufacturer laughed uneasily. "It is in my power to take away hislife; but I don't habitually shoot my fellow-men, and I never dismissed aman yet without good reason. "

"Oh, I beg your pardon, " said the Altrurian. "I didn't dream of accusingyou of such inhumanity. But, you see, our whole system is so verydifferent that, as I said, it is hard for me to conceive of yours, and Iam very curious to understand its workings. If you shot your fellow-man, as you say, the law would punish you; but if, for some reason that youdecided to be good, you took away his means of living, and he actuallystarved to death--"

"Then the law would have nothing to do with it, " the professor replied forthe manufacturer, who did not seem ready to answer. "But that is not theway things fall out. The man would be supported in idleness, probably, till he got another job, by his union, which would take the matter up. "

"But I thought that our friend did not employ union labor, " returned theAltrurian. 

I found all this very uncomfortable, and tried to turn the talk back to apoint that I felt curious about: "But in Altruria, if the literary classis not exempt from the rule of manual labor, where do they find time andstrength to write?"

"Why, you must realize that our manual labor is never engrossing orexhausting. It is no more than is necessary to keep the body in health. Ido not see how you remain well here, you people of sedentary occupations. "

"Oh, we all take some sort of exercise. We walk several hours a day, or werow, or we ride a bicycle, or a horse, or we fence. "

"But to us, " returned the Altrurian, with a growing frankness whichnothing but the sweetness of his manner would have excused, "exercise forexercise would appear stupid. The barren expenditure of force that beganand ended in itself, and produced nothing, we should--if you will excusemy saying so--look upon as childish, if not insane or immoral. "

V

At this moment the lady who had hailed me so gayly from the top of thecoach while I stood waiting for the Altrurian to help the porter with thebaggage, just after the arrival of the train, came up with her husband toour little group and said to me: "I want to introduce my husband to you. He adores your books. " She went on much longer to this effect, while theother men grinned round and her husband tried to look as if it were alltrue, and her eyes wandered to the Altrurian, who listened gravely. I knewperfectly well that she was using her husband's zeal for my fiction tomake me present my friend; but I did not mind that, and I introduced himto both of them. She took possession of him at once and began walking himoff down the piazza, while her husband remained with me, and the membersof our late conference drifted apart. I was not sorry to have it broken upfor the present; it seemed to me that it had lasted quite long enough, andI lighted a cigar with the husband, and we strolled together in thedirection his wife had taken. 

He began, apparently in compliment to literature in my person: "Yes, Ilike to have a book where I can get at it when we're not going out to thetheatre, and I want to quiet my mind down after business. I don't caremuch what the book is; my wife reads to me till I drop off, and then shefinishes the book herself and tells me the rest of the story. You see, business takes it out of you so! Well, I let my wife do most of thereading, anyway. She knows pretty much everything that's going in thatline. We haven't got any children, and it occupies her mind. She's up toall sorts of things--she's artistic, and she's musical, and she'sdramatic, and she's literary. Well, I like to have her. Women are funny, anyway. "

He was a good-looking, good-natured, average American of the money-makingtype; I believe he was some sort of a broker, but I do not quite know whathis business was. As we walked up and down the piazza, keeping a discreetlittle distance from the corner where his wife had run off to with hercapture, he said he wished he could get more time with her in the summer--but he supposed I knew what business was. He was glad she could have therest, anyway; she needed it. 

"By-the-way, " he asked, "who is this friend of yours? The women are allcrazy about him, and it's been an even thing between my wife and MissGroundsel which would fetch him first. But I'll bet on my wife every time, when it comes to a thing like that. He's a good-looking fellow--some kindof foreigner, I believe; pretty eccentric, too, I guess. Where isAltruria, anyway?"

I told him, and he said: "Oh yes. Well, if we are going to restrictimmigration, I suppose we sha'n't see many more Altrurians, and we'dbetter make the most of this one. Heigh?"

I do not know why this innocent pleasantry piqued me to say: "If Iunderstand the Altrurians, my dear fellow, nothing could induce them toemigrate to America. As far as I can make out, they would regard it verymuch as we should regard settling among the Eskimos. "

"Is that so?" asked my new acquaintance, with perfect good temper. "Why?"

"Really, I can't say, and I don't know that I've explicit authority for mystatement. "

"They are worse than the English used to be, " he went on. "I didn't knowthat there were any foreigners who looked at us in that light now. Ithought the war settled all that. "

I sighed. "There are a good many things that the war didn't settle sodefinitely as we've been used to thinking, I'm afraid. But, for thatmatter, I fancy an Altrurian would regard the English as a little lower inthe scale of savagery than ourselves even. "

"Is that so? Well, that's pretty good on the English, anyway, " said mycompanion, and he laughed with an easy satisfaction that I envied him. 

"My dear!" his wife called to him from where she was sitting with theAltrurian, "I wish you would go for my shawl. I begin to feel the air alittle. "

"I'll go if you'll tell me where, " he said, and he confided to me, "Neverknows where her shawl is one-quarter of the time. "

"Well, I think I left it in the office somewhere. You might ask at thedesk; or perhaps it's in the rack by the dining-room door--or maybe up inour room. "

"I thought so, " said her husband, with another glance at me, as if it werethe greatest fun in the world, and he started amiably off. 

I went and took a chair by the lady and the Altrurian, and she began atonce: "Oh, I'm so glad you've come! I have been trying to enlighten Mr. Homos about some of the little social peculiarities among us that he findsso hard to understand. He was just now, " the lady continued, "wanting toknow why all the natives out here were not invited to go in and join ouryoung people in the dance, and I've been trying to tell him that weconsider it a great favor to let them come and take up so much of thepiazza and look in at the windows. "

She gave a little laugh of superiority, and twitched her pretty head inthe direction of the young country girls and country fellows who werethronging the place that night in rather unusual numbers. They were wellenough looking, and, as it was Saturday night, they were in their best. Isuppose their dress could have been criticised; the young fellows wereclothed by the ready-made clothing-store, and the young girls after theirown devices from the fashion papers; but their general effect was good, and their behavior was irreproachable; they were very quiet--if anything, too quiet. They took up a part of the piazza that was yielded them bycommon usage, and sat watching the hop inside, not so much enviously, Ithought, as wistfully; and for the first time it struck me as odd thatthey should have no part in the gayety. I had often seen them therebefore, but I had never thought it strange they should be shut out. It hadalways seemed quite normal, but now, suddenly, for one baleful moment, itseemed abnormal. I suppose it was the talk we had been having about theworking-men in society which caused me to see the thing as the Altrurianmust have seen it; but I was, nevertheless, vexed with him for havingasked such a question, after he had been so fully instructed upon thepoint. It was malicious of him, or it was stupid. I hardened my heart, andanswered: "You might have told him, for one thing, that they were notdancing because they had not paid the piper. "

"Then the money consideration enters even into your social pleasures?"asked the Altrurian. 

"Very much. Doesn't it with you?"

He evaded this question, as he evaded all straightforward questionsconcerning his country: "We have no money consideration, you know. But doI understand that all your social entertainments are paid for by theguests?"

"Oh no, not so bad as that, quite. There are a great many that the hostpays for. Even here, in a hotel, the host furnishes the music and the roomfree to the guests of the house. "

"And none are admitted from the outside?"

"Oh yes, people are welcome from all the other hotels and boarding-housesand the private cottages. The young men are especially welcome; there arenot enough young men in the hotel to go round, you see. " In fact, we couldsee that some of the pretty girls within were dancing with other girls;half-grown boys were dangling from the waists of tall young ladies andwaltzing on tiptoe. 

"Isn't that rather droll?" asked the Altrurian. 

"It's grotesque!" I said, and I felt ashamed of it. "But what are you todo? The young men are hard at work in the cities, as many as can get workthere, and the rest are out West, growing up with the country. There aretwenty young girls for every young man at all the summer resorts in theEast. "

"But what would happen if these young farmers--I suppose they arefarmers--were invited in to take part in the dance?" asked my friend. 

"But that is impossible. "

"Why?"

"Really, Mrs. Makely, I think I shall have to give him back to you, " Isaid. 

The lady laughed. "I am not sure that I want him back. "

"Oh yes, " the Altrurian entreated, with unwonted perception of the humor. "I know that I must be very trying with my questions; but do not abandonme to the solitude of my own conjectures. They are dreadful!"

"Well, I won't, " said the lady, with another laugh. "And I will try totell you what would happen if those farmers, or farm-hands, or whateverthey are, were asked in. The mammas would be very indignant, and the youngladies would be scared, and nobody would know what to do, and the dancewould stop. "

"Then the young ladies prefer to dance with one another and with littleboys--"

"No, they prefer to dance with young men of their own station; they wouldrather not dance at all than dance with people beneath them. I don't sayanything against these natives here; they are very civil and decent. Butthey have not the same social traditions as the young ladies; they wouldbe out of place with them, and they would feel it. "

"Yes, I can see that they are not fit to associate with them, " said theAltrurian, with a gleam of commonsense that surprised me, "and that aslong as your present conditions endure they never can be. You must excusethe confusion which the difference between your political ideals and youreconomic ideals constantly creates in me. I always think of youpolitically first, and realize you as a perfect democracy; then come theseother facts, in which I cannot perceive that you differ from thearistocratic countries of Europe in theory, or practice. It is verypuzzling. Am I right in supposing that the effect of your economy is toestablish insuperable inequalities among you, and to forbid the hope ofthe brotherhood which your policy proclaims?"

Mrs. Makely looked at me as if she were helpless to grapple with hismeaning, and, for fear of worse, I thought best to evade it. I said: "Idon't believe that anybody is troubled by those distinctions. We are usedto them, and everybody acquiesces in them, which is a proof that they area very good thing. "

Mrs. Makely now came to my support. "The Americans are very high-spirited, in every class, and I don't believe one of those nice farm-boys would likebeing asked in any better than the young ladies. You can't imagine howproud some of them are. "

"So that they suffer from being excluded as inferiors?"

"Oh, I assure you they don't feel themselves inferior! They considerthemselves as good as anybody. There are some very interesting charactersamong them. Now, there is a young girl sitting at the first window, withher profile outlined by the light, whom I feel it an honor to speak to. That's her brother, standing there with her--that tall, gaunt young manwith a Roman face; it's such a common type here in the mountains. Theirfather was a soldier, and he distinguished himself so in one of the lastbattles that he was promoted. He was badly wounded, but he never took apension; he just came back to his farm and worked on till he died. Now theson has the farm, and he and his sister live there with their mother. Thedaughter takes in sewing, and in that way they manage to make both endsmeet. The girl is really a first-rate seamstress, and so cheap! I give hera good deal of my work in the summer, and we are quite friends. She's veryfond of reading; the mother is an invalid, but she reads aloud while thedaughter sews, and you've no idea how many books they get through. Whenshe comes for sewing, I like to talk with her about them; I always haveher sit down; it's hard to realize that she isn't a lady. I'm a good dealcriticised, I know, and I suppose I do spoil her a little; it puts notionsinto such people's heads, if you meet them in that way; they're prettyfree and independent as it is. But when I'm with Lizzie I forget thatthere is any difference between us; I can't help loving the child. Youmust take Mr. Homos to see them, Mr. Twelvemough. They've got the father'ssword hung up over the head of the mother's bed; it's very touching. Butthe poor little place is so bare!"

Mrs. Makely sighed, and there fell a little pause, which she broke with aquestion she had the effect of having kept back. 

"There is one thing I should like to ask you, too, Mr. Homos. Is it truethat everybody in Altruria does some kind of manual labor?"

"Why, certainly, " he answered, quite as if he had been an American. 

"Ladies, too? Or perhaps you have none. "

I thought this rather offensive, but I could not see that the Altrurianhad taken it ill. "Perhaps we had better try to understand each otherclearly before I answer that question. You have no titles of nobility asthey have in England--"

"No, indeed! I hope we have outgrown those superstitions, " said Mrs. Makely, with a republican fervor that did my heart good. "It is a wordthat we apply first of all to the moral qualities of a person. "

"But you said just now that you sometimes forgot that your seamstress wasnot a lady. Just what did you mean by that?"

Mrs. Makely hesitated. "I meant--I suppose I meant--that she had not thesurroundings of a lady; the social traditions. "

"Then it has something to do with social as well as moral qualities--withranks and classes?"

"Classes, yes; but, as you know, we have no ranks in America. " TheAltrurian took off his hat and rubbed an imaginable perspiration from hisforehead. He sighed deeply. "It is all very difficult. "

"Yes, " Mrs. Makely assented, "I suppose it is. All foreigners find it so. In fact, it is something that you have to live into the notion of; itcan't be explained. "

"Well, then, my dear madam, will you tell me without further question whatyou understand by a lady, and let me live into the notion of it at myleisure?"

"I will do my best, " said Mrs. Makely. "But it would be so much easier totell you _who_ was or who was not a lady. However, your acquaintance is solimited yet that I must try to do something in the abstract and impersonalfor you. In the first place, a lady must be above the sordid anxieties inevery way. She need not be very rich, but she must have enough, so thatshe need not be harassed about making both ends meet, when she ought to bedevoting herself to her social duties. The time is past with us when alady could look after the dinner, and perhaps cook part of it herself, andthen rush in to receive her guests and do the amenities. She must have acertain kind of house, so that her entourage won't seem cramped and mean, and she must have nice frocks, of course, and plenty of them. She needn'tbe of the smart set; that isn't at all necessary; but she can't afford tobe out of the fashion. Of course, she must have a certain training. Shemust have cultivated tastes; she must know about art and literature andmusic, and all those kind of things, and, though it isn't necessary to goin for anything in particular, it won't hurt her to have a fad or two. Thenicest kind of fad is charity; and people go in for that a great deal. Ithink sometimes they use it to work up with, and there are some who usereligion in the same way; I think it's horrid; but it's perfectly safe;you can't accuse them of doing it. I'm happy to say, though, that merechurch association doesn't count socially so much as it used to. Charityis a great deal more insidious. But you see how hard it is to definea lady. So much has to be left to the nerves, in all these things. Andthen it's changing all the time; Europe's coming in, and the old Americanideals are passing away. Things that people did ten years ago would beimpossible now, or at least ridiculous. You wouldn't be considered vulgar, quite, but you would certainly be considered a back number, and that'salmost as bad. Really, " said Mrs. Makely, "I don't believe I can tell youwhat a lady is. "

We all laughed together at her frank confession. The Altrurian asked: "Butdo I understand that one of her conditions is that she shall have nothingwhatever to do?"

"Nothing to _do_!" cried Mrs. Makely. "A lady is busy from morning tillnight. She always goes to bed perfectly worn out. "

"But with what?" asked the Altrurian. 

"With making herself agreeable and her house attractive, with going tolunches and teas and dinners and concerts and theatres and artexhibitions, and charity meetings and receptions, and with writing athousand and one notes about them, and accepting and declining, and givinglunches and dinners, and making calls and receiving them, and I don't knowwhat all. It's the most hideous slavery!" Her voice rose into somethinglike a shriek; one could see that her nerves were going at the merethought of it all. "You don't have a moment to yourself; your life isn'tyour own. "

"But the lady isn't allowed to do any useful kind of work?"

"_Work_! Don't you call all that work, and _useful_? I'm sure I envy thecook in my kitchen at times; I envy the woman that scrubs my floors. Stop!Don't ask why I don't go into my kitchen, or get down on my knees with themop. It isn't possible. You simply can't. Perhaps you could if you werevery _grande dame_, but if you're anywhere near the line of necessity, orever have been, you can't. Besides, if we did do our own household work, as I understand your Altrurian ladies do, what would become of the servantclass? We should be taking away their living, and that would be wicked. "

"It would certainly be wrong to take away the living of afellow-creature, " the Altrurian gravely admitted, "and I see the obstaclein your way. "

"It's a mountain, " said the lady, with exhaustion in her voice, but areturning amiability; his forbearance must have placated her. 

"May I ask what the use of your society life is?" he ventured, after amoment. 

"Use? Why should it have any? It kills time. "

"Then you are shut up to a hideous slavery without use, except to killtime, and you cannot escape from it without taking away the living ofthose dependent on you?"

"Yes, " I put in, "and that is a difficulty that meets us at every turn. Itis something that Matthew Arnold urged with great effect in his paper onthat crank of a Tolstoy. He asked what would become of the people who needthe work if we served and waited on ourselves, as Tolstoy preached. Thequestion is unanswerable. "

"That is true; in your conditions, it is unanswerable, " said theAltrurian. 

"I think, " said Mrs. Makely, "that, under the circumstances, we do prettywell. "

"Oh, I don't presume to censure you. And if you believe that yourconditions are the best--"

"We believe them the best in the best of all possible worlds, " I said, devoutly; and it struck me that, if ever we came to have a nationalchurch, some such affirmation as that concerning our economical conditionsought to be in the confession of faith. 

The Altrurian's mind had not followed mine so far. "And your young girls, "he asked of Mrs. Makely--"how is their time occupied?"

"You mean after they come out in society?"

"I suppose so. "

She seemed to reflect. "I don't know that it is very differently occupied. Of course, they have their own amusements; they have their dances, andlittle clubs, and their sewing-societies. I suppose that even an Altrurianwould applaud their sewing for the poor?" Mrs. Makely asked, rathersatirically. 

"Yes, " he answered; and then he asked: "Isn't it taking work away fromsome needy seamstress, though? But I suppose you excuse it to thethoughtlessness of youth. "

Mrs. Makely did not say, and he went on: "What I find it so hard tounderstand is how you ladies can endure a life of mere nervous exertion, such as you have been describing to me. I don't see how you keep well. "

"We _don't_ keep well, " said Mrs. Makely, with the greatest amusement. "Idon't suppose that when you get above the working classes, till you reachthe very rich, you would find a perfectly well woman in America. "

"Isn't that rather extreme?" I ventured to ask. 

"No, " said Mrs. Makely, "it's shamefully moderate, " and she seemed todelight in having made out such a bad case for her sex. You can't stop awoman of that kind when she gets started; I had better left it alone. 

"But, " said the Altrurian, "if you are forbidden by motives of humanityfrom doing any sort of manual labor, which you must leave to those wholive by it, I suppose you take some sort of exercise?"

"Well, " said Mrs. Makely, shaking her head gayly, "we prefer to takemedicine. "

"You must approve of that, " I said to the Altrurian, "as you considerexercise for its own sake insane or immoral. But, Mrs. Makely, " Ientreated, "you're giving me away at a tremendous rate. I have just beentelling Mr. Homos that you ladies go in for athletics so much now in yoursummer outings that there is danger of your becoming physically as well asintellectually superior to us poor fellows. Don't take that consolationfrom me. "

"I won't, altogether, " she said. "I couldn't have the heart to, after thepretty way you've put it. I don't call it very athletic, sitting around onhotel piazzas all summer long, as nineteen-twentieths of us do. But Idon't deny that there is a Remnant, as Matthew Arnold calls them, who dogo in for tennis and boating and bathing and tramping and climbing. " Shepaused, and then she concluded, gleefully: "And you ought to see whatwrecks they get home in the fall!"

The joke was on me; I could not help laughing, though I felt rathersheepish before the Altrurian. Fortunately, he did not pursue the inquiry;his curiosity had been given a slant aside from it. 

"But your ladies, " he asked, "they have the summer for rest, however theyuse it. Do they generally leave town? I understood Mr. Twelvemough to sayso, " he added, with a deferential glance at me. 

"Yes, you may say it is the universal custom in the class that can affordit, " said Mrs. Makely. She proceeded as if she felt a tacit censure in hisquestion. "It wouldn't be the least use for us to stay and fry through oursummers in the city simply because our fathers and brothers had to. Besides, we are worn out, at the end of the season, and they want us tocome away as much as we want to come. "

"Ah, I have always heard that the Americans are beautiful in theirattitude toward women. "

"They are perfect dears, " said Mrs. Makely, "and here comes one of thebest of them. "

At that moment her husband came up and laid her shawl across hershoulders. "Whose character is it you're blasting?" he asked, jocosely. 

"Where in the world did you find it?" she asked, meaning the shawl. 

"It was where you left it--on the sofa, in the side parlor. I had to takemy life in my hand when I crossed among all those waltzers in there. Theremust have been as many as three couples on the floor. Poor girls! I pitythem, off at these places. The fellows in town have a good deal bettertime. They've got their clubs, and they've got the theatre, and when theweather gets too much for them they can run off down to the shore for thenight. The places anywhere within an hour's ride are full of fellows. Thegirls don't have to dance with one another there, or with little boys. Ofcourse, that's all right if they like it better. " He laughed at his wife, and winked at me, and smoked swiftly, in emphasis of his irony. 

"Then the young gentlemen whom the young ladies here usually meet insociety are all at work in the cities?" the Altrurian asked him, ratherneedlessly, as I had already said so. 

"Yes, those who are not out West, growing up with the country, except, ofcourse, the fellows who have inherited a fortune. They're mostly off onyachts. "

"But why do your young men go West to grow up with the country?" pursuedmy friend. 

"Because the East is _grown_ up. They have got to hustle, and the West isthe place to hustle. To make money, " added Makely, in response to apuzzled glance of the Altrurian. 

"Sometimes, " said his wife, "I almost hate the name of money. "

"Well, so long as you don't hate the thing, Peggy. "

"Oh, we must have it, I suppose, " she sighed. "They used to say about thegirls who grew into old maids just after the Rebellion that they had losttheir chance in the war for the Union. I think quite as many lose theirchance now in the war for the dollar. "

"Mars hath slain his thousands, but Mammon hath slain his tens ofthousands, " I suggested, lightly; we all like to recognize the facts, solong as we are not expected to do anything about them; then, we deny them. 

"Yes, quite as bad as that, " said Mrs. Makely. 

"Well, my dear, you are expensive, you know, " said her husband, "and if wewant to have you--why, we've got to hustle first. "

"Oh, I don't blame you, you poor things! There's nothing to be done aboutit; it's just got to go on and on; I don't see how it's ever to end. "

The Altrurian had been following us with that air of polite mystificationwhich I had begun to dread in him. "Then, in your good society youpostpone, and even forego, the happiness of life in the struggle to berich?"

"Well, you see, " said Makely, "a fellow don't like to ask a girl to sharea home that isn't as nice as the home she has left. "

"Sometimes, " his wife put in, rather sadly, "I think that it's all amistake, and that we'd be willing to share the privations of the man weloved. "

"Well, " said Makely, with a laugh, "we wouldn't like to risk it. "

I laughed with him, but his wife did not, and in the silence that ensuedthere was nothing to prevent the Altrurian from coming in with another ofhis questions: "How far does this state of things extend downward? Does itinclude the working classes, too?"

"Oh no!" we all answered together, and Mrs. Makely said: "With yourAltrurian ideas, I suppose you would naturally sympathize a great dealmore with the lower classes, and think they had to endure all thehardships in our system; but if you could realize how the struggle goes onin the best society, and how we all have to fight for what we get, ordon't get, you would be disposed to pity our upper classes, too. "

"I am sure I should, " said the Altrurian. 

Makely remarked: "I used to hear my father say that slavery was harder onthe whites than it was on the blacks, and that he wanted it done away withfor the sake of the masters. "

Makely rather faltered in conclusion, as if he were not quite satisfiedwith his remark, and I distinctly felt a want of proportion in it; but Idid not wish to say anything. His wife had no reluctance. 

"Well, there's no comparison between the two things, but the strugglecertainly doesn't affect the working classes as it does us. They go onmarrying and giving in marriage in the old way. They have nothing to lose, and so they can afford it. "

"Blessed am dem what don't expect nuffin! Oh, I tell you, it's aworking-man's country, " said Makely, through his cigar-smoke. "You oughtto see them in town, these summer nights, in the parks and squares andcheap theatres. Their girls are not off for their health, anywhere, andtheir fellows are not off growing up with the country. Their day's work isover, and they're going in for a good time. And, then, walk through thestreets where they live, and see them out on the stoops with their wivesand children! I tell you, it's enough to make a fellow wish he was poorhimself. "

"Yes, " said Mrs. Makely, "it's astonishing how strong and well those womenkeep, with their great families and their hard work. Sometimes I reallyenvy them. "

"Do you suppose, " said the Altrurian, "that they are aware of thesacrifices which the ladies of the upper classes make in leaving all thework to them, and suffering from the nervous debility which seems to bethe outcome of your society life?"

"They have not the remotest idea of it. They have no conception of what asociety woman goes through with. They think we do nothing. They envy us, too, and sometimes they're so ungrateful and indifferent, if you try tohelp them, or get on terms with them, that I believe they hate us. "

"But that comes from ignorance?"

"Yes, though I don't know that they are really any more ignorant of usthan we are of them. It's the other half on both sides. "

"Isn't that a pity, rather?"

"Of course it's a pity, but what can you do? You can't know what peopleare like unless you live like them, and then the question is whether thegame is worth the candle. I should like to know how you manage inAltruria. "

"Why, we have solved the problem in the only way, as you say, that it canbe solved. We all live alike. "

"Isn't that a little, just a very trifling little bit, monotonous?" Mrs. Makely asked, with a smile. "But there is everything, of course, in beingused to it. To an unregenerate spirit--like mine, for example--it seemsintolerable. "

"But why? When you were younger, before you were married, you all lived athome together--or, perhaps, you were an only child?"

"Oh, no indeed! There were ten of us. "

"Then you all lived alike, and shared equally?"

"Yes, but we were a family. "

"We do not conceive of the human race except as a family. "

"Now, excuse me, Mr. Homos, that is all nonsense. You cannot have thefamily feeling without love, and it is impossible to love other people. That talk about the neighbor, and all that, is all well enough--" Shestopped herself, as if she dimly remembered who began that talk, and thenwent on: "Of course, I accept it as a matter of faith, and the spirit ofit, nobody denies that; but what I mean is, that you must have frightfulquarrels all the time. " She tried to look as if this were where she reallymeant to bring up, and he took her on the ground she had chosen. 

"Yes, we have quarrels. Hadn't you at home?"

"We fought like little cats and dogs, at times. "

Makely and I burst into a laugh at her magnanimous frankness. TheAltrurian remained serious. "But, because you lived alike, you knew eachother, and so you easily made up your quarrels. It is quite as simple withus, in our life as a human family. "

This notion of a human family seemed to amuse Mrs. Makely more and more;she laughed and laughed again. "You must excuse me, " she panted, at last, "but I cannot imagine it! No, it is too ludicrous. Just fancy the jars ofan ordinary family multiplied by the population of a whole continent! Why, you must be in a perpetual squabble. You can't have any peace of yourlives. It's worse, far worse, than our way. "

"But, madam, " he began, "you are supposing our family to be made up ofpeople with all the antagonistic interests of your civilization. As amatter of fact--"

"No, no! _I know human nature_, Mr. Homos!" She suddenly jumped up andgave him her hand. "Good-night, " she said, sweetly, and as she drifted offon her husband's arm she looked back at us and nodded in gay triumph. 

The Altrurian turned upon me with unabated interest. "And have you noprovision in your system for finally making the lower classes understandthe sufferings and sacrifices of the upper classes in their behalf? Do youexpect to do nothing to bring them together in mutual kindness?"

"Well, not this evening, " I said, throwing the end of my cigar away. "I'mgoing to bed--aren't you?"

"Not yet. "

"Well, good-night. Are you sure you can find your room?"

"Oh yes. Good-night. "

VI

I left my guest abruptly, with a feeling of vexation not very easilydefinable. His repetition of questions about questions which society hasso often answered, and always in the same way, was not so bad in him as itwould have been in a person of our civilization; he represented a whollydifferent state of things, the inversion of our own, and much could beforgiven him for that reason, just as in Russia much could be forgiven toan American if he formulated his curiosity concerning imperialism from apurely republican experience. I knew that in Altruria, for instance, thepossession of great gifts, of any kind of superiority, involved the senseof obligation to others, and the wish to identify one's self with thegreat mass of men, rather than the ambition to distinguish one's self fromthem; and that the Altrurians honored their gifted men in the measure theydid this. A man reared in such a civilization must naturally find itdifficult to get our point of view; with social inclusion as the ideal, hewould with difficulty conceive of our ideal of social exclusion; but Ithink we had all been very patient with him; we should have made shortwork with an American who had approached us with the same inquiries. Even from a foreigner, the citizen of a republic founded on the notion, elsewhere exploded ever since Cain, that one is his brother's keeper, the things he asked seemed inoffensive only because they were puerile;but they certainly were puerile. I felt that it ought to have beenself-evident to him that when a commonwealth of sixty million Americansbased itself upon the great principle of self-seeking, self-seeking wasthe best thing, and, whatever hardship it seemed to work, it must carrywith it unseen blessings in tenfold measure. If a few hundred thousandfavored Americans enjoyed the privilege of socially contemning all therest, it was as clearly right and just that they should do so as that fourthousand American millionaires should be richer than all the otherAmericans put together. Such a status, growing out of our politicalequality and our material prosperity, must evince a divine purpose to anyone intimate with the designs of Providence, and it seemed a kind ofimpiety to doubt its perfection. I excused the misgivings which I couldnot help seeing in the Altrurian to his alien traditions, and I was awarethat my friends had done so, too. But, if I could judge from myself, hemust have left them all sensible of their effort; and this was notpleasant. I could not blink the fact that although I had openly disagreedwith him on every point of ethics and economics, I was still responsiblefor him as a guest. It was as if an English gentleman had introduced ablatant American Democrat into Tory society; or, rather, as if aSoutherner of the olden time had harbored a Northern Abolitionist andpermitted him to inquire into the workings of slavery among his neighbors. People would tolerate him as my guest for a time, but there must be an endof their patience with the tacit enmity of his sentiments and the explicitvulgarity of his ideals, and when the end came I must be attainted withhim. 

I did not like the notion of this, and I meant to escape it if I could. Iconfess that I would have willingly disowned him, as I had alreadydisavowed his opinions, but there was no way of doing it short of tellinghim to go away, and I was not ready to do that. Something in the man, I donot know what, mysteriously appealed to me. He was not contemptiblypuerile without being lovably childlike, and I could only make up my mindto be more and more frank with him and to try and shield him, as well asmyself, from the effects I dreaded. 

I fell asleep planning an excursion farther into the mountains, whichshould take up the rest of the week that I expected him to stay with me, and would keep him from following up his studies of American life wherethey would be so injurious to both of us as they must in our hotel. Aknock at my door roused me, and I sent a drowsy "Come in!" toward it fromthe bedclothes without looking that way. 

"Good-morning!" came back in the rich, gentle voice of the Altrurian. Ilifted my head with a jerk from the pillow, and saw him standing againstthe closed door, with my shoes in his hand. "Oh, I am sorry I waked you. Ithought--"

"Not at all, not at all, " I said. "It's quite time, I dare say. But yououghtn't to have taken the trouble to bring my shoes in. "

"I wasn't altogether disinterested in it, " he returned. "I wished you tocompliment me on them. Don't you think they are pretty well done, for anamateur?" He came toward my bed, and turned them about in his hands, sothat they would catch the light, and smiled down upon me. 

"I don't understand, " I began. 

"Why, " he said, "I blacked them, you know. "

"You blacked them?"

"Yes, " he returned, easily. "I thought I would go into the baggage-room, after we parted last night, to look for a piece of mine that had not beentaken to my room, and I found the porter there, with his wrist bound up. He said he had strained it in handling a lady's Saratoga--he said aSaratoga was a large trunk--and I begged him to let me relieve him at theboots he was blacking. He refused at first, but I insisted upon trying myhand at a pair, and then he let me go on with the men's boots; he said hecould varnish the ladies' without hurting his wrist. It needed less skillthan I supposed, and after I had done a few pairs he said I could blackboots as well as he. "

"Did anybody see you?" I gasped, and I felt a cold perspiration break outon me. 

"No, we had the whole midnight hour to ourselves. The porter's work withthe baggage was all over, and there was nothing to interrupt thedelightful chat we fell into. He is a very intelligent man, and he told meall about that custom of feeing which you deprecate. He says that theservants hate it as much as the guests; they have to take the tips nowbecause the landlords figure on them in the wages, and they cannot livewithout them. He is a fine, manly fellow, and--"

"Mr. Homos, " I broke in, with the strength I found in his assurance thatno one had seen him helping the porter black boots, "I want to speak veryseriously with you, and I hope you will not be hurt if I speak veryplainly about a matter in which I have your good solely at heart. " Thiswas not quite true, and I winced inwardly a little when he thanked me withthat confounded sincerity of his which was so much like irony; but I wenton: "It is my duty to you, as my guest, to tell you that this thing ofdoing for others is not such a simple matter here, as your peculiartraining leads you to think. You have been deceived by a superficiallikeness; but, really, I do not understand how you could have read all youhave done about us and not realize before coming here that America andAltruria are absolutely distinct and diverse in their actuatingprinciples. They are both republics, I know; but America is a republicwhere every man is for himself, and you cannot help others as you do athome; it is dangerous--it is ridiculous. You must keep this fact in mind, or you will fall into errors that will be very embarrassing to you in yourstay among us, and, " I was forced to add, "to all your friends. Now, Icertainly hoped, after what I had said to you and what my friends hadexplained of our civilization, that you would not have done a thing ofthis kind. I will see the porter, as soon as I am up, and ask him not tomention the matter to any one, but, I confess, I don't like to take anapologetic tone with him; your conditions are so alien to ours that theywill seem incredible to him, and he will think I am stuffing him. "

"I don't believe he will think that, " said the Altrurian, "and I hope youwon't find the case so bad as it seems to you. I am extremely sorry tohave done wrong--"

"Oh, the thing wasn't wrong in itself. It was only wrong under thecircumstances. Abstractly, it is quite right to help a fellow-being whoneeds help; no one denies that, even in a country where every one is forhimself. "

"I am so glad to hear it, " said the Altrurian. "Then, at least, I have notgone radically astray; and I do not think you need take the trouble toexplain the Altrurian ideas to the porter. I have done that already, andthey seemed quite conceivable to him; he said that poor folks had to actupon them, even here, more or less, and that if they did not act upon themthere would be no chance for them at all. He says they have to help oneanother very much as we do at home, and that it is only the rich folksamong you who are independent. I really don't think you need speak to himat all, unless you wish; and I was very careful to guard my offer of helpat the point where I understood from you and your friends that it might doharm. I asked him if there was not some one who would help him out withhis boot-blacking for money, because in that case I should be glad to payhim; but he said there was no one about who would take the job; that hehad to agree to black the boots, or else he would not have got the placeof porter, but that all the rest of the help would consider it a disgrace, and would not help him for love or money. So it seemed quite safe to offerhim my services. "

I felt that the matter was almost hopeless, but I asked: "And what hesaid--didn't that suggest anything else to you?"

"How anything else?" asked the Altrurian, in his turn. 

"Didn't it occur to you that if none of his fellow-servants were willingto help him black boots, and if he did it only because he was obliged to, it was hardly the sort of work for you?"

"Why, no, " said the Altrurian, with absolute simplicity. He must haveperceived the despair I fell into at this answer, for he asked: "Whyshould I have minded doing for others what I should have been willing todo for myself?"

"There are a great many things we are willing to do for ourselves that weare not willing to do for others. But even on that principle, which Ithink false and illogical, you could not be justified. A gentleman is notwilling to black _his own_ boots. It is offensive to his feelings, to hisself-respect; it is something he will not do if he can get anybody else todo it for him. "

"Then in America, " said the Altrurian, "it is not offensive to thefeelings of a gentleman to let another do for him what he would not do forhimself?"

"Certainly not. "

"Ah, " he returned, "then we understand something altogether different bythe word gentleman in Altruria. I see, now, how I have committed amistake. I shall be more careful hereafter. "

I thought I had better leave the subject, and, "By-the-way, " I said, "howwould you like to take a little tramp with me to-day farther up into themountains?"

"I should be delighted, " said the Altrurian, so gratefully that I wasashamed to think why I was proposing the pleasure to him. 

"Well, then, I shall be ready to start as soon as we have had breakfast. Iwill join you down-stairs in half an hour. "

He left me at this hint, though really I was half afraid he might stay andoffer to lend me a hand at my toilet, in the expression of his nationalcharacter. I found him with Mrs. Makely, when I went down, and she began, with a parenthetical tribute to the beauty of the mountains in the morninglight: "Don't be surprised to see me up at this unnatural hour. I don'tknow whether it was the excitement of our talk last night, or what it was, but my sulphonal wouldn't act, though I took fifteen grains, and I was upwith the lark, or should have been, if there had been any lark outside ofliterature to be up with. However, this air is so glorious that I don'tmind losing a night's sleep now and then. I believe that with a littlepractice one could get along without any sleep at all here; at least, _I_could. I'm sorry to say poor Mr. Makely _can't_, apparently. He's makingup for his share of my vigils, and I'm going to breakfast without him. Doyou know, I've done a very bold thing: I've got the head-waiter to giveyou places at our table; I know you'll hate it, Mr. Twelvemough, becauseyou naturally want to keep Mr. Homos to yourself, and I don't blame you atall; but I'm simply not going to _let_ you, and that's all there is aboutit. "

The pleasure I felt at this announcement was not unmixed, but I tried tokeep Mrs. Makely from thinking so, and I was immensely relieved when shefound a chance to say to me, in a low voice: "I know just how you'refeeling, Mr. Twelvemough, and I'm going to help you keep him from doinganything ridiculous, if I can. I _like_ him, and I think it's a perfectshame to have people laughing at him. I know we can manage him betweenus. "

We so far failed, however, that the Altrurian shook hands with thehead-waiter when he pressed open the wire-netting door to let us into thedining-room, and made a bow to our waitress of the sort one makes to alady. But we thought it best to ignore these little errors of his andreserve our moral strength for anything more spectacular. Fortunately wegot through our breakfast with nothing worse than his jumping up andstooping to hand the waitress a spoon she let fall; but this could easilypass for some attention to Mrs. Makely at a little distance. There werenot many people down to breakfast yet; but I could see that there was agood deal of subdued sensation among the waitresses, standing with foldedarms behind their tables, and that the head-waiter's handsome face was redwith anxiety. 

Mrs. Makely asked if we were going to church. She said she was drivingthat way, and would be glad to drop us. "I'm not going myself, " sheexplained, "because I couldn't make anything of the sermon, with my headin the state it is, and I'm going to compromise on a good action. I wantto carry some books and papers over to Mrs. Camp. Don't you think thatwill be quite as acceptable, Mr. Homos?"

"I should venture to hope it, " he said, with a tolerant seriousness notaltogether out of keeping with her lightness. 

"Who is Mrs. Camp?" I asked, not caring to commit myself on the question. 

"Lizzie's mother. You know I told you about them last night. I think shemust have got through the books I lent her, and I know Lizzie didn't liketo ask me for more, because she saw me talking with you, and didn't wantto interrupt us. Such a nice girl! I think the Sunday papers must havecome, and I'll take them over, too; Mrs. Camp is always so glad to getthem, and she is so delightful when she gets going about public events. But perhaps you don't approve of Sunday papers, Mr. Homos. "

"I'm sure I don't know, madam. I haven't seen them yet. You know this isthe first Sunday I've been in America. "

"Well, I'm sorry to say you won't see the old Puritan Sabbath, " said Mrs. Makely, with an abrupt deflection from the question of the Sunday papers. "Though you ought to, up in these hills. The only thing left of it isrye-and-Indian bread, and these baked beans and fish-balls. "

"But they are very good?"

"Yes, I dare say they are not the worst of it. "

She was a woman who tended to levity, and I was a little afraid she mightbe going to say something irreverent; but, if she were, she wasforestalled by the Altrurian asking: "Would it be very indiscreet, madam, if I were to ask you some time to introduce me to that family?"

"The Camps?" she returned. "Not at all. I should be perfectly delighted. "The thought seemed to strike her, and she asked: "Why not go with me thismorning, unless you are inflexibly bent on going to church, you and Mr. Twelvemough?"

The Altrurian glanced at me, and I said I should be only too glad, if Icould carry some books, so that I could compromise on a good action, too. "Take one of your own, " she instantly suggested. 

"Do you think they wouldn't be too severe upon it?" I asked. 

"Well, Mrs. Camp might, " Mrs. Makely consented, with a smile. "She goesin for rather serious fiction; but I think Lizzie would enjoy a good, old-fashioned love-story, where everybody got married, as they do in yourcharming books. "

I winced a little, for every one likes to be regarded seriously, and I didnot enjoy being remanded to the young-girl public; but I put a bold faceon it, and said: "My good action shall be done in behalf of Miss Lizzie. "

Half an hour later, Mrs. Makely having left word with the clerk where wewere gone, so that her husband need not be alarmed when he got up, we werestriking into the hills on a two-seated buckboard, with one of the bestteams of our hotel, and one of the most taciturn drivers. Mrs. Makely hadthe Altrurian get into the back seat with her, and, after some attempts tomake talk with the driver, I leaned over and joined in their talk. TheAltrurian was greatly interested, not so much in the landscape--though heowned its beauty when we cried out over it from point to point--but in thehuman incidents and features. He noticed the cattle in the fields, and thehorses we met on the road, and the taste and comfort of the buildings, thevariety of the crops, and the promise of the harvest. I was glad of therespite his questions gave me from the study of the intimate character ofour civilization, for they were directed now at these more material facts, and I willingly joined Mrs. Makely in answering them. We explained thatthe finest teams we met were from the different hotels or boarding-houses, or at least from the farms where the people took city people to board; andthat certain shabby equipages belonged to the natives who lived solely bycultivating the soil. There was not very much of the soil cultivated, forthe chief crop was hay, with here and there a patch of potatoes or beans, and a few acres in sweet-corn. The houses of the natives, when they werefor their use only, were no better than their turnouts; it was where thecity boarder had found shelter that they were modern and pleasant. Now andthen we came to a deserted homestead, and I tried to make the Altrurianunderstand how farming in New England had yielded to the competition ofthe immense agricultural operations of the West. "You know, " I said, "thatagriculture is really an operation out there, as much as coal-mining is inPennsylvania, or finance in Wall Street; you have no idea of the vastnessof the scale. " Perhaps I swelled a little with pride in my celebration ofthe national prosperity, as it flowed from our Western farms of five andten and twenty thousand acres; I could not very well help putting on thepedal in these passages. Mrs. Makely listened almost, as eagerly, as theAltrurian, for, as a cultivated American woman, she was necessarilyquite ignorant of her own country, geographically, politically, andhistorically. "The only people left in the hill country of New England, " Iconcluded, "are those who are too old or too lazy to get away. Any youngman of energy would be ashamed to stay, unless he wanted to keep aboarding-house or live on the city vacationists in summer. If he doesn't, he goes West and takes up some of the new land, and comes back inmiddle-life and buys a deserted farm to spend his summers on. "

"Dear me!" said the Altrurian. "Is it so simple as that? Then we canhardly wonder at their owners leaving these worn-out farms; though Isuppose it must be with the pang of exile, sometimes. "

"Oh, I fancy there isn't much sentiment involved, " I answered, lightly. 

"Whoa!" said Mrs. Makely, speaking to the horses before she spoke to thedriver, as some women will. He pulled them up, and looked round at her. 

"Isn't that Reuben Camp, _now_, over there by that house?" she asked, asif we had been talking of him; that is another way some women have. 

"Yes, ma'am, " said the driver. 

"Oh, well, then!" and "Reuben!" she called to the young man, who wasprowling about the door-yard of a sad-colored old farm-house, and peeringinto a window here and there. "Come here a moment--won't you, please?"

He lifted his head and looked round, and, when he had located the appealmade to him, he came down the walk to the gate and leaned over it, waitingfor further instructions. I saw that it was the young man whom we hadnoticed with the girl Mrs. Makely called Lizzie on the hotel piazza thenight before. 

"Do you know whether I should find Lizzie at home this morning?"

"Yes, she's there with mother, " said the young fellow, with neither likingnor disliking in his tone. 

"Oh, I'm so glad!" said the lady. "I didn't know but she might be atchurch. What in the world has happened here? Is there anything unusualgoing on inside?"

"No, I was just looking to see if it was all right. The folks wanted Ishould come round. "

"Why, where are they?"

"Oh, they're gone. "

"Gone?"

"Yes; gone West. They've left the old place, because they couldn't make aliving here any longer. "

"Why, this is quite a case in point, " I said. "Now, Mr. Homos, here is achance to inform yourself at first hand about a very interesting fact ofour civilization"; and I added, in a low voice, to Mrs. Makely: "Won't youintroduce us?"

"Oh yes. Mr. Camp, this is Mr. Twelvemough, the author--you know hisbooks, of course; and Mr. Homos, a gentleman from Altruria. "

The young fellow opened the gate he leaned on and came out to us. He tookno notice of me, but he seized the Altrurian's hand and wrung it. "I'veheard of _you_" he said. "Mrs. Makely, were you going to our place?"

"Why, yes. "

"So do, then. Mother would give almost anything to see Mr. Homos. We'veheard of Altruria, over our way, " he added to our friend. "Mother's beenreading up all she can about it. She'll want to talk with you, and shewon't give the rest of us much of a chance, I guess. "

"Oh, I shall be glad to see her, " said the Altrurian, "and to tell hereverything I can. But won't you explain to me first something about yourdeserted farms here? It's quite a new thing to me. "

"It isn't a new thing to us, " said the young fellow, with a short laugh. "And there isn't much to explain about it. You'll see them all through NewEngland. When a man finds he can't get his funeral expenses out of theland, he don't feel like staying to be buried in it, and he pulls up andgoes. "

"But people used to get their living expenses here, " I suggested. "Whycan't they now?"

"Well, they didn't use to have Western prices to fight with; and then theland wasn't worn out so, and the taxes were not so heavy. How would youlike to pay twenty to thirty dollars on the thousand, and assessed up tothe last notch, in the city?"

"Why, what in the world makes your taxes so heavy?"

"Schools and roads. We've got to have schools, and you city folks wantgood roads when you come here in the summer, don't you? Then the season isshort, and sometimes we can't make a crop. The frost catches the corn inthe field, and you have your trouble for your pains. Potatoes are the onlything we can count on, except grass, and, when everybody raises potatoes, you know where the price goes. "

"Oh, but now, Mr. Camp, " said Mrs. Makely, leaning over toward him, andspeaking in a cosey and coaxing tone, as if he must not really keep thetruth from an old friend like her, "isn't it a good deal because thefarmers' daughters want pianos, and the farmers' sons want buggies? Iheard Professor Lumen saying, the other day, that, if the farmers werewilling to work as they used to work, they could still get a good livingoff their farms, and that they gave up their places because they were toolazy, in many cases, to farm them properly. "

"He'd better not let _me_ hear him saying that, " said the young fellow, while a hot flush passed over his face. He added, bitterly: "If he wantsto see how easy it is to make a living up here, he can take this place andtry for a year or two; he can get it cheap. But I guess he wouldn't wantit the year round; he'd only want it a few months in the summer, when hecould enjoy the sightliness of it, and see me working over there on myfarm, while he smoked on his front porch. " He turned round and looked atthe old house in silence a moment. Then, as he went on, his voice lost itsangry ring. "The folks here bought this place from the Indians, and they'dbeen here more than two hundred years. Do you think they left it becausethey were too lazy to run it, or couldn't get pianos and buggies out ofit, or were such fools as not to know whether they were well off? It wastheir _home_; they were born and lived and died here. There is the familyburying-ground over there. "

Neither Mrs. Makely nor myself was ready with a reply, and we left theword with the Altrurian, who suggested: "Still, I suppose they will bemore prosperous in the West on the new land they take up?"

The young fellow leaned his arms on the wheel by which he stood. "What doyou mean by taking up new land?"

"Why, out of the public domain--"

"There _ain't_ any public domain that's worth having. All the good land isin the hands of railroads and farm syndicates and speculators; and if youwant a farm in the West you've got to buy it; the East is the only placewhere folks give them away, because they ain't worth keeping. If youhaven't got the ready money, you can buy one on credit, and pay ten, twenty, and thirty per cent. Interest, and live in a dugout on theplains--till your mortgage matures. " The young man took his arms from thewheel and moved a few steps backward, as he added: "I'll see you over atthe house later. "

The driver touched his horses, and we started briskly off again. But Iconfess I had quite enough of his pessimism, and as we drove away I leanedback toward the Altrurian and said: "Now, it is all perfect nonsense topretend that things are at that pass with us. There are more millionairesin America, probably, than there are in all the other civilized countriesof the globe, and it is not possible that the farming population should bein such a hopeless condition. All wealth comes out of the earth, and youmay be sure they get their full share of it. "

"I am glad to hear you say so, " said the Altrurian. "What is the meaningof this new party in the West that seems to have held a convention lately?I read something of it in the train yesterday. "

"Oh, that is a lot of crazy Hayseeds, who don't want to pay back the moneythey have borrowed, or who find themselves unable to meet their interest. It will soon blow over. We are always having these political flurries. Agood crop will make it all right with them. "

"But is it true that they have to pay such rates of interest as our youngfriend mentioned?"

"Well, " I said, seeing the thing in the humorous light which softens forus Americans so many of the hardships of others, "I suppose that man likesto squeeze his brother man when he gets him in his grip. That's humannature, you know. "

"Is it?" asked the Altrurian. 

It seemed to me that he had asked something like that before when Ialleged human nature in defence of some piece of every-day selfishness. But I thought best not to notice it, and I went on: "The land is so richout there that a farm will often pay for itself with a single crop. "

"Is it possible?" cried the Altrurian. "Then I suppose it seldom reallyhappens that a mortgage is foreclosed, in the way our young friendinsinuated?"

"Well, I can't say that exactly"; and, having admitted so much, I did notfeel bound to impart a fact that popped perversely into my mind. I wasonce talking with a Western money-lender, a very good sort of fellow, frank and open as the day; I asked him whether the farmers generally paidoff their mortgages, and he answered me that if the mortgage was to thevalue of a fourth of the land, the farmer might pay it off, but if it wereto a half, or a third even, he never paid it, but slaved on and died inhis debts. "You may be sure, however, " I concluded, "that our young friendtakes a jaundiced view of the situation. "

"Now, really, " said Mrs. Makely, "I must insist upon dropping thiseverlasting talk about money. I think it is perfectly disgusting, and Ibelieve it was Mr. Makely's account of his speculations that kept me awakelast night. My brain got running on figures till the dark seemed to be allsown with dollar-marks, like the stars in the Milky Way. I--ugh! What inthe world is it? Oh, you dreadful little things!"

Mrs. Makely passed swiftly from terror to hysterical laughter as thedriver pulled up short and a group of barefooted children broke in frontof his horses and scuttled out of the dust into the road-side bushes likea covey of quails. There seemed to be a dozen of them, nearly all the samein size, but there turned out to be only five or six; or at least no moreshowed their gleaming eyes and teeth through the underbrush in quietenjoyment of the lady's alarm. 

"Don't you know that you might have got killed?" she demanded, with thatseverity good women feel for people who have just escaped with theirlives. "How lovely the dirty little dears are!" she added, in the nextwave of emotion. One bold fellow of six showed a half-length above thebushes, and she asked: "Don't you know that you oughtn't to play in theroad when there are so many teams passing? Are all those your brothers andsisters?"

He ignored the first question. "One's my cousin. " I pulled out ahalf-dozen coppers, and held my hand toward him. "See if there is onefor each. " They had no difficulty in solving the simple mathematicalproblem except the smallest girl, who cried for fear and baffled longing. I tossed the coin to her, and a little fat dog darted out at her feet andcaught it up in his mouth. "Oh, good gracious!" I called out in my light, humorous way. "Do you suppose he's going to spend it for candy?" Thelittle people thought that a famous joke, and they laughed with thegratitude that even small favors inspire. "Bring your sister here, " I saidto the boldest boy, and, when he came up with the little woman, I putanother copper into her hand. "Look out that the greedy dog doesn't getit, " I said, and my gayety met with fresh applause. "Where do you live?" Iasked, with some vague purpose of showing the Altrurian the kindlinessthat exists between our upper and lower classes. 

"Over there, " said the boy. I followed the twist of his head, and glimpseda wooden cottage on the border of the forest, so very new that thesheathing had not yet been covered with clapboards. I stood up in thebuckboard and saw that it was a story and a half high, and could have hadfour or five rooms in it. The bare, curtainless windows were set in theunpainted frames, but the front door seemed not to be hung yet. The peoplemeant to winter there, however, for the sod was banked up against thewooden underpinning; a stovepipe stuck out of the roof of a little wingbehind. While I gazed a young-looking woman came to the door, as if shehad been drawn by our talk with the children, and then she jumped downfrom the threshold, which still wanted a doorstep, and came slowly out tous. The children ran to her with their coppers, and then followed her backto us. 

Mrs. Makely called to her before she reached us: "I hope you weren'tfrightened. We didn't drive over any of them. "

"Oh, I wasn't frightened, " said the young woman. "It's a very safe placeto bring up children, in the country, and I never feel uneasy about them. "

"Yes, if they are not under the horses' feet, " said Mrs. Makely, minglinginstruction and amusement very judiciously in her reply. "Are they allyours?"

"Only five, " said the mother, and she pointed to the alien in her flock. "He's my sister's. She lives just below here. " Her children had groupedthemselves about her, and she kept passing her hands caressingly overtheir little heads as she talked. "My sister has nine children, but shehas the rest at church with her to-day. "

"You don't speak like an American, " Mrs. Makely suggested. 

"No, we're English. Our husbands work in the quarry. That's _my_ littlepalace. " The woman nodded her head toward the cottage. 

"It's going to be very nice, " said Mrs. Makely, with an evident perceptionof her pride in it. 

"Yes, if we ever get money to finish it. Thank you for the children. "

"Oh, it was this gentleman. " Mrs. Makely indicated me, and I bore themerit of my good action as modestly as I could. 

"Then thank _you_, sir, " said the young woman, and she asked Mrs. Makely:"You're not living about here, ma'am?"

"Oh no, we're staying at the hotel. "

"At the hotel! It must be very dear, there. "

"Yes, it is expensive, " said Mrs. Makely, with a note of that satisfactionin her voice which we all feel in spending a great deal of money. 

"But I suppose you can afford it, " said the woman, whose eye was runninghungrily over Mrs. Makely's pretty costume. "Some are poor, and some arerich. That's the way the world has to be made up, isn't it?"

"Yes, " said Mrs. Makely, very dryly, and the talk languished from thispoint, so that the driver felt warranted in starting up his horses. Whenwe had driven beyond earshot she said: "I knew she was not an American, as soon as she spoke, by her accent, and then those foreigners have noself-respect. That was a pretty bold bid for a contribution to finish upher 'little palace'! I'm glad you didn't give her anything, Mr. Twelvemough. I was afraid your sympathies had been wrought upon. "

"Oh, not at all, " I answered. "I saw the mischief I had done with thechildren. "

The Altrurian, who has not asked anything for a long time, but hadlistened with eager interest to all that passed, now came up smiling withhis question: "Will you kindly tell me what harm would have been done byoffering the woman a little money to help finish up her cottage?"

I did not allow Mrs. Makely to answer, I was so eager to air my politicaleconomy. "The very greatest harm. It would have pauperized her. You haveno idea how quickly they give way to the poison of that sort of thing. Assoon as they get any sort of help they expect more; they count upon it, and they begin to live upon it. The sight of those coppers which I gaveher children--more out of joke than charity--demoralized the woman. Shetook us for rich people, and wanted us to build her a house. You have toguard against every approach to a thing of that sort. "

"I don't believe, " said Mrs. Makely, "that an American would have hinted, as she did. "

"'No, an American would not have done that, I'm thankful to say. They takefees, but they don't ask charity, yet. " We went on to exult in the nobleindependence of the American character in all classes, at some length. Wetalked at the Altrurian, but he did not seem to hear us. At last he asked, with a faint sigh: "Then, in your conditions, a kindly impulse to aid onewho needs your help is something to be guarded against as possiblypernicious?"

"Exactly, " I said. "And now you see what difficulties beset us in dealingwith the problem of poverty. We cannot let people suffer, for that wouldbe cruel; and we cannot relieve their need without pauperizing them. "

"I see, " he answered. "It is a terrible quandary. "

"I wish, " said Mrs. Makely, "that you would tell us just how you managewith the poor in Altruria. "

"We have none, " he replied. 

"But the comparatively poor--you have some people who are richer thanothers?"

"No. We should regard that as the worst incivism. "

"What is incivism?"

I interpreted, "Bad citizenship. "

"Well, then, if you will excuse me, Mr. Homos, " she said, "I think that issimply impossible. There _must_ be rich and there _must_ be poor. Therealways have been, and there always will be. That woman said it as well asanybody. Didn't Christ Himself say, 'The poor ye have always with you'?"

VII

The Altrurian looked at Mrs. Makely with an amazement visibly heightenedby the air of complacency she put on after delivering this poser: "Do youreally think Christ meant that you _ought_ always to have the poor withyou?" he asked. 

"Why, of course!" she answered, triumphantly. "How else are the sympathiesof the rich to be cultivated? The poverty of some and the wealth ofothers, isn't that what forms the great tie of human brotherhood? If wewere all comfortable, or all shared alike, there could not be anythinglike charity, and Paul said, 'The greatest of these is charity. ' I believeit's 'love' in the new version, but it comes to the same thing. "

The Altrurian gave a kind of gasp, and then lapsed into a silence thatlasted until we came in sight of the Camp farm-house. It stood on thecrest of a road-side upland, and looked down the beautiful valley, bathedin Sabbath sunlight, and away to the ranges of hills, so far that it washard to say whether it was sun or shadow that dimmed their distance. Decidedly, the place was what the country people call sightly. The oldhouse, once painted a Brandon red, crouched low to the ground, with itslean-to in the rear, and its flat-arched wood-sheds and wagon-housesstretching away at the side of the barn, and covering the approach to itwith an unbroken roof. There were flowers in the beds along theunderpinning of the house, which stood close to the street, and on oneside of the door was a clump of Spanish willow; an old-fashioned June roseclimbed over it from the other. An aged dog got stiffly to his feet fromthe threshold stone and whimpered as our buckboard drew up; the poultrypicking about the path and among the chips lazily made way for us, and asour wheels ceased to crunch upon the gravel we heard hasty steps, andReuben Camp came round the corner of the house in time to give Mrs. Makelyhis hand and help her spring to the ground, which she did very lightly;her remarkable mind had kept her body in a sort of sympathetic activity, and at thirty-five she had the gracile ease and self-command of a girl. 

"Ah, Reuben, " she sighed, permitting herself to call him by his firstname, with the emotion which expressed itself more definitely in the wordsthat followed, "how I envy you all this dear, old, homelike place! I nevercome here without thinking of my grandfather's farm in Massachusetts, where I used to go every summer when I was a little girl. If I had a placelike this, I should never leave it. "

"Well, Mrs. Makely, " said young Camp, "you can have this place cheap, ifyou really want it. Or almost any other place in the neighborhood. "

"Don't say such a thing!" she returned. "It makes one feel as if thefoundations of the great deep were giving way. I don't know what thatmeans exactly, but I suppose it's equivalent to mislaying George's hatchetand going back on the Declaration generally; and I don't like to hear youtalk so. "

Camp seemed to have lost his bitter mood, and he answered, pleasantly:"The Declaration is all right, as far as it goes, but it don't help us tocompete with the Western farm operations. "

"Why, you believe every one was born free and equal, don't you?" Mrs. Makely asked. 

"Oh yes, I believe that; but--"

"Then why do you object to free and equal competition?"

The young fellow laughed, and said, as he opened the door for us: "Walkright into the parlor, please. Mother will be ready for you in a minute. "He added: "I guess she's putting on her best cap for you, Mr. Homos. It'sa great event for her, your coming here. It is for all of us. We're gladto have you. "

"And I'm glad to be here, " said the Altrurian, as simply as the other. Helooked about the best room of a farm-house that had never adapted itselfto the tastes or needs of the city boarder, and was as stiffly repellentin its upholstery and as severe in its decoration as hair-cloth chairs anddark-brown wall-paper of a trellis pattern, with drab roses, could makeit. The windows were shut tight, and our host did not offer to open them. A fly or two crossed the doorway into the hall, but made no attemptto penetrate the interior, where we sat in an obscurity that left thehigh-hung family photographs on the walls vague and uncertain. I made amental note of it as a place where it would be very characteristic to havea rustic funeral take place; and I was pleased to have Mrs. Makely dropinto a sort of mortuary murmur, as she said: "I hope your mother is aswell as usual this morning?" I perceived that this murmur was produced bythe sepulchral influence of the room. 

"Oh yes, " said Camp, and at that moment a door opened from the room acrossthe hall, and his sister seemed to bring in some of the light from it tous where we sat. She shook hands with Mrs. Makely, who introduced me toher, and then presented the Altrurian. She bowed very civilly to me, butwith a touch of severity, such as country people find necessary for theassertion of their self-respect with strangers. I thought it very pretty, and instantly saw that I could work it into some picture of character; andI was not at all sorry that she made a difference in favor of theAltrurian. 

"Mother will be so glad to see you, " she said to him, and, "Won't you comeright in?" she added to us all. 

We followed her and found ourselves in a large, low, sunny room onthe southeast corner of the house, which had no doubt once been theliving-room, but which was now given up to the bedridden invalid; a dooropened into the kitchen behind, where the table was already laid for themidday meal, with the plates turned down in the country fashion, and somenetting drawn over the dishes to keep the flies away. 

Mrs. Makely bustled up to the bedside with her energetic, patronizingcheerfulness. "Ah, Mrs. Camp, I am glad to see you looking so well thismorning. I've been meaning to run over for several days past, but Icouldn't find a moment till this morning, and I knew you didn't object toSunday visits. " She took the invalid's hand in hers, and, with the air ofshowing how little she felt any inequality between them, she leaned overand kissed her, where Mrs. Camp sat propped against her pillows. She had alarge, nobly moulded face of rather masculine contour, and at the sametime the most motherly look in the world. Mrs. Makely bubbled and babbledon, and every one waited patiently till she had done, and turned and said, toward the Altrurian: "I have ventured to bring my friend, Mr. Homos, withme. He is from Altruria. " Then she turned to me and said: "Mr. Twelvemoughyou know already through his delightful books"; but, although she paid methis perfunctory compliment it was perfectly apparent to me that in theesteem of this disingenuous woman the distinguished stranger was a farmore important person than the distinguished author. Whether Mrs. Campread my perception of this fact in my face or not I cannot say, but shewas evidently determined that I should not feel a difference in her. Sheheld out her hand to me first, and said that I never could know how manyheavy hours I had helped to lighten for her, and then she turned to theAltrurian and took his hand. "Oh!" she said, with a long, deep-drawn sigh, as if that were the supreme moment of her life. "And are you really fromAltruria? It seems too good to be true!" Her devout look and her earnesttone gave the commonplace words a quality that did not inhere in them, butMrs. Makely took them on their surface. 

"Yes, doesn't it?" she made haste to interpose, before the Altrurian couldsay anything. "That is just the way we all feel about it, Mrs. Camp. Iassure you, if it were not for the accounts in the papers and the talkabout it everywhere, I couldn't believe there _was_ any such place asAltruria; and if it were not for Mr. Twelvemough here--who has to keep allhis inventions for his novels, as a mere matter of business routine--Imight really suspect him and Mr. Homos of--well, _working_ us, as myhusband calls it. "

The Altrurian smiled politely, but vaguely, as if he had not quite caughther meaning, and I made answer for both: "I am sure, Mrs. Makely, if youcould understand my peculiar state of mind about Mr. Homos, you wouldnever believe that I was in collusion with him. I find him quite asincredible as you do. There are moments when he seems so entirelysubjective with me that I feel as if he were no more definite or tangiblethan a bad conscience. "

"Exactly!" said Mrs. Makely, and she laughed out her delight in myillustration. 

The Altrurian must have perceived that we were joking, though the Campsall remained soberly silent. "I hope it isn't so bad as that, " he said, "though I have noticed that I seem to affect you all with a kind ofmisgiving. I don't know just what it is; but, if I could remove it, Ishould be very glad to do so. "

Mrs. Makely very promptly seized her chance: "Well, then, in the firstplace, my husband and I were talking it over last night after we left you, and that was one of the things that kept us awake; it turned into moneyafterward. It isn't so much that a whole continent, as big as Australia, remained undiscovered till within such a very few years, as it is thecondition of things among you: this sort of all living for one another, and not each one for himself. My husband says that is simply moonshine;such a thing never was and never can be; it is opposed to human nature, and would take away incentive and all motive for exertion and advancementand enterprise. I don't know _what_ he didn't say against it; but onething, he says it's perfectly un-American. " The Altrurian remained silent, gravely smiling, and Mrs. Makely added, with her most engaging littlemanner: "I hope you won't feel hurt, personally or patriotically, by whatI've repeated to you. I know my husband is awfully Philistine, though he_is_ such a good fellow, and I don't, by any means, agree with him on allthose points; but I _would_ like to know what you think of them. Thetrouble is, Mrs. Camp, " she said, turning to the invalid, "that Mr. Homosis so dreadfully reticent about his own country, and I am so curious tohear of it at first hands, that I consider it justifiable to use any meansto make him open up about it. "

"There is no offence, " the Altrurian answered for himself, "in what Mr. Makely says, though, from the Altrurian point of view, there is a gooddeal of error. 

"Does it seem so strange to you, " he asked, addressing himself to Mrs. Camp, "that people should found a civilization on the idea of living forone another instead of each for himself?"

"No indeed!" she answered. "Poor people have always had to live that way, or they could not have lived at all. "

"That was what I understood your porter to say last night, " said theAltrurian to me. He added, to the company generally: "I suppose that evenin America there are more poor people than there are rich people?"

"Well, I don't know about that, " I said. "I suppose there are more peopleindependently rich than there are people independently poor. "

"We will let that formulation of it stand. If it is true, I do not see whythe Altrurian system should be considered so very un-American. Then, as towhether there is or ever was really a practical altruism, a civicexpression of it, I think it cannot be denied that among the firstChristians, those who immediately followed Christ, and might be supposedto be directly influenced by His life, there was an altruism practised asradical as that which we have organized into a national polity and aworking economy in Altruria. "

"Ah, but you know, " said Mrs. Makely, with the air of advancing a pointnot to be put aside, "they had to drop _that_. It was a dead failure. Theyfound that they couldn't make it go at all among cultivated people, andthat, if Christianity was to advance, they would have to give up all thatcrankish kind of idolatry of the mere letter. At any rate, " she went on, with the satisfaction we all feel in getting an opponent into closequarters, "you must confess that there is a much greater play ofindividuality here. "

Before the Altrurian could reply, young Camp said: "If you want to seeAmerican individuality, the real, simon-pure article, you ought to go downto one of our big factory towns and look at the mill-hands coming home indroves after a day's work, young girls and old women, boys and men, allfluffed over with cotton, and so dead tired that they can hardly walk. They come shambling along with all the individuality of a flock of sheep. "

"Some, " said Mrs. Makely, heroically, as if she were one of these, "mustbe sacrificed. Of course, some are not so individual as others. A greatdeal depends upon temperament. "

"A great deal more depends upon capital, " said Camp, with an offensivelaugh. "If you have capital in America, you can have individuality; if youhaven't, you can't. "

His sister, who had not taken part in the talk before, said, demurely: "Itseems to me you've got a good deal of individuality, Reub, and you haven'tgot a great deal of capital, either, " and the two young people laughedtogether. 

Mrs. Makely was one of those fatuous women whose eagerness to make a pointexcludes the consideration even of their own advantage. "I'm sure, " shesaid, as if speaking for the upper classes, "we haven't got anyindividuality at all. We are as like as so many peas or pins. In fact, youhave to be so in society. If you keep asserting your own individuality toomuch, people avoid you. It's very vulgar and the greatest bore. "

"Then you don't find individuality so desirable, after all, " said theAltrurian. 

"I perfectly detest it!" cried the lady, and evidently she had not theleast notion where she was in the argument. "For my part, I'm never happyexcept when I've forgotten myself and the whole individual bother. "

Her declaration seemed somehow to close the incident, and we were allsilent a moment, which I employed in looking about the room, and taking inwith my literary sense the simplicity and even bareness of its furnishing. There was the bed where the invalid lay, and near the head a table with apile of books and a kerosene-lamp on it, and I decided that she was a gooddeal wakeful, and that she read by that lamp when she could not sleep atnight. Then there were the hard chairs we sat on, and some home-madehooked rugs, in rounds and ovals, scattered about the clean floor; therewas a small melodeon pushed against the wall; the windows had papershades, and I recalled that I had not seen any blinds on the outside ofthe house. Over the head of the bed hung a cavalryman's sword, with itsbelt--the sword that Mrs. Makely had spoken of. It struck me as a roomwhere a great many things might have happened, and I said: "You can'tthink, Mrs. Camp, how glad I am to see the inside of your house. It seemsto me so typical. "

A pleased intelligence showed itself in her face, and she answered: "Yes, it is a real old-fashioned farmhouse. We have never taken boarders, and sowe have kept it as it was built pretty much, and only made such changes init as we needed or wanted for ourselves. "

"It's a pity, " I went on, following up what I thought a fortunate lead, "that we city people see so little of the farming life when we come intothe country. I have been here now for several seasons, and this is thefirst time I have been inside a farmer's house. "

"Is it possible!" cried the Altrurian, with an air of utter astonishment;and, when I found the fact appeared so singular to him, I began to berather proud of its singularity. 

"Yes, I suppose that most city people come and go, year after year, in thecountry, and never make any sort of acquaintance with the people who livethere the year round. We keep to ourselves in the hotels, or, if we go outat all, it is to make a call upon some city cottager, and so we do not getout of the vicious circle of our own over-intimacy with ourselves and ourignorance of others. "

"And you regard that as a great misfortune?" asked the Altrurian. 

"Why, it's inevitable. There is nothing to bring us together, unless it'ssome happy accident, like the present. But we don't have a traveler fromAltruria to exploit every day, and so we have no business to come intopeople's houses. "

"You would have been welcome in ours long ago, Mr. Twelvemough, " said Mrs. Camp. 

"But, excuse me, " said the Altrurian, "what you say really seems dreadfulto me. Why, it is as if you were not the same race or kind of men!"

"Yes, " I answered. "It has sometimes seemed to me as if our big hotelthere were a ship anchored off some strange coast. The inhabitants comeout with supplies, and carry on their barter with the ship's steward, andwe sometimes see them over the side, but we never speak to them or haveanything to do with them. We sail away at the close of the season, andthat is the end of it till next summer. "

The Altrurian turned to Mrs. Camp. "And how do you look at it? How does itseem to you?"

"I don't believe we have thought about it very much; but, now that Mr. Twelvemough has spoken of it, I can see that it does look that way. And itseems very strange, doesn't it, for we are all the same people, and havethe same language and religion and country--the country that my husbandfought for and, I suppose I may say, died for; he was never the same manafter the war. It does appear as if we had some interests in common, andmight find it out if we ever came together. "

"It's a great advantage, the city people going into the country so much asthey do now, " said Mrs. Makely. "They bring five million dollars into theState of New Hampshire, alone, every summer. "

She looked round for the general approval which this fact merited, andyoung Camp said: "And it shows how worthless the natives are, that theycan't make both ends meet, with all that money, but have to give up theirfarms and go West, after all. I suppose you think it comes from wantingbuggies and pianos. "

"Well, it certainly comes from something, " said Mrs. Makely, with thecourage of her convictions. 

She was evidently not going to be put down by that sour young fellow, andI was glad of it, though I must say I thought the thing she left to ranklein his mind from our former meeting had not been said in very good taste. I thought, too, that she would not fare best in any encounter of wits withhim, and I rather trembled for the result. I said, to relieve the strainedsituation: "I wish there was some way of our knowing each other better. I'm sure there's a great deal of good-will on both sides. "

"No, there isn't, " said Camp, "or at least I can answer for our side thatthere isn't. You come into the country to get as much for your money asyou can, and we mean to let you have as little as we can. That's the wholestory, and if Mr. Homos believes anything different, he's very muchmistaken. "

"I hadn't formed any conclusion in regard to the matter, which is quitenew to me, " said the Altrurian, mildly. "But why is there no basis ofmutual kindness between you?"

"Because it's like everything else with us; it's a question of supply anddemand, and there is no room for any mutual kindness in a question of thatkind. Even if there were, there is another thing that would kill it. Thesummer folks, as we call them, look down on the natives, as they call us, and we know it. "

"Now, Mr. Camp, I am sure that you cannot say _I_ look down on thenatives, " said Mrs. Makely, with an air of argument. 

The young fellow laughed. "Oh yes, you do, " he said, not unamiably, and headded, "and you've got the right to. We're not fit to associate with you, and you know it, and we know it. You've got more money, and you've gotnicer clothes, and you've got prettier manners. You talk about things thatmost natives never heard of, and you care for things they never saw. Iknow it's the custom to pretend differently, but I'm not going to pretenddifferently. "

I recalled what my friend the banker said about throwing away cant, and Iasked myself if I were in the presence of some such free spirit again. Idid not see how young Camp could afford it; but then I reflected that hehad really nothing to lose by it, for he did not expect to make anythingout of us; Mrs. Makely would probably not give up his sister as seamstressif the girl continued to work so well and so cheaply as she said. 

"Suppose, " he went on, "that some old native took you at your word, andcame to call upon you at the hotel, with his wife, just as one of the citycottagers would do if he wanted to make your acquaintance?"

"I should be perfectly delighted, " said Mrs. Makely, "and I should receivethem with the greatest possible cordiality. "

"The same kind of cordiality that you would show to the cottagers?"

"I suppose that I should feel that I had more in common with thecottagers. We should be interested in the same things, and we shouldprobably know the same people and have more to talk about--"

"You would both belong to the same class, and that tells the whole story. If you were out West, and the owner of one of those big twenty-thousand-acre farms called on you with his wife, would you act toward them as youwould toward our natives? You wouldn't. You would all be rich peopletogether, and you would understand one another because you had money. "

"Now, that is not so, " Mrs. Makely interrupted. "There are plenty of richpeople one wouldn't wish to know at all, and who really can't get intosociety--who are ignorant and vulgar. And then, when you come to money, Idon't see but what country people are as glad to get it as anybody. "

"Oh, gladder, " said the young man. 

"Well?" demanded Mrs. Makely, as if this were a final stroke of logic. Theyoung man did not reply, and Mrs. Makely continued: "Now I will appeal toyour sister to say whether she has ever seen any difference in my mannertoward her from what I show to all the young ladies in the hotel. " Theyoung girl flushed and seemed reluctant to answer. "Why, Lizzie!" criedMrs. Makely, and her tone showed that she was really hurt. 

The scene appeared to me rather cruel, and I glanced at Mrs. Camp with anexpectation that she would say something to relieve it. But she did not. Her large, benevolent face expressed only a quiet interest in thediscussion. 

"You know very well, Mrs. Makely, " said the girl, "you don't regard me asyou do the young ladies in the hotel. "

There was no resentment in her voice or look, but only a sort of regret, as if, but for this grievance, she could have loved the woman from whomshe had probably had much kindness. The tears came into Mrs. Makely'seyes, and she turned toward Mrs. Camp. "And is this the way you _all_ feeltoward us?" she asked. 

"Why shouldn't we?" asked the invalid, in her turn. "But, no, it isn't theway all the country people feel. Many of them feel as you would like tohave them feel; but that is because they do not think. When they think, they feel as we do. But I don't blame you. You can't help yourselves anymore than we can. We're all bound up together in that, at least. "

At this apparent relenting Mrs. Makely tricked her beams a little, andsaid, plaintively, as if offering herself for further condolence: "Yes, that is what that woman at the little shanty back there said: some have tobe rich, and some have to be poor; it takes all kinds to make a world. "

"How would you like to be one of those that have to be poor?" asked youngCamp, with an evil grin. 

"I don't know, " said Mrs. Makely, with unexpected spirit; "but I am surethat I should respect the feelings of all, rich or poor. "

"I am sorry if we have hurt yours, Mrs. Makely, " said Mrs. Camp, withdignity. "You asked us certain questions, and we thought you wished us toreply truthfully. We could not answer you with smooth things. "

"But sometimes you do, " said Mrs. Makely, and the tears stood in her eyesagain. "And you know how fond I am of you all!"

Mrs. Camp wore a bewildered look. "Perhaps we have said more than weought. But I couldn't help it, and I don't see how the children could, when you asked them here, before Mr. Homos. "

I glanced at the Altrurian, sitting attentive and silent, and a suddenmisgiving crossed my mind concerning him. Was he really a man, a humanentity, a personality like ourselves, or was he merely a sort of spiritualsolvent, sent for the moment to precipitate whatever sincerity there wasin us, and show us what the truth was concerning our relations to oneanother? It was a fantastic conception, but I thought it was one that Imight employ in some sort of purely romantic design, and I wasprofessionally grateful for it. I said, with a humorous gayety: "Yes, weall seem to have been compelled to be much more honest than we like; andif Mr. Homos is going to write an account of his travels when he getshome, he can't accuse us of hypocrisy, at any rate. And I always used tothink it was one of our virtues! What with Mr. Camp, here, and my friendthe banker at the hotel, I don't think he'll have much reason to complaineven of our reticence. "

"Well, whatever he says of us, " sighed Mrs. Makely, with a pious glance atthe sword over the bed, "he will have to say that, in spite of ourdivisions and classes, we are all Americans, and, if we haven't the sameopinions and ideas on minor matters, we all have the same country. "

"I don't know about that, " came from Reuben Camp, with shockingpromptness. "I don't believe we all have the same country. America is onething for you, and it's quite another thing for us. America means ease andcomfort and amusement for you, year in and year out, and if it means work, it's work that you _wish_ to do. For us, America means work that we _have_to do, and hard work all the time if we're going to make both ends meet. It means liberty for you; but what liberty has a man got who doesn't knowwhere his next meal is coming from? Once I was in a strike, when I wasworking on the railroad, and I've seen men come and give up their libertyfor a chance to earn their family's living. They knew they were right, andthat they ought to have stood up for their rights; but they had to liedown and lick the hand that fed them. Yes, we are all Americans, but Iguess we haven't all got the same country, Mrs. Makely. What sort of acountry has a blacklisted man got?"

"A blacklisted man?" she repeated. "I don't know what you mean. "

"Well, a kind of man I've seen in the mill towns, that the bosses have allgot on their books as a man that isn't to be given work on any account;that's to be punished with hunger and cold, and turned into the street, for having offended them; and that's to be made to suffer through hishelpless family for having offended them. "

"Excuse me, Mr. Camp, " I interposed, "but isn't a blacklisted man usuallya man who has made himself prominent in some labor trouble?"

"Yes, " the young fellow answered, without seeming sensible of the point Ihad made. 

"Ah!" I returned. "Then you can hardly blame the employers for taking itout of him in any way they can. That's human nature. "

"Good heavens!" the Altrurian cried out. "Is it possible that in Americait is human nature to take away the bread of a man's family because he hasgone counter to your interest or pleasure on some economical question?"

"Well, Mr. Twelvemough seems to think so, " sneered the young man. "Butwhether it's human nature or not, it's a fact that they do it, and you canguess how much a blacklisted man must love the country where such a thingcan happen to him. What should you call such a thing as blacklisting inAltruria?"

"Oh yes, " Mrs. Makely pleaded, "do let us get him to talking aboutAltruria on any terms. I think all this about the labor question is sotiresome; don't you, Mrs. Camp?"

Mrs. Camp did not answer; but the Altrurian said, in reply to her son: "Weshould have no name for such a thing, for with us such a thing would beimpossible. There is no crime so heinous with us that the punishment wouldtake away the criminal's chance of earning his living. "

"Oh, if he was a criminal, " said young Camp, "he would be all right_here_. The state would give him a chance to earn his living then. "

"But if he had no other chance of earning his living, and had committed nooffence against the laws--"

"Then the state would let him take to the road--like that fellow. "

He pulled aside the shade of the window where he sat, and we saw pausingbefore the house, and glancing doubtfully at the doorstep, where the doglay, a vile and loathsome-looking tramp, a blot upon the sweet andwholesome landscape, a scandal to the sacred day. His rags burlesqued theform which they did not wholly hide; his broken shoes were covered withdust; his coarse hair came in a plume through his tattered hat; his red, sodden face, at once fierce and timid, was rusty with a fortnight's beard. He offended the eye like a visible stench, and the wretched carrion seemedto shrink away from our gaze as if he were aware of his loathsomeness. 

"Really, " said Mrs. Makely, "I thought those fellows were arrested now. Itis too bad to leave them at large. They are dangerous. " Young Camp leftthe room, and we saw him going out toward the tramp. 

"Ah, that's quite right, " said the lady. "I hope Reuben is going to sendhim about his business. Why, surely, he's not going to feed the horridcreature!" she added, as Camp, after a moment's parley with the tramp, turned with him and disappeared round a corner of the house. "Now, Mrs. Camp, I think that is really a very bad example. It's encouraging them. Very likely he'll go to sleep in your barn, and set it on fire with hispipe. What do you do with tramps in Altruria, Mr. Homos?"

The Altrurian seemed not to have heard her. He said to Mrs. Camp: "Then Iunderstand from something your son let fall that he has not always been athome with you here. Does he reconcile himself easily to the country afterthe excitement of town life? I have read that the cities in America aredraining the country of the young people. "

"I don't think he was sorry to come home, " said the mother, with a touchof fond pride. "But there was no choice for him after his father died; hewas always a good boy, and he has not made us feel that we were keepinghim away from anything better. When his father was alive we let him go, because then we were not so dependent, and I wished him to try his fortunein the world, as all boys long to do. But he is rather peculiar, and heseems to have got quite enough of the world. To be sure, I don't supposehe's seen the brightest side of it. He first went to work in the millsdown at Ponkwasset, but he was 'laid off' there when the hard times cameand there was so much overproduction, and he took a job of railroading, and was braking on a freight-train when his father left us. "

Mrs. Makely said, smiling: "No, I don't think that was the brightestoutlook in the world. No wonder he has brought back such gloomyimpressions. I am sure that if he could have seen life under brighterauspices he would not have the ideas he has. "

"Very likely, " said the mother, dryly. "Our experiences have a great dealto do with forming our opinions. But I am not dissatisfied with my son'sideas. I suppose Reuben got a good many of his ideas from his father: he'shis father all over again. My husband thought slavery was wrong, and hewent into the war to fight against it. He used to say when the war wasover that the negroes were emancipated, but slavery was not abolishedyet. "

"What in the world did he mean by that?" demanded Mrs. Makely. 

"Something you wouldn't understand as we do. I tried to carry on the farmafter he first went, and before Reuben was large enough to help me muchand ought to be in school, and I suppose I overdid. At any rate, that waswhen I had my first shock of paralysis. I never was very strong, and Ipresume my health was weakened by my teaching school so much, andstudying, before I was married. But that doesn't matter now, and hasn'tfor many a year. The place was clear of debt then, but I had to get amortgage put on it. The savings-bank down in the village took it, andwe've been paying the interest ever since. My husband died paying it, andmy son will pay it all my life, and then I suppose the bank willforeclose. The treasurer was an old playmate of my husband's, and he saidthat as long as either of us lived the mortgage could lie. "

"How splendid of him!" said Mrs. Makely. "I should think you had been veryfortunate. "

"I said that you would not see it as we do, " said the invalid, patiently. 

The Altrurian asked: "Are there mortgages on many of the farms in theneighborhood?"

"Nearly all, " said Mrs. Camp. "We seem to own them, but in fact they ownus. "

Mrs. Makely hastened to say: "My husband thinks it's the best way to haveyour property. If you mortgage it close up, you have all your capitalfree, and you can keep turning it over. That's what you ought to do, Mrs. Camp. But what was the slavery that Captain Camp said was not abolishedyet?"

The invalid looked at her a moment without replying, and just then thedoor of the kitchen opened, and Young Camp came in and began to gathersome food from the table on a plate. 

"Why don't you bring him to the table, Reub?" his sister called to him. 

"Oh, he says he'd rather not come in, as long as we have company. He sayshe isn't dressed for dinner; left his spike-tail in the city. "

The young man laughed, and his sister with him. 

VIII

Young Camp carried out the plate of victuals to the tramp, and Mrs. Makelysaid to his mother: "I suppose you would make the tramp do some sort ofwork to earn his breakfast on week-days?"

"Not always, " Mrs. Camp replied. "Do the boarders at the hotel always workto earn their breakfast?"

"No, certainly not, " said Mrs. Makely, with the sharpness of offence. "Butthey always pay for it. "

"I don't think that paying for a thing is earning it. Perhaps some oneelse earned the money that pays for it. But I believe there is too muchwork in the world. If I were to live my life over again, I should not workhalf so hard. My husband and I took this place when we were young marriedpeople, and began working to pay for it. We wanted to feel that it wasours, that we owned it, and that our children should own it afterward. Weboth worked all day long like slaves, and many a moonlight night we wereup till morning, almost, gathering the stones from our fields and buryingthem in deep graves that we had dug for them. But we buried our youth andstrength and health in those graves, too, and what for? I don't own thefarm that we worked so hard to pay for, and my children won't. That iswhat it has all come to. We were rightly punished for our greed, Isuppose. Perhaps no one has a right to own any portion of the earth. Sometimes I think so, but my husband and I earned this farm, and now thesavings-bank owns it. That seems strange, doesn't it? I suppose you'll saythat the bank paid for it. Well, perhaps so; but the bank didn't earn it. When I think of that I don't always think that a person who pays for hisbreakfast has the best right to a breakfast. "

I could see the sophistry of all this, but I had not the heart to point itout; I felt the pathos of it, too. Mrs. Makely seemed not to see the onenor to feel the other very distinctly. "Yes, but surely, " she said, "ifyou give a tramp his breakfast without making him work for it, you mustsee that it is encouraging idleness. And idleness is very corrupting--thesight of it. "

"You mean to the country people? Well, they have to stand a good deal ofthat. The summer folks that spend four or five months of the year heredon't seem to do anything from morning till night. "

"Ah, but you must recollect that they are _resting_! You have no idea howhard they all work in town during the winter, " Mrs. Makely urged, with anair of argument. 

"Perhaps the tramps are resting, too. At any rate, I don't think the sightof idleness in rags, and begging at back doors, is very corrupting to thecountry people; I never heard of a single tramp who had started from thecountry; they all come from the cities. It's the other kind of idlenessthat tempts our young people. The only tramps that my son says he everenvies are the well-dressed, strong young fellows from town that gotramping through the mountains for exercise every summer. "

The ladies both paused. They seemed to have got to the end of theirtether; at least, Mrs. Makely had apparently nothing else to advance, andI said, lightly: "But that is just the kind of tramps that Mr. Homos wouldmost disapprove of. He says that in Altruria they would consider exercisefor exercise' sake a wicked waste of force and little short of lunacy. "

I thought my exaggeration might provoke him to denial, but he seemed notto have found it unjust. "Why, you know, " he said to Mrs. Camp, "inAltruria every one works with his hands, so that the hard work shall notall fall to any one class; and this manual labor of each is sufficient tokeep the body in health, as well as to earn a living. After the three, hours' work, which constitutes a day's work with us, is done, the youngpeople have all sorts of games and sports, and they carry them as lateinto life as the temperament of each demands. But what I was saying to Mr. Twelvemough--perhaps I did not make myself clear--was that we shouldregard the sterile putting forth of strength in exercise, if others wereeach day worn out with hard manual labor, as insane or immoral. But I canaccount for it differently with you, because I understand that in yourconditions a person of leisure could not do any manual labor withouttaking away the work of some one who needed it to live by; and could noteven relieve an overworked laborer, and give him the money for the work, without teaching him habits of idleness. In Altruria we can all keepourselves well by doing each his share of hard work, and we can help thosewho are exhausted, when such a thing happens, without injuring themmaterially or morally. "

Young Camp entered at this moment, and the Altrurian hesitated. "Oh, do goon!" Mrs. Makely entreated. She added to Camp: "We've got him to talkingabout Altruria at last, and we wouldn't have him stopped for worlds. "

The Altrurian looked around at all our faces, and no doubt read our eagercuriosity in them. He smiled and said: "I shall be very glad, I'm sure. But I do not think you will find anything so remarkable in ourcivilization, if you will conceive of it as the outgrowth of theneighborly instinct. In fact, neighborliness is the essence ofAltrurianism. If you will imagine having the same feeling toward all, " heexplained to Mrs. Makely, "as you have toward your next-door neighbor--"

"My next-door neighbor!" she cried. "But I don't _know_ the people nextdoor! We live in a large apartment house, some forty families, and Iassure you I do not know a soul among them. "

He looked at her with a puzzled air, and she continued: "Sometimes it_does_ seem rather hard. One day the people on the same landing with uslost one of their children, and I should never have been a whit the wiserif my cook hadn't happened to mention it. The servants all know eachother; they meet in the back elevator, and get acquainted. I don'tencourage it. You can't tell what kind of families they belong to. "

"But surely, " the Altrurian persisted, "you have friends in the city whomyou think of as your neighbors?"

"No, I can't say that I have, " said Mrs. Makely. "I have my visiting-list, but I shouldn't think of anybody on _that_ as a neighbor. "

The Altrurian looked so blank and baffled that I could hardly helplaughing. "Then I should not know how to explain Altruria to you, I'mafraid. "

"Well, " she returned, lightly, "if it's anything like neighborliness asI've seen it in small places, deliver me from it! I like beingindependent. That's why I like the city. You're let alone. "

"I was down in New York once, and I went through some of the streets andhouses where the poor people live, " said young Camp, "and they seemed toknow each other and to be quite neighborly. "

"And would you like to be all messed in with one another that way?"demanded the lady. 

"Well, I thought it was better than living as we do in the country, so farapart that we never see one another, hardly. And it seems to me betterthan not having any neighbors at all. "

"Well, every one to his taste, " said Mrs. Makely. "I wish you would tellus how people manage with you socially, Mr. Homos. "

"Why, you know, " he began, "we have neither city nor country in yoursense, and so we are neither so isolated nor so crowded together. You feelthat you lose a great deal in not seeing one another oftener?" he askedCamp. 

"Yes. Folks rust out living alone. It's Human nature to want to gettogether. "

"And I understand Mrs. Makely that it is human nature to want to keepapart?"

"Oh no, but to come together independently, " she answered. 

"Well, that is what we have contrived in our life at home. I should haveto say, in the first place, that--"

"Excuse me just one moment, Mr. Homos, " said Mrs. Makely. This perversewoman was as anxious to hear about Altruria as any of us, but she was awoman who would rather hear the sound of her own voice than any other, even if she were dying, as she would call it, to hear the other. TheAltrurian stopped politely, and Mrs. Makely went on: "I have been thinkingof what Mr. Camp was saying about the blacklisted men, and their allturning into tramps--"

"But I didn't say that, Mrs. Makely, " the young fellow protested, inastonishment. 

"Well, it stands to reason that if the tramps have all been blacklistedmen--"

"But I didn't say that, either. "

"No matter! What I am trying to get at is this: if a workman has madehimself a nuisance to the employers, haven't they a right to punish him inany way they can?"

"I believe there's no law yet against blacklisting, " said Camp. 

"Very well, then, I don't see what they've got to complain of. Theemployers surely know their own business. "

"They claim to know the men's, too. That's what they're always saying;they will manage their own affairs in their own way. But no man, orcompany, that does business on a large scale has any affairs that are notpartly other folks' affairs, too. All the saying in the world won't makeit different. "

"Very well, then, " said Mrs. Makely, with a force of argument which sheseemed to think was irresistible, "I think the workmen had better leavethings to the employers, and then they won't get blacklisted. It's asbroad as it's long. "

I confess that, although I agreed with Mrs. Makely in regard to what theworkmen had better do, her position had been arrived at by suchextraordinary reasoning that I blushed for her; at the same time, I wantedto laugh. She continued, triumphantly: "You see, the employers have everso much more at stake. "

"Then men have everything at stake--the work of their hands, " said theyoung fellow. 

"Oh, but surely, " said Mrs. Makely, "you wouldn't set that againstcapital? You wouldn't compare the two?"

"Yes, I should, " said Camp, and I could see his eye kindle and his jawstiffen. 

"Then I suppose you would say that a man ought to get as much for his workas an employer gets for his capital. If you think one has as much at stakeas the other, you must think they ought to be paid alike. "

"That is _just_ what I think, " said Camp, and Mrs. Makely burst into apeal of amiable laughter. 

"Now, that is too preposterous!"

"Why is it preposterous?" he demanded, with a quivering nostril. 

"Why, simply because it _is_" said the lady, but she did not say why, andalthough I thought so, too, I was glad she did not attempt to do it, forher conclusions seemed to me much better than her reasons. 

The old wooden clock in the kitchen began to strike, and she rose brisklyto her feet and went and laid the books she had been holding in her lap onthe table beside Mrs. Camp's bed. "We must really be going, " she said, asshe leaned over and kissed the invalid. "It is your dinner-time, and weshall barely get back for lunch if we go by the Loop road; and I want verymuch to have Mr. Homos see the Witch's Falls on the way. I have got two orthree of the books here that Mr. Makely brought me last night--I sha'n'thave time to read them at once--and I'm smuggling in one of Mr. Twelvemough's, that he's too modest to present for himself. " She turned agay glance upon me, and Mrs. Camp thanked me, and a number of civilitiesfollowed from all sides. In the process of their exchange, Mrs. Makely'sspirits perceptibly rose, and she came away in high good-humor with thewhole Camp family. "Well, now, I am sure, " she said to the Altrurian, aswe began the long ascent of the Loop road, "you must allow that you haveseen some very original characters. But how _warped_ people get livingalone so much! That is the great drawback of the country. Mrs. Camp thinksthe savings-bank did her a real injury in taking a mortgage on her place, and Reuben seems to have seen just enough of the outside world to get itall wrong. But they are the best-hearted creatures in the world, and Iknow you won't misunderstand them. That unsparing country bluntness--don'tyou think it's perfectly delightful? I do like to stir poor Reuben up, andget him talking. He is a good boy, if he _is_ so wrong-headed, and he'sthe most devoted son and brother in the world. Very few young fellowswould waste their lives on an old farm like that; I suppose, when hismother dies, he will marry and strike out for himself in some growingplace. "

"He did not seem to think the world held out any very bright inducementsfor him to leave home, " the Altrurian suggested. 

"Oh, let him get one of these lively, pushing Yankee girls for a wife, andhe will think very differently, " said Mrs. Makely. 

The Altrurian disappeared that afternoon, and I saw little or nothing ofhim till the next day at supper. Then he said he had been spending thetime with young Camp, who had shown him something of the farm-work, andintroduced him to several of the neighbors; he was very much interested init all, because at home he was, at present, engaged in farm-work himself, and he was curious to contrast the American and Altrurian methods. Webegan to talk of the farming interest again, later in the day, when themembers of our little group came together, and I told them what theAltrurian had been doing. The doctor had been suddenly called back totown; but the minister was there, and the lawyer and the professor and thebanker and the manufacturer. 

It was the banker who began to comment on what I said, and he seemed to bein the frank humor of the Saturday night before. "Yes, " he said, "it's ahard life, and they have to look sharp if they expect to make both endsmeet. I would not like to undertake it myself with their resources. "

The professor smiled, in asking the Altrurian: "Did your agriculturalfriends tell you anything of the little rural traffic in votes that theycarry on about election time? That is one of the side means they have ofmaking both ends meet. "

"I don't understand, " said the Altrurian. 

"Why, you know, you can buy votes among our virtuous yeomen from twodollars up at the ordinary elections. When party feeling runs high, andthere are vital questions at stake, the votes cost more. "

The Altrurian looked round at us all aghast. "Do, you mean that Americansbuy votes?"

The professor smiled again. "Oh no; I only mean that they sell them. Well, I don't wonder that they rather prefer to blink the fact; but it is afact, nevertheless, and pretty notorious. "

"Good heavens!" cried the Altrurian. "And what defence have they for suchtreason? I don't mean those who sell; from what I have seen of thebareness and hardship of their lives, I could well imagine that theremight sometimes come a pinch when they would be glad of the few dollarsthat they could get in that way; but what have those who buy to say?"

"Well, " said the professor, "it isn't a transaction that's apt to betalked about much on either side. "

"I think, " the banker interposed, "that there is some exaggeration aboutthat business; but it certainly exists, and I suppose it is a growing evilin the country. I fancy it arises, somewhat, from a want of, clearthinking on the subject. Then there is no doubt but it comes, sometimes, from poverty. A man sells his vote, as a woman sells her person, formoney, when neither can turn virtue into cash. They feel that they mustlive, and neither of them would be satisfied if Dr. Johnson told them hedidn't see the necessity. In fact, I shouldn't myself, if I were in theirplaces. You can't have the good of a civilization like ours without havingthe bad; but I am not going to deny that the bad is bad. Some people liketo do that; but I don't find my account in it. In either case, I confessthat I think the buyer is worse than the seller--incomparably worse. Isuppose you are not troubled with either case in Altruria?"

"Oh no!" said the Altrurian, with an utter horror, which no repetition ofhis words can give the sense of. "It would be unimaginable. "

"Still, " the banker suggested, "you have cakes and ale, and at times theginger is hot in the mouth?"

"I don't pretend that we have immunity from error; but upon such terms asyou have described we have none. It would be impossible. "

The Altrurian's voice expressed no contempt, but only a sad patience, amelancholy surprise, such as a celestial angel might feel in beingsuddenly confronted with some secret shame and horror of the Pit. 

"Well, " said the banker, "with us the only way is to take the businessview and try to strike an average somewhere. "

"Talking of business, " said the professor, turning to the manufacturer, who had been quietly smoking, "why don't some of you capitalists take holdof farming here in the East, and make a business of it as they do in theWest?"

"Thank you, " said the other; "if you mean me, I would rather not invest. "He was silent a moment, and then he went on, as if the notion werebeginning to win upon him: "It may come to something like that, though. Ifit does, the natural course, I should think, would he through therailroads. It would he a very easy matter for them to buy up all the goodfarms along their lines and put tenants on them, and run them in their owninterest. Really, it isn't a bad scheme. The waste in the present methodis enormous, and there is no reason why the roads should not own thefarms, as they are beginning to own the mines. They could manage thembetter than the small farmers do in every way. I wonder the thing hasn'toccurred to some smart railroad man. "

We all laughed a little, perceiving the semi-ironical spirit of his talk;but the Altrurian must have taken it in dead earnest: "But, in that case, the number of people thrown out of work would be very great, wouldn't it?And what would become of them?"

"Well, they would have whatever their farms brought to make a new startwith somewhere else; and, besides, that question of what would become ofpeople thrown out of work by a given improvement is something that capitalcannot consider. We used to introduce a bit of machinery in the mill, every now and then, that threw out a dozen or a hundred people; but wecouldn't stop for that. "

"And you never knew what became of them?"

"Sometimes. Generally not. We took it for granted that they would light ontheir feet somehow. "

"And the state--the whole people--the government--did nothing for them?"

"If it became a question of the poor-house, yes. "

"Or the jail, " the lawyer suggested. 

"Speaking of the poor-house, " said the professor, "did our exemplary ruralfriends tell you how they sell out their paupers to the lowest bidder, andget them boarded sometimes as low as a dollar and a quarter a week?"

"Yes, young Mr. Camp told me of that. He seemed to think it was terrible. "

"Did he? Well, I'm glad to hear that of young Mr. Camp. From all that I'vebeen told before, he seems to reserve his conscience for the use ofcapitalists. What does he propose to do about it?"

"He seems to think the state ought to find work for them. "

"Oh, paternalism! Well, I guess the state won't. "

"That was his opinion, too. "

"It seems a hard fate, " said the minister, "that the only provision thelaw makes for people who are worn out by sickness or a life of work shouldbe something that assorts them with idiots and lunatics, and brings suchshame upon them that it is almost as terrible as death. "

"It is the only way to encourage independence and individuality, " said theprofessor. "Of course, it has its dark side. But anything else would besentimental and unbusinesslike, and, in fact, un-American. "

"I am not so sure that it would be un-Christian, " the minister timidlyventured, in the face of such an authority on political economy. 

"Oh, as to that, I must leave the question to the reverend clergy, " saidthe professor. 

A very unpleasant little silence followed. It was broken by the lawyer, who put his feet together, and, after a glance down at them, began to say:"I was very much interested this afternoon by a conversation I had withsome of the young fellows in the hotel. You know most of them aregraduates, and they are taking a sort of supernumerary vacation thissummer before they plunge into the battle of life in the autumn. They weretalking of some other fellows, classmates of theirs, who were not solucky, but had been obliged to begin the fight at once. It seems that ourfellows here are all going in for some sort of profession: medicine or lawor engineering or teaching or the church, and they were commiseratingthose other fellows not only because they were not having thesupernumerary vacation, but because they were going into business. Thatstruck me as rather odd, and I tried to find out what it meant, and, asnearly as I could find out, it meant that most college graduates would notgo into business if they could help it. They seemed to feel a sort ofincongruity between their education and the business life. They pitied thefellows that had to go in for it, and apparently the fellows that had togo in for it pitied themselves, for the talk seemed to have begun about aletter that one of the chaps here had got from poor Jack or Jim somebody, who had been obliged to go into his father's business, and was groaningover it. The fellows who were going to study professions were huggingthemselves at the contrast between their fate and his, and were makingremarks about business that were, to say the least, unbusinesslike. A fewyears ago we should have made a summary disposition of the matter, and Ibelieve some of the newspapers still are in doubt about the value of acollege education to men who have got to make their way. What do youthink?"

The lawyer addressed his question to the manufacturer, who answered, witha comfortable satisfaction, that he did not think those young men if theywent into business would find that they knew too much. 

"But they pointed out, " said the lawyer, "that the great American fortuneshad been made by men who had never had their educational advantages, andthey seemed to think that what we call the education of a gentleman was alittle too good for money-making purposes. "

"Well, " said the other, "they can console themselves with the reflectionthat going into business isn't necessarily making money; it isn'tnecessarily making a living, even. "

"Some of them seem to have caught on to that fact; and they pitied Jack orJim partly because the chances were so much against him. But they pitiedhim mostly because in the life before him he would have no use for hisacademic training, and he had better not gone to college at all. They saidhe would be none the better for it, and would always be miserable when helooked back to it. "

The manufacturer did not reply, and the professor, after a preliminaryhemming, held his peace. It was the banker who took the word: "Well, sofar as business is concerned, they were right. It is no use to pretendthat there is any relation between business and the higher education. There is no business man who will pretend that there is not often anactual incompatibility if he is honest. I know that when we get togetherat a commercial or financial dinner we talk as if great merchants andgreat financiers were beneficent geniuses, who evoked the prosperity ofmankind by their schemes from the conditions that would otherwise haveremained barren. Well, very likely they are, but we must all confess thatthey do not know it at the time. What they are consciously looking out forthen is the main chance. If general prosperity follows, all well and good;they are willing to be given the credit for it. But, as I said, withbusiness as business, the 'education of a gentleman' has nothing to do. That education is always putting the old Ciceronian question: whether thefellow arriving at a starving city with a cargo of grain is bound to tellthe people before he squeezes them that there are half a dozen otherfellows with grain just below the horizon. As a gentleman he would have totell them, because he could not take advantage of their necessities; but, as a business man, he would think it bad business to tell them, or nobusiness at all. The principle goes all through; I say, business isbusiness; and I am not going to pretend that business will ever beanything else. In our business battles we don't take off our hats to theother side and say, 'Gentlemen of the French Guard, have the goodness tofire. ' That may be war, but it is not business. We seize all theadvantages we can; very few of us would actually deceive; but if a fellowbelieves a thing, and we know he is wrong, we do not usually take thetrouble to set him right, if we are going to lose anything by undeceivinghim. That would not be business. I suppose you think that is dreadful?" Heturned smilingly to the minister. 

"I wish--I wish, " said the minister, gently, "it could be otherwise. "

"Well, I wish so, too, " returned the banker. "But it isn't. Am I right oram I wrong?" he demanded of the manufacturer, who laughed. 

"I am not conducting this discussion. I will not deprive you of thefloor. "

"What you say, " I ventured to put in, "reminds me of the experience of afriend of mine, a brother novelist. He wrote a story where the failure ofa business man turned on a point just like that you have instanced. Theman could have retrieved himself if he had let some people believe thatwhat was so was not so, but his conscience stepped in and obliged him toown the truth. There was a good deal of talk about the case, I suppose, because it was not in real life, and my friend heard divers criticisms. Heheard of a group of ministers who blamed him for exalting a case of commonhonesty, as if it were something extraordinary; and he heard of somebusiness men who talked it over and said he had worked the case upsplendidly, but he was all wrong in the outcome--the fellow would neverhave told the other fellows. They said it would not have been business. "

We all laughed except the minister and the Altrurian; the manufacturersaid: "Twenty-five years hence, the fellow who is going into business maypity the fellows who are pitying him for his hard fate now. "

"Very possibly, but not necessarily, " said the banker. "Of course, thebusiness man is on top, as far as money goes; he is the fellow who makesthe big fortunes; the millionaire lawyers and doctors and ministers areexceptional. But his risks are tremendous. Ninety-five times out of ahundred he fails. To be sure, he picks up and goes on, but he seldom getsthere, after all. "

"Then in your system, " said the Altrurian, "the great majority of thosewho go into what you call the battle of life are defeated?"

"The killed, wounded, and missing sum up a frightful total, " the bankeradmitted. "But whatever the end is, there is a great deal of prosperity onthe way. The statistics are correct, but they do not tell the whole truth. It is not so bad as it seems. Still, simply looking at the materialchances, I don't blame those young fellows for not wanting to go intobusiness. And when you come to other considerations! We used to cut theknot of the difficulty pretty sharply; we said a college education waswrong, or the hot and hot American spread-eaglers did. Business is thenational ideal, and the successful business man is the American type. Itis a business man's country. "

"Then, if I understand you, " said the Altrurian, "and I am very anxious tohave a clear understanding of the matter, the effect of the universitywith you is to unfit a youth for business life. "

"Oh no. It may give him great advantages in it, and that is the theory andexpectation of most fathers who send their sons to the university. But, undoubtedly, the effect is to render business life distasteful. Theuniversity nurtures all sorts of lofty ideals, which business has no usefor. "

"Then the effect is undemocratic?"

"No, it is simply unbusinesslike. The boy is a better democrat when heleaves college than he will be later, if he goes into business. Theuniversity has taught him and equipped him to use his own gifts and powersfor his advancement; but the first lesson of business, and the last, is touse other men's gifts and powers. If he looks about him at all, he seesthat no man gets rich simply by his own labor, no matter how mighty agenius he is, and that, if you want to get rich, you must make other menwork for you, and pay you for the privilege of doing so. Isn't that true?"

The banker turned to the manufacturer with this question, and the othersaid: "The theory is, that we give people work, " and they both laughed. 

The minister said: "I believe that in Altruria no man works for the profitof another?"

"No; each works for the profit of all, " replied the Altrurian. 

"Well, " said the banker, "you seem to have made it go. Nobody can denythat. But we couldn't make it go here. "

"Why? I am very curious to know why our system seems so impossible toyou. "

"Well, it is contrary to the American spirit. It is alien to our love ofindividuality. "

"But we prize individuality, too, and we think we secure it under oursystem. Under yours, it seems to me that while the individuality of theman who makes other men work for him is safe, except from itself, theindividuality of the workers--"

"Well, that is their lookout. We have found that, upon the whole, it isbest to let every man look out for himself. I know that, in a certainlight, the result has an ugly aspect; but, nevertheless, in spite of all, the country is enormously prosperous. The pursuit of happiness, which isone of the inalienable rights secured to us by the Declaration, is, andalways has been, a dream; but the pursuit of the dollar yields tangibleproceeds, and we get a good deal of excitement out of it as it goes on. You can't deny that we are the richest nation in the world. Do you callAltruria a rich country?"

I could not quite make out whether the banker was serious or not in allthis talk; sometimes I suspected him of a fine mockery, but the Altruriantook him upon the surface of his words. 

"I hardly know whether it is or not. The question of wealth does not enterinto our scheme. I can say that we all have enough, and that no one iseven in the fear of want. "

"Yes, that is very well. But we should think it was paying too much for itif we had to give up the hope of ever having more than we wanted, " and atthis point the banker uttered his jolly laugh, and I perceived that he hadbeen trying to draw the Altrurian out and practise upon his patriotism. Itwas a great relief to find that he had been joking in so much that seemeda dead give-away of our economical position. "In Altruria, " he asked, "whois your ideal great man? I don't mean personally, but abstractly. "

The Altrurian thought a moment. "With us there is so little ambition fordistinction, as you understand it, that your question is hard to answer. But I should say, speaking largely, that it was some man who had been ablefor the time being to give the greatest happiness to the greatest number--some artist or poet or inventor or physician. "

I was somewhat surprised to have the banker take this preposterousstatement seriously, respectfully. "Well, that is quite conceivable withyour system. What should you say, " he demanded of the rest of usgenerally, "was our ideal of greatness?"

No one replied at once, or at all, till the manufacturer said: "We willlet you continue to run it. "

"Well, it is a very curious inquiry, and I have thought it over a gooddeal. I should say that within a generation our ideal has changed twice. Before the war, and during all the time from the Revolution onward, it wasundoubtedly the great politician, the publicist, the statesman. As we grewolder and began to have an intellectual life of our own, I think theliterary fellows had a pretty good share of the honors that were going--that is, such a man as Longfellow was popularly considered a type ofgreatness. When the war came, it brought the soldier to the front, andthere was a period of ten or fifteen years when he dominated the nationalimagination. That period passed, and the great era of material prosperityset in. The big fortunes began to tower up, and heroes of another sortbegan to appeal to our admiration. I don't think there is any doubt butthe millionaire is now the American ideal. It isn't very pleasant to thinkso, even for people who have got on, but it can't very hopefully bedenied. It is the man with the most money who now takes the prize in ournational cake-walk. "

The Altrurian turned curiously toward me, and I did my best to tell himwhat a cake-walk was. When I had finished, the banker resumed, only tosay, as he rose from his chair to bid us good-night: "In any averageassembly of Americans the greatest millionaire would take the eyes of allfrom the greatest statesman, the greatest poet, or the greatest soldier weever had. That, " he added to the Altrurian, "will account to you for manythings as you travel through our country. "

IX

The next time the members of our little group came together, themanufacturer began at once upon the banker:

"I should think that our friend the professor, here, would hardly likethat notion of yours, that business, as business, has nothing to do withthe education of a gentleman. If this is a business man's country, and ifthe professor has nothing in stock but the sort of education that businesshas no use for, I should suppose that he would want to go into some otherline. "

The banker mutely referred the matter to the professor, who said, withthat cold grin of his which I hated:

"Perhaps we shall wait for business to purge and live cleanly. Then itwill have some use for the education of a gentleman. "

"I see, " said the banker, "that I have touched the quick in both of you, when I hadn't the least notion of doing so. But I shouldn't really like toprophesy which will adapt itself to the other--education or business. Letus hope there will be mutual concessions. There are some pessimists whosay that business methods, especially on the large scale of the trusts andcombinations, have grown worse instead of better; but this may be merelywhat is called a 'transition state. ' Hamlet must be cruel to be kind; thedarkest hour comes before dawn--and so on. Perhaps when business getsthe whole affair of life into its hands, and runs the republic, as itsenemies now accuse it of doing, the process of purging and living cleanlywill begin. I have known lots of fellows who started in life ratherscampishly; but when they felt secure of themselves, and believed thatthey could afford to be honest, they became so. There's no reason why thesame thing shouldn't happen on a large scale. We must never forget that weare still a very novel experiment, though we have matured so rapidly insome respects that we have come to regard ourselves as an accomplishedfact. We are really less so than we were forty years ago, with all thetremendous changes since the war. Before that we could take certainmatters for granted. If a man got out of work, he turned his hand tosomething else; if a man failed in business, he started in again from someother direction; as a last resort, in both cases, he went West, pre-empteda quarter-section of public land, and grew up with the country. Now thecountry is grown up; the public land is gone; business is full on allsides, and the hand that turned itself to something else has lost itscunning. The struggle for life has changed from a free-fight to anencounter of disciplined forces, and the free-fighters that are left getground to pieces between organized labor and organized capital. Decidedly, we are in a transition state, and if the higher education tried to adaptitself to business needs, there are chances that it might sacrifice itselfwithout helping business. After all, how much education does businessneed? Were our great fortunes made by educated men, or men of universitytraining? I don't know but these young fellows are right about that. "

"Yes, that may all be, " I put in. "But it seems to me that you give Mr. Homos, somehow, a wrong impression of our economic life by yourgeneralizations. You are a Harvard man yourself. "

"Yes, and I am not a rich man. A million or two, more or less; but what isthat? I have suffered, at the start and all along, from the question as towhat a man with the education of a gentleman ought to do in such and sucha juncture. The fellows who have not that sort of education have not thatsort of question, and they go in and win. "

"So you admit, then, " said the professor, "that the higher educationelevates a business man's standard of morals?"

"Undoubtedly. That is one of its chief drawbacks, " said the banker, with alaugh. 

"Well, " I said, with the deference due even to a man who had only amillion or two, more or less, "we must allow _you_ to say such things. Butif the case is so bad with the business men who have made the greatfortunes--the business men who have never had the disadvantage of auniversity education--I wish you would explain to Mr. Homos why, in everypublic exigency, we instinctively appeal to the business sense of thecommunity as if it were the fountain of wisdom, probity, and equity. Suppose there were some question of vital interest--I won't say financial, but political or moral or social--on which it was necessary to rousepublic opinion, what would be the first thing to do? To call a meetingover the signatures of the leading business men, because no other namesappeal with such force to the public. You might get up a call signed byall the novelists, artists, ministers, lawyers, and doctors in the state, and it would not have a tithe of the effect, with the people at large, that a call signed by a few leading merchants, bank presidents, railroadmen, and trust officers would have. What is the reason? It seems strangethat I should be asking you to defend yourself against yourself. "

"Not at all, my dear fellow, not at all, " the banker replied, with hiscaressing bonhomie. "Though I will confess, to begin with, that I do notexpect to answer your question to your entire satisfaction. I can only domy best--on the instalment plan. "

He turned to the Altrurian, and then went on: "As I said the other night, this is a business man's country. We are a purely commercial people; moneyis absolutely to the fore; and business, which is the means of getting themost money, is the American ideal. If you like, you may call it theAmerican fetish; I don't mind calling it so myself. The fact that businessis our ideal, or our fetish, will account for the popular faith inbusiness men, who form its priesthood, its hierarchy. I don't know, myself, any other reason for regarding business men as solider thannovelists or artists or ministers, not to mention lawyers and doctors. They are supposed to have long heads; but it appears that ninety-fivetimes out of a hundred they haven't. They are supposed to be veryreliable; but it is almost invariably a business man of some sort who getsout to Canada while the state examiner is balancing his books, and it isusually the longest headed business men who get plundered by him. No, itis simply because business is our national ideal that the business man ishonored above all other men among us. In the aristocratic countries theyforward a public object under the patronage of the nobility and gentry; ina plutocratic country they get the business men to indorse it. I supposethat the average American citizen feels that they wouldn't indorse a thingunless it was safe; and the average American citizen likes to be safe--heis cautious. As a matter of fact, business men are always taking risks, and business is a game of chance, in a certain degree. Have I made myselfintelligible?"

"Entirely so, " said the Altrurian; and he seemed so thoroughly wellsatisfied that he forbore asking any further question. 

No one else spoke. The banker lighted a cigar, and resumed at the pointwhere he left off when I ventured to enter upon the defence of his classwith him. I must say that he had not convinced me at all. At that momentI would rather have trusted him, in any serious matter of practicalconcern, than all the novelists I ever heard of. But I thought I wouldleave the word to him, without further attempt to reinstate him in hisself-esteem. In fact, he seemed to be getting along very well without it, or else he was feeling that mysterious control from the Altrurian which Ihad already suspected him of using. Voluntarily or involuntarily, thebanker proceeded with his contribution to the Altrurian's stock ofknowledge concerning our civilization:

"I don't believe, however, that the higher education is any more of afailure, as a provision for a business career, than the lower education isfor the life of labor. I suppose that the hypercritical observer might saythat in a wholly commercial civilization like ours the business man reallyneeded nothing beyond the three R's, and the working-man needed no R atall. As a practical affair, there is a good deal to be said in favor ofthat view. The higher education is part of the social ideal which we havederived from the past, from Europe. It is part of the provision for thelife of leisure, the life of the aristocrat, which nobody of ourgeneration leads, except women. Our women really have some use for theeducation of a gentleman, but our men have none. How will that do for ageneralization?" the banker asked of me. 

"Oh, " I admitted, with a laugh, "it is a good deal like one of my own. Ihave always been struck with that phase of our civilization. "

"Well, then, " the banker resumed, "take the lower education. That is partof the civic ideal which, I suppose, I may say we evolved from the depthsof our inner consciousness of what an American citizen ought to be. Itincludes instruction in all the R's, and in several other letters of thealphabet. It is given free by the state, and no one can deny that it isthoroughly socialistic in conception and application. "

"Distinctly so, " said the professor. "Now that the text-books arefurnished by the state, we have only to go a step further and provide agood, hot lunch for the children every day, as they do in Paris. "

"Well, " the banker returned, "I don't know that I should have much to sayagainst that. It seems as reasonable as anything in the system ofeducation which we force upon the working classes. _They_ know perfectlywell, whether we do or not, that the three R's will not make theirchildren better mechanics or laborers, and that, if the fight for a mereliving is to go on from generation to generation, they will have noleisure to apply the little learning they get in the public schools fortheir personal culture. In the mean time we deprive the parents of theirchildren's labor, in order that they may be better citizens for theirschooling, as we imagine; I don't know whether they are or not. We offerthem no sort of compensation for their time, and I think we ought to feelobliged to them for not wanting wages for their children while we areteaching them to be better citizens. "

"You know, " said the professor, "that has been suggested by some of theirleaders. "

"No, really? Well, that is too good!" The banker threw back his head androared, and we all laughed with him. When we had sobered down again, hesaid: "I suppose that when a working-man makes all the use he can of hislower education he becomes a business man, and then he doesn't need thehigher. Professor, you seem to be left out in the cold by our system, whichever way you take it. "

"Oh, " said the professor, "the law of supply and demand works both ways:it creates the demand, if the supply comes first; and if we keep on givingthe sons of business men the education of a gentleman, we may yet makethem feel the need of it. We shall evolve a new sort of business man. "

"The sort that can't make money, or wouldn't exactly like to, on someterms?" asked the banker. "Well, perhaps we shall work out our democraticsalvation in that way. When you have educated your new business man to thepoint where he can't consent to get rich at the obvious cost of others, you've got him on the way back to work with his hands. He will sink intothe ranks of labor, and give the fellow with the lower education a chance. I've no doubt he'll take it. I don't know but you're right, professor. "

The lawyer had not spoken as yet. Now he said: "Then it is education, after all, that is to bridge the chasm between the classes and the masses, though it seems destined to go a long way around about it. There was atime, I believe, when we expected religion to do that. "

"Well, it may still be doing it, for all I know, " said the banker. "Whatdo you say?" he asked, turning to the minister. "You ought to be able togive us some statistics on the subject with that large congregation ofyours. You preach to more people than any other pulpit in your city. "

The banker named one of the principal cities in the East, and the ministeranswered, with, modest pride: "I am not sure of that; but our society iscertainly a very large one. "

"Well, and how many of the lower classes are there in it--people who workfor their living with their hands?"

The minister stirred uneasily in his chair, and at last he said, withevident unhappiness: "They--I suppose--they have their own churches. Ihave never thought that such a separation of the classes was right; and Ihave had some of the very best people--socially and financially--with mein the wish that there might be more brotherliness between the rich andpoor among us. But as yet--"

He stopped; the banker pursued: "Do you mean there are _no_ working-peoplein your congregation?"

"I cannot think of any, " returned the minister, so miserably that thebanker forbore to press the point. 

The lawyer broke the awkward pause which followed: "I have heard itasserted that there is no country in the world where the separation of theclasses is so absolute as in ours. In fact, I once heard a Russianrevolutionist, who had lived in exile all over Europe, say that he hadnever seen anywhere such a want of kindness or sympathy between rich andpoor as he had observed in America. I doubted whether he was right. But hebelieved that, if it ever came to the industrial revolution with us, thefight would be more uncompromising than any such fight that the world hadever seen. There was no respect from low to high, he said, and noconsideration from high to low, as there were in countries with traditionsand old associations. "

"Well, " said the banker, "there may be something in that. Certainly, sofar as the two forces have come into conflict here, there has been nodisposition, on either side, to 'make war with the water of roses. ' It'sastonishing, in fact, to see how ruthless the fellows who have just got upare toward the fellows who are still down. And the best of us have been uponly a generation or two--and the fellows who are still down know it. "

"And what do you think would be the outcome of such a conflict?" I asked, with my soul divided between fear of it and the perception of itsexcellence as material. My fancy vividly sketched the outline of a storywhich should forecast the struggle and its event, somewhat on the plan ofthe Battle of Dorking. 

"We should beat, " said the banker, breaking his cigar-ash off with hislittle finger; and I instantly cast him, with his ironic calm, for thepart of a great patrician leader in my "Fall of the Republic. " Of course, I disguised him somewhat, and travestied his worldly bonhomie with thebluff sang-froid of the soldier; these things are easily done. 

"What makes you think we should beat?" asked the manufacturer, with acertain curiosity. 

"Well, all the good jingo reasons: we have got the materials for beating. Those fellows throw away their strength whenever they begin to fight, andthey've been so badly generalled, up to the present time, that they havewanted to fight at the outset of every quarrel. They have been beaten inevery quarrel, but still they always want to begin by fighting. That isall right. When they have learned enough to begin by _voting_, then weshall have to look out. But if they keep on fighting, and always puttingthemselves in the wrong and getting the worst of it, perhaps we can fixthe voting so we needn't be any more afraid of that than we are of thefighting. It's astonishing how short-sighted they are. They, have noconception of any cure for their grievances except more wages and fewerhours. "

"But, " I asked, "do you really think they have any just grievances?"

"Of course not, as a business man, " said the banker. "If I were aworking-man, I should probably think differently. But we will suppose, forthe sake of argument, that their day is too long and their pay is tooshort. How do they go about to better themselves? They strike. Well, astrike is a fight, and in a fight, nowadays, it is always skill and moneythat win. The working-men can't stop till they have put themselves outsideof the public sympathy which the newspapers say is so potent in theirbehalf; I never saw that it did them the least good. They begin byboycotting, and breaking the heads of the men who want to work. Theydestroy property, and they interfere with business--the two absolutelysacred things in the American religion. Then we call out the militia andshoot a few of them, and their leaders declare the strike off. It isperfectly simple. "

"But will it be quite as simple, " I asked, reluctant in behalf of myprojected romance, to have the matter so soon disposed of--"will it bequite so simple if their leaders ever persuade the working-men to leavethe militia, as they threaten to do, from time to time?"

"No, not quite so simple, " the banker admitted. "Still, the fight would becomparatively simple. In the first place, I doubt--though I won't becertain about it--whether there are a great many working-men in themilitia now. I rather fancy it is made up, for the most part, of clerksand small tradesmen and book-keepers, and such employés of business ashave time and money for it. I may be mistaken. "

No one seemed able to say whether he was mistaken or not; and, afterwaiting a moment, he proceeded: "I feel pretty sure that it is so in thecity companies and regiments, at any rate, and that if every working-manleft them it would not seriously impair their effectiveness. But when theworking-men have left the militia, what have they done? They haveeliminated the only thing that disqualifies it for prompt and unsparinguse against strikers. As long as they are in it we might have ourmisgivings, but if they were once out of it we should have none. And whatwould they gain? They would not be allowed to arm and organize as aninimical force. _That_ was settled once for all in Chicago, in the case ofthe International Groups. A few squads of policemen would break them up. Why, " the banker exclaimed, with his good-humored laugh, "how preposterousthey are when you come to look at it! They are in the majority, theimmense majority, if you count the farmers, and they prefer to behave asif they were the hopeless minority. They say they want an eight-hour law, and every now and then they strike and try to fight it. Why don't they_vote_ it? They could _make_ it the law in six months by such overwhelmingnumbers that no one would dare to evade or defy it. They can make any lawthey want, but they prefer to break such laws as we have. That 'alienatespublic sympathy, ' the newspapers say; but the spectacle of their stupidityand helpless wilfulness is so lamentable that I could almost pity them. Ifthey chose, it would take only a few years to transform our governmentinto the likeness of anything they wanted. But they would rather not havewhat they want, apparently, if they can only keep themselves from gettingit, and they have to work hard to do that!"

"I suppose, " I said, "that they are misled by the un-American principlesand methods of the Socialists among them. "

"Why, no, " returned the banker, "I shouldn't say that. As far as Iunderstand it, the Socialists are the only fellows among them who proposeto vote their ideas into laws, and nothing can be more American than that. I don't believe the Socialists stir up the strikes--at least, among ourworking-men; though the newspapers convict them of it, generally withouttrying them. The Socialists seem to accept the strikes as the inevitableoutcome of the situation, and they make use of them as proofs of theindustrial discontent. But, luckily for the status, our labor leaders arenot Socialists, for your Socialist, whatever you may say against him, hasgenerally thought himself into a Socialist. He knows that until theworking-men stop fighting, and get down to voting--until they consent tobe the majority--there is no hope for them. I am not talking ofanarchists, mind you, but of Socialists, whose philosophy is more law, notless, and who look forward to an order so just that it can't bedisturbed. "

"And what, " the minister faintly said, "do you think will be the outcomeof it all?"

"We had that question the other night, didn't we? Our legal friend hereseemed to feel that we might rub along indefinitely as we are doing, orwork out an Altruria of our own; or go back to the patriarchal stage andown our working-men. He seemed not to have so much faith in the logic ofevents as I have. I doubt if it is altogether a woman's logic. _Parolefemmine, fatti maschi, _ and the logic of events isn't altogether words;it's full of hard knocks, too. But I'm no prophet. I can't forecast thefuture; I prefer to take it as it comes. There's a little tract of WilliamMorris's, though--I forget just what he calls it--that is full of curiousand interesting speculation on this point. He thinks that, if we keep theroad we are now going, the last state of labor will be like its first, andit will be owned. "

"Oh, I don't believe that will ever happen in America, " I protested. 

"Why not?" asked the banker. "Practically, it is owned already in a vastlygreater measure than we recognize. And where would the great harm be? Thenew slavery would not be like the old. There needn't be irresponsiblewhipping and separation of families, and private buying and selling. Theproletariate would probably be owned by the state, as it was at one timein Greece; or by large corporations, which would be much more in keepingwith the genius of our free institutions; and an enlightened publicopinion would cast safeguards about it in the form of law to guard it fromabuse. But it would be strictly policed, localized, and controlled. Therewould probably be less suffering than there is now, when a man may becowed into submission to any terms through the suffering of his family;when he may be starved out and turned out if he is unruly. You may be surethat nothing of that kind would happen in the new slavery. We have not hadnineteen hundred years of Christianity for nothing. "

The banker paused, and, as the silence continued, he broke it with alaugh, which was a prodigious relief to my feelings, and I suppose to thefeelings of all. I perceived that he had been joking, and I was confirmedin this when he turned to the Altrurian and laid his hand upon hisshoulder. "You see, " he said, "I'm a kind of Altrurian myself. What is thereason why we should not found a new Altruria here on the lines I'vedrawn? Have you never had philosophers--well, call them philanthropists; Idon't mind--of my way of thinking among you?"

"Oh yes, " said the Altrurian. "At one time, just before we emerged fromthe competitive conditions, there was much serious question whethercapital should not own labor instead of labor owning capital. That wasmany hundred years ago. "

"I am proud to find myself such an advanced thinker, " said the banker. "And how came you to decide that labor should own capital?"

"We voted it, " answered the Altrurian. 

"Well, " said the banker, "our fellows are still fighting it, and gettingbeaten. "

I found him later in the evening talking with Mrs. Makely. "My dear sir, "I said, "I liked your frankness with my Altrurian friend immensely; and itmay be well to put the worst foot foremost; but what is the advantage ofnot leaving us a leg to stand upon?"

He was not in the least offended at my boldness, as I had feared he mightbe, but he said, with that jolly laugh of his: "Capital! Well, perhaps Ihave worked my candor a little too hard; I suppose there is such a thing. But don't you see that it leaves me in the best possible position to carrythe war into Altruria when we get him to open up about his native land?"

"Ah! If you can get him to do it. "

"Well, we were just talking about that. Mrs. Makely has a plan. "

"Yes, " said the lady, turning an empty chair near her own toward me. "Sitdown and listen. "

X

I sat down, and Mrs. Makely continued: "I have thought it all out, and Iwant you to confess that in all practical matters a woman's brain isbetter than a man's. Mr. Bullion, here, says it is, and I want you to sayso, too. "

"Yes, " the banker admitted, "when it comes down to business a woman isworth any two of us. "

"And we have just been agreeing, " I coincided, "that the only gentlemenamong us are women. Mrs. Makely, I admit, without further dispute, thatthe most unworldly woman is worldlier than the worldliest man; and that inall practical matters we fade into dreamers and doctrinaires beside you. Now, go on. "

But she did not mean to let me off so easily. She began to brag herselfup, as women do whenever you make them the slightest concession. 

"Here, you men, " she said, "have been trying for a whole week to getsomething out of Mr. Homos about his country, and you have left it to apoor, weak woman, at last, to think how to manage it. I do believe thatyou get so much interested in your own talk, when you are with him, thatyou don't let him get in a word, and that's the reason you haven't foundout anything about Altruria yet from him. "

In view of the manner in which she had cut in at Mrs. Camp's, and stoppedHomos on the very verge of the only full and free confession he had everbeen near making about Altruria, I thought this was pretty cool; but, forfear of worse, I said:

"You're quite right, Mrs. Makely. I'm sorry to say that there has been ashameful want of self-control among us, and that, if we learn anything atall from him, it will be because you have taught us how. "

She could not resist this bit of taffy. She scarcely gave herself time togulp it before she said:

"Oh, it's very well to say that now! But where would you have been if Ihadn't set my wits to work? Now, listen! It just popped into my mind, likean inspiration, when I was thinking of something altogether different. Itflashed upon me in an instant: a good object, and a public occasion. "

"Well?" I said, finding this explosion and electrical inspiration ratherenigmatical. 

"Why, you know, the Union Chapel, over in the village, is in a languishingcondition, and the ladies have been talking all summer about doingsomething for it, getting up something--a concert or theatricals or adance or something--and applying the proceeds to repainting and paperingthe visible church; it needs it dreadfully. But, of course, those thingsare not exactly religious, don't you know; and a fair is so much trouble;and _such_ a bore, when you get the articles ready, even; and everybodyfeels swindled; and now people frown on raffles, so there is no usethinking of them. What you want is something striking. We did think of aparlor-reading, or perhaps ventriloquism; but the performers all charge somuch that there wouldn't be anything left after paying expenses. "

She seemed to expect some sort of prompting at this point; so I said:"Well?"

"Well, " she repeated, "that is just where your Mr. Homos comes in. "

"Oh! How does he come in there?"

"Why, get him to deliver a Talk on Altruria. As soon as he knows it's fora good object, he will be on fire to do it; and they must live so much incommon there that the public occasion will be just the thing that willappeal to him. "

It did seem a good plan to me, and I said so. But Mrs. Makely was so muchin love with it that she was not satisfied with my modest recognition. 

"Good? It's magnificent! It's the very thing! And I have thought it out, down to the last detail--"

"Excuse me, " I interrupted. "Do you think there is sufficient generalinterest in the subject, outside of the hotel, to get a full house forhim? I shouldn't like to see him subjected to the mortification of emptybenches. "

"What in the world are you thinking of? Why, there isn't a farm-house, anywhere within ten miles, where they haven't heard of Mr. Homos; andthere isn't a servant under this roof, or in any of the boarding-houses, who doesn't know something about Altruria and want to know more. It seemsthat your friend has been much oftener with the porters and thestable-boys than he has been with us. "

I had only too great reason to fear so. In spite of my warnings andentreaties, he had continued to behave toward every human being he metexactly as if they were equals. He apparently could not conceive of thatsocial difference which difference of occupation creates among us. Heowned that he saw it, and from the talk of our little group he knew itexisted; but, when I expostulated with him upon some act in grossviolation of society usage, he only answered that he could not imaginethat what he saw and knew could actually be. It was quite impossible tokeep him from bowing with the greatest deference to our waitress; he shookhands with the head-waiter every morning as well as with me; there was afearful story current in the house, that he had been seen running down oneof the corridors to relieve a chambermaid laden with two heavy water-pailswhich she was carrying to the rooms to fill up the pitchers. This wasprobably not true; but I myself saw him helping in the hotel hay-field oneafternoon, shirt-sleeved like any of the hired men. He said that it wasthe best possible exercise, and that he was ashamed he could give nobetter excuse for it than the fact that without something of the kind heshould suffer from indigestion. It was grotesque, and out of all keepingwith a man of his cultivation and breeding. He was a gentleman and ascholar, there was no denying, and yet he did things in contravention ofgood form at every opportunity, and nothing I could say had any effectwith him. I was perplexed beyond measure, the day after I had reproachedhim for his labor in the hay-field, to find him in a group of table-girls, who were listening while the head-waiter read aloud to them in the shadeof the house; there was a corner looking toward the stables which wasgiven up to them by tacit consent of the guests during a certain part ofthe afternoon. 

I feigned not to see him, but I could not forbear speaking to him about itafterward. He took it in good part, but he said he had been ratherdisappointed in the kind of literature they liked and the comments theymade on it; he had expected that with the education they had received, andwith their experience of the seriousness of life, they would prefersomething less trivial. He supposed, however, that a romantic love-story, where a poor American girl marries an English lord, formed a refuge forthem from the real world which promised them so little and held them socheap. It was quite useless for one to try to make him realize hisbehavior in consorting with servants as a kind of scandal. 

The worst of it was that his behavior, as I could see, had already begunto demoralize the objects of his misplaced politeness. At first theservants stared and resented it, as if it were some tasteless joke; but inan incredibly short time, when they saw that he meant his courtesy in goodfaith, they took it as their due. I had always had a good understandingwith the head-waiter, and I thought I could safely smile with him at thequeer conduct of my friend toward himself and his fellow-servants. To my astonishment he said: "I don't see why he shouldn't treat them as ifthey were ladies and gentlemen. Doesn't he treat you and your friends so?"

It was impossible to answer this, and I could only suffer in silence, andhope the Altrurian would soon go. I had dreaded the moment when thelandlord should tell me that his room was wanted; now I almost desired it;but he never did. On the contrary, the Altrurian was in high favor withhim. He said he liked to see a man make himself pleasant with everybody;and that he did not believe he had ever had a guest in the house who wasso popular all round. 

"Of course, " Mrs. Makely went on, "I don't criticise him--with hispeculiar traditions. I presume I should be just so myself if I had beenbrought up in Altruria, which, thank goodness, I wasn't. But Mr. Homos isa perfect dear, and all the women in the house are in love with him, fromthe cook's helpers, up and down. No, the only danger is that there won'tbe room in the hotel parlors for all the people that will want to hearhim, and we shall have to make the admission something that will beprohibitive in most cases. We shall have to make it a dollar. "

"Well, " I said, "I think that will settle the question as far as thefarming population is concerned. It's twice as much as they ever pay for areserved seat in the circus, and four times as much as a simple admission. I'm afraid, Mrs. Makely, you're going to be very few, though fit. "

"Well, I've thought it all over, and I'm going to put the tickets at onedollar. "

"Very good. Have you caught your hare?"

"No, I haven't yet. And I want you to help me catch him. What do you thinkis the best way to go about it?"

The banker said he would leave us to the discussion of that question, butMrs. Makely could count upon him in everything if she could only get theman to talk. At the end of our conference we decided to interview theAltrurian together. 

I shall always be ashamed of the way that woman wheedled the Altrurian, when we found him the next morning, walking up and down the piazza, beforebreakfast--that is, it was before our breakfast; when we asked him to goin with us, he said he had just had his breakfast, and was waiting forReuben Camp, who had promised to take him up as he passed with a load ofhay for one of the hotels in the village. 

"Ah, that reminds me, Mr. Homos, " the unscrupulous woman began on him atonce. "We want to interest you in a little movement we're getting up forthe Union Chapel in the village. You know it's the church where all thedifferent sects have their services; alternately. Of course, it's ratheran original way of doing, but there is sense in it where the people aretoo poor to go into debt for different churches, and--"

"It's admirable!" said the Altrurian. "I have heard about it from theCamps. It is an emblem of the unity which ought to prevail amongChristians of all professions. How can I help you, Mrs. Makely?"

"I knew you would approve of it!" she exulted. "Well, it's simply this:The poor little place has got so shabby that _I'm_ almost ashamed to beseen going into it, for one; and want to raise money enough to give it anew coat of paint outside and put on some kind of pretty paper, of anecclesiastical pattern, on the inside. I declare, those staring whitewalls, with the cracks in the plastering zigzagging every _which_ way, distract me so that I can't put my mind on the sermon. Don't you thinkthat paper, say of a Gothic design, would be a great improvement? I'm sureit would; and it's Mr. Twelvemough's idea, too. "

I learned this fact now for the first time; but, with Mrs. Makely'swarning eye upon me, I could not say so, and I made what sounded to melike a Gothic murmur of acquiescence. It sufficed for Mrs. Makely'spurpose, at any rate, and she went on, without giving the Altrurian achance to say what he thought the educational effect of wall-paper wouldbe:

"Well, the long and short of it is that we want you to make this money forus, Mr. Homos. "

"I?" He started in a kind of horror. "My dear lady, I never made any moneyin my life. I should think it _wrong_ to make money. "

"In Altruria, yes. We all know how it is in your delightful country, and Iassure you that no one could respect your conscientious scruples more thanI do. But you must remember that you are in America now. In America youhave to make money, or else--get left. And then you must consider theobject, and all the good you can do, indirectly, by a little Talk onAltruria. "

He answered, blandly: "A little Talk on Altruria? How in the world shouldI get money by that?"

She was only too eager to explain, and she did it with so much volubilityand at such great length that I, who am good for nothing till I have hadmy cup of coffee in the morning, almost perished of an elucidation whichthe Altrurian bore with the sweetest patience. 

When she gave him a chance to answer, at last, he said: "I shall be veryhappy to do what you wish, madam. "

"_Will_ you?" she screamed. "Oh, I'm so glad! You _have_ been so slipperyabout Altruria, you know, that I expected nothing but a point-blankrefusal. Of course, I knew you would be kind about it. Oh, I can hardlybelieve my senses! You can't think what a dear you are. " I knew she hadgot that word from some English people who had been in the hotel; and shewas working it rather wildly, but it was not my business to check her. "Well, then, all you have got to do is to leave the whole thing to me, andnot bother about it a bit till I send and tell you we are ready to listen. There comes Reuben, with his ox-team. Thank you so much, Mr. Homos. No oneneed be ashamed to enter the house of God"--she said Gawd, in an access ofpiety--"after we get that paint and paper on it; and we shall have them onbefore two Sabbaths have passed over it. "

She wrung the Altrurian's hand; I was only afraid she was going to kisshim. 

"There is but one stipulation I should like to make, " he began. 

"Oh, a thousand, " she cut in. 

"And that is, there shall be no exclusion from my lecture on account ofoccupation or condition. That is a thing that I can in no wisecountenance, even in America; it is far more abhorrent to me even thanmoney-making, though they are each a part and parcel of the other. "

"I thought it was that, " she retorted, joyously. "And I can assure you, Mr. Homos, there shall be nothing of that kind. Every one--I don't carewho it is or what they do--shall hear you who buys a ticket. Now, willthat do?"

"Perfectly, " said the Altrurian, and he let her wring his hand again. 

She pushed hers through my arm as we started for the dining-room, andleaned over to whisper jubilantly: "That will fix it. He will see how muchhis precious lower classes care for Altruria if they have to pay a dollarapiece to hear about it. And I shall keep faith with him to the letter. "

I could not feel that she would keep it in the spirit; but I could onlygroan inwardly and chuckle outwardly at the woman's depravity. 

It seemed to me, though I could not approve of it, a capital joke, and soit seemed to all the members of the little group whom I had madeespecially acquainted with the Altrurian. It is true that the minister wassomewhat troubled with the moral question, which did not leave me whollyat peace; and the banker affected to find a question of taste involved, which he said he must let me settle, however, as the man's host; if Icould stand it, he could. No one said anything against the plan to Mrs. Makely, and this energetic woman made us take two tickets apiece, as soonas she got them printed, over in the village. She got little hand-billsprinted, and had them scattered about through the neighborhood, at all thehotels, boarding-houses, and summer cottages, to give notice of the timeand place of the talk on Altruria. She fixed this for the followingSaturday afternoon, in our hotel parlor; she had it in the afternoon so asnot to interfere with the hop in the evening; she put tickets on sale atthe principal houses and at the village drug-store, and she made me goabout with her and help her sell them at some of the cottages in person. 

I must say I found this extremely distasteful, especially where the peoplewere not very willing to buy, and she had to urge them. They all admittedthe excellence of the object, but they were not so sure about the means. At several places the ladies asked who was this Mr. Homos, anyway; and howdid she know he was really from Altruria? He might be an impostor. 

Then Mrs. Makely would put me forward, and I would be obliged to give suchaccount of him as I could, and to explain just how and why he came to bemy guest; with the cumulative effect of bringing back all the misgivingswhich I had myself felt at the outset concerning him, and which I haddismissed as too fantastic. 

The tickets went off rather slowly, even in our own hotel; people thoughtthem too dear; and some, as soon as they knew the price, said frankly theyhad heard enough about Altruria already, and were sick of the whole thing. 

Mrs. Makely said this was quite what she had expected of those people;that they were horrid and stingy and vulgar; and she should see what facethey would have to ask her to take tickets when _they_ were trying to getup something. She began to be vexed with herself, she confessed, at thejoke she was playing on Mr. Homos, and I noticed that she put herselfrather defiantly _en evidence_ in his company whenever she could in thepresence of these reluctant ladies. She told me she had not the courage toask the clerk how many of the tickets he had sold out of those she hadleft at the desk. 

One morning, the third or fourth, as I was going in to breakfast with her, the head-waiter stopped her as he opened the door, and asked modestly ifshe could spare him a few tickets, for he thought he could sell some. Tomy amazement the unprincipled creature said: "Why, certainly. How many?"and instantly took a package out of her pocket, where she seemed always tohave them. He asked, Would twenty be more than she could spare? and sheanswered: "Not at all. Here are twenty-five. " and bestowed the wholepackage upon him. 

That afternoon Reuben Camp came lounging up toward us, where I sat withher on the corner of the piazza, and said that if she would like to lethim try his luck with some tickets for the Talk he would see what he coulddo. 

"You can have all you want, Reuben, " she said, "and I hope you'll havebetter luck than I have. I'm perfectly disgusted with people. "

She fished several packages out of her pocket this time, and he asked: "Doyou mean that I can have them all?"

"Every one, and a band of music into the bargain, " she answered, recklessly. But she seemed a little daunted when he quietly took them. "You know there are a hundred here?"

"Yes, I should like to see what I can do among the natives. Then there isa construction train over at the junction, and I know a lot of thefellows. I guess some of 'em would like to come. "

"The tickets are a dollar each, you know, " she suggested. 

"That's all right, " said Camp. "Well, good-afternoon. "

Mrs. Makely turned to me with a kind of gasp as he shambled away. "I don'tknow about that. "

"About having the whole crew of a construction train at the Talk? I daresay it won't be pleasant to the ladies who have bought tickets. "

"_Oh_!" said Mrs. Makely, with astonishing contempt, "I don't care what_they_ think. But Reuben has got all my tickets, and suppose he keeps themso long that I won't have time to sell any, and then throws them back onmy hands? _I_ know!" she added, joyously. "I can go around now and tellpeople that my tickets are all gone; and I'll go instantly and have theclerk hold all he has left at a premium. "

She came back looking rather blank. 

"He hasn't got a single one left. He says an old native came in thismorning and took every last one of them--he doesn't remember just howmany. I believe they're going to speculate on them; and if Reuben Campserves me a trick like that--Why, " she broke off, "I believe I'llspeculate on them myself. I should like to know why I shouldn't. Oh, Ishould just _like_ to make some of those creatures pay double, or treble, for the chances they've refused. Ah, Mrs. Bulkham, " she called out to alady who was coming down the veranda toward us, "you'll be glad to knowI've got rid of all my tickets. _Such_ a relief!"

"You _have_?" Mrs. Bulkham retorted. 

"Every one. "

"I thought, " said Mrs. Bulkham, "that you understood I wanted one for mydaughter and myself, if she came. "

"I certainly didn't, " said Mrs. Makely, with a wink of concentratedwickedness at me. "But, if you do, you will have to say so now, withoutany ifs or ands about it; and if any of the tickets come back--I letfriends have a few on sale--I will give you two. "

"Well, I do, " said Mrs. Bulkham, after a moment. 

"Very well; it will be five dollars for the two. I feel bound to get all Ican for the cause. Shall I put your name down?"

"Yes, " said Mrs. Bulkham, rather crossly; but Mrs. Makely inscribed hername on her tablets with a radiant amiability, which suffered no eclipsewhen, within the next fifteen minutes, a dozen other ladies hurried up andbought in at the same rate. 

I could not stand it, and I got up to go away, feeling extremely_particeps criminis_. Mrs. Makely seemed to have a conscience as light asair. 

"If Reuben Camp or the head-waiter don't bring back some of those tickets, I don't know what I shall do. I shall have to put chairs into the aislesand charge five dollars apiece for as many people as I can crowd in there. I never knew anything so perfectly providential. "

"I envy you the ability to see it in that light, Mrs. Makely, " I said, faint at heart. "Suppose Camp crowds the place full of his trainmen, howwill the ladies that you've sold tickets to at five dollars apiece likeit?"

"Pooh! What do I care how they like it! Horrid things! And for repairs onthe house of Gawd, it's the same as being in church, where everybody isequal. "

The time passed. Mrs. Makely sold chances to all the ladies in the house;on Friday night Reuben Camp brought her a hundred dollars; the head-waiterhad already paid in twenty-five. "I didn't dare to ask them if theyspeculated on them, " she confided to me. "Do you suppose they would havethe conscience?"

They had secured the large parlor of the hotel, where the young peopledanced in the evening, and where entertainments were held, of the sortusually given in summer hotels; we had already had a dramatic reading, atime with the phonograph, an exhibition of necromancy, a concert by acollege glee club, and I do not know what else. The room would holdperhaps two hundred people, if they were closely seated, and, by her ownshowing, Mrs. Makely had sold above two hundred and fifty tickets andchances. All Saturday forenoon she consoled herself with the belief that agreat many people at the other hotels and cottages had bought seatsmerely to aid the cause, and would not really come; she estimated that atleast fifty would stay away; but, if Reuben Camp had sold his ticketsamong the natives, we might expect every one of them to come and get hismoney's worth; she did not dare to ask the head-waiter how he had got ridof his twenty-five tickets. 

The hour set for the Talk to begin was three o'clock, so that people couldhave their naps comfortably over, after the one o'clock dinner, and bejust in the right frame of mind for listening. But long before theappointed time the people who dine at twelve, and never take an afternoonnap, began to arrive, on foot, in farm-wagons, smart buggies, mud-crustedcarryalls, and all manner of ramshackle vehicles. They arrived as ifcoming to a circus, old husbands and wives, young couples and theirchildren, pretty girls and their fellows, and hitched their horses to thetails of their wagons, and began to make a picnic lunch in the shadow ofthe grove lying between the hotel and the station. About two we heard thesnorting of a locomotive at a time when no train was due, and aconstruction train came in view, with the men waving their handkerchiefsfrom the windows, and apparently ready for all the fun there was to be inthe thing. Some of them had a small flag in each hand, the American Starsand Stripes and the white flag of Altruria, in compliment to my guest, Isuppose. A good many of the farmers came over to the hotel to buy tickets, which they said they expected to get after they came, and Mrs. Makely wasobliged to pacify them with all sorts of lying promises. From moment tomoment she was in consultation with the landlord, who decided to throwopen the dining-room, which connected with the parlor, so as to allow thehelp and the neighbors to hear without incommoding the hotel guests. Shesaid that this took a great burden off her mind, and that now she shouldfeel perfectly easy, for now no one could complain about being mixed upwith the servants and the natives, and yet every one could hear perfectly. 

She could not rest until she had sent for Homos and told him of thisadmirable arrangement. I did not know whether to be glad or not when heinstantly told her that, if there was to be any such separation of hisauditors, in recognition of our class distinctions, he must refuse tospeak at all. 

"Then what in the world are we to do?" she wailed out, and the tears cameinto her eyes. 

"Have you got the money for all your tickets?" he asked, with a sort ofdisgust for the whole transaction in his tone. 

"Yes, and more, too. I don't believe there's a soul, in the hotel or outof it, that hasn't paid at least a dollar to hear you; and that makes itso very embarrassing. Oh, _dear_ Mr. Homos! You won't be so implacablyhigh-principled as all that! Think that you are doing it for the house ofGawd. "

The woman made me sick. 

"Then no one, " said the Altrurian, "can feel aggrieved, or unfairly used, if I say what I have to say in the open air, where all can listen equally, without any manner of preference or distinction. We will go up to the edgeof the grove overlooking the tennis-court, and hold our meeting there, asthe Altrurian meetings are always held, with the sky for a roof, and withno walls but the horizon. "

"The very thing!" cried Mrs. Makely. "Who would ever have thought you wereso practical, Mr. Homos? I don't believe you're an Altrurian, after all; Ibelieve you are an American in disguise. "

The Altrurian turned away, without making any response to this flatteringattribution of our nationality to him; but Mrs. Makely had not waited forany. She had flown off, and I next saw her attacking the landlord, withsuch apparent success that he slapped himself on the leg and vanished, andimmediately the porters and bell-boys and all the men-servants begancarrying out chairs to the tennis-court, which was already well set roundwith benches. In a little while the whole space was covered, and setteeswere placed well up the ground toward the grove. 

By half-past two the guests of the hotel came out and took the best seats, as by right, and the different tallyhoes and mountain wagons began toarrive from the other hotels, with their silly hotel cries, and their gaygroups dismounted and dispersed themselves over the tennis-court until allthe chairs were taken. It was fine to see how the natives and the trainmenand the hotel servants, with an instinctive perception of the proprieties, yielded these places to their superiors, and, after the summer folks wereall seated, scattered themselves on the grass and the pine-needles aboutthe border of the grove. I should have liked to instance the fact to theAltrurian, as a proof that this sort of subordination was a part of humannature, and that a principle which pervaded our civilization, after thedemocratic training of our whole national life, must be divinelyimplanted. But there was no opportunity for me to speak with him after thefact had accomplished itself, for by this time he had taken his place infront of a little clump of low pines and was waiting for the assembly toquiet itself before he began to speak. I do not think there could havebeen less than five hundred present, and the scene had that accidentalpicturesqueness which results from the grouping of all sorts of faces andcostumes. Many of our ladies had pretty hats and brilliant parasols, but Imust say that the soberer tone of some of the old farm-wives' browncalicoes and outdated bonnets contributed to enrich the coloring, andthere was a certain gayety in the sunny glisten of the men's straw hatseverywhere that was very good. 

The sky overhead was absolutely stainless, and the light of the coolafternoon sun streamed upon the slopes of the solemn mountains to theeast. The tall pines in the background blackened themselves against thehorizon; nearer they showed more and more decidedly their bluish green, and the yellow of the newly fallen needles painted their aisles deep intothe airy shadows. 

A little wind stirred their tops, and for a moment, just before theAltrurian began to speak, drew from them an organ-tone that melteddelicately away as his powerful voice rose. 

XI

"I could not give you a clear account of the present state of things in mycountry, " the Altrurian began, "without first telling you something of ourconditions before the time of our Evolution. It seems to be the law of alllife that nothing can come to fruition without dying and seeming to makean end. It must be sown in corruption before it can be raised inincorruption. The truth itself must perish to our senses before it canlive to our souls; the Son of Man must suffer upon the cross before we canknow the Son, of God. 

"It was so with His message to the world, which we received in the oldtime as an ideal realized by the earliest Christians, who loved oneanother and who had all things common. The apostle cast away upon ourheathen coasts won us with the story of this first Christian republic, andhe established a commonwealth of peace and good-will among us in itslikeness. That commonwealth perished, just as its prototype perished, orseemed to perish; and long ages of civic and economic warfare succeeded, when every man's hand was against his neighbor, and might was the rulethat got itself called right. Religion ceased to be the hope of thisworld, and became the vague promise of the next. We descended into thevalley of the shadow, and dwelt amid chaos for ages before we groped againinto the light. 

"The first glimmerings were few and indistinct, but men formed themselvesabout the luminous points here and there, and, when these broke anddispersed into lesser gleams, still men formed themselves about each ofthem. There arose a system of things better, indeed, than that darkness, but full of war and lust and greed, in which the weak rendered homage tothe strong, and served them in the field and in the camp, and the strongin turn gave the weak protection against the other strong. It was a jugglein which the weak did not see that their safety was, after all, fromthemselves; but it was an image of peace, however false and fitful, and itendured for a time. It endured for a limited time, if we measure by thelife of the race; it endured for an unlimited time if we measure by thelives of the men who were born and died while it endured. 

"But that disorder, cruel and fierce and stupid, which endured because itsometimes masked itself as order, did at last pass away. Here and thereone of the strong overpowered the rest; then the strong became fewer andfewer, and in their turn they all yielded to a supreme lord, andthroughout the land there was one rule, as it was called then, or onemisrule, as we should call it now. This rule, or this misrule, continuedfor ages more; and again, in the immortality of the race, men toiled andstruggled, and died without the hope of better things. 

"Then the time came when the long nightmare was burst with the vision of afuture in which all men were the law, and not one man, or any less numberof men than all. 

"The poor dumb beast of humanity rose, and the throne tumbled, and thesceptre was broken, and the crown rolled away into that darkness of thepast. We thought that heaven had descended to us, and that liberty, equality, and fraternity were ours. We could not see what should againalienate us from one another, or how one brother could again oppressanother. With a free field and no favor we believed we should prosper ontogether, and there would be peace and plenty for all. We had the republicagain after so many ages now, and the republic, as we knew it in our dimannals, was brotherhood and universal happiness. All but a very few, whoprophesied evil of our lawless freedom, were wrapped in a delirium ofhope. Men's minds and men's hands were suddenly released to an activityunheard of before. Invention followed invention; our rivers and seasbecame the warp of commerce where the steam-sped shuttles carried the woofof enterprise to and fro with tireless celerity; machines to save labormultiplied themselves as if they had been procreative forces, and wares ofevery sort were produced with incredible swiftness and cheapness. Moneyseemed to flow from the ground; vast fortunes 'rose like an exhalation, 'as your Milton says. 

"At first we did not know that they were the breath of the nethermost pitsof hell, and that the love of money, which was becoming universal with us, was filling the earth with the hate of men. It was long before we came torealize that in the depths of our steamships were those who fed the fireswith their lives, and that our mines from which we dug our wealth were thegraves of those who had died to the free light and air, without findingthe rest of death. We did not see that the machines for saving labor weremonsters that devoured women and children, and wasted men at the biddingof the power which no man must touch. 

"That is, we thought we must not touch it, for it called itself prosperityand wealth and the public good, and it said that it gave bread, and itimpudently bade the toiling myriads consider what would become of them ifit took away their means of wearing themselves out in its service. Itdemanded of the state absolute immunity and absolute impunity, the rightto do its will wherever and however it would, without question from thepeople who were the final law. It had its way, and under its rule webecame the richest people under the sun. The Accumulation, as we calledthis power, because we feared to call it by its true name, rewarded itsown with gains of twenty, of a hundred, of a thousand per cent. , and tosatisfy its need, to produce the labor that operated its machines, therecame into existence a hapless race of men who bred their kind for itsservice, and whose little ones were its prey almost from their cradles. Then the infamy became too great, and the law, the voice of the people, solong guiltily silent, was lifted in behalf of those who had no helper. TheAccumulation came under control for the first time, and could no longerwork its slaves twenty hours a day amid perils to life and limb from itsmachinery and in conditions that forbade them decency and morality. Thetime of a hundred and a thousand per cent. Passed; but still theAccumulation demanded immunity and impunity, and, in spite of itsconviction of the enormities it had practised, it declared itself the onlymeans of civilization and progress. It began to give out that it wastimid, though its history was full of the boldest frauds and crimes, andit threatened to withdraw itself if it were ruled or even crossed; andagain it had its way, and we seemed to prosper more and more. The land wasfilled with cities where the rich flaunted their splendor in palaces, andthe poor swarmed in squalid tenements. The country was drained of its lifeand force, to feed the centres of commerce and industry. The whole landwas bound together with a network of iron roads that linked the factoriesand founderies to the fields and mines, and blasted the landscape with theenterprise that spoiled the lives of men. 

"Then, all at once, when its work seemed perfect and its dominion sure, the Accumulation was stricken with consciousness of the lie always at itsheart. It had hitherto cried out for a free field and no favor, forunrestricted competition; but, in truth, it had never prospered except asa monopoly. Whenever and wherever competition had play there had beennothing but disaster to the rival enterprises, till one rose over therest. Then there was prosperity for that one. 

"The Accumulation began to act upon its new consciousness. The iron roadsunited; the warring industries made peace, each kind under a singleleadership. Monopoly, not competition, was seen to be the beneficent meansof distributing the favors and blessings of the Accumulation to mankind. But, as before, there was alternately a glut and dearth of things, andit often happened that when starving men went ragged through the streetsthe storehouses were piled full of rotting harvests that the farmerstoiled from dawn till dusk to grow, and the warehouses fed the moth withthe stuffs that the operative had woven his life into at his loom. Thenfollowed, with a blind and mad succession, a time of famine, when moneycould not buy the super-abundance that vanished, none knew how or why. 

"The money itself vanished from time to time, and disappeared into thevaults of the Accumulation, for no better reason than that for which itpoured itself out at other times. Our theory was that the people--that isto say, the government of the people--made the people's money, but, as amatter of fact, the Accumulation made it and controlled it and juggledwith it; and now you saw it, and now you did not see it. The governmentmade gold coins, but the people had nothing but the paper money that theAccumulation made. But whether there was scarcity or plenty, the failureswent on with a continuous ruin that nothing could check, while our largereconomic life proceeded in a series of violent shocks, which we calledfinancial panics, followed by long periods of exhaustion and recuperation. 

"There was no law in our economy, but as the Accumulation had never caredfor the nature of law, it did not trouble itself for its name in our orderof things. It had always bought the law it needed for its own use, firstthrough the voter at the polls in the more primitive days, and then, ascivilization advanced, in the legislatures and the courts. But thecorruption even of these methods was far surpassed when the era ofconsolidation came, and the necessity for statutes and verdicts anddecisions became more stringent. Then we had such a burlesque of--"

"Look here!" a sharp, nasal voice snarled across the rich, full pipe ofthe Altrurian, and we all instantly looked there. The voice came from anold farmer, holding himself stiffly up, with his hands in his pockets andhis lean frame bent toward the speaker. "When are you goin' to get toAltrury? We know all about Ameriky. "

He sat down again, and it was a moment before the crowd caught on. Then ayell of delight and a roar of volleyed laughter went up from the lowerclasses, in which, I am sorry to say, my friend the banker joined, so faras the laughter was concerned. "Good! That's it! First-rate!" came from ahundred vulgar throats. 

"Isn't it a perfect shame?" Mrs. Makely demanded. "I think some of yougentlemen ought to say something. What will Mr. Homos think of ourcivilization if we let such interruptions go unrebuked?"

She was sitting between the banker and myself, and her indignation madehim laugh more and more. "Oh, it serves him right, " he said. "Don't yousee that he is hoist with his own petard? Let him alone. He's in the handsof his friends. "

The Altrurian waited for the tumult to die away, and then he said, gently:"I don't understand. "

The old farmer jerked himself to his feet again. "It's like this: I paidmy dolla' to hear about a country where there wa'n't no co'perations norno monop'lies nor no buyin' up cou'ts; and I ain't agoin' to have noallegory shoved down my throat, instead of a true history, noways. I knowall about how it is _here_. Fi'st, run their line through your backya'd, and then kill off your cattle, and keep kerryin' on it up from cou't tocou't, till there ain't hide or hair on 'em left--"

"Oh, set down, set down! Let the man go on! He'll make it all right withyou, " one of the construction gang called out; but the farmer stood hisground, and I could hear him through the laughing and shouting keep sayingsomething, from time to time, about not wanting to pay no dolla' for notalk about co'perations and monop'lies that we had right under our ownnoses the whole while, and, you might say, in your very bread-troughs;till, at last, I saw Reuben Camp make his way toward him, and, after anenergetic expostulation, turn to leave him again. 

Then he faltered out, "I guess it's all right, " and dropped out of sightin the group he had risen from. I fancied his wife scolding him there, andall but shaking him in public. 

"I should be very sorry, " the Altrurian proceeded, "to have any onebelieve that I have not been giving you a _bona fide_ account ofconditions in my country before the Evolution, when we first took the nameof Altruria in our great, peaceful campaign against the Accumulation. Asfor offering you any allegory or travesty of your own conditions, I willsimply say that I do not know them well enough to do so intelligently. But, whatever they are, God forbid that the likeness which you seem torecognize should ever go so far as the desperate state of things which wefinally reached. I will not trouble you with details; in fact, I have beenafraid that I had already treated of our affairs too abstractly; but, since your own experience furnishes you the means of seizing my meaning, Iwill go on as before. 

"You will understand me when I explain that the Accumulation had noterected itself into the sovereignty with us unopposed. The working-men, who suffered most from its oppression had early begun to band themselvesagainst it, with the instinct of self-preservation, first trade by tradeand art by art, and then in congresses and federations of the trades andarts, until finally they enrolled themselves in one vast union, whichincluded all the working-men, whom their necessity or their interest didnot leave on the side of the Accumulation. This beneficent and generousassociation of the weak for the sake of the weakest did not accomplishitself fully till the baleful instinct of the Accumulation had reduced themonopolies to one vast monopoly, till the stronger had devoured the weakeramong its members, and the supreme agent stood at the head of our affairs, in everything but name, our imperial ruler. We had hugged so long thedelusion of each man for himself that we had suffered all realty to betaken from us. The Accumulation owned the land as well as the mines underit and the shops over it; the Accumulation owned the seas and the shipsthat sailed the seas, and the fish that swam in their depths; it ownedtransportation and distribution, and the wares and products that were tobe carried to and fro; and, by a logic irresistible and inexorable, theAccumulation _was_, and we were _not_. 

"But the Accumulation, too, had forgotten something. It had found it soeasy to buy legislatures and courts that it did not trouble itself aboutthe polls. It left us the suffrage, and let us amuse ourselves with theperiodical election of the political clay images which it manipulated andmoulded to any shape and effect at its pleasure. The Accumulation knewthat it was the sovereignty, whatever figure-head we called president orgovernor or mayor: we had other names for these officials, but I use theiranalogues for the sake of clearness, and I hope my good friend over therewill not think I am still talking about America. "

"No, " the old farmer called back, without rising, "we hain't got therequite yit. "

"No hurry, " said a trainman. "All in good time. Go on!" he called to theAltrurian. 

The Altrurian resumed:

"There had been, from the beginning, an almost ceaseless struggle betweenthe Accumulation and the proletariate. The Accumulation always said thatit was the best friend of the proletariate, and it denounced, through thepress which it controlled, the proletarian leaders who taught that it wasthe enemy of the proletariate, and who stirred up strikes and tumults ofall sorts, for higher wages and fewer hours. But the friend of theproletariate, whenever occasion served, treated the proletariate like adeadly enemy. In seasons of overproduction, as it was called, it lockedthe workmen out or laid them off, and left their families to starve, orran light work and claimed the credit of public benefactors for running atall. It sought every chance to reduce wages; it had laws passed to forbidor cripple the workmen in their strikes; and the judges convicted them ofconspiracy, and wrested the statutes to their hurt, in cases where therehad been no thought of embarrassing them, even among the legislators. Godforbid that you should ever come to such a pass in America; but, if youever should, God grant that you may find your way out as simply as we didat last, when freedom had perished in everything but name among us, andjustice had become a mockery. 

"The Accumulation had advanced so smoothly, so lightly, in all its stepsto the supreme power, and had at last so thoroughly quelled the uprisingsof the proletariate, that it forgot one thing: it forgot the despised andneglected suffrage. The ballot, because it had been so easy to annul itseffect, had been left in the people's hands; and when, at last, theleaders of the proletariate ceased to counsel strikes, or any form ofresistance to the Accumulation that could be tormented into the likenessof insurrection against the government, and began to urge them to attackit in the political way, the deluge that swept the Accumulation out ofexistence came trickling and creeping over the land. It appeared first inthe country, a spring from the ground; then it gathered head in thevillages; then it swelled to a torrent in the cities. I cannot stay totrace its course; but suddenly, one day, when the Accumulation's abuse ofa certain power became too gross, it was voted out of that power. You willperhaps be interested to know that it was with the telegraphs that therebellion against the Accumulation began, and the government was forced, by the overwhelming majority which the proletariate sent to ourparliament, to assume a function which the Accumulation had impudentlyusurped. Then the transportation of smaller and more perishable wares--"

"Yes, " a voice called--"express business. Go on!"

"Was legislated a function of the post-office, " the Altrurian went on. "Then all transportation was taken into the hands of the politicalgovernment, which had always been accused of great corruption in itsadministration, but which showed itself immaculately pure compared withthe Accumulation. The common ownership of mines necessarily followed, withan allotment of lands to any one who wished to live by tilling the land;but not a foot of the land was remitted to private hands for the purposesof selfish pleasure or the exclusion of any other from the landscape. Asall business had been gathered into the grasp of the Accumulation, and themanufacture of everything they used and the production of everything thatthey ate was in the control of the Accumulation, its transfer to thegovernment was the work of a single clause in the statute. 

"The Accumulation, which had treated the first menaces of resistance withcontempt, awoke to its peril too late. When it turned to wrest thesuffrage from the proletariate, at the first election where it attemptedto make head against them, it was simply snowed under, as your picturesquephrase is. The Accumulation had no voters, except the few men at its headand the creatures devoted to it by interest and ignorance. It seemed, atone moment, as if it would offer an armed resistance to the popular will, but, happily, that moment of madness passed. Our Evolution wasaccomplished without a drop of bloodshed, and the first great politicalbrotherhood, the commonwealth of Altruria, was founded. 

"I wish that I had time to go into a study of some of the curious phasesof the transformation from a civility in which the people lived _upon_each other to one in which they lived _for_ each other. There is a famouspassage in the inaugural message of our first Altrurian president whichcompares the new civic consciousness with that of a disembodied spiritreleased to the life beyond this and freed from all the selfish caresand greeds of the flesh. But perhaps I shall give a sufficiently clearnotion of the triumph of the change among us when I say that within halfa decade after the fall of the old plutocratic oligarchy one of the chiefdirectors of the Accumulation publicly expressed his gratitude to Godthat the Accumulation had passed away forever. You will realize theimportance of such an expression in recalling the declarations some ofyour slave-holders have made since the Civil War, that they would not haveslavery restored for any earthly consideration. 

"But now, after this preamble, which has been so much longer than I meantit to be, how shall I give you a sufficiently just conception of theexisting Altruria, the actual state from which I come?"

"Yes, " came the nasal of the old farmer again, "that's what we are herefur. I wouldn't give a copper to know all you went through beforehand. It's too dumn like what we have been through ourselves, as fur as heardfrom. "

A shout of laughter went up from most of the crowd, but the Altrurian didnot seem to see any fun in it. 

"Well, " he resumed, "I will tell you, as well as I can, what Altruria islike; but, in the first place, you will have to cast out of your minds allimages of civilization with which your experience has filled them. For atime the shell of the old Accumulation remained for our social habitation, and we dwelt in the old competitive and monopolistic forms after the lifehad gone out of them--that is, we continued to live in populous cities, and we toiled to heap up riches for the moth to corrupt, and we slaved onin making utterly useless things, merely because we had the habit ofmaking them to sell. For a while we made the old sham things, whichpretended to be useful things and were worse than the confessedly uselessthings. I will give you an illustration from the trades, which you willall understand. The proletariate, in the competitive and monopolistictime, used to make a kind of shoes for the proletariate, or the women ofthe proletariate, which looked like fine shoes of the best quality. Ittook just as much work to make these shoes as to make the best fine shoes;but they were shams through and through. They wore out in a week, and thepeople called them, because they were bought fresh for every Sunday--"

"Sat'd'y-night shoes, " screamed the old farmer. "I know 'em. My gals buy'em. Half-dolla' a pai', and not wo'th the money. "

"Well, " said the Altrurian, "they were a cheat and a lie in every way, and under the new system it was not possible, when public attentionwas called to the fact, to continue the falsehood they embodied. As soonas the Saturday-night shoes realized itself to the public conscience, an investigation began, and it was found that the principle of theSaturday-night shoe underlay half our industries and made half the workthat was done. 

"Then an immense reform took place. We renounced, in the most solemnconvocation of the whole economy, the principle of the Saturday-nightshoe, and those who had spent their lives in producing sham shoes--"

"Yes, " said the professor, rising from his seat near us and addressing thespeaker, "I shall be very glad to know what became of the worthy andindustrious operatives who were thrown out of employment by this explosionof economic virtue. "

"Why, " the Altrurian replied, "they were set to work making honest shoes;and, as it took no more time to make a pair of honest shoes which lasted ayear than it took to make a pair of dishonest shoes that lasted a week, the amount of labor in shoemaking was at once enormously reduced. "

"Yes, " said the professor, "I understand that. What became of theshoemakers?"

"They joined the vast army of other laborers who had been employed, directly or indirectly, in the fabrication of fraudulent wares. Theseshoemakers--lasters, button-holers, binders, and so on--no longer worethemselves out over their machines. One hour sufficed where twelve hourswere needed before, and the operatives were released to the happy labor ofthe fields, where no one with us toils killingly, from dawn till dusk, butdoes only as much work as is needed to keep the body in health. We had acontinent to refine and beautify; we had climates to change and seasons tomodify, a whole system of meteorology to readjust, and the public worksgave employment to the multitudes emancipated from the soul-destroyingservice of shams. I can scarcely give you a notion of the vastness of theimprovements undertaken and carried through, or still in process ofaccomplishment. But a single one will, perhaps, afford a sufficientillustration. Our southeast coast, from its vicinity to the pole, hadalways suffered from a winter of antarctic rigor; but our first presidentconceived the plan of cutting off a peninsula, which kept the equatorialcurrent from making in to our shores; and the work was begun in his term, though the entire strip, twenty miles in width and ninety-three in length, was not severed before the end of the first Altrurian decade. Since thattime the whole region of our southeastern coast has enjoyed the climate ofyour Mediterranean countries. 

"It was not only the makers of fraudulent things who were released tothese useful and wholesome labors, but those who had spent themselves incontriving ugly and stupid and foolish things were set free to the publicemployment. The multitude of these monstrosities and iniquities was asgreat as that of the shams--"

Here I lost some words, for the professor leaned over and whispered to me:"He has got _that_ out of William Morris. Depend upon it, the man is ahumbug. He is not an Altrurian at all. "

I confess that my heart misgave me; but I signalled the professor to besilent, and again gave the Altrurian--if he was an Altrurian--my wholeattention. 

XII

"And so, " the Altrurian continued, "when the labor of the community wasemancipated from the bondage of the false to the free service of the true, it was also, by an inevitable implication, dedicated to beauty and rescuedfrom the old slavery to the ugly, the stupid, and the trivial. The thingthat was honest and useful became, by the operation of a natural law, abeautiful thing. 

"Once we had not time enough to make things beautiful, we were sooverworked in making false and hideous things to sell; but now we had allthe time there was, and a glad emulation arose among the trades andoccupations to the end that everything done should be done finely as wellas done honestly. The artist, the man of genius, who worked from the loveof his work, became the normal man, and in the measure of his ability andof his calling each wrought in the spirit of the artist. We got back thepleasure of doing a thing beautifully, which was God's primal blessingupon all His working children, but which we had lost in the horrible daysof our need and greed. There is not a working-man within the sound of myvoice but has known this divine delight, and would gladly know it alwaysif he only had the time. Well, now we had the time, the Evolution hadgiven us the time, and in all Altruria there was not a furrow driven or aswath mown, not a hammer struck on house or on ship, not a stitch sewn ora stone laid, not a line written or a sheet printed, not a temple raisedor an engine built, but it was done with an eye to beauty as well as touse. 

"As soon as we were freed from the necessity of preying upon one another, we found that there was no hurry. The good work would wait to be welldone; and one of the earliest effects of the Evolution was the disuse ofthe swift trains which had traversed the continent, night and day, thatone man might overreach another, or make haste to undersell his rival, orseize some advantage of him, or plot some profit to his loss. Nine-tenthsof the railroads, which in the old times had ruinously competed, and then, in the hands of the Accumulation, had been united to impoverish andoppress the people, fell into disuse. The commonwealth operated the fewlines that were necessary for the collection of materials and thedistribution of manufactures, and for pleasure travel and the affairs ofstate; but the roads that had been built to invest capital, or parallelother roads, or 'make work, ' as it was called, or to develop resources, or boom localities, were suffered to fall into ruin; the rails werestripped from the landscape, which they had bound as with shackles, andthe road-beds became highways for the use of kindly neighborhoods, ornature recovered them wholly and hid the memory of their former abuse ingrass and flowers and wild vines. The ugly towns that they had forced intobeing, as Frankenstein was fashioned, from the materials of the charnel, and that had no life in or from the good of the community, soon tumbledinto decay. The administration used parts of them in the construction ofthe villages in which the Altrurians now mostly live; but generally thesetowns were built of materials so fraudulent, in form so vile, that it wasjudged best to burn them. In this way their sites were at once purifiedand obliterated. 

"We had, of course, a great many large cities under the old egoisticconditions, which increased and fattened upon the country, and fed theircancerous life with fresh infusions of its blood. We had several cities ofhalf a million, and one of more than a million; we had a score of themwith a population of a hundred thousand or more. We were very proud ofthem, and vaunted them as a proof of our unparalleled prosperity, thoughreally they never were anything but congeries of millionaires and thewretched creatures who served them and supplied them. Of course, there waseverywhere the appearance of enterprise and activity, but it meant finalloss for the great mass of the business men, large and small, and finalgain for the millionaires. These and their parasites dwelt together, therich starving the poor and the poor plundering and misgoverning the rich;and it was the intolerable suffering in the cities that chiefly hastenedthe fall of the old Accumulation and the rise of the commonwealth. 

"Almost from the moment of the Evolution the competitive and monopolisticcentres of population began to decline. In the clear light of the neworder it was seen that they were not fit dwelling-places for men, eitherin the complicated and luxurious palaces where the rich fenced themselvesfrom their kind, or in the vast tenements, towering height upon height, ten and twelve stories up, where the swarming poor festered in vice andsickness and famine. If I were to tell you of the fashion of those citiesof our egoistic epoch, how the construction was one error from the first, and every correction of an error bred a new defect, I should make youlaugh, I should make you weep. We let them fall to ruin as quickly as theywould, and their sites are still so pestilential, after the lapse ofcenturies, that travelers are publicly guarded against them. Raveningbeasts and poisonous reptiles lurk in those abodes of the riches and thepoverty that are no longer known to our life. A part of one of the lessmalarial of the old cities, however, is maintained by the commonwealth inthe form of its prosperity, and is studied by antiquarians for theinstruction, and by moralists for the admonition, it affords. A section ofa street is exposed, and you see the foundations of the houses; you seethe filthy drains that belched into the common sewers, trapped andretrapped to keep the poison gases down; you see the sewers that rolledtheir loathsome tides under the streets, amid a tangle of gas-pipes, steam-pipes, water-pipes, telegraph-wires, electric lighting-wires, electric motor-wires, and grip-cables--all without a plan, but makeshifts, expedients, devices, to repair and evade the fundamental mistake of havingany such cities at all. 

"There are now no cities in Altruria, in your meaning, but there arecapitals, one for each of the regions of our country and one for the wholecommonwealth. These capitals are for the transaction of public affairs, inwhich every citizen of Altruria is schooled, and they are the residencesof the administrative officials, who are alternated every year, from thehighest to the lowest. A public employment with us is of no greater honoror profit than any other, for with our absolute economic equality therecan be no ambition, and there is no opportunity for one citizen tooutshine another. But as the capitals are the centres of all the arts, which we consider the chief of our public affairs, they are oftenestfrequented by poets, actors, painters, sculptors, musicians, andarchitects. We regard all artists, who are in a sort creators, as thehuman type which is likest the divine, and we try to conform our wholeindustrial life to the artistic temperament. Even in the labors of thefield and shop, which are obligatory upon all, we study the inspiration ofthis temperament, and in the voluntary pursuits we allow it full control. Each, in these, follows his fancy as to what he shall do, and when heshall do it, or whether he shall do anything at all. In the capitals arethe universities, theatres, galleries, museums, cathedrals, laboratoriesand conservatories, and the appliances of every art and science, as wellas the administration buildings; and beauty as well as use is studied inevery edifice. Our capitals are as clean and quiet and healthful as thecountry, and these advantages are secured simply by the elimination of thehorse, an animal which we should be as much surprised to find in thestreets of a town as the plesiosaurus or the pterodactyl. Alltransportation in the capitals, whether for pleasure or business, is byelectricity, and swift electrical expresses connect the capital of eachregion with the villages which radiate from it to the cardinal points. These expresses run at the rate of a hundred and fifty miles an hour, andthey enable the artist, the scientist, the literary man, of the remotesthamlet, to visit the capital (when he is not actually resident there insome public use) every day, after the hours of the obligatory industries;or, if he likes, he may remain there a whole week or fortnight, giving sixhours a day instead of three to the obligatories, until the time is madeup. In case of very evident merit, or for the purpose of allowing him tocomplete some work requiring continuous application, a vote of the localagents may release him from the obligatories indefinitely. Generally, however, our artists prefer not to ask this, but avail themselves of thestated means we have of allowing them to work at the obligatories, and getthe needed exercise and variety of occupation in the immediate vicinity ofthe capital. 

"We do not think it well to connect the hamlets on the different lines ofradiation from the capital, except by the good country roads whichtraverse each region in every direction. The villages are mainly inhabitedby those who prefer a rural life; they are farming villages; but inAltruria it can hardly be said that one man is more a farmer than another. We do not like to distinguish men by their callings; we do not speak ofthe poet This or the shoemaker That, for the poet may very likely be ashoemaker in the obligatories, and the shoemaker a poet in thevoluntaries. If it can be said that one occupation is honored aboveanother with us, it is that which we all share, and that is thecultivation of the earth. We believe that this, when not followedslavishly, or for gain, brings man into the closest relations to theDeity, through a grateful sense of the divine bounty, and that it not onlyawakens a natural piety in him, but that it endears to the worker thatpiece of soil which he tills, and so strengthens his love of home. Thehome is the very heart of the Altrurian system, and we do not think itwell that people should be away from their homes very long or very often. In the competitive and monopolistic times men spent half their days inracing back and forth across our continent; families were scattered by thechase for fortune, and there was a perpetual paying and repaying ofvisits. One-half the income of those railroads which we let fall intodisuse came from the ceaseless unrest. Now a man is born and lives anddies among his own kindred, and the sweet sense of neighborhood, ofbrotherhood, which blessed the golden age of the first Christian republicis ours again. Every year the people of each region meet one another onEvolution day, in the regionic capital; once in four years they all visitthe national capital. There is no danger of the decay of patriotism amongus; our country is our mother, and we love her as it is impossible to lovethe step-mother that a competitive or monopolistic nation must be to itscitizens. 

"I can only touch upon this feature and that of our system as I chance tothink of it. If any of you are curious about others, I shall be glad toanswer questions as well as I can. We have, of course, " the Altrurianproceeded, after a little indefinite pause, to let any speak who liked, "no money in your sense. As the whole people control affairs, no man worksfor another, and no man pays another. Every one does his share of labor, and receives his share of food, clothing, and shelter, which is neithermore nor less than another's. If you can imagine the justice andimpartiality of a well-ordered family, you can conceive of the social andeconomic life of Altruria. We are, properly speaking, a family rather thana nation like yours. 

"Of course, we are somewhat favored by our insular, or continental, position; but I do not know that we are more so than you are. Certainly, however, we are self-sufficing in a degree unknown to most Europeancountries; and we have within our borders the materials of every comfortand the resources of every need. We have no commerce with the egoisticworld, as we call that outside, and I believe that I am the firstAltrurian to visit foreign countries avowedly in my national character, though we have always had emissaries living abroad incognito. I hope thatI may say without offence that they find it a sorrowful exile, and thatthe reports of the egoistic world, with its wars, its bankruptcies, itscivic commotions, and its social unhappiness, do not make us discontentedwith our own condition. Before the Evolution we had completed the round ofyour inventions and discoveries, impelled by the force that drives you on;and we have since disused most of them as idle and unfit. But we profit, now and then, by the advances you make in science, for we are passionatelydevoted to the study of the natural laws, open or occult, under which allmen have their being. Occasionally an emissary returns with a sum ofmoney, and explains to the students of the national university theprocesses by which it is lost and won; and at a certain time there was amovement for its introduction among us, not for its use as you know it, but for a species of counters in games of chance. It was considered, however, to contain an element of danger, and the scheme was discouraged. 

"Nothing amuses and puzzles our people more than the accounts ouremissaries give of the changes of fashion in the outside world, and of theruin of soul and body which the love of dress often works. Our own dress, for men and for women, is studied, in one ideal of use and beauty, fromthe antique; caprice and vagary in it would be thought an effect of vulgarvanity. Nothing is worn that is not simple and honest in texture; we donot know whether a thing is cheap or dear, except as it is easy or hard tocome by, and that which is hard to come by is forbidden as wasteful andfoolish. The community builds the dwellings of the community, and these, too, are of a classic simplicity, though always beautiful and fit in form;the splendors of the arts are lavished upon the public edifices, which weall enjoy in common. "

"Isn't this the greatest rehash of 'Utopia, ' 'New Atlantis, ' and 'City ofthe Sun' that you ever imagined?" the professor whispered across me to thebanker. "The man is a fraud, and a very bungling fraud at that. "

"Well, you must expose him, when he gets through, " the banker whisperedback. 

But the professor could not wait. He got upon his feet and called out:"May I ask the gentleman from Altruria a question?"

"Certainly, " the Altrurian blandly assented. 

"Make it short!" Reuben Camp's voice broke in, impatiently. "We didn'tcome here to listen to your questions. "

The professor contemptuously ignored him. "I suppose you occasionallyreceive emissaries from, as well as send them to, the world outside?"

"Yes, now and then castaways land on our coasts, and ships out of theirreckonings put in at our ports for water or provision. "

"And how are they pleased with your system?"

"Why, I cannot better answer than by saying that they mostly refuse toleave us. "

"Ah, just as Bacon reports!" cried the professor. 

"You mean in the _New Atlantis_?" returned the Altrurian. "Yes; it isastonishing how well Bacon in that book, and Sir Thomas More in his_Utopia_, have divined certain phases of our civilization and polity. "

"I think he rather _has_ you, professor, " the banker whispered, with alaugh. 

"But all those inspired visionaries, " the Altrurian continued, while theprofessor sat grimly silent, watching for another chance, "who have bornetestimony of us in their dreams, conceived of states perfect without thediscipline of a previous competitive condition. What I thought, however, might specially interest you Americans in Altruria is the fact that oureconomy was evolved from one so like that in which you actually have yourbeing. I had even hoped you might feel that, in all these points ofresemblance, America prophesies another Altruria. I know that to some ofyou all that I have told of my country will seem a baseless fabric, withno more foundation, in fact, than More's fairy-tale of another land wheremen dealt kindly and justly by one another, and dwelt, a whole nation, inthe unity and equality of a family. But why should not a part of thatfable have come true in our polity, as another part of it has come true inyours? When Sir Thomas More wrote that book, he noted with abhorrence themonstrous injustice of the fact that men were hanged for small thefts inEngland; and in the preliminary conversation between its characters hedenounced the killing of men for any sort of thefts. Now you no longer putmen to death for theft; you look back upon that cruel code of your motherEngland with an abhorrence as great as his own. We, for our part, who haverealized the Utopian dream of brotherly equality, look back with the sameabhorrence upon a state where some were rich and some poor, some taughtand some untaught, some high and some low, and the hardest toil oftenfailed to supply a sufficiency of the food which luxury wasted in itsriots. That state seems as atrocious to us as the state which hanged a manfor stealing a loaf of bread seems to you. 

"But we do not regret the experience of competition and monopoly. Theytaught us some things in the operation of the industries. The labor-savinginventions which the Accumulation perverted to money-making we haverestored to the use intended by their inventors and the Creator of theirinventors. After serving the advantage of socializing the industries whichthe Accumulation effected for its own purposes, we continued the work inlarge mills and shops, in the interest of the workers, whom we wished toguard against the evil effects of solitude. But our mills and shops arebeautiful as well as useful. They look like temples, and they are temples, dedicated to that sympathy between the divine and human which expressesitself in honest and exquisite workmanship. They rise amid leafy boscagesbeside the streams, which form their only power; for we have disused steamaltogether, with all the offences to the eye and ear which its use broughtinto the world. Our life is so simple and our needs are so few that thehand-work of the primitive toilers could easily supply our wants; butmachinery works so much more thoroughly and beautifully that we have ingreat measure retained it. Only, the machines that were once the workmen'senemies and masters are now their friends and servants; and, if any manchooses to work alone with his own hands, the state will buy what he makesat the same price that it sells the wares made collectively. This securesevery right of individuality. 

"The farm-work, as well as the mill-work and the shop-work, is done bycompanies of workers; and there is nothing of that loneliness in our woodsand fields which, I understand, is the cause of so much insanity amongyou. It is not good for man to be alone, was the first thought of hisCreator when he considered him, and we act upon this truth in everything. The privacy of the family is sacredly guarded in essentials, but thesocial instinct is so highly developed with us that we like to eattogether in large refectories, and we meet constantly to argue and disputeon questions of aesthetics and metaphysics. We do not, perhaps, read somany books as you do, for most of our reading, when not for specialresearch, but for culture and entertainment, is done by public readers, tolarge groups of listeners. We have no social meetings which are not freeto all; and we encourage joking and the friendly give and take of wittyencounters. "

"A little hint from Sparta, " suggested the professor. 

The banker leaned over to whisper to me: "From what I have seen of yourfriend when offered a piece of American humor, I should fancy theAltrurian article was altogether different. Upon the whole, I would rathernot be present at one of their witty encounters, if I were obliged to stayit out. "

The Altrurian had paused to drink a glass of water, and now he went on:"But we try, in everything that does not inconvenience or injure others, to let every one live the life he likes best. If a man prefers to dwellapart, and have his meals in private for himself alone or for his family, it is freely permitted; only he must not expect to be served as in public, where service is one of the voluntaries; private service is not permitted;those wishing to live alone must wait upon themselves, cook their ownfood, and care for their own tables. Very few, however, wish to withdrawfrom the public life, for most of the discussions and debates take placeat our mid-day meal, which falls at the end of the obligatory labors, andis prolonged indefinitely, or as long as people like to chat and joke orlisten to the reading of some pleasant book. 

"In Altruria _there is no hurry_, for no one wishes to outstrip another, or in any wise surpass him. We are all assured of enough, and areforbidden any and every sort of superfluity. If any one, after theobligatories, wishes to be entirely idle, he may be so, but I cannot nowthink of a single person without some voluntary occupation; doubtlessthere are such persons, but I do not know them. It used to be said, in theold times, that 'it was human nature' to shirk and malinger and loaf, butwe have found that it is no such thing. We have found that it is humannature to work cheerfully, willingly, eagerly, at the tasks which allshare for the supply of the common necessities. In like manner we havefound out that it is not human nature to hoard and grudge, but that whenthe fear, and even the imagination, of want is taken away, it is humannature to give and to help generously. We used to say: 'A man will lie, ora man will cheat, in his own interest; that is human nature'; but that isno longer human nature with us, perhaps because no man has any interest toserve; he has only the interests of others to serve, while others servehis. It is in no wise possible for the individual to separate his goodfrom the common good; he is prosperous and happy only as all the rest areso; and therefore it is not human nature with us for any one to lie inwait to betray another or seize an advantage. That would be ungentlemanly, and in Altruria every man is a gentleman and every woman a lady. If youwill excuse me here for being so frank, I would like to say something byway of illustration which may be offensive if you take it personally. "

He looked at our little group, as if he were addressing himself moreespecially to us, and the banker called out, jollily: "Go on! I guess wecan stand it, " and "Go ahead!" came from all sides, from all kinds oflisteners. 

"It is merely this: that as we look back at the old competitive conditionswe do not see how any man could be a gentleman in them, since a gentlemanmust think first of others, and these conditions _compelled_ every man tothink first of himself. "

There was a silence broken by some conscious and hardy laughter, while weeach swallowed this pill as we could. 

"What are competitive conditions?" Mrs. Makely demanded of me. 

"Well, ours are competitive conditions, " I said. 

"Very well, then, " she returned, "I don't think Mr. Homos is much of agentleman to say such a thing to an American audience. Or, wait a moment!Ask him if the same rule applies to women. "

I rose, strengthened by the resentment I felt, and said: "Do I understandthat in your former competitive conditions it was also impossible for awoman to be a lady?"

The professor gave me an applausive nod as I sat down. "I envy you thechance of that little dig, " he whispered. 

The Altrurian was thoughtful a moment, and then he answered: "No, I shouldnot say it was. From what we know historically of those conditions in ourcountry, it appears that the great mass of women were not directlyaffected by them. They constituted an altruistic dominion of the egoisticempire, and, except as they were tainted by social or worldly ambitions, it was possible for every woman to be a lady, even in competitiveconditions. Her instincts were unselfish, and her first thoughts werenearly always of others. "

Mrs. Makely jumped to her feet and clapped violently with her fan on thepalm of her left hand. "Three cheers for Mr. Homos!" she shrieked, and allthe women took up the cry, supported by all the natives and theconstruction gang. I fancied these fellows gave their support largely in aspirit of burlesque; but they gave it robustly, and from that time on, Mrs. Makely led the applause, and they roared in after her. 

It is impossible to follow closely the course of the Altrurian's accountof his country, which grew more and more incredible as he went on, andimplied every insulting criticism of ours. Some one asked him about war inAltruria, and he said: "The very name of our country implies the absenceof war. At the time of the Evolution our country bore to the rest of ourcontinent the same relative proportion that your country bears to yourcontinent. The egoistic nations to the north and the south of us enteredinto an offensive and defensive alliance to put down, the new altruisticcommonwealth, and declared war against us. Their forces were met at thefrontier by our entire population in arms, and full of the martial spiritbred of the constant hostilities of the competitive and monopolistic epochjust ended. Negotiations began in the face of the imposing demonstrationwe made, and we were never afterward molested by our neighbors, whofinally yielded to the spectacle of our civilization and united theirpolitical and social fate with ours. At present, our whole continent isAltrurian. For a long time we kept up a system of coast defences, but itis also a long time since we abandoned these; for it is a maxim with usthat where every citizen's life is a pledge of the public safety, thatcountry can never be in danger of foreign enemies. 

"In this, as in all other things, we believe ourselves the true followersof Christ, whose doctrine we seek to make our life as He made it His. Wehave several forms of ritual, but no form of creed, and our religiousdifferences may be said to be aesthetic and temperamental rather thantheological and essential. We have no denominations, for we fear in this, as in other matters, to give names to things lest we should cling to thenames instead of the things. We love the realities, and for this reason welook at the life of a man rather than his profession for proof that he isa religious man. 

"I have been several times asked, during my sojourn among you, what arethe sources of compassion, of sympathy, of humanity, of charity with us, if we have not only no want, or fear of want, but not even any economicinequality. I suppose this is because you are so constantly struck by themisery arising from economic inequality and want, or the fear of want, among yourselves, that you instinctively look in that direction. But haveyou ever seen sweeter compassion, tenderer sympathy, warmer humanity, heavenlier charity than that shown in the family where all areeconomically equal and no one can want while any other has to give?Altruria, I say again, is a family, and, as we are mortal, we are stillsubject to those nobler sorrows which God has appointed to men, and whichare so different from the squalid accidents that they have made forthemselves. Sickness and death call out the most angelic ministries oflove; and those who wish to give themselves to others may do so withouthinderance from those cares, and even those duties, resting upon men whereeach must look out first for himself and for his own. Oh, believe me, believe me, you can know nothing of the divine rapture of self-sacrificewhile you must dread the sacrifice of another in it. You are not _free_, as we are, to do everything for others, for it is your _duty_ to do ratherfor those of your own household!

"There is something, " he continued, "which I hardly know how to speak of, "and here we all began to prick our ears. I prepared myself as well as Icould for another affront, though I shuddered when the banker hardilycalled out: "Don't hesitate to say anything you wish, Mr. Homos. I, forone, should like to hear you express yourself fully. "

It was always the unexpected, certainly, that happened from the Altrurian. "It is merely this, " he said: "Having come to live rightly upon earth, aswe believe, or having at least ceased to deny God in our statutes andcustoms, the fear of death, as it once, weighed upon us, has been liftedfrom our souls. The mystery of it has so far been taken away that weperceive it as something just and natural. Now that all unkindness hasbeen banished from among us, we can conceive of no such cruelty as deathonce seemed. If we do not know yet the full meaning of death, we know thatthe Creator of it and of us meant mercy and blessing by it. When one dieswe grieve, but not as those without hope. We do not say that the dead havegone to a better place, and then selfishly bewail them, for we have thekingdom of heaven upon earth already, and we know that wherever they gothey will be homesick for Altruria; and when we think of the years thatmay pass before we meet them again our hearts ache, as theirs must. Butthe presence of the risen Christ in our daily lives is our assurance thatno one ceases to be, and that we shall see our dead again. I cannotexplain this to you; I can only affirm it. "

The Altrurian spoke very solemnly, and a reverent hush fell upon theassembly. It was broken by the voice of a woman wailing out: "Oh, do yousuppose, if we lived so, we should feel so, too? That I should know mylittle girl was living?"

"Why not?" asked the Altrurian. 

To my vast astonishment, the manufacturer, who sat the farthest from me inthe same line with Mrs. Makely, the professor, and the banker, rose andasked, tremulously: "And have--have you had any direct communication withthe other world? Has any disembodied spirit returned to testify of thelife beyond the grave?"

The professor nodded significantly across Mrs. Makely to me, and thenfrowned and shook his head. I asked her if she knew what he meant. "Why, didn't you know that spiritualism was that poor man's foible? He lost hisson in a railroad accident, and ever since--"

She stopped and gave her attention to the Altrurian, who was replying tothe manufacturer's question. 

"We do not need any such testimony. Our life here makes us sure of thelife there. At any rate, no externation of the supernatural, no objectivemiracle, has been wrought in our behalf. We have had faith to do what weprayed for, and the prescience of which I speak has been added unto us. "

The manufacturer asked, as the bereaved mother had asked: "And if I livedso, should I feel so?"

Again the Altrurian answered: "Why not?"

The poor woman quavered: "Oh, I do believe it! I just _know_ it must betrue!"

The manufacturer shook his head sorrowfully and sat down, and remainedthere, looking at the ground. 

"I am aware, " the Altrurian went on, "that what I have said as to ourrealizing the kingdom of heaven on the earth must seem boastful andarrogant. That is what you pray for every day, but you do not believe itpossible for God's will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven--thatis, you do not if you are like the competitive and monopolistic people weonce were. We once regarded that petition as a formula vaguely pleasingto the Deity, but we no more expected His kingdom to come than we expectedHim to give us each day our daily bread; we knew that if we wantedsomething to eat we should have to hustle for it, and get there first; Iuse the slang of that far-off time, which, I confess, had a vulgar vigor. 

"But now everything is changed, and the change has taken place chieflyfrom one cause--namely, the disuse of money. At first, it was thought thatsome sort of circulating medium _must_ be used, that life could not betransacted without it. But life began to go on perfectly well, when eachdwelt in the place assigned him, which was no better and no worse than anyother; and when, after he had given his three hours a day to theobligatory labors, he had a right to his share of food, light, heat, andraiment; the voluntary labors, to which he gave much time or little, brought him no increase of those necessaries, but only credit andaffection. We had always heard it said that the love of money was the rootof all evil, but we had taken this for a saying, merely; now we realizedit as an active, vital truth. As soon as money was abolished the power topurchase was gone, and even if there had been any means of buying beyondthe daily needs, with overwork, the community had no power to sell to theindividual. No man owned anything, but every man had the right to anythingthat he could use; when he could not use it, his right lapsed. 

"With the expropriation of the individual the whole vast catalogue ofcrimes against property shrank to nothing. The thief could only steal fromthe community; but if he stole, what was he to do with his booty? It wasstill possible for a depredator to destroy, but few men's hate is socomprehensive as to include all other men, and when the individual couldno longer hurt some other individual in his property destruction ceased. 

"All the many murders done from love of money, or of what money could buy, were at an end. Where there was no want, men no longer bartered theirsouls, or women their bodies, for the means to keep themselves alive. Thevices vanished with the crimes, and the diseases almost as largelydisappeared. People were no longer sickened by sloth and surfeit, ordeformed and depleted by overwork and famine. They were wholesomely housedin healthful places, and they were clad fitly for their labor and fitlyfor their leisure; the caprices of vanity were not suffered to attaint thebeauty of the national dress. 

"With the stress of superfluous social and business duties, and theperpetual fear of want which all classes felt, more or less; with thetumult of the cities and the solitude of the country, insanity hadincreased among us till the whole land was dotted with asylums and the madwere numbered by hundreds of thousands. In every region they were an army, an awful army of anguish and despair. Now they have decreased to a numberso small, and are of a type so mild, that we can hardly count insanityamong our causes of unhappiness. 

"We have totally eliminated chance from our economic life. There is stilla chance that a man will be tall or short in Altruria, that he will bestrong or weak, well or ill, gay or grave, happy or unhappy in love, butnone that he will be rich or poor, busy or idle, live splendidly ormeanly. These stupid and vulgar accidents of human contrivance cannotbefall us; but I shall not be able to tell you just how or why, or todetail the process of eliminating chance. I may say, however, that itbegan with the nationalization of telegraphs, expresses, railroads, mines, and all large industries operated by stock companies. This at once strucka fatal blow at the speculation in values, real and unreal, and at thestock-exchange, or bourse; we had our own name for that gambler'sparadise, or gambler's hell, whose baleful influence penetrated everybranch of business. 

"There were still business fluctuations as long as we had business, butthey were on a smaller and smaller scale, and with the final lapse ofbusiness they necessarily vanished; all economic chance vanished. Thefounders of the commonwealth understood perfectly that business was thesterile activity of the function interposed between the demand and thesupply; that it was nothing structural; and they intended its extinction, and expected it from the moment that money was abolished. "

"This is all pretty tiresome, " said the professor to our immediate party. "I don't see why we oblige ourselves to listen to that fellow's stuff. Asif a civilized state could exist for a day without money or business. "

He went on to give his opinion of the Altrurian's pretended description, in a tone so audible that it attracted the notice of the nearest group ofrailroad hands, who were listening closely to Homos, and one of them sangout to the professor: "Can't you wait and let the first man finish?" andanother yelled: "Put him out!" and then they all laughed with a humorousperception of the impossibility of literally executing the suggestion. 

By the time all was quiet again I heard the Altrurian saying: "As to oursocial life, I cannot describe it in detail, but I can give you somenotion of its spirit. We make our pleasures civic and public as far aspossible, and the ideal is inclusive and not exclusive. There are, ofcourse, festivities which all cannot share, but our distribution intosmall communities favors the possibility of all doing so. Our daily life, however, is so largely social that we seldom meet by special invitation orengagement. When we do, it is with the perfect understanding that theassemblage confers no social distinction, but is for a momentaryconvenience. In fact, these occasions are rather avoided, recalling, asthey do, the vapid and tedious entertainments of the competitive epoch, the receptions and balls and dinners of a semi-barbaric people strivingfor social prominence by shutting a certain number in and a certain numberout, and overdressing, overfeeding, and overdrinking. Anythingpremeditated in the way of a pleasure we think stupid and mistaken; welike to meet suddenly, or on the spur of the moment, out-of-doors, ifpossible, and arrange a picnic or a dance or a play; and let people comeand go without ceremony. No one is more host than guest; all are hosts andguests. People consort much according to their tastes--literary, musical, artistic, scientific, or mechanical--but these tastes are made approaches, not barriers; and we find out that we have many more tastes in common thanwas formerly supposed. 

"But, after all, our life is serious, and no one among us is quite happy, in the general esteem, unless he has dedicated himself, in some specialway, to the general good. Our ideal is not rights, but duties. "

"Mazzini!" whispered the professor. 

"The greatest distinction which any one can enjoy with us is to have foundout some new and signal way of serving the community; and then it is notgood form for him to seek recognition. The doing any fine thing is thepurest pleasure it can give; applause flatters, but it hurts, too, and ourbenefactors, as we call them, have learned to shun it. 

"We are still far from thinking our civilization perfect; but we are surethat our civic ideals are perfect. What we have already accomplished is tohave given a whole continent perpetual peace; to have founded an economyin which there is no possibility of want; to have killed out political andsocial ambition; to have disused money and eliminated chance; to haverealized the brotherhood of the race, and to have outlived the fear ofdeath. "

The Altrurian suddenly stopped with these words and sat down. He hadspoken a long time, and with a fulness which my report gives little notionof; but, though most of his cultivated listeners were weary, and a goodmany ladies had left their seats and gone back to the hotel, not one ofthe natives, or the work-people of any sort, had stirred; now theyremained a moment motionless and silent before they rose from all parts ofthe field and shouted: "Go on! Don't stop! Tell us all about it!"

I saw Reuben Camp climb the shoulders of a big fellow near where theAltrurian had stood; he waved the crowd to silence with out-spread arms. "He isn't going to say anything more; he's tired. But if any man don'tthink he's got his dollar's worth, let him walk up to the door and theticket-agent will refund him his money. "

The crowd laughed, and some one shouted: "Good for you, Reub!"

Camp continued: "But our friend here will shake the hand of any man, woman, or child that wants to speak to him; and you needn't wipe it on thegrass first, either. He's a _man_! And I want to say that he's going tospend the next week with us, at my mother's house, and we shall be glad tohave you call. "

The crowd, the rustic and ruder part of it, cheered and cheered till themountain echoes answered; then a railroader called for three times three, with a tiger, and got it. The guests of the hotel broke away and wenttoward the house over the long shadows of the meadow. The lower classespressed forward, on Camp's invitation. 

"Well, did you ever hear a more disgusting rigmarole?" asked Mrs. Makely, as our little group halted indecisively about her. 

"With all those imaginary commonwealths to draw upon, from Plato, throughMore, Bacon, and Campanella, down to Bellamy and Morris, he hasconstructed the shakiest effigy ever made of old clothes stuffed withstraw, " said the professor. 

The manufacturer was silent. The banker said: "I don't know. He grappledpretty boldly with your insinuations. That frank declaration that Altruriawas all these pretty soap-bubble worlds solidified was rather fine. "

"It was splendid!" cried Mrs. Makely. The lawyer and the minister cametoward us from where they had been sitting together. She called out tothem: "Why in the world didn't one of your gentlemen get up and propose avote of thanks?"

"The difficulty with me is, " continued the banker, "that he has renderedAltruria incredible. I have no doubt that he is an Altrurian, but I doubtvery much if he comes from anywhere in particular, and I find this quite ablow, for we had got Altruria nicely located on the map, and werebeginning to get accounts of it in the newspapers. "

"Yes, that is just exactly the way I feel about it, " sighed Mrs. Makely. "But still, don't you think there ought to have been a vote of thanks, Mr. Bullion?"

"Why, certainly. The fellow was immensely amusing, and you must have got alot of money by him. It was an oversight not to make him a formalacknowledgment of some kind. If we offered him money, he would have toleave it all behind him here when he went home to Altruria. "

"Just as _we_ do when we go to heaven, " I suggested; the banker did notanswer, and I instantly felt that in the presence of the minister myremark was out of taste. 

"Well, then, don't you think, " said Mrs. Makely, who had a leatheryinsensibility to everything but the purpose possessing her, "that we oughtat least to go and say something to him personally?"

"Yes, I think we ought, " said the banker, and we all walked up to wherethe Altrurian stood, still thickly surrounded by the lower classes, whowere shaking hands with him and getting in a word with him now and then. 

One of the construction gang said, carelessly: "No all-rail route toAltruria, I suppose?"

"No, " answered Homos, "it's a far sea voyage. "

"Well, I shouldn't mind working my passage, if you think they'd let mestay after I got there. "

"Ah, you mustn't go to Altruria. You must let Altruria come to _you_"returned Homos, with that confounded smile of his that always won myheart. 

"Yes, " shouted Reuben Camp, whose thin face was red with excitement, "that's the word. Have Altruria right here, and right now. "

The old farmer, who had several times spoken, cackled out: "I didn't know, one while, when you was talk'n' about not havin' no money, but what someon us had had Altrury here for quite a spell, already. I don't pass more'nfifty dolla's through my hands most years. "

A laugh went up, and then, at sight of Mrs. Makely heading our littleparty, the people round Homos civilly made way for us. She rushed uponhim, and seized his hand in both of hers; she dropped her fan, parasol, gloves, handkerchief, and vinaigrette in the grass to do so. "Oh, Mr. Homos, " she fluted, and the tears came into her eyes, "it was beautiful, _beautiful_, every word of it! I sat in a perfect trance from beginning toend, and I felt that it was all as true as it was beautiful. People allaround me were breathless with interest, and I don't know how I can everthank you enough. "

"Yes. Indeed, " the professor hastened to say, before the Altrurian couldanswer, and he beamed malignantly upon him through his spectacles while hespoke, "it was like some strange romance. "

"I don't know that I should go so far as that, " said the banker, in histurn, "but it certainly seemed too good to be true. "

"Yes, " the Altrurian responded, simply, but a little sadly; "now that I amaway from it all, and in conditions so different, I sometimes had to askmyself, as I went on, if my whole life had not hitherto been a dream, andAltruria were not some blessed vision of the night. "

"Then you know how to account for a feeling which I must acknowledge, too?" the lawyer asked, courteously. "But it was most interesting. "

"The kingdom of God upon earth, " said the minister--"It ought not to beincredible; but that, more than anything else you told us of, gave mepause. "

"You of all men?" returned the Altrurian, gently. 

"Yes, " said the minister, with a certain dejection, "when I remember whatI have seen of men, when I reflect what human nature is, how can I believethat the kingdom of God will ever come upon the earth?"

"But in heaven, where He reigns, who is it does His will? The spirits ofmen?" pursued the Altrurian. 

"Yes, but conditioned as men are here--"

"But if they were conditioned as men are there?"

"Now, I can't let you two good people get into a theological dispute, "Mrs. Makely pushed in. "Here is Mr. Twelvemough dying to shake hands withMr. Homos and compliment his distinguished guest. "

"Ah, Mr. Homos knows what I must have thought of his talk without mytelling him, " I began, skilfully. "But I am sorry that I am to lose mydistinguished guest so soon. "

Reuben Camp broke out: "That was my blunder, Mr. Twelvemough. Mr. Homosand I had talked it over conditionally, and I was not to speak of it tillhe had told you; but it slipped out in the excitement of the moment. "

"Oh, it's all right, " I said, and I shook hands cordially with both ofthem. "It will be the greatest possible advantage for Mr. Homos to seecertain phases of American life at close range, and he couldn't possiblysee them under better auspices than yours, Camp. "

"Yes, I'm going to drive him through the hill country after haying, andthen I'm going to take him down and show him one of our big factorytowns. "

I believe this was done, but finally the Altrurian went on to New York, where he was to pass the winter. We parted friends; I even offered himsome introductions; but his acquaintance had become more and moredifficult, and I was not sorry to part with him. That taste of his for lowcompany was incurable, and I was glad that I was not to be responsible anylonger for whatever strange thing he might do next. I think he remainedvery popular with the classes he most affected; a throng of natives, construction hands, and table-girls saw him off on his train; and he leftlarge numbers of such admirers in our house and neighborhood, devout inthe faith that there was such a commonwealth as Altruria, and that he wasreally an Altrurian. As for the more cultivated people who had met him, they continued of two minds upon both points. 

THE END