THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

 A Romance

 WITH AN INTRODUCTION

 BY W. D. HOWELLS

 1907

INTRODUCTION

Aristides Homos, an Emissary of the Altrurian Commonwealth, visited theUnited States during the summer of 1893 and the fall and winterfollowing. For some weeks or months he was the guest of a well-knownman of letters at a hotel in one of our mountain resorts; in the earlyautumn he spent several days at the great Columbian Exhibition inChicago; and later he came to New York, where he remained until hesailed, rather suddenly, for Altruria, taking the circuitous route bywhich he came. He seems to have written pretty constantly throughout hissojourn with us to an intimate friend in his own country, giving freelyhis impressions of our civilization. His letters from New York appear tohave been especially full, and, in offering the present synopsis of theseto the American reader, it will not be impertinent to note certainpeculiarities of the Altrurian attitude which the temperament of thewriter has somewhat modified. He is entangled in his social sophistriesregarding all the competitive civilizations; he cannot apparently do fulljustice to the superior heroism of charity and self-sacrifice aspractised in countries where people live _upon_ each other as theAmericans do, instead of _for_ each other as the Altrurians do; buthe has some glimmerings of the beauty of our living, and he hasundoubtedly the wish to be fair to our ideals. He is unable to value ourdevotion to the spirit of Christianity amid the practices which seem todeny it; but he evidently wishes to recognize the possibility of such athing. He at least accords us the virtues of our defects, and, amongthe many visitors who have censured us, he has not seen us with hiscensures prepared to fit the instances; in fact, the very reverse hasbeen his method. 

Many of the instances which he fits with his censures are such as hecould no longer note, if he came among us again. That habit ofcelebrating the munificence of the charitable rich, on which he spendshis sarcasm, has fallen from us through the mere superabundance ofoccasion. Our rich people give so continuously for all manner of goodobjects that it would be impossible for our press, however vigilant, tonote the successive benefactions, and millions are now daily bestowedupon needy educational institutions, of which no mention whatever is madein the newspapers. If a millionaire is now and then surprised in a goodaction by a reporter of uncommon diligence, he is able by an appeal totheir common humanity to prevail with the witness to spare him therevolting publicity which it must be confessed would once have followedhis discovery; the right hand which is full to overflowing is now asskilled as the empty right hand in keeping the left hand ignorant of itsdoings. This has happened through the general decay of snobbishness amongus, perhaps. It is certain that there is no longer the passion for aknowledge of the rich, and the smart, which made us ridiculous to Mr. Homos. Ten or twelve years ago, our newspapers abounded in intelligenceof the coming and going of social leaders, of their dinners and lunchesand teas, of their receptions and balls, and the guests who were biddento them. But this sort of unwholesome and exciting gossip, which wasformerly devoured by their readers with inappeasable voracity, is nolonger supplied, simply because the taste for it has wholly passed away. 

Much the same might be said of the social hospitalities which raised ourvisitor's surprise. For example, many people are now asked to dinner whoreally need a dinner, and not merely those who revolt from the notion ofdinner with loathing, and go to it with abhorrence. At the tables of ourhighest social leaders one now meets on a perfect equality persons ofinteresting minds and uncommon gifts who would once have been excludedbecause they were hungry, or were not in the hostess's set, or had not anew gown or a dress-suit. This contributes greatly to the pleasure of thetime, and promotes the increasing kindliness between the rich and poorfor which our status is above all things notable. 

The accusation which our critic brings that the American spirit has beenalmost Europeanized away, in its social forms, would be less grounded inthe observance of a later visitor. The customs of good society must bethe same everywhere in some measure, but the student of the competitiveworld would now find European hospitality Americanized, rather than. American hospitality Europeanized. The careful research which has beenmade into our social origins has resulted in bringing back many of theaboriginal usages; and, with the return of the old American spirit offraternity, many of the earlier dishes as well as amenities have beenrestored. A Thanksgiving dinner in the year 1906 would have been foundmore like a Thanksgiving dinner in 1806 than the dinner to which Mr. Homos was asked in 1893, and which he has studied so interestingly, though not quite without some faults of taste and discretion. Theprodigious change for the better in some material aspects of our statuswhich has taken place in the last twelve years could nowhere be so wellnoted as in the picture he gives us of the housing of our people in 1893. His study of the evolution of the apartment-house from the oldflat-house, and the still older single dwelling, is very curious, and, upon the whole, not incorrect. But neither of these last differed somuch from the first as the apartment-house now differs from theapartment-house of his day. There are now no dark rooms opening onairless pits for the family, or black closets and dismal basements forthe servants. Every room has abundant light and perfect ventilation, andas nearly a southern exposure as possible. The appointments of the housesare no longer in the spirit of profuse and vulgar luxury which it must beallowed once characterized them. They are simply but tastefully finished, they are absolutely fireproof, and, with their less expensive decoration, the rents have been so far lowered that in any good position a quarter ofnine or ten rooms, with as many baths, can be had for from three thousandto fifteen thousand dollars. This fact alone must attract to ourmetropolis the best of our population, the bone and sinew which have nolonger any use for themselves where they have been expended in rearingcolossal fortunes, and now demand a metropolitan repose. 

The apartments are much better fitted for a family of generous size thanthose which Mr. Homos observed. Children, who were once almost unheardof, and quite unheard, in apartment-houses, increasingly abound underfavor of the gospel of race preservation. The elevators are full of them, and in the grassy courts round which the houses are built, the littleones play all day long, or paddle in the fountains, warmed withsteam-pipes in the winter, and cooled to an agreeable temperature in asummer which has almost lost its terrors for the stay-at-home New-Yorker. Each child has his or her little plot of ground in the roof-garden, wherethey are taught the once wellnigh forgotten art of agriculture. 

The improvement of the tenement-house has gone hand in hand with that ofthe apartment-house. As nearly as the rate of interest on the landlord'sinvestment will allow, the housing of the poor approaches in comfort thatof the rich. Their children are still more numerous, and the playgroundssupplied them in every open space and on every pier are visitedconstantly by the better-to-do children, who exchange with them lessonsof form and fashion for the scarcely less valuable instruction inpractical life which the poorer little ones are able to give. The rentsin the tenement houses are reduced even more notably than those in theapartment-houses, so that now, with the constant increase in wages, thetenants are able to pay their rents promptly. The evictions once socommon are very rare; it is doubtful whether a nightly or daily walk inthe poorer quarters of the town would develop, in the coldest weather, half a dozen cases of families set out on the sidewalk with theirhousehold goods about them. 

The Altrurian Emissary visited this country when it was on the verge ofthe period of great economic depression extending from 1894 to 1898, but, after the Spanish War, Providence marked the divine approval of ourvictory in that contest by renewing in unexampled measure the prosperityof the Republic. With the downfall of the trusts, and the release of ourindustrial and commercial forces to unrestricted activity, the conditionof every form of labor has been immeasurably improved, and it is nowunited with capital in bonds of the closest affection. But in no phasehas its fate been so brightened as in that of domestic service. This hasoccurred not merely through the rise of wages, but through a greaterknowledge between the employing and employed. When, a few years since, itbecame practically impossible for mothers of families to get help fromthe intelligence-offices, and ladies were obliged through lack of cooksand chambermaids to do the work of the kitchen and the chamber andparlor, they learned to realize what such work was, how poorly paid, howbadly lodged, how meanly fed. From this practical knowledge it wasimpossible for them to retreat to their old supremacy and indifference asmistresses. The servant problem was solved, once for all, by humanity, and it is doubtful whether, if Mr. Homos returned to us now, he wouldgive offence by preaching the example of the Altrurian ladies, or wouldbe shocked by the contempt and ignorance of American women where otherwomen who did their household drudgery were concerned. 

As women from having no help have learned how to use their helpers, certain other hardships have been the means of good. The flattened wheelof the trolley, banging the track day and night, and tormenting thewaking and sleeping ear, was, oddly enough, the inspiration of reformswhich have made our city the quietest in the world. The trolleys now passunheard; the elevated train glides by overhead with only a modulatedmurmur; the subway is a retreat fit for meditation and prayer, where thepassenger can possess his soul in a peace to be found nowhere else; theautomobile, which was unknown in the day of the Altrurian Emissary, whirssoftly through the most crowded thoroughfare, far below the speed limit, with a sigh of gentle satisfaction in its own harmlessness, and, "likethe sweet South, taking and giving odor. " The streets that he saw sofilthy and unkempt in 1893 are now at least as clean as they are quiet. Asphalt has universally replaced the cobble-stones and Belgian blocks ofhis day, and, though it is everywhere full of holes, it is still asphalt, and may some time be put in repair. 

There is a note of exaggeration in his characterization of our men whichthe reader must regret. They are not now the intellectual inferior of ourwomen, or at least not so much the inferiors. Since his day they havemade a vast advance in the knowledge and love of literature. With themultitude of our periodicals, and the swarm of our fictions selling froma hundred thousand to half a million each, even our business-men cannotwholly escape culture, and they have become more and more cultured, sothat now you frequently hear them asking what this or that book is allabout. With the mention of them, the reader will naturally recur to thework of their useful and devoted lives--the accumulation of money. It isthis accumulation, this heaping-up of riches, which the AltrurianEmissary accuses in the love-story closing his study of our conditions, but which he might not now so totally condemn. 

As we have intimated, he has more than once guarded against a rashconclusion, to which the logical habit of the Altrurian mind might havebetrayed him. If he could revisit us we are sure that he would have stillgreater reason to congratulate himself on his forbearance, and woulddoubtless profit by the lesson which events must teach all but the mosthopeless doctrinaires. The evil of even a small war (and soldiersthemselves do not deny that wars, large or small, are evil) has, as wehave noted, been overruled for good in the sort of Golden Age, or Age ona Gold Basis, which we have long been enjoying. If our good-fortuneshould be continued to us in reward of our public and private virtue, the fact would suggest to so candid an observer that in economics, as inother things, the rule proves the exception, and that as good times havehitherto always been succeeded by bad times, it stands to reason thatour present period of prosperity will never be followed by a period ofadversity. 

It would seem from the story continued by another hand in the second partof this work, that Altruria itself is not absolutely logical in itsevents, which are subject to some of the anomalies governing in our ownaffairs. A people living in conditions which some of our dreamers wouldconsider ideal, are forced to discourage foreign emigration, againsttheir rule of universal hospitality, and in at least one notable instanceare obliged to protect themselves against what they believe an evilexample by using compulsion with the wrongdoers, though the theory oftheir life is entirely opposed to anything of the kind. Perhaps, however, we are not to trust to this other hand at all times, since it is awoman's hand, and is not to be credited with the firm and unerring touchof a man's. The story, as she completes it, is the story of theAltrurian's love for an American woman, and will be primarily interestingfor that reason. Like the Altrurian's narrative, it is here compiled froma succession of letters, which in her case were written to a friend inAmerica, as his were written to a friend in Altruria. But it can by nomeans have the sociological value which the record of his observationsamong ourselves will have for the thoughtful reader. It is at best therecord of desultory and imperfect glimpses of a civilizationfundamentally alien to her own, such as would attract an enthusiasticnature, but would leave it finally in a sort of misgiving as to thereality of the things seen and heard. Some such misgiving attended theinquiries of those who met the Altrurian during his sojourn with us, butit is a pity that a more absolute conclusion should not have been theeffect of this lively lady's knowledge of the ideal country of heradoption. It is, however, an interesting psychological result, and itcontinues the tradition of all the observers of ideal conditions from SirThomas More down to William Morris. Either we have no terms forconditions so unlike our own that they cannot be reported to us withabsolute intelligence, or else there is in every experience of them anessential vagueness and uncertainty. 

PART FIRST

Through the Eye of the Needle

I

If I spoke with Altrurian breadth of the way New-Yorkers live, my dearCyril, I should begin by saying that the New-Yorkers did not live at all. But outside of our happy country one learns to distinguish, and to allowthat there are several degrees of living, all indeed hateful to us, if weknew them, and yet none without some saving grace in it. You would saythat in conditions where men were embattled against one another by thegreed and the envy and the ambition which these conditions perpetuallyappeal to here, there could be no grace in life; but we must rememberthat men have always been better than their conditions, and thatotherwise they would have remained savages without the instinct or thewish to advance. Indeed, our own state is testimony of a potentialcivility in all states, which we must keep in mind when we judge thepeoples of the plutocratic world, and especially the American people, whoare above all others the devotees and exemplars of the plutocratic ideal, without limitation by any aristocracy, theocracy, or monarchy. They arepurely commercial, and the thing that cannot be bought and sold haslogically no place in their life. But life is not logical outside ofAltruria; we are the only people in the world, my dear Cyril, who areprivileged to live reasonably; and again I say we must put by our owncriterions if we wish to understand the Americans, or to recognize thatmeasure of loveliness which their warped and stunted and perverted livescertainly show, in spite of theory and in spite of conscience, even. Ican make this clear to you, I think, by a single instance, say that ofthe American who sees a case of distress, and longs to relieve it. If heis rich, he can give relief with a good conscience, except for the harmthat may come to his beneficiary from being helped; but if he is notrich, or not finally rich, and especially if he has a family dependentupon him, he cannot give in anything like the measure Christ bade us givewithout wronging those dear to him, immediately or remotely. That is tosay, in conditions which oblige every man to look out for himself, a mancannot be a Christian without remorse; he cannot do a generous actionwithout self-reproach; he cannot be nobly unselfish without the fear ofbeing a fool. You would think that this predicament must deprave, and sowithout doubt it does; and yet it is not wholly depraving. It often hasits effect in character of a rare and pathetic sublimity; and manyAmericans take all the cruel risks of doing good, reckless of the evilthat may befall them, and defiant of the upbraidings of their own hearts. This is something that we Altrurians can scarcely understand: it is likethe munificence of a savage who has killed a deer and shares it with hisstarving tribesmen, forgetful of the hungering little ones who wait hisreturn from the chase with food; for life in plutocratic countries isstill a chase, and the game is wary and sparse, as the terrible averageof failures witnesses. 

Of course, I do not mean that Americans may not give at all withoutsensible risk, or that giving among them is always followed by a logicalregret; but, as I said, life with them is in no wise logical. They evenapplaud one another for their charities, which they measure by the amountgiven, rather than by the love that goes with the giving. The widow'smite has little credit with them, but the rich man's million has anacclaim that reverberates through their newspapers long after his gift ismade. It is only the poor in America who do charity as we do, by givinghelp where it is needed; the Americans are mostly too busy, if they areat all prosperous, to give anything but money; and the more money theygive, the more charitable they esteem themselves. From time to time someman with twenty or thirty millions gives one of them away, usually to apublic institution of some sort, where it will have no effect with thepeople who are underpaid for their work or cannot get work; and then hisdeed is famed throughout the continent as a thing really beyond praise. Yet any one who thinks about it must know that he never earned themillions he kept, or the millions he gave, but somehow made them from thelabor of others; that, with all the wealth left him, he cannot miss thefortune he lavishes, any more than if the check which conveyed it were awithered leaf, and not in any wise so much as an ordinary working-manmight feel the bestowal of a postage-stamp. 

But in this study of the plutocratic mind, always so fascinating to me, Iam getting altogether away from what I meant to tell you. I meant to tellyou not how Americans live in the spirit, illogically, blindly, andblunderingly, but how they live in the body, and more especially how theyhouse themselves in this city of New York. A great many of them do nothouse themselves at all, but that is a class which we cannot nowconsider, and I will speak only of those who have some sort of a roofover their heads. 

II

Formerly the New-Yorker lived in one of three different ways: in privatehouses, or boarding-houses, or hotels; there were few restaurants orpublic tables outside of the hotels, and those who had lodgings and tooktheir meals at eating-houses were but a small proportion of the wholenumber. The old classification still holds in a measure, but within thelast thirty years, or ever since the Civil War, when the enormouscommercial expansion of the country began, several different ways ofliving have been opened. The first and most noticeable of these ishousekeeping in flats, or apartments of three or four rooms or more, onthe same floor, as in all the countries of Europe except England; thoughthe flat is now making itself known in London, too. Before the war, theNew-Yorker who kept house did so in a separate house, three or fourstories in height, with a street door of its own. Its pattern within wasfixed by long usage, and seldom varied; without, it was of brown-stonebefore, and brick behind, with an open space there for drying clothes, which was sometimes gardened or planted with trees and vines. The rear ofthe city blocks which these houses formed was more attractive than thefront, as you may still see in the vast succession of monotonouscross-streets not yet invaded by poverty or business; and often theperspective of these rears is picturesque and pleasing. But with thesudden growth of the population when peace came, and through theacquaintance the hordes of American tourists had made with Europeanfashions of living, it became easy, or at least simple, to divide thefloors of many of these private dwellings into apartments, each with itsown kitchen and all the apparatus of housekeeping. The apartments thenhad the street entrance and the stairways in common, and they had incommon the cellar and the furnace for heating; they had in common thedisadvantage of being badly aired and badly lighted. They were dark, cramped, and uncomfortable, but they were cheaper than separate houses, and they were more homelike than boarding-houses or hotels. Large numbersof them still remain in use, and when people began to live in flats, inconformity with the law of evolution, many buildings were put up andsubdivided into apartments in imitation of the old dwellings which hadbeen changed. 

But the apartment as the New-Yorkers now mostly have it, was at the sametime evolving from another direction. The poorer class of New Yorkwork-people had for a long period before the war lived, as they stilllive, in vast edifices, once thought prodigiously tall, which were calledtenement-houses. In these a family of five or ten persons is commonlypacked in two or three rooms, and even in one room, where they eat andsleep, without the amenities and often without the decencies of life, andof course without light and air. The buildings in case of fire aredeath-traps; but the law obliges the owners to provide some apparentmeans of escape, which they do in the form of iron balconies and ladders, giving that festive air to their façades which I have already noted. Thebare and dirty entries and staircases are really ramifications of thefilthy streets without, and each tenement opens upon a landing as if itopened upon a public thoroughfare. The rents extorted from the inmates issometimes a hundred per cent. , and is nearly always cruelly out ofproportion to the value of the houses, not to speak of the wretchedshelter afforded; and when the rent is not paid the family in arrears isset with all its poor household gear upon the sidewalk, in a pitilessindifference to the season and the weather, which you could not realizewithout seeing it, and which is incredible even of plutocratic nature. Ofcourse, landlordism, which you have read so much of, is at its worstin the case of the tenement-houses. But you must understand thatcomparatively few people in New York own the roofs that shelter them. Byfar the greater number live, however they live, in houses owned byothers, by a class who prosper and grow rich, or richer, simply by owningthe roofs over other men's heads. The landlords have, of course, no humanrelation with their tenants, and really no business relations, for allthe affairs between them are transacted by agents. Some have thereputation of being better than others; but they all live, or expect tolive, without work, on their rents. They are very much respected for it;the rents are considered a just return from the money invested. You musttry to conceive of this as an actual fact, and not merely as astatistical statement. I know it will not be easy for you; it is not easyfor me, though I have it constantly before my face. 

III

The tenement-house, such as it is, is the original of theapartment-house, which perpetuates some of its most characteristicfeatures on a scale and in material undreamed of in the simple philosophyof the inventor of the tenement-house. The worst of these features isthe want of light and air, but as much more space and as many more roomsare conceded as the tenant will pay for. The apartment-house, however, soars to heights that the tenement-house never half reached, and issometimes ten stories high. It is built fireproof, very often, and isgenerally equipped with an elevator, which runs night and day, and makesone level of all the floors. The cheaper sort, or those which havedeparted less from the tenement-house original, have no elevators, butthe street door in all is kept shut and locked, and is opened only by thetenant's latch-key or by the janitor having charge of the whole building. In the finer houses there is a page whose sole duty it is to open andshut this door, and who is usually brass-buttoned to one blinding effectof livery with the elevator-boy. Where this page or hall-boy is found, the elevator carries you to the door of any apartment you seek; where heis not found, there is a bell and a speaking-tube in the lower entry, foreach apartment, and you ring up the occupant and talk to him as manystories off as he happens to be. But people who can afford to indulgetheir pride will not live in this sort of apartment-house, and therents in them are much lower than in the finer sort. The finer sort arevulgarly fine for the most part, with a gaudy splendor of mosaicpavement, marble stairs, frescoed ceilings, painted walls, and cabinetwood-work. But there are many that are fine in a good taste, in thethings that are common to the inmates. Their fittings for housekeepingare of all degrees of perfection, and, except for the want of light andair, life in them has a high degree of gross luxury. They are heatedthroughout with pipes of steam or hot water, and they are sometimeslighted with both gas and electricity, which the inmate uses at will, though of course at his own cost. Outside, they are the despair ofarchitecture, for no style has yet been invented which enables the artistto characterize them with beauty, and wherever they lift their vast bulksthey deform the whole neighborhood, throwing the other buildings out ofscale, and making it impossible for future edifices to assimilatethemselves to the intruder. 

There is no end to the apartment-houses for multitude, and there is nostreet or avenue free from them. Of course, the better sort are to befound on the fashionable avenues and the finer cross-streets, but othersfollow the course of the horse-car lines on the eastern and westernavenues, and the elevated roads on the avenues which these have invaded. In such places they are shops below and apartments above, and I cannotsee that the inmates seem at all sensible that they are unfitly housed inthem. People are born and married, and live and die in the midst of anuproar so frantic that you would think they would go mad of it; and Ibelieve the physicians really attribute something of the growingprevalence of neurotic disorders to the wear and tear of the nerves fromthe rush of the trains passing almost momently, and the perpetual jarringof the earth and air from their swift transit. I once spent an evening inone of these apartments, which a friend had taken for a few weeks lastspring (you can get them out of season for any length of time), and asthe weather had begun to be warm, we had the windows open, and so we hadthe full effect of the railroad operated under them. My friend had becomeaccustomed to it, but for me it was an affliction which I cannot give youany notion of. The trains seemed to be in the room with us, and I sat asif I had a locomotive in my lap. Their shrieks and groans burst everysentence I began, and if I had not been master of that visible speechwhich we use so much at home I never should have known what my friend wassaying. I cannot tell you how this brutal clamor insulted me, and madethe mere exchange of thought a part of the squalid struggle which is theplutocratic conception of life; I came away after a few hours of it, bewildered and bruised, as if I had been beaten upon with hammers. 

Some of the apartments on the elevated lines are very good, as suchthings go; they are certainly costly enough to be good; and they areinhabited by people who can afford to leave them during the hot seasonwhen the noise is at its worst; but most of them belong to people whomust dwell in them summer and winter, for want of money and leisure toget out of them, and who must suffer incessantly from the noise I couldnot endure for a few hours. In health it is bad enough, but in sicknessit must be horrible beyond all parallel. Imagine a mother with a dyingchild in such a place; or a wife bending over the pillow of her husbandto catch the last faint whisper of farewell, as a train of five or sixcars goes roaring by the open window! What horror! What profanation!

IV

The noise is bad everywhere in New York, but in some of the finerapartment-houses on the better streets you are as well out of it as youcan be anywhere in the city. I have been a guest in these at differenttimes, and in one of them I am such a frequent guest that I may be saidto know its life intimately. In fact, my hostess (women transact societyso exclusively in America that you seldom think of your host) in theapartment I mean to speak of, invited me to explore it one night when Idined with her, so that I might, as she said, tell my friends when I gotback to Altruria how people lived in America; and I cannot feel that Iam violating her hospitality in telling you now. She is that Mrs. Makelywhom I met last summer in the mountains, and whom you thought so strangea type from the account of her I gave you, but who is not altogetheruncommon here. I confess that, with all her faults, I like her, and Ilike to go to her house. She is, in fact, a very good woman, perfectlyselfish by tradition, as the American women must be, and wildly generousby nature, as they nearly always are; and infinitely superior to herhusband in cultivation, as is commonly the case with them. As he knowsnothing but business, he thinks it is the only thing worth knowing, andhe looks down on the tastes and interests of her more intellectual lifewith amiable contempt, as something almost comic. She respects business, too, and so she does not despise his ignorance as you would suppose; itis at least the ignorance of a business-man, who must have something inhim beyond her ken, or else he would not be able to make money as hedoes. 

With your greater sense of humor, I think you would be amused if youcould see his smile of placid self-satisfaction as he listens to ourdiscussion of questions and problems which no more enter his daily lifethan they enter the daily life of an Eskimo; but I do not find italtogether amusing myself, and I could not well forgive it, if I did notknow that he was at heart so simple and good, in spite of hiscommerciality. But he is sweet and kind, as the American men so oftenare, and he thinks his wife is the delightfulest creature in the world, as the American husband nearly always does. They have several times askedme to dine with them _en famille;_ and, as a matter of form, hekeeps me a little while with him after dinner, when she has left thetable, and smokes his cigar, after wondering why we do not smoke inAltruria; but I can see that he is impatient to get to her in theirdrawing-room, where we find her reading a book in the crimson light ofthe canopied lamp, and where he presently falls silent, perfectly happyto be near her. The drawing-room is of a good size itself, and it has aroom opening out of it called the library, with a case of books in it, and Mrs. Makely's piano-forte. The place is rather too richly and denselyrugged, and there is rather more curtaining and shading of the windowsthan we should like; but Mrs. Makely is too well up-to-date, as she wouldsay, to have much of the bric-à-brac about which she tells me used toclutter people's houses here. There are some pretty good pictures on thewalls, and a few vases and bronzes, and she says she has produced agreater effect of space by quelling the furniture--she means, having fewpieces and having them as small as possible. There is a little stand withher afternoon tea-set in one corner, and there is a pretty writing-deskin the library; I remember a sofa and some easy-chairs, but not toomany of them. She has a table near one of the windows, with books andpapers on it. She tells me that she sees herself that the place is keptjust as she wishes it, for she has rather a passion for neatness, and you never can trust servants not to stand the books on their heads orstudy a vulgar symmetry in the arrangements. She never allows them inthere, she says, except when they are at work under her eye; and shenever allows anybody there except her guests, and her husband after hehas smoked. Of course, her dog must be there; and one evening after herhusband fell asleep in the arm-chair near her, the dog fell asleep onthe fleece at her feet, and we heard them softly breathing in unison. She made a pretty little mocking mouth when the sound first becameaudible, and said that she ought really to have sent Mr. Makely out withthe dog, for the dog ought to have the air every day, and she hadbeen kept indoors; but sometimes Mr. Makely came home from business sotired that she hated to send him out, even for the dog's sake, though hewas so apt to become dyspeptic. "They won't let you have dogs in some ofthe apartment-houses, but I tore up the first lease that had that clausein it, and I told Mr. Makely that I would rather live in a house all mydays than any flat where my dog wasn't as welcome as I was. Of course, they're rather troublesome. "

The Makelys had no children, but it is seldom that the occupants ofapartment-houses of a good class have children, though there is no clausein the lease against them. I verified this fact from Mrs. Makely herself, by actual inquiry, for in all the times that I had gone up and down inthe elevator to her apartment I had never seen any children. She seemedat first to think I was joking, and not to like it, but when she foundthat I was in earnest she said that she did not suppose all the familiesliving under that roof had more than four or five children among them. She said that it would be inconvenient; and I could not allege thetenement-houses in the poor quarters of the city, where children seemedto swarm, for it is but too probable that they do not regard conveniencein such places, and that neither parents nor children are morecomfortable for their presence. 

V

Comfort is the American ideal, in a certain way, and comfort is certainlywhat is studied in such an apartment as the Makelys inhabit. We got totalking about it, and the ease of life in such conditions, and it wasthen she made me that offer to show me her flat, and let me report to theAltrurians concerning it. She is all impulse, and she asked, How would Ilike to see it _now?_ and when I said I should be delighted, shespoke to her husband, and told him that she was going to show me throughthe flat. He roused himself promptly, and went before us, at her bidding, to turn up the electrics in the passages and rooms, and then she led theway out through the dining-room. 

"This and the parlors count three, and the kitchen here is the fourthroom of the eight, " she said, and as she spoke she pushed open the doorof a small room, blazing with light and dense with the fumes of thedinner and the dish-washing which was now going on in a closet openingout of the kitchen. 

She showed me the set range, at one side, and the refrigerator in analcove, which she said went with the flat, and, "Lena, " she said to thecook, "this is the Altrurian gentleman I was telling you about, and Iwant him to see your kitchen. Can I take him into your room?"

The cook said, "Oh yes, ma'am, " and she gave me a good stare, while Mrs. Makely went to the kitchen window and made me observe that it let in theoutside air, though the court that it opened into was so dark that onehad to keep the electrics going in the kitchen night and day. "Of course, it's an expense, " she said, as she closed the kitchen door after us. Sheadded, in a low, rapid tone, "You must excuse my introducing the cook. She has read all about you in the papers--you didn't know, I suppose, that there were reporters that day of your delightful talk in themountains, but I had them--and she was wild, when she heard you werecoming, and made me promise to let her have a sight of you somehow. Shesays she wants to go and live in Altruria, and if you would like to takehome a cook, or a servant of any kind, you wouldn't have much trouble. Now here, " she ran on, without a moment's pause, while she flung openanother door, "is what you won't find in every apartment-house, even verygood ones, and that's a back elevator. Sometimes there are only stairs, and they make the poor things climb the whole way up from the basement, when they come in, and all your marketing has to be brought up that way, too; sometimes they send it up on a kind of dumb-waiter, in the cheapplaces, and you give your orders to the market-men down below through aspeaking-tube. But here we have none of that bother, and this elevator isfor the kitchen and housekeeping part of the flat. The grocer's and thebutcher's man, and anybody who has packages for you, or trunks, or thatsort of thing, use it, and, of course, it's for the servants, and theyappreciate not having to walk up as much as anybody. "

"Oh yes, " I said, and she shut the elevator door and opened another alittle beyond it. 

"This is our guest chamber, " she continued, as she ushered me into a verypretty room, charmingly furnished. "It isn't very light by day, for itopens on a court, like the kitchen and the servants' room here, " and withthat she whipped out of the guest chamber and into another doorway acrossthe corridor. This room was very much narrower, but there were two smallbeds in it, very neat and clean, with some furnishings that were inkeeping, and a good carpet under foot. Mrs. Makely was clearly proud ofit, and expected me to applaud it; but I waited for her to speak, whichupon the whole she probably liked as well. 

"I only keep two servants, because in a flat there isn't really room formore, and I put out the wash and get in cleaning-women when it's needed. I like to use my servants well, because it pays, and I hate to seeanybody imposed upon. Some people put in a double-decker, as they callit--a bedstead with two tiers, like the berths on a ship; but I thinkthat's a shame, and I give them two regular beds, even if it does crowdthem a little more and the beds have to be rather narrow. This room hasoutside air, from the court, and, though it's always dark, it's verypleasant, as you see. " I did not say that I did not see, and thissufficed Mrs. Makely. 

"Now, " she said, "I'll show you _our_ rooms, " and she flew down thecorridor towards two doors that stood open side by side and flashed intothem before me. Her husband was already in the first she entered, smilingin supreme content with his wife, his belongings, and himself. 

"This is a southern exposure, and it has a perfect gush of sun frommorning till night. Some of the flats have the kitchen at the end, andthat's stupid; you can have a kitchen in any sort of hole, for you cankeep on the electrics, and with them the air is perfectly good. As soonas I saw these chambers, and found out that they would let you keep adog, I told Mr. Makely to sign the lease instantly, and I would see tothe rest. "

She looked at me, and I praised the room and its dainty tastefulness toher heart's content, so that she said: "Well, it's some satisfaction toshow you anything, Mr. Homos, you are so appreciative. I'm sure you'llgive a good account of us to the Altrurians. Well, now we'll go back tothe pa--drawing-room. This is the end of the story. "

"Well, " said her husband, with a wink at me, "I thought it was to becontinued in our next, " and he nodded towards the door that opened fromhis wife's bower into the room adjoining. 

"Why, you poor old fellow!" she shouted. "I forgot all about _your_room, " and she dashed into it before us and began to show it off. It wasequipped with every bachelor luxury, and with every appliance for healthand comfort. "And here, " she said, "he can smoke, or anything, as long ashe keeps the door shut. Oh, good gracious! I forgot the bath-room, " andthey both united in showing me this, with its tiled floor and walls andits porcelain tub; and then Mrs. Makely flew up the corridor before us. "Put out the electrics, Dick!" she called back over her shoulder. 

VI

When we were again seated in the drawing-room, which she had been so nearcalling a parlor, she continued to bubble over with delight in herselfand her apartment. "Now, isn't it about perfect?" she urged, and I had toown that it was indeed very convenient and very charming; and in therapture of the moment she invited me to criticise it. 

"I see very little to criticise, " I said, "from your point of view; but Ihope you won't think it indiscreet if I ask a few questions?"

She laughed. "Ask anything, Mr. Homos! I hope I got hardened to yourquestions in the mountains. "

"She said you used to get off some pretty tough ones, " said her husband, helpless to take his eyes from her, although he spoke to me. 

"It is about your servants, " I began. 

"Oh, of course! Perfectly characteristic! Go on. "

"You told me that they had no natural light either in the kitchen ortheir bedroom. Do they never see the light of day?"

The lady laughed heartily. "The waitress is in the front of the houseseveral hours every morning at her work, and they both have an afternoonoff once a week. Some people only let them go once a fortnight; but Ithink they are human beings as well as we are, and I let them go everyweek. "

"But, except for that afternoon once a week, your cook lives inelectric-light perpetually?"

"Electric-light is very healthy, and it doesn't heat the air!" the ladytriumphed, "I can assure you that she thinks she's very well off; and soshe is. " I felt a little temper in her voice, and I was silent, until sheasked me, rather stiffly, "Is there any _other_ inquiry you wouldlike to make?"

"Yes, " I said, "but I do not think you would like it. "

"Now, I assure you, Mr. Homos, you were never more mistaken in your life. I perfectly delight in your naïveté. I know that the Altrurians don'tthink as we do about some things, and I don't expect it. What is it youwould like to ask?"

"Well, why should you require your servants to go down on a differentelevator from yourselves?"

"Why, good gracious!" cried the lady. --"aren't they different from us in_every_ way? To be sure, they dress up in their ridiculous best whenthey go out, but you couldn't expect us to let them use the _front_elevator? I don't want to go up and down with my own cook, and Icertainly don't with my neighbor's cook!"

"Yes, I suppose you would feel that an infringement of your socialdignity. But if you found yourself beside a cook in a horse-car or otherpublic conveyance, you would not feel personally affronted?"

"No, that is a very different thing. That is something we cannot control. But, thank goodness, we can control our elevator, and if I were in ahouse where I had to ride up and down with the servants I would nomore stay in it than I would in one where I couldn't keep a dog. I shouldconsider it a perfect outrage. I cannot understand you, Mr. Homos! Youare a gentleman, and you must have the traditions of a gentleman, and yet you ask me such a thing as that!"

I saw a cast in her husband's eye which I took for a hint not to pressthe matter, and so I thought I had better say, "It is only that inAltruria we hold serving in peculiar honor. "

"Well, " said the lady, scornfully, "if you went and got your servantsfrom an intelligence-office, and had to look up their references, youwouldn't hold them in very much honor. I tell you they look out for theirinterests as sharply as we do for ours, and it's nothing between us but aquestion of--"

"Business, " suggested her husband. 

"Yes, " she assented, as if this clinched the matter. 

"That's what I'm always telling you, Dolly, and yet you _will_ tryto make them your friends, as soon as you get them into your house. Youwant them to love you, and you know that sentiment hasn't got anythingto do with it. "

"Well, I can't help it, Dick. I can't live with a person without tryingto like them and wanting them to like me. And then, when the ungratefulthings are saucy, or leave me in the lurch as they do half the time, italmost breaks my heart. But I'm thankful to say that in these hard timesthey won't be apt to leave a good place without a good reason. "

"Are there many seeking employment?" I asked this because I thought itwas safe ground. 

"Well, they just stand around in the office as _thick!_" said thelady. "And the Americans are trying to get places as well as theforeigners. But I won't have Americans. They are too uppish, and they arenever half so well trained as the Swedes or the Irish. They still expectto be treated as one of the family. I suppose, " she continued, with alingering ire in her voice, "that in Altruria you do treat them as one ofthe family?"

"We have no servants, in the American sense, " I answered, asinoffensively as I could. 

Mrs. Makely irrelevantly returned to the question that had first provokedher indignation. "And I should like to know how much worse it is to havea back elevator for the servants than it is to have the basement door forthe servants, as you always do when you live in a separate house?"

"I should think it was no worse, " I admitted, and I thought this a goodchance to turn the talk from the dangerous channel it had taken. "I wish, Mrs. Makely, you would tell me something about the way people live inseparate houses in New York. "

She was instantly pacified. "Why, I should be delighted. I only wish myfriend Mrs. Bellington Strange was back from Europe; then I could showyou a model house. I mean to take you there, as soon as she gets home. She's a kind of Altrurian herself, you know. She was my dearest friend atschool, and it almost broke my heart when she married Mr. Strange, somuch older, and her inferior in every way. But she's got his money now, and oh, the good she does do with it! I know you'll like each other, Mr. Homos. I do wish Eva was at home!"

I said that I should be very glad to meet an American Altrurian, but thatnow I wished she would tell me about the normal New York house, and whatwas its animating principle, beginning with the basement door. 

She laughed and said, "Why, it's just like any other house!"

VII

I can never insist enough, my dear Cyril, upon the illogicality ofAmerican life. You know what the plutocratic principle is, and what theplutocratic civilization should logically be. But the plutocraticcivilization is much better than it should logically be, bad as it is;for the personal equation constantly modifies it, and renders it far lessdreadful than you would reasonably expect. That is, the potentialities ofgoodness implanted in the human heart by the Creator forbid theplutocratic man to be what the plutocratic scheme of life implies. He isoften merciful, kindly, and generous, as I have told you already, inspite of conditions absolutely egotistical. You would think that theAmericans would be abashed in view of the fact that their morality isoften in contravention of their economic principles, but apparently theyare not so, and I believe that for the most part they are not aware ofthe fact. Nevertheless, the fact is there, and you must keep it in mind, if you would conceive of them rightly. You can in no other way accountfor the contradictions which you will find in my experiences among them;and these are often so bewildering that I have to take myself in hand, from time to time, and ask myself what mad world I have fallen into, andwhether, after all, it is not a ridiculous nightmare. I am not sure that, when I return and we talk these things over together, I shall be able toovercome your doubts of my honesty, and I think that when I no longerhave them before my eyes I shall begin to doubt my own memory. But forthe present I can only set down what I at least seem to see, and trustyou to accept it, if you cannot understand it. 

Perhaps I can aid you by suggesting that, logically, the Americans shouldbe what the Altrurians are, since their polity embodies our belief thatall men are born equal, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuitof happiness; but that illogically they are what the Europeans are, sincethey still cling to the economical ideals of Europe, and hold that menare born socially unequal, and deny them the liberty and happiness whichcan come from equality alone. It is in their public life and civic lifethat Altruria prevails; it is in their social and domestic life thatEurope prevails; and here, I think, is the severest penalty they must payfor excluding women from political affairs; for women are at once thebest and the worst Americans: the best because their hearts are thepurest, the worst because their heads are the idlest. "Anothercontradiction!" you will say, and I cannot deny it; for, with all theircultivation, the American women have no real intellectual interests, butonly intellectual fads; and while they certainly think a great deal, theyreflect little, or not at all. The inventions and improvements whichhave made their household work easy, the wealth that has released them insuch vast numbers from work altogether, has not enlarged them to thesphere of duties which our Altrurian women share with us, but has leftthem, with their quickened intelligences, the prey of the trivialitieswhich engross the European women, and which have formed the life of thesex hitherto in every country where women have an economical and socialfreedom without the political freedom that can alone give it dignity andimport. They have a great deal of beauty, and they are inconsequentlycharming; I need not tell you that they are romantic and heroic, or thatthey would go to the stake for a principle, if they could find one, aswillingly as any martyr of the past; but they have not much moreperspective than children, and their reading and their talk about readingseem not to have broadened their mental horizons beyond the old sunriseand the old sunset of the kitchen and the parlor. 

In fine, the American house as it is, the American household, is what theAmerican woman makes it and wills it to be, whether she wishes it to beso or not; for I often find that the American woman wills things that shein no wise wishes. What the normal New York house is, however, I hadgreat difficulty in getting Mrs. Makely to tell me, for, as she saidquite frankly, she could not imagine my not knowing. She asked me if Ireally wanted her to begin at the beginning, and, when I said that I did, she took a little more time to laugh at the idea, and then she said, "Isuppose you mean a brown-stone, four-story house in the middle of ablock?"

"Yes, I think that is what I mean, " I said. 

"Well, " she began, "those high steps that they all have, unless they'reEnglish-basement houses, really give them another story, for people usedto dine in the front room of their basements. You've noticed the littlefront yard, about as big as a handkerchief, generally, and the stepsleading down to the iron gate, which is kept locked, and the basementdoor inside the gate? Well, that's what you might call the back elevatorof a house, for it serves the same purpose: the supplies are brought inthere, and market-men go in and out, and the ashes, and the swill, andthe servants--that you object to so much. We have no alleys in New York, the blocks are so narrow, north and south; and, of course, we have noback doors; so we have to put the garbage out on the sidewalk--and it'snasty enough, goodness knows. Underneath the sidewalk there are binswhere people keep their coal and kindling. You've noticed the gratings inthe pavements?"

I said yes, and I was ashamed to own that at first I had thought themsome sort of registers for tempering the cold in winter; this would haveappeared ridiculous in the last degree to my hostess, for the Americanshave as yet no conception of publicly modifying the climate, as we do. 

"Back of what used to be the dining-room, and what is now used for alaundry, generally, is the kitchen, with closets between, of course, andthen the back yard, which some people make very pleasant with shrubs andvines; the kitchen is usually dark and close, and the girls can only geta breath of fresh air in the yard; I like to see them; but generally it'staken up with clothes-lines, for people in houses nearly all have theirwashing done at home. Over the kitchen is the dining-room, which takes upthe whole of the first floor, with the pantry, and it almost always has abay-window out of it; of course, that overhangs the kitchen, and darkensit a little more, but it makes the dining-room so pleasant. I tell myhusband that I should be almost willing to live in a house again, just onaccount of the dining-room bay-window. I had it full of flowers in pots, for the southern sun came in; and then the yard was so nice for the dog;you didn't have to take him out for exercise, yourself; he chased thecats there and got plenty of it. I must say that the cats on the backfences were a drawback at night; to be sure, we have them here, too; it'sseven stories down, but you do hear them, along in the spring. Theparlor, or drawing-room, is usually rather long, and runs from thedining-room to the front of the house, though where the house is verydeep they have a sort of middle room, or back parlor. Dick, get somepaper and draw it. Wouldn't you like to see a plan of the floor?"

I said that I should, and she bade her husband make it like their oldhouse in West Thirty-third Street. We all looked at it together. 

"This is the front door, " Mrs. Makely explained, "where people come in, and then begins the misery of a house--stairs! They mostly go upstraight, but sometimes they have them curve a little, and in the newhouses the architects have all sorts of little dodges for squaring themand putting landings. Then, on the second floor--draw it, Dick--you havetwo nice, large chambers, with plenty of light and air, before andbehind. I do miss the light and air in a flat, there's no denying it. "

"You'll go back to a house yet, Dolly, " said her husband. 

"Never!" she almost shrieked, and he winked at me, as if it were the bestjoke in the world. "Never, as long as houses have stairs!"

"Put in an elevator, " he suggested. 

"Well, that is what Eveleth Strange has, and she lets the servants useit, too, " and Mrs. Makely said, with a look at me: "I suppose that wouldplease you, Mr. Homos. Well, there's a nice side-room over the front doorhere, and a bath-room at the rear. Then you have more stairs, and largechambers, and two side-rooms. That makes plenty of chambers for a smallfamily. I used to give two of the third-story rooms to my two girls. Iought really to have made them sleep in one; it seemed such a shame tolet the cook have a whole large room to herself; but I had nothing elseto do with it, and she did take such comfort in it, poor old thing! Yousee, the rooms came wrong in our house, for it fronted north, and I hadto give the girls sunny rooms or else give them front rooms, so that itwas as broad as it was long. I declare, I was perplexed about it thewhole time we lived there, it seemed so perfectly anomalous. "

"And what is an English-basement house like?" I ventured to ask, ininterruption of the retrospective melancholy she had fallen into. 

"Oh, _never_ live in an English-basement house, if you value yourspine!" cried the lady. "An English-basement house is nothing _but_stairs. In the first place, it's only one room wide, and it's a storyhigher than the high-stoop house. It's one room forward and one back, thewhole way up; and in an English-basement it's always _up_, and_never_ down. If I had my way, there wouldn't one stone be left uponanother in the English-basements in New York. "

I have suffered Mrs. Makely to be nearly as explicit to you as she was tome; for the kind of house she described is of the form ordinarilyprevailing in all American cities, and you can form some idea from it howcity people live here. I ought perhaps to tell you that such a house isfitted with every housekeeping convenience, and that there is hot andcold water throughout, and gas everywhere. It has fireplaces in all therooms, where fires are often kept burning for pleasure; but it is reallyheated from a furnace in the basement, through large pipes carried to thedifferent stories, and opening into them by some such registers as weuse. The separate houses sometimes have steam-heating, but not often. They each have their drainage into the sewer of the street, and this istrapped and trapped again, as in the houses of our old plutocraticcities, to keep the poison of the sewer from getting into the houses. 

VIII

You will be curious to know something concerning the cost of living insuch a house, and you may be sure that I did not fail to question Mrs. Makely on this point. She was at once very volubly communicative; shetold me all she knew, and, as her husband said, a great deal more. 

"Why, of course, " she began, "you can spend all you have in New York, ifyou like, and people do spend fortunes every year. But I suppose you meanthe average cost of living in a brown-stone house, in a good block, thatrents for $1800 or $2000 a year, with a family of three or four children, and two servants. Well, what should you say, Dick?"

"Ten or twelve thousand a year--fifteen, " answered her husband. 

"Yes, fully that, " she answered, with an effect of disappointment in hisfigures. "We had just ourselves, and we never spent less than seven, andwe didn't dress, and we didn't entertain, either, to speak of. But youhave to live on a certain scale, and generally you live up to yourincome. "

"Quite, " said Mr. Makely. 

"I don't know what makes it cost so. Provisions are cheap enough, andthey say people live in as good style for a third less in London. Thereused to be a superstition that you could live for less in a flat, andthey always talk to you about the cost of a furnace, and a man to tend itand keep the snow shovelled off your sidewalk, but that is all stuff. Five hundred dollars will make up the whole difference, and more. You payquite as much rent for a decent flat, and then you don't get half theroom. No, if it wasn't for the stairs, I wouldn't live in a flat for aninstant. But that makes all the difference. "

"And the young people, " I urged--"those who are just starting inlife--how do they manage? Say when the husband has $1500 or $2000 ayear?"

"Poor things!" she returned. "I don't know how they manage. They boardtill they go distracted, or they dry up and blow away; or else the wifehas a little money, too, and they take a small flat and ruin themselves. Of course, they want to live nicely and like other people. "

"But if they didn't?"

"Why, then they could live delightfully. My husband says he often wisheshe was a master-mechanic in New York, with a thousand a year, and a flatfor twelve dollars a month; he would have the best time in the world. "

Her husband nodded his acquiescence. "Fighting-cock wouldn't be in it, "he said. "Trouble is, we all want to do the swell thing. "

"But you can't all do it, " I ventured, "and, from what I see of thesimple, out-of-the-way neighborhoods in my walks, you don't all try. "

"Why, no, " he said. "Some of us were talking about that the other nightat the club, and one of the fellows was saying that he believed there wasas much old-fashioned, quiet, almost countrified life in New York, amongthe great mass of the people, as you'd find in any city in the world. Said you met old codgers that took care of their own furnaces, just asyou would in a town of five thousand inhabitants. "

"Yes, that's all very well, " said his wife; "but they wouldn't be nicepeople. Nice people want to live nicely. And so they live beyond theirmeans or else they scrimp and suffer. I don't know which is worst. "

"But there is no obligation to do either?" I asked. 

"Oh yes, there is, " she returned. "If you've been born in a certain way, and brought up in a certain way, you can't get out of it. You simplycan't. You have got to keep in it till you drop. Or a woman has. "

"That means the woman's husband, too, " said Mr. Makely, with his wink forme. "Always die together. "

In fact, there is the same competition in the social world as in thebusiness world; and it is the ambition of every American to live in somesuch house as the New York house; and as soon as a village begins togrow into a town, such houses are built. Still, the immensely greaternumber of the Americans necessarily live so simply and cheaply that sucha house would be almost as strange to them as to an Altrurian. But whilewe should regard its furnishings as vulgar and unwholesome, mostAmericans would admire and covet its rich rugs or carpets, its paperedwalls, and thickly curtained windows, and all its foolish ornamentation, and most American women would long to have a house like the ordinaryhigh-stoop New York house, that they might break their backs over itsstairs, and become invalids, and have servants about them to harass themand hate them. 

Of course, I put it too strongly, for there is often, illogically, agreat deal of love between the American women and their domestics, thoughwhy there should be any at all I cannot explain, except by reference tothat mysterious personal equation which modifies all conditions here. Youwill have made your reflection that the servants, as they are cruellycalled (I have heard them called so in their hearing, and wondered theydid not fly tooth and nail at the throat that uttered the insult), formreally no part of the house, but are aliens in the household and thefamily life. In spite of this fact, much kindness grows up between themand the family, and they do not always slight the work that I cannotunderstand their ever having any heart in. Often they do slight it, andthey insist unsparingly upon the scanty privileges which their mistressesseem to think a monstrous invasion of their own rights. The habit ofoppression grows upon the oppressor, and you would find tender-heartedwomen here, gentle friends, devoted wives, loving mothers, who would bewilling that their domestics should remain indoors, week in and week out, and, where they are confined in the ridiculous American flat, never seethe light of day. In fact, though the Americans do not know it, and wouldbe shocked to be told it, their servants are really slaves, who are nonethe less slaves because they cannot be beaten, or bought and sold exceptby the week or month, and for the price which they fix themselves, andthemselves receive in the form of wages. They are social outlaws, so faras the society of the family they serve is concerned, and they arerestricted in the visits they receive and pay among themselves. They aregiven the worst rooms in the house, and they are fed with the food thatthey have prepared, only when it comes cold from the family table; in thewealthier houses, where many of them are kept, they are supplied with acoarser and cheaper victual bought and cooked for them apart from thatprovided for the family. They are subject, at all hours, to the pleasureor caprice of the master or mistress. Every circumstance of their life isan affront to that just self-respect which even Americans allow is theright of every human being. With the rich, they are said to be sometimesindolent, dishonest, mendacious, and all that Plato long ago explainedthat slaves must be; but in the middle-class families they are mostlyfaithful, diligent, and reliable in a degree that would put to shame mostmen who hold positions of trust, and would leave many ladies whom theyrelieve of work without ground for comparison. 

IX

After Mrs. Makely had told me about the New York house, we began to talkof the domestic service, and I ventured to hint some of the things that Ihave so plainly said to you. She frankly consented to my whole view ofthe matter, for if she wishes to make an effect or gain a point she has amagnanimity that stops at nothing short of self-devotion. "I know it, "she said. "You are perfectly right; but here we are, and what are we todo? What do you do in Altruria, I should like to know?"

I said that in Altruria we all worked, and that personal service washonored among us like medical attendance in America; I did not know whatother comparison to make; but I said that any one in health would thinkit as unwholesome and as immoral to let another serve him as to let adoctor physic him. At this Mrs. Makely and her husband laughed so that Ifound myself unable to go on for some moments, till Mrs. Makely, with afinal shriek, shouted to him: "Dick, do stop, or I shall die! Excuse me, Mr. Homos, but you are so deliciously funny, and I know you're justjoking. You _won't_ mind my laughing? Do go on. "

I tried to give her some notion as to how we manage, in our common life, which we have simplified so much beyond anything that this barbarouspeople dream of; and she grew a little soberer as I went on, and seemedat least to believe that I was not, as her husband said, stuffing them;but she ended, as they always do here, by saying that it might be allvery well in Altruria, but it would never do in America, and that it wascontrary to human nature to have so many things done in common. "Now, I'll tell you, " she said. "After we broke up housekeeping in Thirty-thirdStreet, we stored our furniture--"

"Excuse me, " I said. "How--stored?"

"Oh, I dare say you never store your furniture in Altruria. But here wehave hundreds of storage warehouses of all sorts and sizes, packed withfurniture that people put into them when they go to Europe, or get sickto death of servants and the whole bother of house-keeping; and that'swhat we did; and then, as my husband says, we browsed about for a yearor two. First, we tried hotelling it, and we took a hotel apartmentfurnished, and dined at the hotel table, until I certainly thought Ishould go off, I got so tired of it. Then we hired a suite in one of thefamily hotels that there are so many of, and got out enough of ourthings to furnish it, and had our meals in our rooms; they let you dothat for the same price, often they are _glad_ to have you, for thedining-room is so packed. But everything got to tasting just the same aseverything else, and my husband had the dyspepsia so bad he couldn't halfattend to business, and I suffered from indigestion myself, cooped up ina few small rooms, that way; and the dog almost died; and finally we gavethat up, and took an apartment, and got out our things--the storage costas much as the rent of a small house--and put them into it, and had acaterer send in the meals as they do in Europe. But it isn't the samehere as it is in Europe, and we got so sick of it in a month that Ithought I should scream when I saw the same old dishes coming on thetable, day after day. We had to keep one servant--excuse me, Mr. Homos:_domestic_--anyway, to look after the table and the parlor andchamber work, and my husband said we might as well be hung for a sheep asa lamb, and so we got in a cook; and, bad as it is, it's twenty milliontimes better than anything else you can do. Servants are a plague, butyou have got to have them, and so I have resigned myself to the will ofProvidence. If they don't like it, neither do I, and so I fancy it'sabout as broad as it's long. " I have found this is a favorite phrase ofMrs. Makely's, and that it seems to give her a great deal of comfort. 

"And you don't feel that there's any harm in it?" I ventured to ask. 

"Harm in it?" she repeated. "Why, aren't the poor things glad to get thework? What would they do without it?"

"From what I see of your conditions I should be afraid that they wouldstarve, " I said. 

"Yes, they can't all get places in shops or restaurants, and they have todo something, or starve, as you say, " she said; and she seemed to thinkwhat I had said was a concession to her position. 

"But if it were your own case?" I suggested. "If you had no alternativesbut starvation and domestic service, you would think there was harm init, even although you were glad to take a servant's place?"

I saw her flush, and she answered, haughtily, "You must excuse me if Irefuse to imagine myself taking a servant's place, even for the sake ofargument. "

"And you are quite right, " I said. "Your American instinct is too strongto brook even in imagination the indignities which seem daily, hourly, and momently inflicted upon servants in your system. "

To my great astonishment she seemed delighted by this conclusion. "Yes, "she said, and she smiled radiantly, "and now you understand how it isthat American girls won't go out to service, though the pay is so muchbetter and they are so much better housed and fed--and everything. Besides, " she added, with an irrelevance which always amuses her husband, though I should be alarmed by it for her sanity if I did not find it socharacteristic of women here, who seem to be mentally characterized bythe illogicality of the civilization, "they're not half so good as theforeign servants. They've been brought up in homes of their own, andthey're uppish, and they have no idea of anything but third-rateboarding-house cooking, and they're always hoping to get married, sothat, really, you have no peace of your life with them. "

"And it never seems to you that the whole relation is wrong?" I asked. 

"What relation?"

"That between maid and mistress, the hirer and the hireling. "

"Why, good gracious!" she burst out. "Didn't Christ himself say that thelaborer was worthy of his hire? And how would you get your work done, ifyou didn't pay for it?"

"It might be done for you, when you could not do it yourself, fromaffection. "

"From affection!" she returned, with the deepest derision. "Well, Irather think I _shall_ have to do it myself if I want it donefrom affection! But I suppose you think I _ought_ to do itmyself, as the Altrurian ladies do! I can tell you that in America itwould be impossible for a lady to do her own work, and there are nointelligence-offices where you can find girls that want to work for love. It's as broad as it's long. "

"It's simply business, " her husband said. 

They were right, my dear friend, and I was wrong, strange as it mustappear to you. The tie of service, which we think as sacred as the tie ofblood, can be here only a business relation, and in these conditionsservice must forever be grudgingly given and grudgingly paid. There issomething in it, I do not quite know what, for I can never place myselfprecisely in an American's place, that degrades the poor creatures whoserve, so that they must not only be social outcasts, but must leave sucha taint of dishonor on their work that one cannot even do it for one'sself without a sense of outraged dignity. You might account for this inEurope, where ages of prescriptive wrong have distorted the relation outof all human wholesomeness and Christian loveliness; but in America, where many, and perhaps most, of those who keep servants and call them soare but a single generation from fathers who earned their bread by thesweat of their brows, and from mothers who nobly served in all householdoffices, it is in the last degree bewildering. I can only account for itby that bedevilment of the entire American ideal through the retention ofthe English economy when the English polity was rejected. But at theheart of America there is this ridiculous contradiction, and it mustremain there until the whole country is Altrurianized. There is no otherhope; but I did not now urge this point, and we turned to talk of otherthings, related to the matters we had been discussing. 

"The men, " said Mrs. Makely, "get out of the whole bother very nicely, aslong as they are single, and even when they're married they are apt torun off to the club when there's a prolonged upheaval in the kitchen. "

"_I_ don't, Dolly, " suggested her husband. 

"No, _you_ don't, Dick, " she returned, fondly. "But there are notmany like you. "

He went on, with a wink at me, "I never live at the club, except insummer, when you go away to the mountains. "

"Well, you know I can't very well take you with me, " she said. 

"Oh, I couldn't leave my business, anyway, " he said, and he laughed. 

X

I had noticed the vast and splendid club-houses in the best places in thecity, and I had often wondered about their life, which seemed to me ablind groping towards our own, though only upon terms that forbade it tothose who most needed it. The clubs here are not like our groups, thefree association of sympathetic people, though one is a little moreliterary, or commercial, or scientific, or political than another; butthe entrance to each is more or less jealously guarded; there is aninitiation-fee, and there are annual dues, which are usually heavy enoughto exclude all but the professional and business classes, though thereare, of course, successful artists and authors in them. During the pastwinter I visited some of the most characteristic, where I dined andsupped with the members, or came alone when one of these put me down, fora fortnight or a month. 

They are equipped with kitchens and cellars, and their wines and dishesare of the best. Each is, in fact, like a luxurious private house on alarge scale; outwardly they are palaces, and inwardly they have everyfeature and function of a princely residence complete, even to a certainnumber of guest-chambers, where members may pass the night, or stayindefinitely in some cases, and actually live at the club. The club, however, is known only to the cities and larger towns, in this highlydeveloped form; to the ordinary, simple American of the country, or ofthe country town of five or ten thousand people, a New York club would beas strange as it would be to any Altrurian. 

"Do many of the husbands left behind in the summer live at the club?" Iasked. 

"All that _have_ a club do, " he said. "Often there's a very goodtable d'hôte dinner that you couldn't begin to get for the same priceanywhere else; and there are a lot of good fellows there, and you cancome pretty near forgetting that you're homeless, or even that you'remarried. "

He laughed, and his wife said: "You ought to be ashamed, Dick; and meworrying about you all the time I'm away, and wondering what the cookgives you here. Yes, " she continued, addressing me, "that's the worstthing about the clubs. They make the men so comfortable that they sayit's one of the principal obstacles to early marriages. The young men tryto get lodgings near them, so that they can take their meals there, andthey know they get much better things to eat than they could have in ahouse of their own at a great deal more expense, and so they simply don'tthink of getting married. Of course, " she said, with that wonderful, unintentional, or at least unconscious, frankness of hers, "I don't blamethe clubs altogether. There's no use denying that girls are expensivelybrought up, and that a young man has to think twice before taking one ofthem out of the kind of home she's used to and putting her into the kindof home he can give her. If the clubs have killed early marriages, the women have created the clubs. "

"Do women go much to them?" I asked, choosing this question as a safeone. 

"_Much_!" she screamed. "They don't go at all! They _can't_!They won't _let_ us! To be sure, there are some that have roomswhere ladies can go with their friends who are members, and have lunch ordinner; but as for seeing the inside of the club-house proper, wherethese great creatures"--she indicated her husband--"are sitting up, smoking and telling stories, it isn't to be dreamed of. "

Her husband laughed. "You wouldn't like the smoking, Dolly. "

"Nor the stories, some of them, " she retorted. 

"Oh, the stories are always first-rate, " he said, and he laughed morethan before. 

"And they never gossip at the clubs, Mr. Homos--never!" she added. 

"Well, hardly ever, " said her husband, with an intonation that I did notunderstand. It seemed to be some sort of catch-phrase. 

"All I know, " said Mrs. Makely, "is that I like to have my husband belongto his club. It's a nice place for him in summer; and very often inwinter, when I'm dull, or going out somewhere that he hates, he can godown to his club and smoke a cigar, and come home just about the time Iget in, and it's much better than worrying through the evening with abook. He hates books, poor Dick!" She looked fondly at him, as if thiswere one of the greatest merits in the world. "But I confess I shouldn'tlike him to be a mere club man, like some of them. "

"But how?" I asked. 

"Why, belonging to five or six, or more, even; and spending their wholetime at them, when they're not at business. "

There was a pause, and Mr. Makely put on an air of modest worth, which hecarried off with his usual wink towards me. I said, finally, "And if theladies are not admitted to the men's clubs, why don't they have clubs oftheir own?"

"Oh, they have--several, I believe. But who wants to go and meet a lot ofwomen? You meet enough of them in society, goodness knows. You hardlymeet any one else, especially at afternoon teas. They bore you to death. "

Mrs. Makely's nerves seemed to lie in the direction of a prolongation ofthis subject, and I asked my next question a little away from it. "I wishyou would tell me, Mrs. Makely, something about your way of provisioningyour household. You said that the grocer's and butcher's man came up tothe kitchen with your supplies--"

"Yes, and the milkman and the iceman; the iceman always puts the ice intothe refrigerator; it's very convenient, and quite like your own house. "

"But you go out and select the things yourself the day before, or in themorning?"

"Oh, not at all! The men come and the cook gives the order; she knowspretty well what we want on the different days, and I never meddle withit from one week's end to the other, unless we have friends. Thetradespeople send in their bills at the end of the month, and that's allthere is of it. " Her husband gave me one of his queer looks, and she wenton: "When we were younger, and just beginning housekeeping, I used to goout and order the things myself; I used even to go to the big markets, and half kill myself trying to get things a little cheaper at one placeand another, and waste more car-fare and lay up more doctor's bills thanit would all come to, ten times over. I used to fret my life out, remembering the prices; but now, thank goodness, that's all over. I don'tknow any more what beef is a pound than my husband does; if a thing isn'tgood, I send it straight back, and that puts them on their honor, youknow, and they have to give me the best of everything. The bills averageabout the same, from month to month; a little more if we have companybut if they're too outrageous, I make a fuss with the cook, and shescolds the men, and then it goes better for a while. Still, it's a greatbother. "

I confess that I did not see what the bother was, but I had not thecourage to ask, for I had already conceived a wholesome dread of themystery of an American lady's nerves. So I merely suggested, "And that isthe way that people usually manage?"

"Why, " she said, "I suppose that some old-fashioned people still do theirmarketing, and people that have to look to their outgoes, and know whatevery mouthful costs them. But their lives are not worth having. EvelethStrange does it--or she did do it when she was in the country; I dare sayshe won't when she gets back--just from a sense of duty, and because shesays that a housekeeper ought to know about her expenses. But I ask herwho will care whether she knows or not; and as for giving the money tothe poor that she saves by spending economically, I tell her that thebutchers and the grocers have to live, too, as well as the poor, and soit's as broad as it's long. "

XI

I could not make out whether Mr. Makely approved of his wife's philosophyor not; I do not believe he thought much about it. The money probablycame easily with him, and he let it go easily, as an American likes todo. There is nothing penurious or sordid about this curious people, sofierce in the pursuit of riches. When these are once gained, they seem tohave no value to the man who has won them, and he has generally no objectin life but to see his womankind spend them. 

This is the season of the famous Thanksgiving, which has now become thenational holiday, but has no longer any savor in it of the grimPuritanism it sprang from. It is now appointed by the president and thegovernors of the several states, in proclamations enjoining a piousgratitude upon the people for their continued prosperity as a nation, anda public acknowledgment of the divine blessings. The blessings aresupposed to be of the material sort, grouped in the popular imaginationas good times, and it is hard to see what they are when hordes of men andwomen of every occupation are feeling the pinch of poverty in theirdifferent degrees. It is not merely those who have always the wolf attheir doors who are now suffering, but those whom the wolf neverthreatened before; those who amuse as well as those who serve the richare alike anxious and fearful, where they are not already in actual want;thousands of poor players, as well as hundreds of thousands of poorlaborers, are out of employment, and the winter threatens to be one ofdire misery. Yet you would not imagine from the smiling face of things, as you would see it in the better parts of this great city, that therewas a heavy heart or an empty stomach anywhere below it. In fact, peoplehere are so used to seeing other people in want that it no longer affectsthem as reality; it is merely dramatic, or hardly so lifelike as that--itis merely histrionic. It is rendered still more spectacular to theimaginations of the fortunate by the melodrama of charity they areinvited to take part in by endless appeals, and their fancy is flatteredby the notion that they are curing the distress they are only slightlyrelieving by a gift from their superfluity. The charity, of course, isbetter than nothing, but it is a fleeting mockery of the trouble, at thebest. If it were proposed that the city should subsidize a theatre awhich the idle players could get employment in producing good plays at amoderate cost to the people, the notion would not be considered moreridiculous than that of founding municipal works for the different sortsof idle workers; and it would not be thought half so nefarious, for theproposition to give work by the collectivity is supposed to be incontravention of the sacred principle of monopolistic competition sodear to the American economist, and it would be denounced as anapproximation to the surrender of the city to anarchism and destructionby dynamite. 

But as I have so often said, the American life is in no wise logical, andyou will not be surprised, though you may be shocked or amused, to learnthat the festival of Thanksgiving is now so generally devoted towitnessing a game of football between the elevens of two greatuniversities that the services at the churches are very scantilyattended. The Americans are practical, if they are not logical, and thispreference of football to prayer and praise on Thanksgiving-day has goneso far that now a principal church in the city holds its services onThanksgiving-eve, so that the worshippers may not be tempted to keep awayfrom their favorite game. 

There is always a heavy dinner at home after the game, to console thefriends of those who have lost and to heighten the joy of the winningside, among the comfortable people. The poor recognize the day largelyas a sort of carnival. They go about in masquerade on the easternavenues, and the children of the foreign races who populate that quarterpenetrate the better streets, blowing horns and begging of the passers. They have probably no more sense of its difference from the old carnivalof Catholic Europe than from the still older Saturnalia of pagan times. Perhaps you will say that a masquerade is no more pagan than a footballgame; and I confess that I have a pleasure in that innocentmisapprehension of the holiday on the East Side. I am not more censoriousof it than I am of the displays of festival cheer at the provision-storesor green-groceries throughout the city at this time. They are almost asnumerous on the avenues as the drinking-saloons, and, thanks to them, thetasteful housekeeping is at least convenient in a high degree. The wasteis inevitable with the system of separate kitchens, and it is not inprovisions alone, but in labor and in time, a hundred cooks doing thework of one; but the Americans have no conception of our co-operativehousekeeping, and so the folly goes on. 

Meantime the provision-stores add much to their effect of crazy gayety onthe avenues. The variety and harmony of colors is very great, and thismorning I stood so long admiring the arrangement in one of them that I amafraid I rendered myself a little suspicious to the policeman guardingthe liquor-store on the nearest corner; there seems always to be apoliceman assigned to this duty. The display was on either side of theprovisioner's door, and began, on one hand, with a basal line of pumpkinswell out on the sidewalk. Then it was built up with the soft white andcool green of cauliflowers and open boxes of red and white grapes, to thewindow that flourished in banks of celery and rosy apples. On the otherside, gray-green squashes formed the foundation, and the wall was slopedupward with the delicious salads you can find here, the dark red ofbeets, the yellow of carrots, and the blue of cabbages. The associationof colors was very artistic, and even the line of mutton carcassesoverhead, with each a brace of grouse or half a dozen quail in itsembrace, and flanked with long sides of beef at the four ends of theline, was picturesque, though the sight of the carnage at theprovision-stores here would always be dreadful to an Altrurian; in thegreat markets it is intolerable. This sort of business is mostly in thehands of the Germans, who have a good eye for such effects as may bestudied in it; but the fruiterers are nearly all Italians, and theirstalls are charming. I always like, too, the cheeriness of the chestnutand peanut ovens of the Italians; the pleasant smell and friendly smokethat rise from them suggest a simple and homelike life which there are soany things in this great, weary, heedless city to make one forget. 

XII

But I am allowing myself to wander too far from Mrs. Makely and herletter, which reached me only two days before Thanksgiving. 

"MY DEAR MR. HOMOS, --Will you give me the pleasure of your company atdinner, on Thanksgiving-day, at eight o'clock, very informally. Myfriend, Mrs. Bellington Strange, has unexpectedly returned from Europewithin the week, and I am asking a few friends, whom I can trust toexcuse this very short notice, to meet her. 

With Mr. Makely's best regards, Yours cordially, DOROTHEA MAKELY. 

The Sphinx, November the twenty sixth, Eighteen hundred andNinety-three. "

I must tell you that it has been a fad with the ladies here to spell outtheir dates, and, though the fashion is waning, Mrs. Makely is a womanwho would remain in such an absurdity among the very last. I will let youmake your own conclusions concerning this, for though, as an Altrurian, Icannot respect her, I like her so much, and have so often enjoyed hergenerous hospitality, that I cannot bring myself to criticise her exceptby the implication of the facts. She is anomalous, but, to our way ofthinking, all the Americans I have met are anomalous, and she has themerits that you would not logically attribute to her character. Ofcourse, I cannot feel that her evident regard for me is the least ofthese, though I like to think that it is founded on more reason than therest. 

I have by this time become far too well versed in the politeinsincerities of the plutocratic world to imagine that, because she askedme to come to her dinner very informally, I was not to come in all thestate I could put into my dress. You know what the evening dress of menis here, from the costumes in our museum, and you can well believe that Inever put on those ridiculous black trousers without a sense of theirgrotesqueness--that scrap of waistcoat reduced to a mere rim, so as toshow the whole white breadth of the starched shirt-bosom, and that coatchopped away till it seems nothing but tails and lapels. It is true thatI might go out to dinner in our national costume; in fact, Mrs. Makelyhas often begged me to wear it, for she says the Chinese wear theirs; butI have not cared to make the sensation which I must if I wore it; myoutlandish views of life and my frank study of their customs signalize mequite sufficiently among the Americans. 

At the hour named I appeared in Mrs. Makely's drawing-room in all theformality that I knew her invitation, to come very informally, reallymeant. I found myself the first, as I nearly always do, but I had onlytime for a word or two with my hostess before the others began to come. She hastily explained that as soon as she knew Mrs. Strange was in NewYork she had despatched a note telling her that I was still here; andthat as she could not get settled in time to dine at home, she must comeand take Thanksgiving dinner with her. "She will have to go out with Mr. Makely; but I am going to put you next to her at table, for I want youboth to have a good time. But don't you forget that you are going to take_me_ out. "

I said that I should certainly not forget it, and I showed her theenvelope with my name on the outside, and hers on a card inside, whichthe serving-man at the door had given me in the hall, as the first tokenthat the dinner was to be unceremonious. 

She laughed, and said: "I've had the luck to pick up two or three otheragreeable people that I know will be glad to meet you. Usually it's sucha scratch lot at Thanksgiving, for everybody dines at home that can, andyou have to trust to the highways and the byways for your guests, if yougive a dinner. But I did want to bring Mrs. Strange and you together, andso I chanced it. Of course, it's a sent-in dinner, as you must haveinferred from the man at the door; I've given my servants a holiday, andhad Claret's people do the whole thing. It's as broad as it's long, and, as my husband says, you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb; andit saves bother. Everybody will know it's sent in, so that nobody will bedeceived. There'll be a turkey in it somewhere, and cranberry sauce; I'veinsisted on that; but it won't be a regular American Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm rather sorry, on your account, for I wanted you to see one, and Imeant to have had you here, just with ourselves; but Eveleth Strange'scoming back put a new face on things, and so I've gone in for thisaffair, which isn't at all what you would like. That's the reason I tellyou at once it's sent in. "

XIII

I am so often at a loss for the connection in Mrs. Makely's ideas that Iam more patient with her incoherent jargon than you will be, I am afraid. It went on to much the effect that I have tried to report until themoment she took the hand of the guest who came next. They arrived, untilthere were eight of us in all, Mrs. Strange coming last, with excuses forbeing late. I had somehow figured her as a person rather mystical andrecluse in appearance, perhaps on account of her name, and I had imaginedher tall and superb. But she was, really, rather small, though not belowthe woman's average, and she had a face more round than otherwise, with asort of business-like earnestness, but a very charming smile, andpresently, as I saw, an American sense of humor. She had brown hair andgray eyes, and teeth not too regular to be monotonous; her mouth was verysweet, whether she laughed or sat gravely silent. She at once affected melike a person who had been sobered beyond her nature by responsibilities, and had steadily strengthened under the experiences of life. She wasdressed with a sort of personal taste, in a rich gown of black lace, which came up to her throat; and she did not subject me to thatembarrassment I always feel in the presence of a lady who is muchdécolletée, when I sit next her or face to face with her: I cannot alwayslook at her without a sense of taking an immodest advantage. Sometimes Ifind a kind of pathos in this sacrifice of fashion, which affects me asif the poor lady were wearing that sort of gown because she thought shereally ought, and then I keep my eyes firmly on hers, or avert themaltogether; but there are other cases which have not this appealingquality. Yet in the very worst of the cases it would be a mistake tosuppose that there was a display personally meant of the displaypersonally made. Even then it would be found that the gown was worn sobecause the dressmaker had made it so, and, whether she had made itin this country or in Europe, that she had made it in compliance with aEuropean custom. In fact, all the society customs of the Americans followsome European original, and usually some English original; and it is onlyfair to say that in this particular custom they do not go to the Englishextreme. 

We did not go out to dinner at Mrs. Makely's by the rules of Englishprecedence, because there are nominally no ranks here, and we could not;but I am sure it will not be long before the Americans will begin playingat precedence just as they now play at the other forms of aristocraticsociety. For the present, however, there was nothing for us to do but toproceed, when dinner was served, in such order as offered itself, afterMr. Makely gave his arm to Mrs. Strange; though, of course, the whiteshoulders of the other ladies went gleaming out before the whiteshoulders of Mrs. Makely shone beside my black ones. I have now become soused to these observances that they no longer affect me as they once did, and as I suppose my account of them must affect you, painfully, comically. But I have always the sense of having a part in amateurtheatricals, and I do not see how the Americans can fail to have the samesense, for there is nothing spontaneous in them, and nothing that hasgrown even dramatically out of their own life. 

Often when I admire the perfection of the stage-setting, it is with avague feeling that I am derelict in not offering it an explicit applause. In fact, this is permitted in some sort and measure, as now when we satdown at Mrs. Makely's exquisite table, and the ladies frankly recognizedher touch in it. One of them found a phrase for it at once, andpronounced it a symphony in chrysanthemums; for the color and thecharacter of these flowers played through all the appointments of thetable, and rose to a magnificent finale in the vast group in the middleof the board, infinite in their caprices of tint and design. Another ladysaid that it was a dream, and then Mrs. Makely said, "No, a memory, " andconfessed that she had studied the effect from her recollection of sometables at a chrysanthemum show held here year before last, which seemedfailures because they were so simply and crudely adapted in the china andnapery to merely one kind and color of the flower. 

"Then, " she added, "I wanted to do something very chrysanthemummy, because it seems to me the Thanksgiving flower, and belongs toThanksgiving quite as much as holly belongs to Christmas. "

Everybody applauded her intention, and they hungrily fell to upon theexcellent oysters, with her warning that we had better make the most ofeverything in its turn, for she had conformed her dinner to the brevityof the notice she had given her guests. 

XIV

Just what the dinner was I will try to tell you, for I think that it willinterest you to know what people here think a very simple dinner. Thatis, people of any degree of fashion; for the unfashionable Americans, whoare innumerably in the majority, have, no more than the Altrurians, seensuch a dinner as Mrs. Makely's. This sort generally sit down to a singledish of meat, with two or three vegetables, and they drink tea or coffee, or water only, with their dinner. Even when they have company, as theysay, the things are all put on the table at once; and the average ofAmericans who have seen a dinner served in courses, after the Russianmanner, invariable in the fine world here, is not greater than those whohave seen a serving-man in livery. Among these the host piles up hisguest's plate with meat and vegetables, and it is passed from hand tohand till it reaches him; his drink arrives from the hostess by the samemeans. One maid serves the table in a better class, and two maids in aclass still better; it is only when you reach people of very decided formthat you find a man in a black coat behind your chair; Mrs. Makely, mindful of the informality of her dinner in everything, had two men. 

I should say the difference between the Altrurians and the unfashionableAmericans, in view of such a dinner as she gave us, would be that, whileit would seem to us abominable for its extravagance, and revolting in itsappeals to appetite, it would seem to most of such Americans altogetheradmirable and enviable, and would appeal to their ambition to give such adinner themselves as soon as ever they could. 

Well, with our oysters we had a delicate French wine, though I am toldthat formerly Spanish wines were served. A delicious soup followed theoysters, and then we had fish with sliced cucumbers dressed with oil andvinegar, like a salad; and I suppose you will ask what we could possiblyhave eaten more. But this was only the beginning, and next there came acourse of sweetbreads with green peas. With this the champagne began atonce to flow, for Mrs. Makely was nothing if not original, and she hadchampagne very promptly. One of the gentlemen praised her for it, andsaid you could not have it too soon, and he had secretly hoped it wouldhave begun with the oysters. Next, we had a remove--a tenderloin of beef, with mushrooms, fresh, and not of the canned sort which it is usuallyaccompanied with. This fact won our hostess more compliments from thegentlemen, which could not have gratified her more if she had dressed andcooked the dish herself. She insisted upon our trying the stewedterrapin, for, if it did come in a little by the neck and shoulders, itwas still in place at a Thanksgiving dinner, because it was so American;and the stuffed peppers, which, if they were not American, were at leastMexican, and originated in the kitchen of a sister republic. There wereone or two other side-dishes, and, with all, the burgundy began to bepoured out. 

Mr. Makely said that claret all came now from California, no matter whatFrench château they named it after, but burgundy you could not err in. His guests were now drinking the different wines, and to much the sameeffect, I should think, as if they had mixed them all in one cup; thoughI ought to say that several of the ladies took no wine, and kept me incountenance after the first taste I was obliged to take of each, in orderto pacify my host. 

You must know that all the time there were plates of radishes, olives, celery, and roasted almonds set about that every one ate of without muchreference to the courses. The talking and the feasting were at theirheight, but there was a little flagging of the appetite, perhaps, when itreceived the stimulus of a water-ice flavored with rum. After eating it Iimmediately experienced an extraordinary revival of my hunger (I amashamed to confess that I was gorging myself like the rest), but Iquailed inwardly when one of the men-servants set down before Mr. Makelya roast turkey that looked as large as an ostrich. It was received withcries of joy, and one of the gentlemen said, "Ah, Mrs. Makely, I waswaiting to see how you would interpolate the turkey, but you never fail. I knew you would get it in somewhere. But where, " he added, in aburlesque whisper, behind his hand, "are the--"

"Canvasback duck?" she asked, and at that moment the servant set beforethe anxious inquirer a platter of these renowned birds, which you knowsomething of already from the report our emissaries have given of theircult among the Americans. 

Every one laughed, and after the gentleman had made a despairing flourishover them with a carving-knife in emulation of Mr. Makely's emblematicattempt upon the turkey, both were taken away and carved at a sideboard. They were then served in slices, the turkey with cranberry sauce, and theducks with currant jelly; and I noticed that no one took so much of theturkey that he could not suffer himself to be helped also to the duck. Imust tell you that there a salad with the duck, and after that there wasan ice-cream, with fruit and all manner of candied fruits, and candies, different kinds of cheese, coffee, and liqueurs to drink after thecoffee. 

"Well, now, " Mrs. Makely proclaimed, in high delight with her triumph, "Imust let you imagine the pumpkin-pie. I meant to have it, because itisn't really Thanksgiving without it. But I couldn't, for the life of me, see where it would come in. "

XV

The sally of the hostess made them all laugh, and they began to talkabout the genuine American character of the holiday, and what a finething it was to have something truly national. They praised Mrs. Makelyfor thinking of so many American dishes, and the facetious gentleman saidthat she rendered no greater tribute than was due to the overrulingProvidence which had so abundantly bestowed them upon the Americans as apeople. "You must have been glad, Mrs. Strange, " he said to the lady atmy side, "to get back to our American oysters. There seems nothing elseso potent to bring us home from Europe. "

"I'm afraid, " she answered, "that I don't care so much for the Americanoyster as I should. But I am certainly glad to get back. "

"In time for the turkey, perhaps?"

"No, I care no more for the turkey than for the oyster of my nativeland, " said the lady. 

"Ah, well, say the canvasback duck, then? The canvasback duck is noalien. He is as thoroughly American as the turkey, or as any of us. "

"No, I should not have missed him, either, " persisted the lady. 

"What could one have missed, " the gentleman said, with a bow to thehostess, "in the dinner Mrs. Makely has given us? If there had beennothing, I should not have missed it, " and when the laugh at his drollinghad subsided he asked Mrs. Strange: "Then, if it is not too indiscreet, might I inquire what in the world has lured you again to our shores, ifit was not the oyster, nor the turkey, nor yet the canvasback?"

"The American dinner-party, " said the lady, with the same burlesque. 

"Well, " he consented, "I think I understand you. It is different from theEnglish dinner-party in being a festivity rather than a solemnity;though, after all, the American dinner is only a condition of the Englishdinner. Do you find us much changed, Mrs. Strange?"

"I think we are every year a little more European, " said the lady. "Onenotices it on getting home. "

"I supposed we were so European already, " returned the gentleman, "thata European landing among us would think he had got back to hisstarting-point in a sort of vicious circle. I am myself so thoroughlyEuropeanized in all my feelings and instincts that, do you know, Mrs. Makely, if I may confess it without offence--"

"Oh, by all means!" cried the hostess. 

"When that vast bird which we have been praising, that colossal roastturkey, appeared, I felt a shudder go through my delicate substance, suchas a refined Englishman might have experienced at the sight, and I saidto myself, quite as if I were not one of you, 'Good Heavens! now theywill begin talking through their noses and eating with their knives. 'It's what I might have expected!"

It was impossible not to feel that this gentleman was talking at me; ifthe Americans have a foreign guest, they always talk at him more or less;and I was not surprised when he said, "I think our friend, Mr. Homos, will conceive my fine revolt from the crude period of our existence whichthe roast turkey marks as distinctly as the graffiti of the cave-dwellerproclaim his epoch. "

"No, " I protested, "I am afraid that I have not the documents for theinterpretation of your emotion. I hope you will take pity on my ignoranceand tell me just what you mean. "

The others said they none of them knew, either, and would like to know, and the gentleman began by saying that he had been going over the matterin his mind on his way to dinner, and he had really been trying to leadup to it ever since we sat down. "I've been struck, first of all, by thefact, in our evolution, that we haven't socially evolved from ourselves;we've evolved from the Europeans, from the English. I don't think you'llfind a single society rite with us now that had its origin in ourpeculiar national life, if we have a peculiar national life; I doubt it, sometimes. If you begin with the earliest thing in the day, if you beginwith breakfast, as society gives breakfasts, you have an Englishbreakfast, though American people and provisions. "

"I must say, I think they're both much nicer, " said Mrs. Makely. 

"Ah, there I am with you! We borrow the form, but we infuse the spirit. Iam talking about the form, though. Then, if you come to the societylunch, which is almost indistinguishable from the society breakfast, youhave the English lunch, which is really an undersized English dinner. The afternoon tea is English again, with its troops of eager females andstray, reluctant males; though I believe there are rather more men at theEnglish teas, owing to the larger leisure class in England. The afternoontea and the 'at home' are as nearly alike as the breakfast and the lunch. Then, in the course of time, we arrive at the great society function, the dinner; and what is the dinner with us but the dinner of ourmother-country?"

"It is livelier, " suggested Mrs. Makely, again. 

"Livelier, I grant you, but I am still speaking of the form, and not ofthe spirit. The evening reception, which is gradually fading away, as aseparate rite, with its supper and its dance, we now have as the Englishhave it, for the people who have not been asked to dinner. The ball, which brings us round to breakfast again, is again the ball of ourAnglo-Saxon kin beyond the seas. In short, from the society point of viewwe are in everything their mere rinsings. "

"Nothing of the kind!" cried Mrs. Makely. "I won't let you say such athing! On Thanksgiving-day, too! Why, there is the Thanksgiving dinneritself! If that isn't purely American, I should like to know what is. "

"It is purely American, but it is strictly domestic; it is not society. Nobody but some great soul like you, Mrs. Makely, would have the courageto ask anybody to a Thanksgiving dinner, and even you ask only sucheasy-going house-friends as we are proud to be. You wouldn't think ofgiving a dinner-party on Thanksgiving?"

"No, I certainly shouldn't. I should think it was very presuming; and youare all as nice as you can be to have come to-day; I am not the onlygreat soul at the table. But that is neither here nor there. Thanksgivingis a purely American thing, and it's more popular than ever. A few yearsago you never heard of it outside of New England. "

The gentleman laughed. "You are perfectly right, Mrs. Makely, as youalways are. Thanksgiving is purely American. So is the corn-husking, sois the apple-bee, so is the sugar-party, so is the spelling-match, so isthe church-sociable; but none of these have had their evolution in oursociety entertainments. The New Year's call was also purely American, butthat is now as extinct as the dodo, though I believe the other Americanfestivities are still known in the rural districts. "

"Yes, " said Mrs. Makely, "and I think it's a great shame that we can'thave some of them in a refined form in society. I once went to asugar-party up in New Hampshire when I was a girl, and I never enjoyedmyself so much in my life. I should like to make up a party to go to onesomewhere in the Catskills in March. Will you all go? It would besomething to show Mr. Homos. I should like to show him something reallyAmerican before he goes home. There's nothing American left in society!"

"You forget the American woman, " suggested the gentleman. "She is alwaysAmerican, and she is always in society. "

"Yes, " returned our hostess, with a thoughtful air, "you're quite rightin that. One always meets more women than men in society. But it'sbecause the men are so lazy, and so comfortable at their clubs, theywon't go. They enjoy themselves well enough in society after they getthere, as I tell my husband when he grumbles over having to dress. "

"Well, " said the gentleman, "a great many things, the day-time things, wereally can't come to, because we don't belong to the aristocratic class, as you ladies do, and we are busy down-town. But I don't think we arereluctant about dinner; and the young fellows are nearly always willingto go to a ball, if the supper's good and it's a house where they don'tfeel obliged to dance. But what do _you_ think, Mr. Homos?" heasked. "How does your observation coincide with my experience?"

I answered that I hardly felt myself qualified to speak, for though I hadassisted at the different kinds of society rites he had mentioned, thanksto the hospitality of my friends in New York, I knew the Englishfunctions only from a very brief stay in England on my way here, and fromwhat I had read of them in English fiction and in the relations of ouremissaries. He inquired into our emissary system, and the companyappeared greatly interested in such account of it as I could brieflygive. 

"Well, " he said, "that would do while you kept it to yourselves; but nowthat your country is known to the plutocratic world, your publicdocuments will be apt to come back to the countries your emissaries havevisited, and make trouble. The first thing you know some of our brightreporters will get on to one of your emissaries, and interview him, andthen we shall get what you think of us at first hands. By-the-by, haveyou seen any of those primitive social delights which Mrs. Makely regretsso much?"

"I!" our hostess protested. But then she perceived that he was joking, and she let me answer. 

I said that I had seen them nearly all, during the past year, in NewEngland and in the West, but they appeared to me inalienable of thesimpler life of the country, and that I was not surprised they should nothave found an evolution in the more artificial society of the cities. 

"I see, " he returned, "that you reserve your _opinion_ of our moreartificial society; but you may be sure that our reporters will get itout of you yet before you leave us. "

"Those horrid reporters!" one of the ladies irrelevantly sighed. 

The gentleman resumed: "In the mean time, I don't mind saying how itstrikes me. I think you are quite right about the indigenous Americanthings being adapted only to the simpler life of the country and thesmaller towns. It is so everywhere. As soon as people become at allrefined they look down upon what is their own as something vulgar. But itis peculiarly so with us. We have nothing national that is not connectedwith the life of work, and when we begin to live the life of pleasure wemust borrow from the people abroad, who have always lived the life ofpleasure. "

"Mr. Homos, you know, " Mrs. Makely explained for me, as if this were theaptest moment, "thinks we all ought to work. He thinks we oughtn't tohave any servants. "

"Oh no, my dear lady, " I put in. "I don't think that of you as you_are_. None of you could see more plainly than I do that in yourconditions you _must_ have servants, and that you cannot possiblywork unless poverty obliges you. "

The other ladies had turned upon me with surprise and horror at Mrs. Makely's words, but they now apparently relented, as if I had fullyredeemed myself from the charge made against me. Mrs. Strange aloneseemed to have found nothing monstrous in my supposed position. "Sometimes, " she said, "I wish we had to work, all of us, and that wecould be freed from our servile bondage to servants. "

Several of the ladies admitted that it was the greatest slavery in theworld, and that it would be comparative luxury to do one's own work. Butthey all asked, in one form or another, what were they to do, and Mrs. Strange owned that she did not know. The facetious gentleman asked me howthe ladies did in Altruria, and when I told them, as well as I could, they were, of course, very civil about it, but I could see that they allthought it impossible, or, if not impossible, then ridiculous. I did notfeel bound to defend our customs, and I knew very well that each womanthere was imagining herself in our conditions with the curse of herplutocratic tradition still upon her. They could not do otherwise, any ofthem, and they seemed to get tired of such effort as they did make. 

Mrs. Makely rose, and the other ladies rose with her, for the Americansfollow the English custom in letting the men remain at table after thewomen have left. But on this occasion I found it varied by a pretty touchfrom the French custom, and the men, instead of merely standing up whilethe women filed out, gave each his arm, as far as the drawing-room, tothe lady he had brought in to dinner. Then we went back, and what is thepleasantest part of the dinner to most men began for us. 

XVI

I must say, to the credit of the Americans, that although the eating anddrinking among them appear gross enough to an Altrurian, you are notrevolted by the coarse stories which the English sometimes tell as soonas the ladies have left them. If it is a men's dinner, or more especiallya men's supper, these stories are pretty sure to follow the coffee; butwhen there have been women at the board, some sense of their presenceseems to linger in the more delicate American nerves, and the indulgenceis limited to two or three things off color, as the phrase is here, toldwith anxious glances at the drawing-room doors, to see if they are fastshut. 

I do not remember just what brought the talk back from these primrosepaths to that question of American society forms, but presently some onesaid he believed the church-sociable was the thing in most towns beyondthe apple-bee and sugar-party stage, and this opened the inquiry as tohow far the church still formed the social life of the people in cities. Some one suggested that in Brooklyn it formed it altogether, and thenthey laughed, for Brooklyn is always a joke with the New-Yorkers; I donot know exactly why, except that this vast city is so largely a suburb, and that it has a great number of churches and is comparatively cheap. Then another told of a lady who had come to New York (he admitted, twentyyears ago), and was very lonely, as she had no letters until she joined achurch. This at once brought her a general acquaintance, and she began tofind herself in society; but as soon as she did so she joined a moreexclusive church, where they took no notice of strangers. They alllaughed at that bit of human nature, as they called it, and theyphilosophized the relation of women to society as a purely businessrelation. The talk ranged to the mutable character of society, and howpeople got into it, or were of it, and how it was very different fromwhat it once was, except that with women it was always business. Theyspoke of certain new rich people with affected contempt; but I could seethat they were each proud of knowing such millionaires as they couldclaim for acquaintance, though they pretended to make fun of the numberof men-servants you had to run the gantlet of in their houses before youcould get to your hostess. 

One of my commensals said he had noticed that I took little or no wine, and, when I said that we seldom drank it in Altruria, he answered that hedid not think I could make that go in America, if I meant to dine much. "Dining, you know, means overeating, " he explained, "and if you wish toovereat you must overdrink. I venture to say that you will pass a worsenight than any of us, Mr. Homos, and that you will be sorrier to-morrowthan I shall. " They were all smoking, and I confess that their tobaccowas secretly such an affliction to me that I was at one moment in doubtwhether I should take a cigar myself or ask leave to join the ladies. 

The gentleman who had talked so much already said: "Well, I don't minddining, a great deal, especially with Makely, here, but I do object tosupping, as I have to do now and then, in the way of pleasure. LastSaturday night I sat down at eleven o'clock to blue-point oysters, consommé, stewed terrapin--yours was very good, Makely; I wish I hadtaken more of it--lamb chops with peas, redhead duck with celerymayonnaise, Nesselrode pudding, fruit, cheese, and coffee, with sausages, caviare, radishes, celery, and olives interspersed wildly, and drinkablesand smokables _ad libitum_; and I can assure you that I felt verydevout when I woke up after church-time in the morning. It is thisturning night into day that is killing us. We men, who have to go tobusiness the next morning, ought to strike, and say that we won't goto anything later than eight-o'clock dinner. "

"Ah, then the women would insist upon our making it four-o'clock tea, "said another. 

Our host seemed to be reminded of something by the mention of the women, and he said, after a glance at the state of the cigars, "Shall we jointhe ladies?"

One of the men-servants had evidently been waiting for this question. Heheld the door open, and we all filed into the drawing-room. 

Mrs. Makely hailed me with, "Ah, Mr. Homos, I'm so glad you've come! Wepoor women have been having a most dismal time!"

"Honestly, " asked the funny gentleman, "don't you always, without us?""Yes, but this has been worse than usual. Mrs. Strange has been asking ushow many people we supposed there were in this city, within five minutes'walk of us, who had no dinner to-day. Do you call that kind?"

"A little more than kin and less than kind, perhaps, " the gentlemansuggested. "But what does she propose to do about it?"

He turned towards Mrs. Strange, who answered, "Nothing. What does any onepropose to do about it?"

"Then, why do you think about it?"

"I don't. It thinks about itself. Do you know that poem of Longfellow's, 'The Challenge'?"

"No, I never heard of it. "

"Well, it begins in his sweet old way, about some Spanish king who waskilled before a city he was besieging, and one of his knights sallies outof the camp and challenges the people of the city, the living and thedead, as traitors. Then the poet breaks off, _apropos de rien:_

 'There is a greater army That besets us round with strife, A numberless, starving army, At all the gates of life. The poverty-stricken millions Who challenge our wine and bread And impeach us all for traitors, Both the living and the dead. And whenever I sit at the banquet, Where the feast and song are high, Amid the mirth and the music I can hear that fearful cry. 

 And hollow and haggard faces Look into the lighted hall, And wasted hands are extended To catch the crumbs that fall. For within there is light and plenty, And odors fill the air; But without there is cold and darkness, And hunger and despair. And there, in the camp of famine, In wind and cold and rain, Christ, the great Lord of the Army, Lies dead upon the plain. '"

"Ah, " said the facetious gentleman, "that is fine! We really forget howfine Longfellow was. It is so pleasant to hear you quoting poetry, Mrs. Strange! That sort of thing has almost gone out; and it's a pity. "

XVII

Our fashion of offering hospitality on the impulse would be as strangehere as offering it without some special inducement for its acceptance. The inducement is, as often as can be, a celebrity or eccentricity ofsome sort, or some visiting foreigner; and I suppose that I have been agood deal used myself in one quality or the other. But when the thing hasbeen done, fully and guardedly at all points, it does not seem to havebeen done for pleasure, either by the host or the guest. The dinner isgiven in payment of another dinner; or out of ambition by people who arestriving to get forward in society; or by great social figures who giveregularly a certain number of dinners every season. In either case it iseaten from motives at once impersonal and selfish. I do not mean to saythat I have not been at many dinners where I felt nothing perfunctoryeither in host or guest, and where as sweet and gay a spirit ruled as atany of our own simple feasts. Still, I think our main impression ofAmerican hospitality would be that it was thoroughly infused with theplutocratic principle, and that it meant business. 

I am speaking now of the hospitality of society people, who number, afterall, but a few thousands out of the many millions of American people. These millions are so far from being in society, even when they are verycomfortable, and on the way to great prosperity, if they are not alreadygreatly prosperous, that if they were suddenly confronted with the bestsociety of the great Eastern cities they would find it almost as strangeas so many Altrurians. A great part of them have no conception ofentertaining except upon an Altrurian scale of simplicity, and they knownothing and care less for the forms that society people value themselvesupon. When they begin, in the ascent of the social scale, to adopt forms, it is still to wear them lightly and with an individual freedom andindifference; it is long before anxiety concerning the social law rendersthem vulgar. 

Yet from highest to lowest, from first to last, one invariable factcharacterizes them all, and it may be laid down as an axiom that in aplutocracy the man who needs a dinner is the man who is never asked todine. I do not say that he is not given a dinner. He is very often givena dinner, and for the most part he is kept from starving to death; but heis not suffered to sit at meat with his host, if the person who gives hima meal can be called his host. His need of the meal stamps him with ahopeless inferiority, and relegates him morally to the company of theswine at their husks, and of Lazarus, whose sores the dogs licked. Usually, of course, he is not physically of such a presence as to fit himfor any place in good society short of Abraham's bosom; but even if hewere entirely decent, or of an inoffensive shabbiness, it would not bepossible for his benefactors, in any grade of society, to ask him totheir tables. He is sometimes fed in the kitchen; where the people of thehouse feed in the kitchen themselves, he is fed at the back door. 

We were talking of this the other night at the house of that lady whomMrs. Makely invited me specially to meet on Thanksgiving-day. It happenedthen, as it often happens here, that although I was asked to meet her, Isaw very little of her. It was not so bad as it sometimes is, for I havebeen asked to meet people, very informally, and passed the whole eveningwith them, and yet not exchanged a word with them. Mrs. Makely reallygave me a seat next Mrs. Strange at table, and we had some unimportantconversation; but there was a lively little creature vis-à-vis of me, whohad a fancy of addressing me so much of her talk that my acquaintancewith. Mrs. Strange rather languished through the dinner, and she wentaway so soon after the men rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room that Idid not speak to her there. I was rather surprised, then, to receive anote from her a few days later, asking me to dinner; and I finally went, I am ashamed to own, more from curiosity than from any other motive. Ihad been, in the mean time, thoroughly coached concerning her by Mrs. Makely, whom I told of my invitation, and who said, quite frankly, thatshe wished Mrs. Strange had asked her, too. "But Eveleth Strange wouldn'tdo that, " she explained, "because it would have the effect of paying meback. I'm so glad, on your account, that you're going, for I do want youto know at least one American woman that you can unreservedly approve of;I know you don't _begin_ to approve of _me;_ and I was so vexedthat you really had no chance to talk with her that night you met herhere; it seemed to me as if she ran away early just to provoke me; and, to tell you the truth, I thought she had taken a dislike to you. I wish Icould tell you just what sort of a person she is, but it would beperfectly hopeless, for you haven't got the documents, and you nevercould get them. I used to be at school with her, and even then she wasn'tlike any of the other girls. She was always so original, and did thingsfrom such a high motive, that afterwards, when we were all settled, Iwas perfectly thunderstruck at her marrying old Bellington Strange, whowas twice her age and had nothing but his money; he was not related tothe New York Bellingtons at all, and nobody knows how he got the name;nobody ever heard of the Stranges. In fact, people say that he used to beplain Peter B. Strange till he married Eveleth, and she made him drop thePeter and blossom out in the Bellington, so that he could seem to have asocial as well as a financial history. People who dislike her insistedthat they were not in the least surprised at her marrying him; that thehigh-motive business was just her pose; and that she had jumped at thechance of getting him. But I always stuck up for her--and I know that shedid it for the sake of her family, who were all as poor as poor, and weredependent on her after her father went to smash in his business. She wasalways as high-strung and romantic as she could be, but I don't believethat even then she would have taken Mr. Strange if there had been anybodyelse. I don't suppose any one else ever looked at her, for the young menare pretty sharp nowadays, and are not going to marry girls without acent, when there are so many rich girls, just as charming every way; youcan't expect them to. At any rate, whatever her motive was, she had herreward, for Mr. Strange died within a year of their marriage, and she gotall his money. There was no attempt to break the will, for Mr. Strangeseemed to be literally of no family; and she's lived quietly on in thehouse he bought her ever since, except when she's in Europe, and that'sabout two-thirds of the time. She has her mother with her, and I supposethat her sisters and her cousins and her aunts come in for outdoor aid. She's always helping somebody. They say that's her pose, now; but, if itis, I don't think it's a bad one; and certainly, if she wanted to getmarried again, there would be no trouble, with her three millions. Iadvise you to go to her dinner, by all means, Mr. Homos. It will besomething worth while, in every way, and perhaps you'll convert her toAltrurianism; she's as hopeful a subject as _I_ know. "

XVIII

I was one of the earliest of the guests, for I cannot yet believe thatpeople do not want me to come exactly when they say they do. I perceived, however, that one other gentleman had come before me, and I was bothsurprised and delighted to find that this was my acquaintance Mr. Bullion, the Boston banker. He professed as much pleasure at our meetingas I certainly felt; but after a few words he went on talking with Mrs. Strange, while I was left to her mother, an elderly woman of quiet andeven timid bearing, who affected me at once as born and bred in a whollydifferent environment. In fact, every American of the former generationis almost as strange to it in tradition, though not in principle, as Iam; and I found myself singularly at home with this sweet lady, whoseemed glad of my interest in her. I was taken from her side to beintroduced to a lady, on the opposite side of the room, who said she hadbeen promised my acquaintance by a friend of hers, whom I had met in themountains--Mr. Twelvemough; did I remember him? She gave a littlecry while still speaking, and dramatically stretched her hand towards agentleman who entered at the moment, and whom I saw to be no other thanMr. Twelvemough himself. As soon as he had greeted our hostess hehastened up to us, and, barely giving himself time to press the stilloutstretched hand of my companion, shook mine warmly, and expressed thegreatest joy at seeing me. He said that he had just got back to town, ina manner, and had not known I was here, till Mrs. Strange had asked himto meet me. There were not a great many other guests, when they allarrived, and we sat down, a party not much larger than at Mrs. Makely's. 

I found that I was again to take out my hostess, but I was put next thelady with whom I had been talking; she had come without her husband, whowas, apparently, of a different social taste from herself, and had anengagement of his own; there was an artist and his wife, whose looks Iliked; some others whom I need not specify were there, I fancied, becausethey had heard of Altruria and were curious to see me. As Mr. Twelvemoughsat quite at the other end of the table, the lady on my right couldeasily ask me whether I liked his books. She said, tentatively, peopleliked them because they felt sure when they took up one of his novelsthey had not got hold of a tract on political economy in disguise. 

It was this complimentary close of a remark, which scarcely began withpraise, that made itself heard across the table, and was echoed with aheartfelt sigh from the lips of another lady. 

"Yes, " she said, "that is what I find such a comfort in Mr. Twelvemough'sbooks. "

"We were speaking of Mr. Twelvemough's books, " the first lady triumphed, and several began to extol them for being fiction pure and simple, andnot dealing with anything but loves of young people. 

Mr. Twelvemough sat looking as modest as he could under the praise, andone of the ladies said that in a novel she had lately read there was adescription of a surgical operation that made her feel as if she hadbeen present at a clinic. Then the author said that he had read thatpassage, too, and found it extremely well done. It was fascinating, butit was not art. 

The painter asked, Why was it not art?

The author answered, Well, if such a thing as that was art, then anythingthat a man chose to do in a work of imagination was art. 

"Precisely, " said the painter--"art _is_ choice. "

"On that ground, " the banker interposed, "you could say that politicaleconomy was a fit subject for art, if an artist chose to treat it. "

"It would have its difficulties, " the painter admitted, "but thereare certain phases of political economy, dramatic moments, humanmoments, which might be very fitly treated in art. For instance, whowould object to Mr. Twelvemough's describing an eviction from an EastSide tenement-house on a cold winter night, with the mother and herchildren huddled about the fire the father had kindled with pieces of thehousehold furniture?"

"_I_ should object very much, for one, " said the lady who hadobjected to the account of the surgical operation. "It would be toocreepy. Art should give pleasure. "

"Then you think a tragedy is not art?" asked the painter. 

"I think that these harrowing subjects are brought in altogether toomuch, " said the lady. "There are enough of them in real life, withoutfilling all the novels with them. It's terrible the number of beggarsyou meet on the street, this winter. Do you want to meet them in Mr. Twelvemough's novels, too?"

"Well, it wouldn't cost me any money there. I shouldn't have to give. "

"You oughtn't to give money in real life, " said the lady. "You ought togive charity tickets. If the beggars refuse them, it shows they areimpostors. "

"It's some comfort to know that the charities are so active, " said theelderly young lady, "even if half the letters one gets _do_ turn outto be appeals from them. "

"It's very disappointing to have them do it, though, " said the artist, lightly. "I thought there was a society to abolish poverty. That doesn'tseem to be so active as the charities this winter. Is it possible they'vefound it a failure?"

"Well, " said Mr. Bullion, "perhaps they have suspended during the hardtimes. "

They tossed the ball back and forth with a lightness the Americans have, and I could not have believed, if I had not known how hardened peoplebecome to such things here, that they were almost in the actual presenceof hunger and cold. It was within five minutes' walk of their warmth andsurfeit; and if they had lifted the window and called, "Who goes there?"the houselessness that prowls the night could have answered them from thestreet below, "Despair!"

"I had an amusing experience, " Mr. Twelvemough began, "when I was doing alittle visiting for the charities in our ward, the other winter. "

"For the sake of the literary material?" the artist suggested. 

"Partly for the sake of the literary material; you know we have to lookfor our own everywhere. But we had a case of an old actor's son, who hadgot out of all the places he had filled, on account of rheumatism, andcould not go to sea, or drive a truck, or even wrap gas-fixtures in paperany more. "

"A checkered employ, " the banker mused aloud. 

"It was not of a simultaneous nature, " the novelist explained. "So hecame on the charities, and, as I knew the theatrical profession a little, and how generous it was with all related to it, I said that I wouldundertake to look after his case. You know the theory is that we get workfor our patients, or clients, or whatever they are, and I went to amanager whom I knew to be a good fellow, and I asked him for some sort ofwork. He said, Yes, send the man round, and he would give him a jobcopying parts for a new play he had written. "

The novelist paused, and nobody laughed. 

"It seems to me that your experience is instructive, rather thanamusing, " said the banker. "It shows that something can be done, if youtry. "

"Well, " said Mr. Twelvemough, "I thought that was the moral, myself, tillthe fellow came afterwards to thank me. He said that he consideredhimself very lucky, for the manager had told him that there were sixother men had wanted that job. "

Everybody laughed now, and I looked at my hostess in a littlebewilderment. She murmured, "I suppose the joke is that he had befriendedone man at the expense of six others. "

"Oh, " I returned, "is that a joke?"

No one answered, but the lady at my right asked, "How do you manage withpoverty in Altruria?"

I saw the banker fix a laughing eye on me, but I answered, "In Altruriawe have no poverty. "

"Ah, I knew you would say that!" he cried out. "That's what he alwaysdoes, " he explained to the lady. "Bring up any one of our littledifficulties, and ask how they get over it in Altruria, and he says theyhave nothing like it. It's very simple. "

They all began to ask me questions, but with a courteous incredulitywhich I could feel well enough, and some of my answers made them laugh, all but my hostess, who received them with a gravity that finallyprevailed. But I was not disposed to go on talking of Altruria then, though they all protested a real interest, and murmured against thehardship of being cut off with so brief an account of our country as Ihad given them. 

"Well, " said the banker at last, "if there is no cure for our poverty, wemight as well go on and enjoy ourselves. "

"Yes, " said our hostess, with a sad little smile, "we might as well enjoyourselves. "

XIX

The talk at Mrs. Strange's table took a far wider range than my meagrenotes would intimate, and we sat so long that it was almost elevenbefore the men joined the ladies in the drawing-room. You will hardlyconceive of remaining two, three, or four hours at dinner, as one oftendoes here, in society; out of society the meals are despatched with arapidity unknown to the Altrurians. Our habit of listening to lectors, especially at the evening repast, and then of reasoning upon what wehave heard, prolongs our stay at the board; but the fondest listener, the greatest talker among us, would be impatient of the delay eked outhere by the great number and the slow procession of the courses served. Yet the poorest American would find his ideal realized rather in thelong-drawn-out gluttony of the society dinner here than in our temperatesimplicity. 

At such a dinner it is very hard to avoid a surfeit, and I have to guardmyself very carefully, lest, in the excitement of the talk, I gorgemyself with everything, in its turn. Even at the best, my overloadedstomach often joins with my conscience in reproaching me for what youwould think a shameful excess at table. Yet, wicked as my riot is, mywaste is worse, and I have to think, with contrition, not only of what Ihave eaten, but of what I have left uneaten, in a city where so manywake and sleep in hunger. 

The ladies made a show of lingering after we joined them in thedrawing-room; but there were furtive glances at the clock, and presentlyher guests began to bid Mrs. Strange good-night. When I came up andoffered her my hand, she would not take it, but murmured, with a kind ofpassion: "Don't go! I mean it! Stay, and tell us about Altruria--mymother and me!"

I was by no means loath, for I must confess that all I had seen and heardof this lady interested me in her more and more. I felt at home with her, too, as with no other society woman I have met; she seemed to me not onlygood, but very sincere, and very good-hearted, in spite of the world shelived in. Yet I have met so many disappointments here, of the kind thatour civilization wholly fails to prepare us for, that I should not havebeen surprised to find that Mrs. Strange had wished me to stay, not thatshe might hear me talk about Altruria, but that I might hear her talkabout herself. You must understand that the essential vice of a systemwhich concentres a human being's thoughts upon his own interests, fromthe first moment of responsibility, colors and qualifies every motivewith egotism. All egotists are unconscious, for otherwise they would beintolerable to themselves; but some are subtler than others; and as mostwomen have finer natures than most men everywhere, and in America mostwomen have finer minds than most men, their egotism usually takes theform of pose. This is usually obvious, but in some cases it is sodelicately managed that you do not suspect it, unless some other womangives you a hint of it, and even then you cannot be sure of it, seeingthe self-sacrifice, almost to martyrdom, which the _poseuse_ makesfor it. If Mrs. Makely had not suggested that some people attributeda pose to Mrs. Strange, I should certainly never have dreamed of lookingfor it, and I should have been only intensely interested, when she began, as soon as I was left alone with her and her mother:

"You may not know how unusual I am in asking this favor of you, Mr. Homos; but you might as well learn from me as from others that I amrather unusual in everything. In fact, you can report in Altruria, whenyou get home, that you found at least one woman in America whom fortunehad smiled upon in every way, and who hated her smiling fortune almostas much as she hated herself. I'm quite satisfied, " she went on, with asad mockery, "that fortune is a man, and an American; when he has givenyou all the materials for having a good time, he believes that you mustbe happy, because there is nothing to hinder. It isn't that I want to behappy in the greedy way that men think we do, for then I could easily behappy. If you have a soul which is not above buttons, buttons are enough. But if you expect to be of real use, to help on, and to help out, youwill be disappointed. I have not the faith that they say upholds youAltrurians in trying to help out, if I don't see my way out. It seems tome that my reason has some right to satisfaction, and that, if I am awoman grown, I can't be satisfied with the assurances they would giveto little girls--that everything is going on well. Any one can see thatthings are not going on well. There is more and more wretchedness ofevery kind, not hunger of body alone, but hunger of soul. If you escapeone, you suffer the other, because, if you _have_ a soul, you mustlong to help, not for a time, but for all time. I suppose, " she asked, abruptly, "that Mrs. Makely has told you something about me?"

"Something, " I admitted. 

"I ask, " she went on, "because I don't want to bore you with a statementof my case, if you know it already. Ever since I heard you were in NewYork I have wished to see you, and to talk with you about Altruria; I didnot suppose that there would be any chance at Mrs. Makely's, and therewasn't; and I did not suppose there would be any chance here, unless Icould take courage to do what I have done now. You must excuse it, if itseems as extraordinary a proceeding to you as it really is; I wouldn't atall have you think it is usual for a lady to ask one of her guests tostay after the rest, in order, if you please, to confess herself to him. It's a crime without a name. "

She laughed, not gayly, but humorously, and then went on, speaking alwayswith a feverish eagerness which I find it hard to give you a sense of, for the women here have an intensity quite beyond our experience of thesex at home. 

"But you are a foreigner, and you come from an order of things so utterlyunlike ours that perhaps you will be able to condone my offence. At anyrate, I have risked it. " She laughed again, more gayly, and recoveredherself in a cheerfuller and easier mood. "Well, the long and the shortof it is that I have come to the end of my tether. I have tried, as trulyas I believe any woman ever did, to do my share, with money and withwork, to help make life better for those whose life is bad; and thoughone mustn't boast of good works, I may say that I have been prettythorough, and, if I've given up, it's because I see, in our state ofthings, _no_ hope of curing the evil. It's like trying to soak upthe drops of a rainstorm. You do dry up a drop here and there; but theclouds are full of them, and, the first thing you know, you stand, withyour blotting-paper in your hand, in a puddle over your shoe-tops. Thereis nothing but charity, and charity is a failure, except for the moment. If you think of the misery around you, that must remain around you forever and ever, as long as you live, you have your choice--to go mad andbe put into an asylum, or go mad and devote yourself to society. "

XX

While Mrs. Strange talked on, her mother listened quietly, with a dim, submissive smile and her hands placidly crossed in her lap. She now said:"It seems to be very different now from what it was in my time. There arecertainly a great many beggars, and we used never to have one. Childrengrew up, and people lived and died, in large towns, without ever seeingone. I remember, when my husband first took me abroad, how astonished wewere at the beggars. Now I meet as many in New York as I met in London orin Rome. But if you don't do charity, what can you do? Christ enjoinedit, and Paul says--"

"Oh, people _never_ do the charity that Christ meant, " said Mrs. Strange; "and, as things are now, how _could_ they? Who would dreamof dividing half her frocks and wraps with poor women, or selling_all_ and giving to the poor? That is what makes it so hopeless. We_know_ that Christ was perfectly right, and that He was perfectlysincere in what He said to the good young millionaire; but we all go awayexceeding sorrowful, just as the good young millionaire did. We have to, if we don't want to come on charity ourselves. How do _you_ manageabout that?" she asked me; and then she added, "But, of course, I forgotthat you have no need of charity. "

"Oh yes, we have, " I returned; and I tried, once more, as I have tried sooften with Americans, to explain how the heavenly need of giving the selfcontinues with us, but on terms that do not harrow the conscience of thegiver, as self-sacrifice always must here, at its purest and noblest. Isought to make her conceive of our nation as a family, where every onewas secured against want by the common provision, and against thedegrading and depraving inequality which comes from want. The "dead-levelof equality" is what the Americans call the condition in which all wouldbe as the angels of God, and they blasphemously deny that He ever meantHis creatures to be alike happy, because some, through a long successionof unfair advantages, have inherited more brain or brawn or beauty thanothers. I found that this gross and impious notion of God darkened eventhe clear intelligence of a woman like Mrs. Strange; and, indeed, itprevails here so commonly that it is one of the first things advanced asan argument against the Altrurianization of America. 

I believe I did, at last, succeed in showing her how charity stillcontinues among us, but in forms that bring neither a sense ofinferiority to him who takes nor anxiety to him who gives. I said thatbenevolence here often seemed to involve, essentially, some such risk asa man should run if he parted with a portion of the vital air whichbelonged to himself and his family, in succoring a fellow-being fromsuffocation; but that with us, where it was no more possible for one todeprive himself of his share of the common food, shelter, and clothing, than of the air he breathed, one could devote one's self utterly toothers without that foul alloy of fear which I thought must baselyqualify every good deed in plutocratic conditions. 

She said that she knew what I meant, and that I was quite right in myconjecture, as regarded men, at least; a man who did not stop to thinkwhat the effect, upon himself and his own, his giving must have, would bea fool or a madman; but women could often give as recklessly as theyspent, without any thought of consequences, for they did not know howmoney came. 

"Women, " I said, "are exterior to your conditions, and they can sacrificethemselves without wronging any one. "

"Or, rather, " she continued, "without the sense of wronging any one. Ourmen like to keep us in that innocence or ignorance; they think it ispretty, or they think it is funny; and as long as a girl is in herfather's house, or a wife is in her husband's, she knows no more ofmoney-earning or money-making than a child. Most grown women among us, if they had a sum of money in the bank, would not know how to get itout. They would not know how to indorse a check, much less draw one. Butthere are plenty of women who are inside the conditions, as much as menare--poor women who have to earn their bread, and rich-women who have tomanage their property. I can't speak for the poor women; but I can speakfor the rich, and I can confess for them that what you imagine is true. The taint of unfaith and distrust is on every dollar that you dole out, so that, as far as the charity of the rich is concerned, I would readShakespeare:

'It curseth him that gives, and him that takes. '

"Perhaps that is why the rich give comparatively so little. The poor cannever understand how much the rich value their money, how much the ownerof a great fortune dreads to see it less. If it were not so, they wouldsurely give more than they do; for a man who has ten millions could giveeight of them without feeling the loss; the man with a hundred could giveninety and be no nearer want. Ah, it's a strange mystery! My poor husbandand I used to talk of it a great deal, in the long year that he laydying; and I think I hate my superfluity the more because I know he hatedit so much. "

A little trouble had stolen into her impassioned tones, and there was agleam, as of tears, in the eyes she dropped for a moment. They wereshining still when she lifted them again to mine. 

"I suppose, " she said, "that Mrs. Makely told you something of mymarriage?"

"Eveleth!" her mother protested, with a gentle murmur. 

"Oh, I think I can be frank with Mr. Homos. He is not an American, and hewill understand, or, at least, he will not misunderstand. Besides, I daresay I shall not say anything worse than Mrs. Makely has said already. Myhusband was much older than I, and I ought not to have married him; ayoung girl ought never to marry an old man, or even a man who is onlya good many years her senior. But we both faithfully tried to make thebest of our mistake, not the worst, and I think this effort helped us torespect each other, when there couldn't be any question of more. He wasa rich man, and he had made his money out of nothing, or, at least, froma beginning of utter poverty. But in his last years he came to a sense ofits worthlessness, such as few men who have made their money ever have. He was a common man, in a great many ways; he was imperfectly educated, and he was ungrammatical, and he never was at home in society; but he hada tender heart and an honest nature, and I revere his memory, as no onewould believe I could without knowing him as I did. His money became aburden and a terror to him; he did not know what to do with it, and hewas always morbidly afraid of doing harm with it; he got to thinking thatmoney was an evil in itself. "

"That is what we think, " I ventured. 

"Yes, I know. But he had thought this out for himself, and yet he hadtimes when his thinking about it seemed to him a kind of craze, and, atany rate, he distrusted himself so much that he died leaving it allto me. I suppose he thought that perhaps I could learn how to give itwithout hurting; and then he knew that, in our state of things, I musthave some money to keep the wolf from the door. And I am afraid to partwith it, too. I have given and given; but there seems some evil spell onthe principal that guards it from encroachment, so that it remains thesame, and, if I do not watch, the interest grows in the bank, with thatfrightful life dead money seems endowed with, as the hair of dead, peoplegrows in the grave. "

"Eveleth!" her mother murmured again. 

"Oh yes, " she answered, "I dare say my words are wild. I dare say theyonly mean that I loathe my luxury from the bottom of my soul, and long tobe rid of it, if I only could, without harm to others and with safety tomyself. "

XXI

It seemed to me that I became suddenly sensible of this luxury for thefirst time. I had certainly been aware that I was in a large and statelyhouse, and that I had been served and banqueted with a princely pride andprofusion. But there had, somehow, been through all a sort of simplicity, a sort of quiet, so that I had not thought of the establishment and itsoperation, even so much as I had thought of Mrs. Makely's far inferiorscale of living; or else, what with my going about so much in society, Iwas ceasing to be so keenly observant of the material facts as I had beenat first. But I was better qualified to judge of what I saw, and I hadnow a vivid sense of the costliness of Mrs. Strange's environment. Therewere thousands of dollars in the carpets underfoot; there were tens ofthousands in the pictures on the walls. In a bronze group that withdrewitself into a certain niche, with a faint reluctance, there was the valueof a skilled artisan's wage for five years of hard work; in the bindingsof the books that showed from the library shelves there was almost asmuch money as most of the authors had got for writing them. Everyfixture, every movable, was an artistic masterpiece; a fortune, asfortunes used to be counted even in this land of affluence, had beenlavished in the mere furnishing of a house which the palaces of noblesand princes of other times had contributed to embellish. 

"My husband, " Mrs. Strange went on, "bought this house for me, and let mefurnish it after my own fancy. After it was all done we neither of usliked it, and when he died I felt as if he had left me in a tomb here. "

"Eveleth, " said her mother, "you ought not to speak so before Mr. Homos. He will not know what to think of you, and he will go back to Altruriawith a very wrong idea of American women. "

At this protest, Mrs. Strange seemed to recover herself a little. "Yes, "she said, "you must excuse me. I have no right to speak so. But one isoften much franker with foreigners than with one's own kind, and, besides, there is something--I don't know what--that will not let me keepthe truth from you. "

She gazed at me entreatingly, and then, as if some strong emotion swepther from her own hold, she broke out:

"He thought he would make some sort of atonement to me, as if I owed noneto him! His money was all he had to do it with, and he spent that upon mein every way he could think of, though he knew that money could not buyanything that was really good, and that, if it bought anything beautiful, it uglified it with the sense of cost to every one who could value it indollars and cents. He was a good man, far better than people everimagined, and very simple-hearted and honest, like a child, in hiscontrition for his wealth, which he did not dare to get rid of; andthough I know that, if he were to come back, it would be just as it was, his memory is as dear to me as if--"

She stopped, and pressed in her lip with her teeth, to stay its tremor. I was painfully affected. I knew that she had never meant to be so openwith me, and was shocked and frightened at herself. I was sorry for her, and yet I was glad, for it seemed to me that she had given me a glimpse, not only of the truth in her own heart, but of the truth in the hearts ofa whole order of prosperous people in these lamentable conditions, whom Ishall hereafter be able to judge more leniently, more justly. 

I began to speak of Altruria, as if that were what our talk had beenleading up to, and she showed herself more intelligently interestedconcerning us than any one I have yet seen in this country. We appeared, I found, neither incredible nor preposterous to her; our life, in hereyes, had that beauty of right living which the Americans so feeblyimagine or imagine not at all. She asked what route I had come by toAmerica, and she seemed disappointed and aggrieved that we placed therestrictions we have felt necessary upon visitors from the plutocraticworld. Were we afraid, she asked, that they would corrupt our citizens ormar our content with our institutions? She seemed scarcely satisfied whenI explained, as I have explained so often here, that the measures we hadtaken were rather in the interest of the plutocratic world than of theAltrurians; and alleged the fact that no visitor from the outside hadever been willing to go home again, as sufficient proof that we hadnothing to fear from the spread of plutocratic ideals among us. I assuredher, and this she easily imagined, that, the better known these became, the worse they appeared to us; and that the only concern our priors felt, in regard to them, was that our youth could not conceive of them in theirenormity, but, in seeing how estimable plutocratic people often were, they would attribute to their conditions the inherent good of humannature. I said our own life was so directly reasoned from its economicpremises that they could hardly believe the plutocratic life was often anabsolute non sequitur of the plutocratic premises. I confessed that thiserror was at the bottom of my own wish to visit America and study thosepremises. 

"And what has your conclusion been?" she said, leaning eagerly towardsme, across the table between us, laden with the maps and charts we hadbeen examining for the verification of the position of Altruria, and myown course here, by way of England. 

A slight sigh escaped Mrs. Gray, which I interpreted as an expression offatigue; it was already past twelve o'clock, and I made it the pretextfor escape. 

"You have seen the meaning and purport of Altruria so clearly, " I said, "that I think I can safely leave you to guess the answer to thatquestion. "

She laughed, and did not try to detain me now when I offered my hand forgood-night. I fancied her mother took leave of me coldly, and with acertain effect of inculpation. 

XXII

It is long since I wrote you, and you have had reason enough to beimpatient of my silence. I submit to the reproaches of your letter, witha due sense of my blame; whether I am altogether to blame, you shall sayafter you have read this. 

I cannot yet decide whether I have lost a great happiness, the greatestthat could come to any man, or escaped the worst misfortune that couldbefall me. But, such as it is, I will try to set the fact honestly down. 

I do not know whether you had any conjecture, from my repeated mention ofa lady whose character greatly interested me, that I was in the way offeeling any other interest in her than my letters expressed. I am nolonger young, though at thirty-five an Altrurian is by no means so old asan American at the same age. The romantic ideals of the American womenwhich I had formed from the American novels had been dissipated; if I hadany sentiment towards them, as a type, it was one of distrust, which myvery sense of the charm in their inconsequence, their beauty, theirbrilliancy, served rather to intensify. I thought myself doubly defendedby that difference between their civilization and ours which forbadereasonable hope of happiness in any sentiment for them tenderer thanthat of the student of strange effects in human nature. But we have notyet, my dear Cyril, reasoned the passions, even in Altruria. 

After I last wrote you, a series of accidents, or what appeared so, threwme more and more constantly into the society of Mrs. Strange. We began tolaugh at the fatality with which we met everywhere--at teas, at lunches, at dinners, at evening receptions, and even at balls, where I have been agreat deal, because, with all my thirty-five years, I have not yetoutlived that fondness for dancing which has so often amused you in me. Wherever my acquaintance widened among cultivated people, they had noinspiration but to ask us to meet each other, as if there were really noother woman in New York who could be expected to understand me. "You mustcome to lunch (or tea, or dinner, whichever it might be), and we willhave her. She will be so much interested to meet you. "

But perhaps we should have needed none of these accidents to bring ustogether. I, at least, can look back and see that, when none of themhappened, I sought occasions for seeing her, and made excuses of ourcommon interest in this matter and in that to go to her. As for her, Ican only say that I seldom failed to find her at home, whether I calledupon her nominal day or not, and more than once the man who let me insaid he had been charged by Mrs. Strange to say that, if I called, shewas to be back very soon; or else he made free to suggest that, thoughMrs. Strange was not at home, Mrs. Gray was; and then I found it easyto stay until Mrs. Strange returned. The good old lady had an insatiablecuriosity about Altruria, and, though I do not think she ever quitebelieved in our reality, she at least always treated me kindly, as if Iwere the victim of an illusion that was thoroughly benign. 

I think she had some notion that your letters, which I used often to takewith me and read to Mrs. Strange and herself, were inventions of mine;and the fact that they bore only an English postmark confirmed her inthis notion, though I explained that in our present passive attitudetowards the world outside we had as yet no postal relations with othercountries, and, as all our communication at home was by electricity, thatwe had no letter-post of our own. The very fact that she belonged to apurer and better age in America disqualified her to conceive of Altruria;her daughter, who had lived into a full recognition of the terribleanarchy in which the conditions have ultimated here, could far morevitally imagine us, and to her, I believe, we were at once a livingreality. Her perception, her sympathy, her intelligence, became more andmore to me, and I escaped to them oftener and oftener, from a world wherean Altrurian must be so painfully at odds. In all companies here I amaware that I have been regarded either as a good joke or a bad joke, according to the humor of the listener, and it was grateful to be takenseriously. 

From the first I was sensible of a charm in her, different from that Ifelt in other American women, and impossible in our Altrurian women. Shehad a deep and almost tragical seriousness, masked with a most winninggayety, a light irony, a fine scorn that was rather for herself than forothers. She had thought herself out of all sympathy with her environment;she knew its falsehood, its vacuity, its hopelessness; but shenecessarily remained in it and of it. She was as much at odds in it as Iwas, without my poor privilege of criticism and protest, for, as shesaid, she could not set herself up as a censor of things that she mustkeep on doing as other people did. She could have renounced the world, asthere are ways and means of doing here; but she had no vocation to thereligious life, and she could not feign it without a sense of sacrilege. In fact, this generous and magnanimous and gifted woman was without thatfaith, that trust in God which comes to us from living His law, andwhich I wonder any American can keep. She denied nothing; but she hadlost the strength to affirm anything. She no longer tried to do good fromher heart, though she kept on doing charity in what she said was a meremechanical impulse from the belief of other days, but always with theironical doubt that she was doing harm. Women are nothing by halves, asmen can be, and she was in a despair which no man can realize, for wehave always some if or and which a woman of the like mood casts from herin wild rejection. Where she could not clearly see her way to a truelife, it was the same to her as an impenetrable darkness. 

You will have inferred something of all this from what I have written ofher before, and from words of hers that I have reported to you. Do youthink it so wonderful, then, that in the joy I felt at the hope, thesolace, which my story of our life seemed to give her, she should becomemore and more precious to me? It was not wonderful, either, I think, thatshe should identify me with that hope, that solace, and should sufferherself to lean upon me, in a reliance infinitely sweet and endearing. But what a fantastic dream it now appears!

XXIII

I can hardly tell you just how we came to own our love to each other; butone day I found myself alone with her mother, with the sense thatEveleth had suddenly withdrawn from the room at the knowledge of myapproach. Mrs. Gray was strongly moved by something; but she governedherself, and, after giving me a tremulous hand, bade me sit. 

"Will you excuse me, Mr. Homos, " she began, "if I ask you whether youintend to make America your home after this?"

"Oh no!" I answered, and I tried to keep out of my voice the despair withwhich the notion filled me. I have sometimes had nightmares here, inwhich I thought that I was an American by choice, and I can give you noconception of the rapture of awakening to the fact that I could still goback to Altruria, that I had not cast my lot with this wretched people. "How could I do that?" I faltered; and I was glad to perceive that I hadimparted to her no hint of the misery which I had felt at such a notion. "I mean, by getting naturalized, and becoming a citizen, and taking upyour residence among us. "

"No, " I answered, as quietly as I could, "I had not thought of that. "

"And you still intend to go back to Altruria?"

"I hope so; I ought to have gone back long ago, and if I had not met thefriends I have in this house--" I stopped, for I did not know how Ishould end what I had begun to say. 

"I am glad you think we are your friends, " said the lady, "for we havetried to show ourselves your friends. I feel as if this had given me theright to say something to you that you may think very odd. "

"Say anything to me, my dear lady, " I returned. "I shall not think itunkind, no matter how odd it is. "

"Oh, it's nothing. It's merely that--that when you are not here with us Ilose my grasp on Altruria, and--and I begin to doubt--"

I smiled. "I know! People here have often hinted something of that kindto me. Tell me, Mrs. Gray, do Americans generally take me for animpostor?"

"Oh no!" she answered, fervently. "Everybody that I have heard speak ofyou has the highest regard for you, and believes you perfectly sincere. But--"

"But what?" I entreated. 

"They think you may be mistaken. "

"Then they think I am out of my wits--that I am in an hallucination!"

"No, not that, " she returned. "But it is so very difficult for us toconceive of a whole nation living, as you say you do, on the same termsas one family, and no one trying to get ahead of another, or richer, andhaving neither inferiors nor superiors, but just one dead level ofequality, where there is no distinction except by natural gifts and gooddeeds or beautiful works. It seems impossible--it seems ridiculous. "

"Yes, " I confessed, "I know that it seems so to the Americans. "

"And I must tell you something else, Mr. Homos, and I hope you won't takeit amiss. The first night when you talked about Altruria here, and showedus how you had come, by way of England, and the place where Altruriaought to be on our maps, I looked them over, after you were gone, and Icould make nothing of it. I have often looked at the map since, but Icould never find Altruria; it was no use. "

"Why, " I said, "if you will let me have your atlas--"

She shook her head. "It would be the same again as soon as you wentaway. " I could not conceal my distress, and she went on: "Now, youmustn't mind what I say. I'm nothing but a silly old woman, andEveleth would never forgive me if she could know what I've been saying. "

"Then Mrs. Strange isn't troubled, as you are, concerning me?" I asked, and I confess my anxiety attenuated my voice almost to a whisper. 

"She won't admit that she is. It might be better for her if she would. But Eveleth is very true to her friends, and that--that makes me all themore anxious that she should not deceive herself. "

"Oh, Mrs. Gray!" I could not keep a certain tone of reproach out of mywords. 

She began to weep. "There! I knew I should hurt your feelings. But youmustn't mind what I say. I beg your pardon! I take it all back--"

"Ah, I don't want you to take it back! But what proof shall I give youthat there is such a land as Altruria? If the darkness implies the day, America must imply Altruria. In what way do I seem false, or mad, exceptthat I claim to be the citizen of a country where people love one anotheras the first Christians did?"

"That is just it, " she returned. "Nobody can imagine the firstChristians, and do you think we can imagine anything like them in our ownday?"

"But Mrs. Strange--she imagines us, you say?"

"She thinks she does; but I am afraid she only thinks so, and I know herbetter than you do, Mr. Homos. I know how enthusiastic she always was, and how unhappy she has been since she has lost her hold on faith, andhow eagerly she has caught at the hope you have given her of a higherlife on earth than we live here. If she should ever find out that she waswrong, I don't know what would become of her. You mustn't mind me; youmustn't let me wound you by what I say. "

"You don't wound me, and I only thank you for what you say; but I entreatyou to believe in me. Mrs. Strange has not deceived herself, and I havenot deceived her. Shall I protest to you, by all I hold sacred, that I amreally what I told you I was; that I am not less, and that Altruria isinfinitely more, happier, better, gladder, than any words of mine cansay? Shall I not have the happiness to see your daughter to-day? I hadsomething to say to her--and now I have so much more! If she is in thehouse, won't you send to her? I can make her understand--"

I stopped at a certain expression which I fancied I saw in Mrs. Gray'sface. 

"Mr. Homos, " she began, so very seriously that my heart trembled with avague misgiving, "sometimes I think you had better not see my daughterany more. "

"Not see her any more?" I gasped. 

"Yes; I don't see what good can come of it, and it's all very strange anduncanny. I don't know how to explain it; but, indeed, it isn't anythingpersonal. It's because you are of a state of things so utterly opposed tohuman nature that I don't see how--I am afraid that--"

"But I am not uncanny to _her!_" I entreated. "I am not unnatural, not incredible--"

"Oh no; that is the worst of it. But I have said too much; I have said agreat deal more than I ought. But you must excuse it: I am an old woman. I am not very well, and I suppose it's that that makes me talk so much. "

She rose from her chair, and I, perforce, rose from mine and made amovement towards her. 

"No, no, " she said, "I don't need any help. You must come again soon andsee us, and show that you've forgotten what I've said. " She gave me herhand, and I could not help bending over it and kissing it. She gave alittle, pathetic whimper. "Oh, I _know_ I've said the most dreadfulthings to you. "

"You haven't said anything that takes your friendship from me, Mrs. Gray, and that is what I care for. " My own eyes filled with tears--I do notknow why--and I groped my way from the room. Without seeing any one inthe obscurity of the hallway, where I found myself, I was aware of someone there, by that sort of fine perception which makes us know thepresence of a spirit. 

"You are going?" a whisper said. "Why are you going?" And Eveleth had meby the hand and was drawing me gently into the dim drawing-room thatopened from the place. "I don't know all my mother has been saying toyou. I had to let her say something; she thought she ought. I knew youwould know how to excuse it. "

"Oh, my dearest!" I said, and why I said this I do not know, or how wefound ourselves in each other's arms. 

"What are we doing?" she murmured. 

"You don't believe I am an impostor, an illusion, a visionary?" Ibesought her, straining her closer to my heart. 

"I believe in you, with all my soul!" she answered. 

We sat down, side by side, and talked long. I did not go away the wholeday. With a high disdain of convention, she made me stay. Her mother sentword that she would not be able to come to dinner, and we were alonetogether at table, in an image of what our united lives might be. Wespent the evening in that happy interchange of trivial confidences thatlovers use in symbol of the unutterable raptures that fill them. We werethere in what seemed an infinite present, without a past, without afuture. 

XXIV

Society had to be taken into our confidence, and Mrs. Makely saw to itthat there were no reserves with society. Our engagement was not quitelike that of two young persons, but people found in our character andcircumstance an interest far transcending that felt in the engagement ofthe most romantic lovers. Some note of the fact came to us by accident, as one evening when we stood near a couple and heard them talking. "Itmust be very weird, " the man said; "something like being engaged to amaterialization. " "Yes, " said the girl, "quite the Demon Lover business, I should think. " She glanced round, as people do, in talking, and, atsight of us, she involuntarily put her hand over her mouth. I looked atEveleth; there was nothing expressed in her face but a generous anxietyfor me. But so far as the open attitude of society towards us wasconcerned, nothing could have been more flattering. We could hardly havebeen more asked to meet each other than before; but now there wereentertainments in special recognition of our betrothal, which Evelethsaid could not be altogether refused, though she found the ordeal asirksome as I did. In America, however, you get used to many things. Ido not know why it should have been done, but in the society columns ofseveral of the great newspapers our likenesses were printed, fromphotographs procured I cannot guess how, with descriptions of our personsas to those points of coloring and carriage and stature which thepictures could not give, and with biographies such as could beascertained in her case and imagined in mine. In some of the societypapers, paragraphs of a surprising scurrility appeared, attacking me asan impostor, and aspersing the motives of Eveleth in her former marriage, and treating her as a foolish crank or an audacious flirt. The goodnessof her life, her self-sacrifice and works of benevolence, counted for nomore against these wanton attacks than the absolute inoffensiveness of myown; the writers knew no harm of her, and they knew nothing at all of me;but they devoted us to the execration of their readers simply because weformed apt and ready themes for paragraphs. You may judge of how wildthey were in their aim when some of them denounced me as an Altrurianplutocrat!

We could not escape this storm of notoriety; we had simply to let itspend its fury. When it began, several reporters of both sexes came tointerview me, and questioned me, not only as to all the facts of my pastlife, and all my purposes in the future, but as to my opinion ofhypnotism, eternal punishment, the Ibsen drama, and the tariff reform. Idid my best to answer them seriously, and certainly I answered themcivilly; but it seemed from what they printed that the answers I gave didnot concern them, for they gave others for me. They appeared to me forthe most part kindly and well-meaning young people, though vastlyignorant of vital things. They had apparently visited me with minds madeup, or else their reports were revised by some controlling hand, and aquality injected more in the taste of the special journals theyrepresented than in keeping with the facts. When I realized this, Irefused to see any more reporters, or to answer them, and then theyprinted the questions they had prepared to ask me, in such form that mysilence was made of the same damaging effect as a full confession ofguilt upon the charges. 

The experience was so strange and new to me that it affected me in adegree I was unwilling to let Eveleth imagine. But she divined mydistress, and, when she divined that it was chiefly for her, she setherself to console and reassure me. She told me that this was somethingevery one here expected, in coming willingly or unwillingly before thepublic; and that I must not think of it at all, for certainly no one elsewould think twice of it. This, I found, was really so, for when Iventured to refer tentatively to some of these publications, I found thatpeople, if they had read them, had altogether forgotten them; and thatthey were, with all the glare of print, of far less effect with ouracquaintance than something said under the breath in a corner. I foundthat some of our friends had not known the effigies for ours which theyhad seen in the papers; others made a joke of the whole affair, as theAmericans do with so many affairs, and said that they supposed thepictures were those of people who had been cured by some patent medicine, they looked so strong and handsome. This, I think, was a piece of Mr. Makely's humor in the beginning; but it had a general vogue long afterthe interviews and the illustrations were forgotten. 

XXV

I linger a little upon these trivial matters because I shrink from whatmust follow. They were scarcely blots upon our happiness; rather theywere motes in the sunshine which had no other cloud. It is true that Iwas always somewhat puzzled by a certain manner in Mrs. Gray, whichcertainly was from no unfriendliness for me; she could not have been moreaffectionate to me, after our engagement, if I had been really her ownson; and it was not until after our common kindness had confirmed itselfupon the new footing that I felt this perplexing qualification on it. Ifelt it first one day when I found her alone, and I talked long andfreely to her of Eveleth, and opened to her my whole heart of joy in ourlove. At one point she casually asked me how soon we should expect toreturn from Altruria after our visit; and at first I did not understand. 

"Of course, " she explained, "you will want to see all your old friends, and so will Eveleth, for they will be her friends, too; but if you wantme to go with you, as you say, you must let me know when I shall see NewYork again. "

"Why, " I said, "you will always be with us. "

"Well, then, " she pursued, with a smile, "when shall _you_ comeback?"

"Oh, never!" I answered. "No one ever leaves Altruria, if he can help it, unless he is sent on a mission. "

She looked a little mystified, and I went on: "Of course, I was notofficially authorized to visit the world outside, but I was permitted todo so, to satisfy a curiosity the priors thought useful; but I have nowhad quite enough of it, and I shall never leave home again. "

"You won't come to live in America?"

"God forbid!" said I, and I am afraid I could not hide the horror thatran through me at the thought. "And when you once see our happy country, you could no more be persuaded to return to America than a disembodiedspirit could be persuaded to return to the earth. "

She was silent, and I asked: "But, surely, you understood this, Mrs. Gray?"

"No, " she said, reluctantly. "Does Eveleth?"

"Why, certainly, " I said. "We have talked it over a hundred times. Hasn'tshe--"

"I don't know, " she returned, with a vague trouble in her voice and eyes. "Perhaps I haven't understood her exactly. Perhaps--but I shall be readyto do whatever you and she think best. I am an old woman, you know; and, you know, I was born here, and I should feel the change. "

Her words conveyed to me a delicate reproach; I felt for the first timethat, in my love of my own country, I had not considered her love ofhers. It is said that the Icelanders are homesick when they leave theirworld of lava and snow; and I ought to have remembered that an Americanmight have some such tenderness for his atrocious conditions, if he wereexiled from them forever. I suppose it was the large and wide mind ofEveleth, with its openness to a knowledge and appreciation of betterthings, that had suffered me to forget this. She seemed always so eagerto see Altruria, she imagined it so fully, so lovingly, that I had ceasedto think of her as an alien; she seemed one of us, by birth as well as byaffinity. 

Yet now the words of her mother, and the light they threw upon thesituation, gave me pause. I began to ask myself questions I was impatientto ask Eveleth, so that there should be no longer any shadow of misgivingin my breast; and yet I found myself dreading to ask them, lest by someperverse juggle I had mistaken our perfect sympathy for a perfectunderstanding. 

XXVI

Like all cowards who wait a happy moment for the duty that should not besuffered to wait at all, I was destined to have the affair challenge me, instead of seizing the advantage of it that instant frankness would havegiven me. Shall I confess that I let several days go by, and still hadnot spoken to Eveleth, when, at the end of a long evening--the last longevening we passed together--she said:

"What would you like to have me do with this house while we are gone?"

"Do with this house?" I echoed; and I felt as if I were standing on theedge of an abyss. 

"Yes; shall we let it, or sell it--or what? Or give it away?" I drew alittle breath at this; perhaps we had not misunderstood each other, afterall. She went on: "Of course, I have a peculiar feeling about it, so thatI wouldn't like to get it ready and let it furnished, in the ordinaryway. I would rather lend it to some one, if I could be sure of any onewho would appreciate it; but I can't. Not one. And it's very much thesame when one comes to think about selling it. Yes, I should like to giveit away for some good purpose, if there is any in this wretched state ofthings. What do you say, Aristide?"

She always used the French form of my name, because she said it soundedridiculous in English, for a white man, though I told her that theEnglish was nearer the Greek in sound. 

"By all means, give it away, " I said. "Give it for some public purpose. That will at least be better than any private purpose, and put it somehowin the control of the State, beyond the reach of individuals orcorporations. Why not make it the foundation of a free school for thestudy of the Altrurian polity?"

She laughed at this, as if she thought I must be joking. "It would bedroll, wouldn't it, to have Tammany appointees teaching Altrurianism?"Then she said, after a moment of reflection: "Why not? It needn't be inthe hands of Tammany. It could be in the hands of the United States; Iwill ask my lawyer if it couldn't; and I will endow it with money enoughto support the school handsomely. Aristide, you have hit it!"

I began: "You can give _all_ your money to it, my dear--" But Istopped at the bewildered look she turned on me. 

"All?" she repeated. "But what should we have to live on, then?"

"We shall need no money to live on in Altruria, " I answered. 

"Oh, in Altruria! But when we come back to New York?"

It was an agonizing moment, and I felt that shutting of the heart whichblinds the eyes and makes the brain reel. "Eveleth, " I gasped, "did youexpect to return to New York?"

"Why, certainly!" she cried. "Not at once, of course. But after you hadseen your friends, and made a good, long visit--Why, surely, Aristide, you don't understand that I--You didn't mean to _live_ in Altruria?"

"Ah!" I answered. "Where else could I live? Did you think for an instantthat I could live in such a land as this?" I saw that she was hurt, and Ihastened to say: "I know that it is the best part of the world outside ofAltruria, but, oh, my dear, you cannot imagine how horrible the notion ofliving here seems to me. Forgive me. I am going from bad to worse. Idon't mean to wound you. After all, it is your country, and you must loveit. But, indeed, I could not think of living here. I could not take theburden of its wilful misery on my soul. I must live in Altruria, and you, when you have once seen my country, _our_ country, will neverconsent to live in any other. "

"Yes, " she said, "I know it must be very beautiful; but I hadn'tsupposed--and yet I ought--"

"No, dearest, no! It was I who was to blame, for not being clearer fromthe first. But that is the way with us. We can't imagine any peoplewilling to live anywhere else when once they have seen Altruria; and Ihave told you so much of it, and we have talked of it together so often, that I must have forgotten you had not actually known it. But listen, Eveleth. We will agree to this: After we have been a year in Altruria, if you wish to return to America I will come back and live with youhere. "

"No, indeed!" she answered, generously. "If you are to be my husband, "and here she began with the solemn words of the Bible, so beautiful intheir quaint English, "'whither thou goest, I will go, and I will notreturn from following after thee. Thy country shall be my country, andthy God my God. "

I caught her to my heart, in a rapture of tenderness, and the eveningthat had begun for us so forbiddingly ended in a happiness such as noteven our love had known before. I insisted upon the conditions I hadmade, as to our future home, and she agreed to them gayly at last, as asort of reparation which I might make my conscience, if I liked, fortearing her from a country which she had willingly lived out of for thefar greater part of the last five years. 

But when we met again I could see that she had been thinking seriously. 

"I won't give the house absolutely away, " she said. "I will keep the deedof it myself, but I will establish that sort of school of Altruriandoctrine in it, and I will endow it, and when we come back here, for ourexperimental sojourn, after we've been in Altruria a year, we'll take upour quarters in it--I won't give the whole house to the school--and wewill lecture on the later phases of Altrurian life to the pupils. Howwill that do?"

She put her arms around my neck, and I said that it would do admirably;but I had a certain sinking of the heart, for I saw how hard it was evenfor Eveleth to part with her property. 

"I'll endow it, " she went on, "and I'll leave the rest of my money atinterest here; unless you think that some Altrurian securities--"

"No; there are no such things!" I cried. 

"That was what I thought, " she returned; "and as it will cost us nothingwhile we are in Altruria, the interest will be something very handsome bythe time we get back, even in United States bonds. "

"Something handsome!" I cried. "But, Eveleth, haven't I heard you sayyourself that the growth of interest from dead money was like--"

"Oh yes; that!" she returned. "But you know you have to take it. Youcan't let the money lie idle: that would be ridiculous; and then, withthe good purpose we have in view, it is our _duty_ to take theinterest. How should we keep up the school, and pay the teachers, andeverything?"

I saw that she had forgotten the great sum of the principal, or that, through lifelong training and association, it was so sacred to her thatshe did not even dream of touching it. I was silent, and she thought thatI was persuaded. 

"You are perfectly right in theory, dear, and I feel just as you do aboutsuch things; I'm sure I've suffered enough from them; but if we didn'ttake interest for your money, what should we have to live on?"

"Not _my_ money, Eveleth!" I entreated. "Don't say _my_ money!"

"But whatever is mine is yours, " she returned, with a wounded air. 

"Not your money; but I hope you will soon have none. We should need nomoney to live on in Altruria. Our share of the daily work of all willamply suffice for our daily bread and shelter. "

"In Altruria, yes. But how about America? And you have promised to comeback here in a year, you know. Ladies and gentlemen can't share in thedaily toil here, even if they could get the toil, and, where there are somany out of work, it isn't probable they could. "

She dropped upon my knee as she spoke, laughing, and put her hand undermy chin, to lift my fallen face. 

"Now you mustn't be a goose, Aristide, even if you _are_ an angel!Now listen. You _know_, don't you, that I hate money just as badlyas you?"

"You have made me think so, Eveleth, " I answered. 

"I hate it and loathe it. I think it's the source of all the sin andmisery in the world; but you can't get rid of it at a blow. For if yougave it away you might do more harm than good with it. "

"You could destroy it, " I said. 

"Not unless you were a crank, " she returned. "And that brings me just tothe point. I know that I'm doing a very queer thing to get married, whenwe know so little, really, about you, " and she accented this confessionwith a laugh that was also a kiss. "But I want to show people that we arejust as practical as anybody; and if they can know that I have left mymoney in United States bonds, they'll respect us, no matter what I dowith the interest. Don't you see? We can come back, and preach and teachAltrurianism, and as long as we pay our way nobody will have a rightto say a word. Why, Tolstoy himself doesn't destroy his money, though hewants other people to do it. His wife keeps it, and supports the family. You _have_ to do it. "

"He doesn't do it willingly. "

"No. And _we_ won't. And after a while--after we've got back, andcompared Altruria and America from practical experience, if we decide togo and live there altogether, I will let you do what you please withthe hateful money. I suppose we couldn't take it there with us?"

"No more than you could take it to heaven with you, " I answered, solemnly; but she would not let me be altogether serious about it. 

"Well, in either case we could get on without it, though we certainlycould not get on without it here. Why, Aristide, it is essential to theinfluence we shall try to exert for Altrurianism; for if we came backhere and preached the true life without any money to back us, no onewould pay any attention to us. But if we have a good house waiting forus, and are able to entertain nicely, we can attract the best people, and--and--really do some good. "

XXVII

I rose in a distress which I could not hide. "Oh, Eveleth, Eveleth!" Icried. "You are like all the rest, poor child! You are the creature ofyour environment, as we all are. You cannot escape what you have been. It may be that I was wrong to wish or expect you to cast your lot with mein Altruria, at once and forever. It may be that it is my duty to returnhere with you after a time, not only to let you see that Altruria isbest, but to end my days in this unhappy land, preaching and teachingAltrurianism; but we must not come as prophets to the comfortable people, and entertain nicely. If we are to renew the evangel, it must be in thelife and the spirit of the First Altrurian: we must come poor to thepoor; we must not try to win any one, save through his heart andconscience; we must be as simple and humble as the least of those thatChrist bade follow Him. Eveleth, perhaps you have made a mistake. I loveyou too much to wish you to suffer even for your good. Yes, I am so weakas that. I did not think that this would be the sacrifice for you that itseems, and I will not ask it of you. I am sorry that we have notunderstood each other, as I supposed we had. I could never become anAmerican; perhaps you could never become an Altrurian. Think of it, dearest. Think well of it, before you take the step which you cannotrecede from. I hold you to no promise; I love you so dearly that I cannotlet you hold yourself. But you must choose between me and your money--no, not me--but between love and your money. You cannot keep both. "

She had stood listening to me; now she cast herself on my heart andstopped my words with an impassioned kiss. "Then there is no choice forme. My choice is made, once for all. " She set her hands against my breastand pushed me from her. "Go now; but come again to-morrow. I want tothink it all over again. Not that I have any doubt, but because you wishit--you wish it, don't you?--and because I will not let you ever think Iacted upon an impulse, and that I regretted it. "

"That is right, Eveleth. That is like _you_" I said, and I took herinto my arms for good-night. 

The next day I came for her decision, or rather for her confirmation ofit. The man who opened the door to me met me with a look of concern andembarrassment. He said Mrs. Strange was not at all well, and had told himhe was to give me the letter he handed me. I asked, in taking it, if Icould see Mrs. Gray, and he answered that Mrs. Gray had not been downyet, but he would go and see. I was impatient to read my letter, and Imade I know not what vague reply, and I found myself, I know not how, onthe pavement, with the letter open in my hand. It began abruptly withoutdate or address:

_"You will believe that I have not slept, when you read this. 

"I have thought it all over again, as you wished, and it is all overbetween us. 

"I am what you said, the creature of my environment. I cannot detachmyself from it; I cannot escape from what I have been. 

"I am writing this with a strange coldness, like the chill of death, inmy very soul. I do not ask you to forgive me; I have your forgivenessalready. Do not forget me; that is what I ask. Remember me as theunhappy woman who was not equal to her chance when heaven was opened toher, who could not choose the best when the best came to her. 

"There is no use writing; if I kept on forever, it would always be thesame cry of shame, of love. 

"Eveleth Strange. "_

I reeled as I read the lines. The street seemed to weave itself into acircle around me. But I knew that I was not dreaming, that this was nodelirium of my sleep. 

It was three days ago, and I have not tried to see her again. I havewritten her a line, to say that I shall not forget her, and to take theblame upon myself. I expected the impossible of her. 

I have yet two days before me until the steamer sails; we were to havesailed together, and now I shall sail alone. 

I will try to leave it all behind me forever; but while I linger outthese last long hours here I must think and I must doubt. 

Was she, then, the _poseuse_ that they said? Had she really no hearin our love? Was it only a pretty drama she was playing, and were thosegenerous motives, those lofty principles which seemed to actuate her, thepoetical qualities of the play, the graces of her pose? I cannot believeit. I believe that she was truly what she seemed, for she had been thateven before she met me. I believe that she was pure and lofty in soul asshe appeared; but that her life was warped to such a form by the falseconditions of this sad world that, when she came to look at herselfagain, after she had been confronted with the sacrifice before her, shefeared that she could not make it without in a manner ceasing to be. 

She--

But I shall soon see you again; and, until then, farewell. 

END OF PART I

PART SECOND

I

I could hardly have believed, my dear Dorothea, that I should be so latein writing to you from Altruria, but you can easily believe that I amthoroughly ashamed of myself for my neglect. It is not for want ofthinking of you, or talking of you, that I have seemed so much moreungrateful than I am. My husband and I seldom have any serious talk whichdoesn't somehow come round to you. He admires you and likes you as muchas I do, and he does his best, poor man, to understand you; but his notunderstanding you is only a part of his general failure to understand howany American can be kind and good in conditions which he considers soabominable as those of the capitalistic world. He is not nearly so severeon us as he used to be at times when he was among us. When the otherAltrurians are discussing us he often puts in a reason for us againsttheir logic; and I think he has really forgotten, a good deal, how badthings are with us, or else finds his own memory of them incredible. Buthis experience of the world outside his own country has taught him how totemper the passion of the Altrurians for justice with a tolerance of theunjust; and when they bring him to book on his own report of us he triesto explain us away, and show how we are not so bad as we ought to be. 

For weeks after we came to Altruria I was so unhistorically blest that ifI had been disposed to give you a full account of myself I should havehad no events to hang the narrative on. Life here is so subjective (ifyou don't know what that is, you poor dear, you must get Mr. Twelvemoughto explain) that there is usually nothing like news in it, and I alwaysfeel that the difference between Altruria and America is so immense thatit is altogether beyond me to describe it. But now we have had someoccurrences recently, quite in the American sense, and these havefurnished me with an incentive as well as opportunity to send you aletter. Do you remember how, one evening after dinner, in New York, youand I besieged my husband and tried to make him tell us why Altruria wasso isolated from the rest of the world, and why such a great andenlightened continent should keep itself apart? I see still his look ofhorror when Mr. Makely suggested that the United States should send anexpedition and "open" Altruria, as Commodore Perry "opened" Japan in1850, and try to enter into commercial relations with it. The best hecould do was to say what always seemed so incredible, and keep onassuring us that Altruria wished for no sort of public relations withEurope or America, but was very willing to depend for an indefinite timefor its communication with those regions on vessels putting into itsports from stress of one kind or other, or castaway on its coasts. Theyare mostly trading-ships or whalers, and they come a great deal oftenerthan you suppose; you do not hear of them afterwards, because their crewsare poor, ignorant people, whose stories of their adventures are alwaysdistrusted, and who know they would be laughed at if they told thestories they could of a country like Altruria. My husband himself tookone of their vessels on her home voyage when he came to us, catching theAustralasian steamer at New Zealand; and now I am writing you by the samesort of opportunity. I shall have time enough to write you a longerletter than you will care to read; the ship does not sail for a week yet, because it is so hard to get her crew together. 

Now that I have actually made a beginning, my mind goes back so stronglyto that terrible night when I came to you after Aristides (I always usethe English form of his name now) left New York that I seem to be livingthe tragedy over again, and this happiness of mine here is like a dreamwhich I cannot trust. It was not all tragedy, though, and I remember howfunny Mr. Makely was, trying to keep his face straight when the wholetruth had to come out, and I confessed that I had expected, withoutreally knowing it myself, that Aristides would disregard that wicked noteI had written him and come and make me marry him, not against my will, but against my word. Of course I didn't put it in just that way, but in away to let you both guess it. The first glimmering of hope that I had waswhen Mr. Makely said, "Then, when a woman tells a man that all is overbetween them forever, she means that she would like to discuss thebusiness with him?" I was old enough to be ashamed, but it seemed to methat you and I had gone back in that awful moment and were two girlstogether, just as we used to be at school. I was proud of the way youstood up for me, because I thought that if you could tolerate me afterwhat I had confessed I could not be quite a fool. I knew that I deservedat least some pity, and though I laughed with Mr. Makely, I was glad ofyour indignation with him, and of your faith in Aristides. When it cameto the question of what I should do, I don't know which of you I owed themost to. It was a kind of comfort to have Mr. Makely acknowledge thatthough he regarded Aristides as a myth, still he believed that he was athoroughly _good_ myth, and couldn't tell a lie if he wanted to; and Iloved you, and shall love you more than any one else but him, for sayingthat Aristides was the most real man you had ever met, and that ifeverything he said was untrue you would trust him to the end of theworld. 

But, Dolly, it wasn't all comedy, any more than it was all tragedy, andwhen you and I had laughed and cried ourselves to the point where therewas nothing for me to do but to take the next boat for Liverpool, and Mr. Makely had agreed to look after the tickets and cable Aristides that Iwas coming, there was still my poor, dear mother to deal with. There isno use trying to conceal from you that she was always opposed to myhusband. She thought there was something uncanny about him, though shefelt as we did that there was nothing uncanny _in_ him; but a manwho pretended to come from a country where there was no riches and nopoverty could not be trusted with any woman's happiness; and though shecould not help loving him, she thought I ought to tear him out of myheart, and if I could not do that I ought to have myself shut up in anasylum. We had a dreadful time when I told her what I had decided to do, and I was almost frantic. At last, when she saw that I was determined tofollow him, she yielded, not because she was convinced, but because shecould not give me up; I wouldn't have let her if she could. I believethat the only thing which reconciled her was that you and Mr. Makelybelieved in him, and thought I had better do what I wanted to, if nothingcould keep me from it. I shall never, never forget Mr. Makely's goodnessin coming to talk with her, and how skillfully he managed, withoutcommitting himself to Altruria, to declare his faith in my Altrurian. Even then she was troubled about what she thought the indelicacy of mybehavior in following him across the sea, and she had all sorts of doubtsas to how he would receive me when we met in Liverpool. It wasn't veryreasonable of me to say that if he cast me off I should still love himmore than any other human being, and his censure would be more preciousto me than the praise of the rest of the world. 

I suppose I hardly knew what I was saying, but when once I had yielded tomy love for him there was nothing else in life. I could not have left mymother behind, but in her opposition to me she seemed like an enemy, andI should somehow have _forced_ her to go if she had not yielded. When shedid yield, she yielded with her whole heart and soul, and so far fromhindering me in my preparations for the voyage, I do not believe I couldhave got off without her. She thought about everything, and it was heridea to leave my business affairs entirely in Mr. Makely's hands, andto trust the future for the final disposition of my property. I did notcare for it myself; I hated it, because it was that which had stoodbetween me and Aristides; but she foresaw that if by any wildimpossibility he should reject me when we met, I should need it for thelife I must go back to in New York. She behaved like a martyr as well asa heroine, for till we reached Altruria she was a continual sacrifice tome. She stubbornly doubted the whole affair, but now I must do her thejustice to say that she has been convinced by the fact. The best she cansay of it is that it is like the world of her girlhood; and she has goneback to the simple life here from the artificial life in New York, withthe joy of a child. She works the whole day, and she would play if shehad ever learned how. She is a better Altrurian than I am; if there couldbe a bigoted Altrurian my mother would be one. 

II

I sent you a short letter from Liverpool, saying that by theunprecedented delays of the _Urania_, which I had taken because it wasthe swiftest boat of the Neptune line, we had failed to pass the old, ten-day, single-screw Galaxy liner which Aristides had sailed in. I hadonly time for a word to you; but a million words could not have told theagonies I suffered, and when I overtook him on board the Orient Pacificsteamer at Plymouth, where she touched, I could just scribble off thecable sent Mr. Makely before our steamer put off again. I am afraid youdid not find my cable very expressive, but I was glad that I did not tryto say more, for if I had tried I should simply have gibbered, at ashilling a gibber. I expected to make amends by a whole volume ofletters, and I did post a dozen under one cover from Colombo. If theynever reached you I am very sorry, for now it is impossible to take upthe threads of that time and weave them into any sort of connectedpattern. You will have to let me off with saying that Aristides waseverything that I believed he would be and was never really afraid hemight not be. From the moment we caught sight of each other at Plymouth, he at the rail of the steamer and I on the deck of the tender, we were ascompletely one as we are now. I never could tell how I got aboard to him;whether he came down and brought me, or whether I was simply rapt throughthe air to his side. It would have been embarrassing if we had nottreated the situation frankly; but such odd things happen among theEnglish going out to their different colonies that our marriage, by amissionary returning to his station, was not even a nine days' wonderwith our fellow-passengers. 

We were a good deal more than nine days on the steamer before we couldget a vessel that would take us on to Altruria; but we overhauled a shipgoing there for provisions at last, and we were all put off on her, bagand baggage, with three cheers from the friends we were leaving; I thinkthey thought we were going to some of the British islands that thePacific is full of. I had been thankful from the first that I had notbrought a maid, knowing the Altrurian prejudice against hireling service, but I never was so glad as I was when we got aboard that vessel, for whenthe captain's wife, who was with him, found that I had no one to lookafter me, she looked after me herself, just for the fun of it, shesaid; but _I_ knew it was the love of it. It was a sort of generaltrading-ship, stopping at the different islands in the South Seas, andhad been a year out from home, where the kind woman had left her littleones; she cried over their photographs to me. Her husband had been inAltruria before, and he and Aristides were old acquaintances and met likebrothers; some of the crew knew him, too, and the captain relaxeddiscipline so far as to let us shake hands with the second-mate as themen's representative. 

I needn't dwell on the incidents of our home-coming--for that was what itseemed for my mother and me as well as for my husband--but I must giveyou one detail of our reception, for I still think it almost theprettiest thing that has happened to us among the millions of prettythings. Aristides had written home of our engagement, and he was expectedwith his American wife; and before we came to anchor the captain ran upthe Emissary's signal, which my husband gave him, and then three boatsleft the shore and pulled rapidly out to us. As they came nearer I sawthe first Altrurian costumes in the lovely colors that the people wearhere, and that make a group of them look like a flower-bed; and then Isaw that the boats were banked with flowers along the gunwales from stemto stern, and that they were each not _manned, _ but _girled_ by sixrowers, who pulled as true a stroke as I ever saw in our boat-races. Whenthey caught sight of us, leaning over the side, and Aristides lifted hishat and waved it to them, they all stood their oars upright, and burstinto a kind of welcome song: I had been dreading one of those stupid, banging salutes of ten or twenty guns, and you can imagine what a reliefit was. They were great, splendid creatures, as tall as our millionaires'tallest daughters, and as strong-looking as any of our college-girlathletes; and when we got down over the ship's side, and Aristides said afew words of introduction for my mother and me, as we stepped into thelargest of the boats, I thought they would crush me, catching me in theirstrong, brown arms, and kissing me on each cheek; they never kiss on themouth in Altruria. The girls in the other boats kissed their hands tomother and me, and shouted to Aristides, and then, when our boat set outfor the shore, they got on each side of us and sang song after song asthey pulled even stroke with our crew. Half-way, we met three otherboats, really _manned, _ these ones, and going out to get our baggage, andthen you ought to have heard the shouting and laughing, that ended inmore singing, when the young fellows' voices mixed with the girls, tillthey were lost in the welcome that came off to us from the crowded quay, where I should have thought half Altruria had gathered to receive us. 

I was afraid it was going to be too much for my mother, but she stood itbravely; and almost at a glance people began to take her intoconsideration, and she was delivered over to two young married ladies, who saw that she was made comfortable, the first of any, in the prettyRegionic guest-house where they put us. 

I wish I could give you a notion of that guest-house, with its cool, quiet rooms, and its lawned and gardened enclosure, and a little fountainpurring away among the flowers! But what astonished me was that therewere no sort of carriages, or wheeled conveyances, which, after ourescort from the ship, I thought might very well have met the returningEmissary and his wife. They made my mother get into a litter, with softcushions and with lilac curtains blowing round it, and six girls carriedher up to the house; but they seemed not to imagine my not walking, and, in fact, I could hardly have imagined it myself, after the first momentof queerness. That walk was full of such rich experience for every one ofthe senses that I would not have missed a step of it; but as soon as Icould get Aristides alone I asked him about horses, and he said thatthough horses were still used in farm work, not a horse was allowed inany city or village of Altruria, because of their filthiness. As forpublic vehicles, they used to have electric trolleys; in the year that hehad been absent they had substituted electric motors; but these were notrunning, because it was a holiday on which we had happened to arrive. 

There was another incident of my first day which I think will amuse you, knowing how I have always shrunk from any sort of public appearances. When Aristides went to make his report to the people assembled in a sortof convention, I had to go too, and take part in the proceedings; forwomen are on an entire equality with the men here, and people would beshocked if husband and wife were separated in their public life. They didnot spare me a single thing. Where Aristides was not very clear, orrather not full enough, in describing America, I was called on tosupplement, and I had to make several speeches. Of course, as I spoke inEnglish, he had to put it into Altrurian for me, and it made the greatestexcitement. The Altrurians are very lively people, and as full of thedesire to hear some new things as Paul said the men of Athens were. Attimes they were in a perfect gale of laughter at what we told them aboutAmerica. Afterwards some of the women confessed to me that they liked tohear us speaking English together; it sounded like the whistling of birdsor the shrilling of locusts. But they were perfectly kind, and thoughthey laughed it was clear that they laughed at what we were saying, andnever at us, or at least never at _me_. 

Of course there was the greatest curiosity to know what Aristides'wife looked like, as well as sounded like; he had written out aboutour engagement before I broke it; and my clothes were of as muchinterest As myself, or more. You know how I had purposely left my latestParis things behind, so as to come as simply as possible to the simplelife of Altruria, but still with my big leg-of-mutton sleeves, and mypicture-hat, and my pinched waist, I felt perfectly grotesque, and I haveno doubt I looked it. They had never seen a lady from the capitalisticworld before, but only now and then a whaling-captain's wife who had comeashore; and I knew they were burning to examine my smart clothes down tothe last button and bit of braid. I had on the short skirts of last year, and I could feel ten thousand eyes fastened on my high-heeled boots, which you know _I_ never went to extremes in. I confess my face burneda little, to realize what a scarecrow I must look, when I glanced roundat those Altrurian women, whose pretty, classic fashions made the wholeplace like a field of lilacs and irises, and knew that they were ascomfortable as they were beautiful. Do you remember some of thedescriptions of the undergraduate maidens in the "Princess"--I know youhad it at school--where they are sitting in the palace halls together?The effect was something like that. 

You may be sure that I got out of my things as soon as I could borrow anAltrurian costume, and now my Paris confections are already hung up formonuments, as Richard III. Says, in the Capitalistic Museum, where peoplefrom the outlying Regions may come and study them as object-lessons inwhat not to wear. (You remember what you said Aristides told you, when hespoke that day at the mountains, about the Regions that Altruria isdivided into? This is the Maritime Region, and the city where we areliving for the present is the capital. ) You may think this was ratherhard on me, and at first it did seem pretty intimate, having my things ina long glass case, and it gave me a shock to see them, as if it had beenmy ghost, whenever I passed them. But the fact is I was more ashamed thanhurt--they were so ugly and stupid and useless. I could have borne myParis dress and my picture-hat if it had not been for those ridiculoushigh-heeled, pointed-toe shoes, which the Curatress had stood at thebottom of the skirts. They looked the most frantic things you canimagine, and the mere sight of them made my poor feet _ache_ in thebeautiful sandals I am wearing now; when once you have put on sandals yousay good-bye and good-riddance to shoes. In a single month my feet havegrown almost a tenth as large again as they were, and my friends hereencourage me to believe that they will yet measure nearly the classicsize, though, as you know, I am not in my first youth and can't expectthem to do miracles. 

 * * * * *

I had to leave off abruptly at the last page because Aristides had comein with a piece of news that took my mind off everything else. I amafraid you are not going to get this letter even at the late date I hadset for its reaching you, my dear. It seems that there has been a sort ofmutiny among the crew of our trader, which was to sail next week, and nowthere is no telling when she will sail. Ever since she came the men havebeen allowed their liberty, as they call it, by watches, but the lastwatch came ashore this week before another watch had returned to theship, and now not one of the sailors will go back. They had beenexploring the country by turns, at their leisure, it seems, and theirexcuse is that they like Altruria better than America, which they saythey wish never to see again. 

You know (though I didn't, till Aristides explained to me) that in anyEuropean country the captain in such a case would go to his consul, andthe consul would go to the police, and the police would run the men downand send them back to the ship in irons as deserters, or put them in jailtill the captain was ready to sail, and then deliver them up to him. Butit seems that there is no law in Altruria to do anything of the kind; theonly law here that would touch the case is one which obliges any citizento appear and answer the complaint of any other citizen before theJusticiary Assembly. A citizen cannot be imprisoned for anything but therarest offence, like killing a person in a fit of passion; and as toseizing upon men who are guilty of nothing worse than wanting to be leftto the pursuit of happiness, as all the Altrurians are, there is nostatute and no usage for it. Aristides says that the only thing which canbe done is to ask the captain and the men to come to the Assembly andeach state his case. The Altrurians are not anxious to have the men stay, not merely because they are coarse, rude, or vicious, but because theythink they ought to go home and tell the Americans what they have seenand heard here, and try and get them to found an Altrurian Commonwealthof their own. Still they will not compel them to go, and the magistratesdo not wish to rouse any sort of sentiment against them. They feel thatthe men are standing on their natural rights, which they could notabdicate if they would. I know this will appear perfectly ridiculousto Mr. Makely, and I confess myself that there seems something binding ina contract which ought to act on the men's consciences, at least. 

III

Well, my dear Dorothea, the hearing before the Assembly is over, and ithas left us just where it found us, as far as the departure of our traderis concerned. 

How I wish you could have been there! The hearing lasted three days, andI would not have missed a minute of it. As it was, I did not miss asyllable, and it was so deeply printed on my mind that I believe Icould repeat it word for word if I had to. But, in the first place, Imust try and realize the scene to you. I was once summoned as a witnessin one of our courts, you remember, and I have never forgotten the horrorof it: the hot, dirty room, with its foul air, the brutal spectators, thepolicemen stationed among them to keep them in order, the lawyers withthe plaintiff and defendant seated all at one table, the uncouthabruptness of the clerks and janitors, or whatever, the undignifiedmagistrate, who looked as if his lunch had made him drowsy, and whoseemed half asleep, as he slouched in his arm-chair behind his desk. Instead of such a setting as this, you must imagine a vast marbleamphitheatre, larger than the Metropolitan Opera, by three or four times, all the gradines overflowing (that is the word for the "liquefaction ofthe clothes" which poured over them), and looking like those Bermudanwaters where the colors of the rainbow seem dropped around the coast. Onthe platform, or stage, sat the Presidents of the Assembly, and on a tierof seats behind and above them, the national Magistrates, who, as this isthe capital of the republic for the time being, had decided to be presentat the hearing, because they thought the case so very important. In thehollow space, just below (like that where you remember the Chorus stoodin that Greek play which we saw at Harvard ages ago), were the captainand the first-mate on one hand, and the seamen on the other; thesecond-mate, our particular friend, was not there because he never goesashore anywhere, and had chosen to remain with the black cook in chargeof the ship. The captain's wife would rather have stayed with them, but Ipersuaded her to come to us for the days of the hearing, because thecaptain had somehow thought we were opposed to him, and because I thoughtshe ought to be there to encourage him by her presence. She sat next tome, in a hat which I wish you could have seen, Dolly, and a dress whichwould have set your teeth on edge; but inside of them I knew she was oneof the best souls in the world, and I loved her the more for being thesight she was among those wonderful Altrurian women. 

The weather was perfect, as it nearly always is at this time ofyear--warm, yet fresh, with a sky of that "bleu impossible" of theRiviera on the clearest day. Some people had parasols, but they put themdown as soon as the hearing began, and everybody could see perfectly. Youwould have thought they could not hear so well, but a sort of immensesounding-plane was curved behind the stage, so that not a word of thetestimony on either side was lost to me in English. The Altruriantranslation was given the second day of the hearing through a megaphone, as different in tone from the thing that the man in the Grand CentralStation bellows the trains through as the _vox-humana_ stop of an organis different from the fog-horn of a light-house. The captain's wife wasbashful, in her odd American dress, but we had got seats near thetribune, rather out of sight, and there was nothing to hinder ourhearing, like the _frou-frou_ of stiff silks or starched skirts (whichI am afraid we poor things in America like to make when we move) from thesoft, filmy tissues that the Altrurian women wear; but I must confessthat there was a good deal of whispering while the captain and the menwere telling their stories. But, no one except the interpreters, who weretaking their testimony down in short-hand, to be translated intoAltrurian and read at the subsequent hearing, could understand what theywere saying, and so nobody was disturbed by the murmurs. The whisperingwas mostly near me, where I sat with the captain's wife, for everybody Iknew got as close as they could and studied my face when they thoughtanything important or significant had been said. They are very quick atreading faces here; in fact, a great deal of the conversation is carriedon in that way, or with the visible speech; and my Altrurian friends knewalmost as well as I did when the speakers came to an interesting point. It was rather embarrassing for me, though, with the poor captain's wifeat my side, to tell them, in my broken Altrurian, what the men wereaccusing the captain of. 

I talk of the men, but it was really only one of them who at first, bytheir common consent, spoke for the rest. He was a middle-aged Yankee, and almost the only born American among them, for you know that oursailors, nowadays, are of every nationality under the sun--Portuguese, Norwegians, Greeks, Italians, Kanucks, and Kanakas, and even Cape CodIndians. He said he guessed his story was the story of most sailors, andhe had followed the sea his whole life. His story was dreadful, and Itried to persuade the captain's wife not to come to the hearing the nextday, when it was to be read in Altrurian; but she would come. I wasafraid she would be overwhelmed by the public compassion, and would notknow what to do; for when something awful that the sailor had saidagainst the captain was translated the women, all about us cooed theirsympathy with her, and pressed her hand if they could, or patted her onthe shoulder, to show how much they pitied her. In Altruria they pity thefriends of those who have done wrong, and sometimes even the wrong-doersthemselves; and it is quite a luxury, for there is so little wrong-doinghere: I tell them that in America they would have as much pitying to doas they could possibly ask. After the hearing that day my friends, whowere of a good many different Refectories, as we call them here, wantedher to go and lunch with them; but I got her quietly home with me, andafter she had had something to eat I made her lie down awhile. 

You won't care to have me go fully into the affair. The sailors'spokesman told how he had been born on a farm, where he had shared thefamily drudgery and poverty till he grew old enough to run away. Hemeant to go to sea, but he went first to a factory town and worked threeor four years in the mills. He never went back to the farm, but he sent alittle money now and then to his mother; and he stayed on till he gotinto trouble. He did not say just what kind of trouble, but I fancied itwas some sort of love-trouble; he blamed himself for it; and when he leftthat town to get away from the thought of it, as much as anything, andwent to work in another town, he took to drink; then, once, in a drunkenspree, he found himself in New York without knowing how. But it was inwhat he called a sailors' boarding-house, and one morning, after he hadbeen drinking overnight "with a very pleasant gentleman, " he foundhimself in the forecastle of a ship bound for Holland, and when the matecame and cursed him up and cursed him out he found himself in theforetop. I give it partly in his own language, because I cannot help it;and I only wish I could give it wholly in his language; it was so graphicand so full of queer Yankee humor. From that time on, he said, he hadfollowed the sea; and at sea he was always a good temperance man, butAltruria was the only place he had ever kept sober ashore. He guessedthat was partly because there was nothing to drink but unfermentedgrape-juice, and partly because there was nobody to drink with; anyhow, he had not had a drop here. Everywhere else, as soon as he left his ship, he made for a sailors' boarding-house, and then he did not know much tillhe found himself aboard ship and bound for somewhere that he did not knowof. He was always, he said, a stolen man, as much as a negro captured onthe west coast of Africa and sold to a slaver; and, he said, it was aslave's life he led between drinks, whether it was a long time or short. He said he would ask his mates if it was very different with them, andwhen he turned to them they all shouted back, in their various kinds offoreign accents, No, it was just the same with them, every one. Then hesaid that was how he came to ship on our captain's vessel, and thoughthey could not all say the same, they nodded confirmation as far as hewas concerned. 

The captain looked sheepish enough at this, but he looked sorrowful, too, as if he could have wished it had been different, and he asked the man ifhe had been abused since he came on board. Well, the man said, not unlessyou called tainted salt-horse and weevilly biscuit abuse; and then thecaptain sat down again, and I could feel his poor wife shrinking besideme. The man said that he was comparatively well off on the captain'sship, and the life was not half such a dog's life as he had led on othervessels; but it was such that when he got ashore here in Altruria, andsaw how _white_ people lived, people that _used_ each other white, hemade up his mind that he would never go hack to any ship alive. He hateda ship so much that if he could go home to America as a first-classpassenger on a Cunard liner, John D. Rockefeller would not have moneyenough to hire him to do it. He was going to stay in Altruria till hedied, if they would let him, and he guessed they would, if what he hadheard about them was true. He just wanted, he said, while we were aboutit, to have a few of his mates tell their experience, not so much onboard the _Little Sally, but on shore, and since they could remember;and one after another did get up and tell their miserable stories. Theywere like the stories you sometimes read in your paper over your coffee, or that you can hear any time you go into the congested districts in NewYork; but I assure you, my dear, they seemed to me perfectly incrediblehere, though I had known hundreds of such stories at home. As I realizedtheir facts I forgot where I was; I felt that I was back again in thathorror, where it sometimes seemed to me I had no right to be fed orclothed or warm or clean in the midst of the hunger and cold andnakedness and dirt, and where I could only reconcile myself to my comfortbecause I knew my discomfort would not help others' misery. 

I can hardly tell how, but even the first day a sense of somethingterrible spread through that multitude of people, to whom the wordsthemselves were mere empty sounds. The captain sat through it, with hishead drooping, till his face was out of sight, and the tears ran silentlydown his wife's cheeks; and the women round me were somehow awed intosilence. When the men ended, and there seemed to be no one else to sayanything on that side, the captain jumped to his feet, with a sort offerocious energy, and shouted out, "Are you all through, men?" and theirspokesman answered, "Ay, ay, sir!" and then the captain flung back hisgrizzled hair and shook his fist towards the sailors. "And do you think I_wanted_ to do it? Do you think I _liked_ to do it? Do you think that ifI hadn't been _afraid_ my whole life long I would have had the _heart_ tolead you the dog's life I know I've led you? I've been as poor as thepoorest of you, and as low down as the lowest; I was born in the townpoor-house, and I've been so afraid of the poor-house all my days that Ihain't had, as you may say, a minute's peace. Ask my wife, there, whatsort of a man I _am_, and whether I'm the man, _really_ the man that'sbeen hard and mean to you the way I know I been. It was because I was_afraid_, and because a coward is always hard and mean. I been afraid, ever since I could remember anything, of coming to want, and I waswilling to see other men suffer so I could make sure that me and mineshouldn't suffer. That's the way we do at home, ain't it? That's in theday's work, ain't it? That's playing the game, ain't it, for everybody?You can't say it ain't. " He stopped, and the men's spokesman called back, "Ay, ay, sir, " as he had done before, and as I had often heard the men dowhen given an order on the ship. 

The captain gave a kind of sobbing laugh, and went on in a lower tone. "Well, I know you ain't going back. I guess I didn't expect it much fromthe start, and I guess I'm not surprised. " Then he lifted his head andshouted, "And do you suppose _I_ want to go back? Don't you suppose _I_would like to spend the rest of my days, too, among _white_ people, people that _use_ each other white, as you say, and where there ain'tany want or, what's worse, _fear_ of want? Men! There ain't a day, or anhour, or a minute, when I don't think how awful it is over there, where Igot to be either some man's slave or some man's master, as much so as ifit was down in the ship's articles. My wife ain't so, because she ain'tbeen ashore here. I wouldn't let her; I was afraid to let her see what awhite man's country really was, because I felt so weak about it myself, and I didn't want to put the trial on her, too. And do you know _why_we're going back, or want to go? I guess some of you know, but I want totell these folks here so they'll understand, and I want you, Mr. Homos, "he called to my husband, "to get it down straight. It's because we've gottwo little children over there, that we left with their grandmother whenmy wife come with me this voyage because she had lung difficulty andwanted to see whether she could get her health back. Nothing else onGod's green earth could take me back to America, and I guess it couldn'tmy wife if she knew what Altruria was as well as I do. But when I wentaround here and saw how everything was, and remembered how it was athome, I just said, 'She'll stay on the ship. ' Now, that's all I got tosay, though I thought I had a lot more. I guess it'll be enough for thesefolks, and they can judge between us. " Then the captain sat down, and tomake a long story short, the facts of the hearing were repeated inAltrurian the next day by megaphone, and when the translation wasfinished there was a general rush for the captain. He plainly expected tobe lynched, and his wife screamed out, "Oh, don't hurt him! He isn't abad man!" But it was only the Altrurian way with a guilty person: theywanted to let him know how sorry they were for him, and since his sin hadfound him out how hopeful they were for his redemption. I had to explainit to the sailors as well as to the captain and his wife, but I don'tbelieve any of them quite accepted the fact. 

The third day of the hearing was for the rendering of the decision, firstin Altrurian, and then in English. The verdict of the magistrates had tohe confirmed by a standing vote of the people, and of course the womenvoted as well as the men. The decision was that the sailors should beabsolutely free to go or stay, but they took into account the fact thatit would be cruel to keep the captain and his wife away from their littleones, and the sailors might wish to consider this. If they still remainedtrue to their love of Altruria they could find some means of returning. 

When the translator came to this point their spokesman jumped to his feetand called out to the captain, "Will you _do_ it?" "Do what?" he asked, getting slowly to his own feet. "Come back with us after you have seenthe kids?" The captain shook his fist at the sailors; it seemed to be theonly gesture he had with them. "Give me the _chance!_ All I want is tosee the children and bring them out with me to Altruria, and the oldfolks with them. " "Will you _swear_ it? Will you say, 'I hope I may findthe kids dead and buried when I get home if I don't do it'?" "I'll takethat oath, or any oath you want me to. " "Shake hands on it, then. "

The two men met in front of the tribunal and clasped hands there, andtheir reconciliation did not need translation. Such a roar of cheers wentup! And then the whole assembly burst out in the national Altruriananthem, "Brothers All. " I wish you could have heard it! But when theterms of the agreement were explained, the cheering that had gone beforewas a mere whisper to what followed. One orator after another rose andpraised the self-sacrifice of the sailors. I was the proudest when thelast of them referred to Aristides and the reports which he had sent homefrom America, and said that without some such study as he had made ofthe American character they never could have understood such an act asthey were now witnessing. Illogical and insensate as their system was, their character sometimes had a beauty, a sublimity which was notpossible to Altrurians even, for it was performed in the face of risksand chances which their happy conditions relieved them from. At the sametime, the orator wished his hearers to consider the essential immoralityof the act. He said that civilized men had no right to take these risksand chances. The sailors were perhaps justified, in so far as they werehomeless, wifeless, and childless men; but it must not be forgotten thattheir heroism was like the reckless generosity of savages. 

The men have gone back to the ship, and she sails this afternoon. I havepersuaded the captain to let his wife stay to lunch with me at ourRefectory, where the ladies wish to bid her good-bye, and I am hurryingforward this letter so that she can take it on board with her thisafternoon. She has promised to post it on the first Pacific steamer theymeet, or if they do not meet any to send it forward to you with aspecial-delivery stamp as soon as they reach Boston. She will alsoforward by express an Altrurian costume, such as I am now wearing, sandals and all! Do put it on, Dolly, dear, for my sake, and realize whatit is for once in your life to be a _free_ woman. 

Heaven knows when I shall have another chance of getting letters to you. But I shall live in hopes, and I shall set down my experiences here foryour benefit, not perhaps as I meet them, but as I think of them, andyou must not mind having a rather cluttered narrative. To-morrow we aresetting off on our round of the capitals, where Aristides is to make asort of public report to the people of the different Regions on theworking of the capitalistic conditions as he observed them among us. ButI don't expect to send you a continuous narrative of our adventures. Good-bye, dearest, with my mother's love, and my husband's as well as myown, to both of you; think of me as needing nothing but a glimpse of youto complete my happiness. How I should like to tell you fully about it!You _must_ come to Altruria!

I came near letting this go without telling you of one curious incidentof the affair between the captain and his men. Before the men returned tothe ship they came with their spokesman to say good-bye to Aristides andme, and he remarked casually that it was just as well, maybe, to be goingback, because, for one thing, they would know then whether it was real ornot. I asked him what he meant, and he said, "Well, you know, some of themates think it's a dream here, or it's too good to be true. As far forthas I go, I'd be willing to have it a dream that I didn't ever have towake up from. It ain't any too good to be true for me. Anyway, I'm goingto get back somehow, and give it another chance to be a fact. " Wasn'tthat charming? It had a real touch of poetry in it, but it was prose thatfollowed. I couldn't help asking him whether there had been nothing tomar the pleasure of their stay in Altruria, and he answered: "Well, Idon't know as you could rightly say _mar;_ it hadn't ought to have. Yousee, it was like this. You see, some of the mates wanted to lay off andhave a regular bange, but that don't seem to be the idea here. After wehad been ashore a day or two they set us to work at different jobs, orwanted to. The mates didn't take hold very lively, and some of 'em didn'ttake hold a bit. But after that went on a couple of days, there wa'n'tany breakfast one morning, and come noontime there wa'n't any dinner, andas far forth as they could make out they had to go to bed without supper. Then they called a halt, and tackled one of your head men here that couldspeak some English. He didn't answer them right off the reel, but hegot out his English Testament and he read 'em a verse that said, 'Foreven when we were with you this we commanded you, that if any one wouldnot work neither should he eat. ' That kind of fetched 'em, and afterthat there wa'n't any sojerin', well not to speak of. They saw he meantbusiness. I guess it did more than any one thing to make 'em think theywa'n't dreamin'. "

IV

You must not think, Dolly, from anything I have been telling you that theAltrurians are ever harsh. Sometimes they cannot realize how thingsreally are with us, and how what seems grotesque and hideous to themseems charming and beautiful, or at least _chic_, to us. But they arewonderfully quick to see when they have hurt you the least, and in thelittle sacrifices I have made of my wardrobe to the cause of generalknowledge there has not been the least urgence from them. When I now lookat the things I used to wear, where they have been finally placed in theethnological department of the Museum, along with the Esquiman kyaksand the Thlinkeet totems, they seem like things I wore in someprehistoric age--

"When wild in woods the noble savage ran. "

Now, am I being unkind? Well, you mustn't mind me, Dolly. You must justsay, "She _has_ got it bad, " and go on and learn as much about Altruriaas you can from me. Some of the things were hard to get used to, and atfirst seemed quite impossible. For one thing, there was the matter ofservice, which is dishonorable with us, and honorable with theAltrurians: I was a long time getting to understand that, though I knewit perfectly well from hearing my husband talk about it in New York. Ibelieve he once came pretty near offending you by asking why you did notdo your own work, or something like that; he has confessed as much, and Icould not wonder at you in your conditions. Why, when we first went tothe guest-house, and the pretty young girls who brought in lunch sat downat table to eat it with us, I felt the indignation making me hot allover. You know how democratic I am, and I did not mind those great, splendid boat-girls hugging and kissing me, but I instinctively drew theline at cooks and waitresses. In New York, you know, I always tried to bekind to my servants, but as for letting one of them sit down in mypresence, much less sit down at table with me, I never dreamed of such athing in my most democratic moments. Luckily I drew the line subjectivelyhere, and later I found that these young ladies were daughters of some ofthe most distinguished men and women on the continent, though you mustnot understand distinction as giving any sort of social primacy; thatsort of thing is not allowed in Altruria. They had drawn lots with thegirls in the Regionic school here, and were proud of having won the honorof waiting on us. Of course, I needn't say they were what we would havefelt to be ladies anywhere, and their manners were exquisite, even toleaving us alone together as soon as we had finished luncheon. The mealitself was something I shall always remember for its delicious cooking ofthe different kinds of mushrooms which took the place of meat, and thewonderful salads, and the temperate and tropical fruits which we had fordessert. 

They had to talk mostly with my husband, of course, and when they didtalk to me it was through him. They were very intelligent about ourworld, much more than we are about Altruria, though, of course, it was bydeduction from premises rather than specific information, and they wantedto ask a thousand questions; but they saw the joke of it, and laughedwith us when Aristides put them off with a promise that if they wouldhave a public meeting appointed we would appear and answer all thequestions anybody could think of; we were not going to waste our answerson them the first day. He wanted them to let us go out and help wash thedishes, but they would not hear of it. I confess I was rather glad ofthat, for it seemed a lower depth to which I could not descend, evenafter eating with them. But they invited us out to look at the kitchen, after they had got it in order a little, and when we joined them there, whom should I see but my own dear old mother, with an apron up to herchin, wiping the glass and watching carefully through her dear oldspectacles that she got everything bright! You know she was of a simplerday than ours, and when she was young she used to do her own work, andshe and my father always washed the dishes together after they hadcompany. I merely said, "_Well_, mother!" and she laughed and colored, and said she guessed she should like it in Altruria, for it took her backto the America she used to know. 

I must mention things as they come into my head, and not in anyregular order; there are too many of them. One thing is that I didnot notice till afterwards that we had had no meat that first day atluncheon--the mushrooms were so delicious, and you know I never was muchof a meat-eater. It was not till we began to make our present tour of theRegionic capitals, where Aristides has had to repeat his account ofAmerican civilization until I am sick as well as ashamed of America, thatI first felt a kind of famine which I kept myself from recognizing aslong as I could. Then I had to own to myself, long before I owned it tohim, that I was hungry for _meat_--for roast, for broiled, for fried, forhashed. I did not actually tell him, but he found it out, and I could notdeny it, though I felt such an ogre in it. He was terribly grieved, andblamed himself for not having thought of it, and wished he had got somecanned meats from the trader before she left the port. He was really indespair, for nobody since the old capitalistic times had thought ofkilling sheep or cattle for food; they have them for wool and milk andbutter; and of course when I looked at them in the fields it did seemrather formidable. You are so used to seeing them in the butchers' shops, ready for the range, that you never think of what they have to _gothrough_ before that. But at last I managed to gasp out, one day, "If Icould only have a chicken!" and he seemed to think that it could bemanaged. I don't know how he made interest with the authorities, or howthe authorities prevailed on a farmer to part with one of his preciouspullets; but the thing was done somehow, and two of the farmer's childrenbrought it to us at one of the guest-houses where we were staying, andthen fled howling. That was bad enough, but what followed was worse. Iwent another day on mushrooms before I had the heart to say chicken againand suggest that Aristides should get it killed and dressed. The poorfellow did try, I believe, but we had to fall back upon ourselves for themurderous deed, and--Did you ever see a chicken have its head cut off, and how hideously it behaves? It made us both wish we were dead; and thesacrifice of that one pullet was quite enough for me. We buried the poorthing under the flowers of the guest-house garden, and I went back tomy mushrooms after a visit of contrition to the farmer and many attemptsto bring his children to forgiveness. After all, the Altrurian mushroomsare wonderfully nourishing, and they are in such variety that, what withother succulent vegetables and the endless range of fruits and nuts, onedoes not wish for meat--meat that one has killed one's self!

V

I wish you could be making tour of the Regionic capitals with us, Dolly!There are swift little one-rail electric expresses running daily from onecapital to another, but these are used only when speed is required, andwe are confessedly in no hurry: Aristides wanted me to see as much of thecountry as possible, and I am as eager as he. The old steam-roads of thecapitalistic epoch have been disused for generations, and their beds arenow the country roads, which are everywhere kept in beautiful repair. There are no horse vehicles (the electric motors are employed in thetowns), though some people travel on horseback, but the favorite means ofconveyance is by electric van, which any citizen may have on proof of hisneed of it; and it is comfortable beyond compare--mounted on easysprings, and curtained and cushioned like those gypsy vans we see in thecountry at home. Aristides drives himself, and sometimes we both get outand walk, for there is plenty of time. 

I don't know whether I can make you understand how everything has tendedto simplification here. They have disused the complicated facilities andconveniences of the capitalistic epoch, which we are so proud of, andhave got back as close as possible to nature. People stay at home a greatdeal more than with us, though if any one likes to make a journey or tovisit the capitals he is quite free to do it, and those who have someuseful or beautiful object in view make the sacrifice, as they feel it, to leave their villages every day and go to the nearest capital to carryon their studies or experiments. What we consider modern conveniencesthey would consider a superfluity of naughtiness for the most part. As_work_ is the ideal, they do not believe in what we call labor-savingdevices. 

When we approach a village on our journey, one of the villagers, sometimes a young man, and sometimes a girl, comes out to meet us, andwhen we pass through they send some one with us on the way a little. Thepeople have a perfect inspiration for hospitality: they not only knowwhen to do and how much to do, but how little and when not at all. Ican't remember that we have ever once been bored by those nice youngthings that welcomed us or speeded us on our way, and when we havestopped in a village they have shown a genius for leaving us alone, afterthe first welcome, that is beautiful. They are so regardful of ourprivacy, in fact, that if it had not been for Aristides, who explainedtheir ideal to me, I should have felt neglected sometimes, and shouldhave been shy of letting them know that we would like their company. Buthe understood it, and I must say that I have never enjoyed people andtheir ways so much. Their hospitality is a sort of compromise betweenthat of the English houses where you are left free at certain houses tofollow your own devices absolutely, and that Spanish splendor whichassures you that the host's house is yours without meaning it. In fact, the guest-house, wherever we go, _is_ ours, for it belongs to thecommunity, and it is absolutely a home to us for the time being. It isusually the best house in the village, the prettiest and cosiest, whereall the houses are so pretty and cosey. There is always another buildingfor public meetings, called the temple, which is the principal edifice, marble and classic and tasteful, which we see almost as much of as theguest-house, for the news of the Emissary's return has preceded him, andeverybody is alive with curiosity, and he has to stand and deliver in thevillage temples everywhere. Of course I am the great attraction, andafter being scared by it at first I have rather got to like it; thepeople are so kind, and unaffected, and really delicate. 

You mustn't get the notion that the Altrurians are a solemn people atall; they are rather gay, and they like other people's jokes as well astheir own; I am sure Mr. Makely, with his sense of humor, would be athome with them at once. The one thing that more than any other has helpedthem to conceive of the American situation is its being the gigantic jokewhich we often feel it to be; I don't know but it appears to them moregrotesque than it does to us even. At first, when Aristides would explainsome peculiarity of ours, they would receive him with a gale of laughing, but this might change into cries of horror and pity later. One of thethings that amused and then revolted them most was our patriotism. Theythought it the drollest thing in the world that men should be willing togive their own lives and take the lives of other men for the sake of acountry which assured them no safety from want, and did not even assurethem work, and in which they had no more logical interest than thecountry they were going to fight. They could understand how a rich manmight volunteer for one of our wars, but when they were told that most ofour volunteers were poor men, who left their mothers and sisters, ortheir wives and children, without any means of support, except theirmeagre pay, they were quite bewildered and stopped laughing, as if thething had passed a joke. They asked, "How if one of these citizensoldiers was killed?" and they seemed to suppose that in this case thecountry would provide for his family and give them work, or if thechildren were too young would support them at the public expense. Itmade me creep a little when my husband answered that the family of acrippled or invalided soldier would have a pension of eight or ten orfifteen dollars a month; and when they came back with the question whythe citizens of such a country should love it enough to die for it, Icould not have said why for the life of me. But Aristides, who is somagnificently generous, tried to give them a notion of the sublimitywhich is at the bottom of our illogicality and which adjusts so manyapparently hopeless points of our anomaly. They asked how this sublimitydiffered from that of the savage who brings in his game and makes a feastfor the whole tribe, and leaves his wife and children without provisionagainst future want; but Aristides told them that there were essentialdifferences between the Americans and savages, which arose from the factthat the savage condition was permanent and the American conditions wereunconsciously provisional. 

They are quite well informed about our life in some respects, but theywished to hear at first hand whether certain things were really so ornot. For instance, they wanted to know whether people were allowed tomarry and bring children into the world if they had no hopes ofsupporting them or educating them, or whether diseased people wereallowed to become parents. In Altruria, you know, the families aregenerally small, only two or three children at the most, so that theparents can devote themselves to them the more fully; and as there is nofear of want here, the state interferes only when the parents aremanifestly unfit to bring the little ones up. They imagined that therewas something of that kind with us, but when they heard that the stateinterfered in the family only when the children were unruly, and then itpunished the children by sending them to a reform school and disgracingthem for life, instead of holding the parents accountable, they seemedto think that it was one of the most anomalous features of our greatanomaly. Here, when the father and mother are always quarrelling, thechildren are taken from them, and the pair are separated, at first for atime, but after several chances for reform they are parted permanently. 

But I must not give you the notion that all our conferences are soserious. Many have merely the character of social entertainments, whichare not made here for invited guests, but for any who choose to come;all are welcome. At these there are often plays given by amateurs, andimprovised from plots which supply the outline, while the performerssupply the dialogue and action, as in the old Italian comedies. TheAltrurians are so quick and fine, in fact, that they often remind me ofthe Italians more than any other people. One night there was for mybenefit an American play, as the Altrurians imagined it from what theyhad read about us, and they had costumed it from the pictures of us theyhad seen in the newspapers Aristides had sent home while he was with us. The effect was a good deal like that American play which the Japanesecompany of Sada Yacco gave while it was in New York. It was all about amillionaire's daughter, who was loved by a poor young man and escapedwith him to Altruria in an open boat from New York. The millionaire couldbe distinctly recognized by the dollar-marks which covered him all over, as they do in the caricatures of rich men in our yellow journals. It wasfunny to the last degree. In the last act he was seen giving his millionsaway to poor people, whose multitude was represented by the continuallycoming and going of four or five performers in and out of the door, inoutrageously ragged clothes. The Altrurians have not yet imagined thenice degrees of poverty which we have achieved, and they could not haveunderstood that a man with a hundred thousand dollars would have seemedpoor to that multi-millionaire. In fact, they do not grasp the idea ofmoney at all. I heard afterwards that in the usual version themillionaire commits suicide in despair, but the piece had been given ahappy ending out of kindness to me. I must say that in spite of themonstrous misconception the acting was extremely good, especially that ofsome comic characters. 

But dancing is the great national amusement in Altruria, where it has notaltogether lost its religious nature. A sort of march in the temples isas much a part of the worship as singing, and so dancing has beenpreserved from the disgrace which it used to be in with serious peopleamong us. In the lovely afternoons you see young people dancing in themeadows, and hear them shouting in time to the music, while the older menand women watch them from their seats in the shade. Every sort ofpleasure here is improvised, and as you pass through a village the firstthing you know the young girls and young men start up in a sort of_girandole_, and linking hands in an endless chain stretch the figurealong through the street and out over the highway to the next village, and the next and the next. The work has all been done in the forenoon, and every one who chooses is at liberty to join in the fun. 

The villages are a good deal alike to a stranger, and we knew what toexpect there after a while, but the country is perpetually varied, andthe unexpected is always happening in it. The old railroad-beds, onwhich we travelled, are planted with fruit and nut trees and floweringshrubs, and our progress is through a fragrant bower that is practicallyendless, except where it takes the shape of a colonnade near the entranceof a village, with vines trained about white pillars, and clusters ofgrapes (which are ripening just now) hanging down. The change in theclimate created by cutting off the southeastern peninsula and letting inthe equatorial current, which was begun under the first Altrurianpresident, with an unexpended war-appropriation, and finished for whatone of the old capitalistic wars used to cost, is something perfectlyastonishing. Aristides says he told you something about it in his speechat the White Mountains, but you would never believe it without theevidence of your senses. Whole regions to the southward, which werenearest the pole and were sheeted with ice and snow, with the temperatureand vegetation of Labrador, now have the climate of Italy; and themountains, which used to bear nothing but glaciers, are covered witholive orchards and plantations of the delicious coffee which they drinkhere. Aristides says you could have the same results at home--no! _in theUnited States_--by cutting off the western shore of Alaska and letting inthe Japanese current; and it could be done at the cost of any averagewar. 

VI

But I must not get away from my personal experiences in theseinternational statistics. Sometimes, when night overtakes us, we stopand camp beside the road, and set about getting our supper of eggs andbread and butter and cheese, or the fruits that are ripening all roundus. Since my experience with that pullet I go meekly mushrooming inthe fields and pastures; and when I have set the mushrooms stewing overan open fire, Aristides makes the coffee, and in a little while wehave a banquet fit for kings--or for the poor things in every grade belowthem that serve kings, political or financial or industrial. There isalways water, for it is brought down from the snow-fields of themountains--there is not much rainfall--and carried in little concretechannels along the road--side from village to village, something likethose conduits the Italian peasants use to bring down the water from theMaritime Alps to their fields and orchards; and you hear the soft gurgleof it the whole night long, and day long, too, whenever you stop. Aftersupper we can read awhile by our electric lamp (we tap the current in thetelephone wires anywhere), or Aristides sacrifices himself to me in alesson of Altrurian grammar. Then we creep back into our van and fallasleep with the Southern Cross glittering over our heads. It is perfectlysafe, though it was a long time before I could imagine the perfect safetyof it. In a country where there are no thieves, because a thief herewould not know what to do with his booty, we are secure from humanmolestation, and the land has long been cleared of all sorts of wildbeasts, without being unpleasantly tamed. It is like England in that, andyet it has a touch of the sylvan, which you feel nowhere as you do in ourdear New England hill country. There was one night, however, when we werelured on and on, and did not stop to camp till fairly in the dusk. Thenwe went to sleep without supper, for we had had rather a late lunch andwere not hungry, and about one o'clock in the morning I was awakened byvoices speaking Altrurian together. I recognized my husband's voice, which is always so kind, but which seemed to have a peculiarly tender andcompassionate note in it now. The other was lower and of a sadness whichwrung my heart, though I did not know in the least what the person wassaying. The talk went on a long time, at first about some matter ofimmediate interest, as I fancied, and then apparently it branched offon some topic which seemed to concern the stranger, whoever he was. Thenit seemed to get more indistinct, as if the stranger were leaving us andAristides were going a little way with him. Presently I heard him comingback, and he put his head in at the van curtains, as if to see whether Iwas asleep. 

"Well?" I said, and he said how sorry he was for having waked me. "Oh, Idon't mind, " I said. "Whom were you talking with? He had the saddestvoice I ever heard. What did he want?"

"Oh, it seems that we are not far from the ruins of one of the oldcapitalistic cities, which have been left for a sort of warning againstthe former conditions, and he wished to caution us against the malarialinfluences from it. I think perhaps we had better push on a little way, if you don't mind. "

The moon was shining clearly, and of course I did not mind, and Aristidesgot his hand on the lever, and we were soon getting out of the dangerouszone. "I think, " he said, "they ought to abolish that pest-hole. I doubtif it serves any good purpose, now, though it has been useful in timespast as an object-lesson. "

"But who was your unknown friend?" I asked, a great deal more curiousabout him than about the capitalistic ruin. 

"Oh, just a poor murderer, " he answered easily, and I shuddered back:"A murderer!"

"Yes. He killed his friend some fifteen years ago in a jealous rage, andhe is pursued by remorse that gives him no peace. "

"And is the remorse his only punishment?" I asked, rather indignantly. 

"Isn't that enough? God seemed to think it was, in the case of the firstmurderer, who killed his brother. All that he did to Cain was to set amark on him. But we have not felt sure that we have the right to do this. We let God mark him, and He has done it with this man in the sorrow ofhis face. I was rather glad you, couldn't see him, my dear. It is anawful face. "

I confess that this sounded like mere sentimentalism to me, and I said, "Really, Aristides, I can't follow you. How are innocent people to beprotected against this wretch, if he wanders about among them at will?"

"They are as safe from him as from any other man in Altruria. His casewas carefully looked into by the medical authorities, and it was decidedthat he was perfectly sane, so that he could be safely left at large, toexpiate his misdeed in the only possible way that such a misdeed can beexpiated--by doing good to others. What would you have had us do withhim?"

The question rather staggered me, but I said, "He ought to have beenimprisoned at least a year for manslaughter. "

"Cain was not imprisoned an hour. "

"That was a very different thing. But suppose you let a man go at largewho has killed his friend in a jealous rage, what do you do with othermurderers?"

"In Altruria there can be no other murderers. People cannot kill here formoney, which prompts every other kind of murder in capitalisticcountries, as well as every other kind of crime. I know, my dear, thatthis seems very strange to you, but you will accustom yourself to theidea, and then you will see the reasonableness of the Altrurian plan. Onthe whole, I am sorry you could not have seen that hapless man, andheard him. He had a face like death--"

"And a voice like death, too!" I put in. 

"You noticed that? He wanted to talk about his crime with me. He wants totalk about it with any one who will listen to him. He is consumed with anundying pity for the man he slew. That is the first thing, the onlything, in his mind. If he could, I believe he would give his life for thelife he took at any moment. But you cannot recreate one life bydestroying another. There is no human means of ascertaining justice, butwe can always do mercy with divine omniscience. " As he spoke the sunpierced the edge of the eastern horizon, and lit up the marble walls androofs of the Regionic capital which we were approaching. 

At the meeting we had there in the afternoon, Aristides reported ourhaving been warned against our danger in the night by that murderer, andpublic record of the fact was made. The Altrurians consider any sort ofpunishment which is not expiation a far greater sin than the wrong itvisits, and altogether barren and useless. After the record in this casehad been made, the conference naturally turned upon what Aristides hadseen of the treatment of criminals in America, and when, he told of ourprisons, where people merely arrested and not yet openly accused arekept, I did not know which way to look, for you know I am still anAmerican at heart, Dolly. Did you ever see the inside of one of ourpolice-stations at night? Or smell it? I did, once, when I went to givebail for a wretched girl who had been my servant, and had gone wrong, buthad been arrested for theft, and I assure you that the sight and thesmell woke me in the night for a month afterwards, and I have never quiteceased to dream about it. 

The Altrurians listened in silence, and I hoped they could not realizethe facts, though the story was every word true; but what seemed to makethem the most indignant was the treatment of the families of theprisoners in what we call our penitentiaries and reformatories. At firstthey did not conceive of it, apparently, because it was so stupidlybarbarous; they have no patience with stupidity; and when Aristides hadcarefully explained, it seemed as if they could not believe it. Theythought it right that the convicts should be made to work, but they couldnot understand that the state really took away their wages, and lefttheir families to suffer for want of the support which it had deprivedthem of. They said this was punishing the mothers and sisters, the wivesand children of the prisoners, and was like putting out the eyes of anoffender's innocent relatives as they had read was done in Orientalcountries. They asked if there was never any sort of protest against suchan atrocious perversion of justice, and when the question was put to meI was obliged to own that I had never heard the system even criticised. Perhaps it has been, but I spoke only from my own knowledge. 

VII

Well, to get away from these dismal experiences, and come back to ourtravels, with their perpetual novelty, and the constantly varying beautyof the country!

The human interest of the landscape, that is always the great interest ofit, and I wish I could make you feel it as I have felt it in thiswonderful journey of ours. It is like the New England landscape at times, in its kind of gentle wildness, but where it has been taken back into thehand of man, how different the human interest is! Instead of a rheumaticold farmer, in his clumsy clothes, with some of his gaunt girls to helphim, or perhaps his ageing wife, getting in the hay of one of those sweetmeadows, and looking like so many animated scarecrows at their work; orinstead of some young farmer, on the seat of his clattering mower, ormounted high over his tedder, but as much alone as if there were no oneelse in the neighborhood, silent and dull, or fierce or sullen, as thecase might be, the work is always going on with companies of mowers orreapers, or planters, that chatter like birds or sing like them. 

It is no use my explaining again and again that in a country like this, where everybody works, nobody over works, and that when the few hours ofobligatory labor are passed in the mornings, people need not do anythingunless they choose. Their working-dresses are very simple, but in allsorts of gay colors, like those you saw in the Greek play at Harvard, with straw hats for the men, and fillets of ribbon for the girls, andsandals for both. I speak of girls, for most of the married women are athome gardening, or about the household work, but men of every age work inthe fields. The earth is dear to them because they get their life from itby labor that is not slavery; they come to love it every acre, everyfoot, because they have known it from childhood; and I have seen old men, very old, pottering about the orchards and meadows during the hours ofvoluntary work, and trimming them up here and there, simply because theycould not keep away from the place, or keep their hands off the trees andbushes. Sometimes in the long, tender afternoons, we see far up on somepasture slope, groups of girls scattered about on the grass, with theirsewing, or listening to some one reading. Other times they are giving alittle play, usually a comedy, for life is so happy here that tragedywould not be true to it, with the characters coming and going in a groveof small pines, for the _coulisses_, and using a level of grass for thestage. If we stop, one of the audience comes down to us and invites us tocome up and see the play, which keeps on in spite of the sensation that Ican feel I make among them. 

Everywhere the news of us has gone before us, and there is a universalcuriosity to get a look at Aristides' capitalistic wife, as they call me. I made him translate it, and he explained that the word was merelydescriptive and not characteristic; some people distinguished and calledme American. There was one place where they were having a picnic in thewoods up a hillside, and they asked us to join them, so we turned ourvan into the roadside and followed the procession. It was headed by twoold men playing on pipes, and after these came children singing, and thenall sorts of people, young and old. When we got to an open place in thewoods, where there was a spring, and smooth grass, they built fires, andbegan to get ready for the feast, while some of them did things to amusethe rest. Every one could do something; if you can imagine a party ofartists, it was something like that. I should say the Altrurians hadartists' manners, free, friendly, and easy, with a dash of humor ineverything, and a wonderful willingness to laugh and make laugh. Aristides is always explaining that the artist is their ideal type; thatis, some one who works gladly, and plays as gladly as he works; no onehere is asked to do work that he hates, unless he seems to hate everykind of work. When this happens, the authorities find out something forhim that he had _better_ like, by letting him starve till he works. Thatpicnic lasted the whole afternoon and well into the night, and then thepicnickers went home through the starlight, leading the little ones, orcarrying them when they were too little or too tired. But first they camedown to our van with us, and sang us a serenade after we had disappearedinto it, and then left us, and sent their voices back to us out of thedark. 

One morning at dawn, as we came into a village, we saw nearly the wholepopulation mounting the marble steps of the temple, all the holiday dressof the Voluntaries, which they put on here every afternoon when the workis done. Last of the throng came a procession of children, lookingsomething like a May-Day party, and midway of their line were a young manand a young girl, hand in hand, who parted at the door of the temple, andentered separately. Aristides called out, "Oh, it is a wedding! You arein luck, Eveleth, " and then and there I saw my first Altrurian wedding. 

Within, the pillars and the altar and the seats of the elders weregarlanded with flowers, so fresh and fragrant that they seemed to haveblossomed from the marble overnight, and there was a soft murmur ofAltrurian voices that might very well have seemed the hum of bees amongthe blossoms. This subsided, as the young couple, who had paused justinside the temple door, came up the middle side by side, and againseparated and took their places, the youth on the extreme right of theelder, and the maiden on the extreme left of the eldresses, and stoodfacing the congregation, which was also on foot, and joined in the hymnwhich everybody sang. Then one of the eldresses rose and began a sort ofstatement which Aristides translated to me afterwards. She said that theyoung couple whom we saw there had for the third time asked to become manand wife, after having believed for a year that they loved each other, and having statedly come before the marriage authorities and beenquestioned as to the continuance of their affection. She said thatprobably every one present knew that they had been friends fromchildhood, and none would be surprised that they now wished to be unitedfor life. They had been carefully instructed as to the serious nature ofthe marriage bond, and admonished as to the duties they were enteringinto, not only to each other, but to the community. At each successivevisit to the authorities they had been warned, separately and together, against the danger of trusting to anything like a romantic impulse, andthey had faithfully endeavored to act upon this advice, as theytestified. In order to prove the reality of their affection, they hadbeen parted every third month, and had lived during that time indifferent Regions where it was meant they should meet many other youngpeople, so that if they felt any swerving of the heart they might notpersist in an intention which could only bring them final unhappiness. Itseems this is the rule in the case of young lovers, and people usuallymarry very young here, but if they wish to marry later in life the ruleis not enforced so stringently, or not at all. The bride and groom we sawhad both stood these trials, and at each return they had been more andmore sure that they loved each other, and loved no one else. Now theywere here to unite their hands, and to declare the union of their heartsbefore the people. 

Then the eldress sat down and an elder arose, who bade the young peoplecome forward to the centre of the line, where the elders and eldresseswere sitting. He took his place behind them, and once more and for thelast time he conjured them not to persist if they felt any doubt ofthemselves. He warned them that if they entered into the married state, and afterwards repented to the point of seeking divorce, the divorcewould indeed be granted them, but on terms, as they must realize, oflasting grief to themselves through the offence they would commit againstthe commonwealth. They answered that they were sure of themselves, andready to exchange their troth for life and death. Then they joined hands, and declared that they took each other for husband and wife. Thecongregation broke into another hymn and slowly dispersed, leaving thebride and groom with their families, who came up to them and embracedthem, pressing their cheeks against the cheeks of the young pair. 

This ended the solemnity, and then the festivity began, as it ended, witha wedding feast, where people sang and danced and made speeches and dranktoasts, and the fun was kept up till the hours of the Obligatoriesapproached; and then, what do you think? The married pair put off theirwedding garments with the rest and went to work in the fields! Later, I understood, if they wished to take a wedding journey they could freelydo so; but the first thing in their married life they must honor theAltrurian ideal of work, by which every one must live in order thatevery other may live without overwork. I believe that the marriageceremonial is something like that of the Quakers, but I never saw aQuaker wedding, and I could only compare this with the crazy romps withwhich our house-weddings often end, with throwing of rice and old shoes, and tying ribbons to the bridal carriage and baggage, and following thepair to the train with outbreaks of tiresome hilarity, which make themconspicuous before their fellow-travellers; or with some of our ghastlychurch weddings, in which the religious ceremonial is lost in the socialeffect, and ends with that everlasting thumping march from "Lohengrin, "and the outsiders storming about the bridal pair and the guests with therude curiosity that the fattest policemen at the canopied and carpetedentrance cannot check. 

VIII

We have since been at other weddings and at christenings and at funerals. The ceremonies are always held in the temples, and are always in the sameserious spirit. As the Altrurians are steadfast believers in immortality, there is a kind of solemn elevation in the funeral ceremonies which Icannot give you a real notion of. It is helped, I think, by the custom ofnot performing the ceremony over the dead; a brief rite is reserved forthe cemetery, where it is wished that the kindred shall not be present, lest they think always of the material body and not of the spiritual bodywhich shall be raised in incorruption. Religious service is held in thetemples every day at the end of the Obligatories, and whenever we arenear a village or in any of the capitals we always go. It is very simple. After a hymn, to which the people sometimes march round the interior ofthe temple, each lays on the altar an offering from the fields or woodswhere they have been working, if it is nothing but a head of grain or awild flower or a leaf. Then any one is at liberty to speak, but any oneelse may go out without offence. There is no ritual; sometimes they reada chapter from the New Testament, preferably a part of the story ofChrist or a passage from His discourses. The idea of coming to the templeat the end of the day's labor is to consecrate that day's work, and theydo not call anything work that is not work with the hands. When Iexplained, or tried to explain, that among us a great many people workedwith their brains, to amuse others or to get handwork out of them, theywere unable to follow me. I asked if they did not consider composingmusic or poetry or plays, or painting pictures work, and they said, No, that was pleasure, and must be indulged only during the Voluntaries; itwas never to be honored like work with the hands, for it would notequalize the burden of that, but might put an undue share of it onothers. They said that lives devoted to such pursuits must be veryunwholesome, and they brought me to book about the lives of most artists, literary men, and financiers in the capitalistic world to prove what theysaid. They held that people must work with their hands willingly, in theartistic spirit, but they could only do that when they knew that othersdifferently gifted were working in like manner with their hands. 

I couldn't begin to tell you all our queer experiences. As I have keptsaying, I am a great curiosity everywhere, and I could flatter myselfthat people were more eager to see me than to hear Aristides. Sometimes Icouldn't help thinking that they expected to find me an awful warning, adreadful example of whatever a woman ought not to be, and a woman fromcapitalistic conditions must be logically. But sometimes they were veryintelligent, even the simplest villagers, as we should call them, thoughthere is such an equality of education and opportunity here that nosimplicity of life has the effect of dulling people as it has with us. One thing was quite American: they always wanted to know how I likedAltruria, and when I told them, as I sincerely could, that I adored it, they were quite affecting in their pleasure. They generally asked if Iwould like to go back to America, and when I said No, they were delightedbeyond anything. They said I must become a citizen and vote and take partin the government, for that was every woman's duty as well as right; itwas wrong to leave the whole responsibility to the men. They asked ifAmerican women took no interest in the government, and when I told themthere was a very small number who wished to influence politics socially, as the Englishwomen did, but without voting or taking any responsibility, they were shocked. In one of the Regionic capitals they wanted me tospeak after Aristides, but I had nothing prepared; at the next I did getoff a little speech in English, which he translated after me. Later heput it into Altrurian, and I memorized it, and made myself immenselypopular by parroting it. 

The pronunciation of Altrurian is not difficult, for it is spelledphonetically, and the sounds are very simple. Where they were oncedifficult they have been simplified, for here the simplification of lifeextends to everything; and the grammar has been reduced in its structuretill it is as elemental as English grammar or Norwegian. The language isGreek in origin, but the intricate inflections and the declensions havebeen thrown away, and it has kept only the simplest forms. You must getMr. Twelvemough to explain this to you, Dolly, for it would take me toolong, and I have so much else to tell you. A good many of the women havetaken up English, but they learn it as a dead language, and they give ita comical effect by trying to pronounce it as it is spelled. 

I suppose you are anxious, if these letters which are piling up andpiling up should ever reach you, or even start to do so, to knowsomething about the Altrurian cities, and what they are like. Well, inthe first place, you must cast all images of American cities out of yourmind, or any European cities, except, perhaps, the prettiest andstateliest parts of Paris, where there is a regular sky-line, and thepublic buildings and monuments are approached through shaded avenues. There are no private houses here, in our sense--that is, houses whichpeople have built with their own money on their own land, and made asugly outside and as molestive to their neighbors and the passers-by asthey chose. As the buildings belong to the whole people, the firstrequirement is that they shall be beautiful inside and out. There are afew grand edifices looking like Greek temples, which are used for thegovernment offices, and these are, of course, the most dignified, but thedwellings are quite as attractive and comfortable. They are built roundcourts, with gardens and flowers in the courts, and wide grassy spacesround them. They are rather tall, but never so tall as our great hotelsor apartment-houses, and the floors are brought to one level byelevators, which are used only in the capitals; and, generally speaking, I should say the villages were pleasanter than the cities. In fact, thevillage is the Altrurian ideal, and there is an effort everywhere toreduce the size of the towns and increase the number of the villages. The outlying farms have been gathered into these, and now there is notone of those lonely places in the country, like those where our farmerstoil alone outdoors and their wives alone indoors, and both go madso often in the solitude. The villages are almost in sight of each other, and the people go to their fields in company, while the women carry ontheir house-keeping co-operatively, with a large kitchen which theyuse in common; they have their meals apart or together, as they like. Ifany one is sick or disabled the neighbors come in and help do her work, as they used with us in the early times, and as they still do in countryplaces. Village life here is preferred, just as country life is inEngland, and one thing that will amuse you, with your American ideas, andyour pride in the overgrowth of our cities: the Altrurian papers solemnlyannounce from time to time that the population of such or such a capitalhas been reduced so many hundreds or thousands since the last census. That means that the villages in the neighborhood have been increased innumber and population. 

Meanwhile, I must say the capitals are delightful: clean, airy, quiet, with the most beautiful architecture, mostly classic and mostly marble, with rivers running through them and round them, and every realconvenience, but not a clutter of artificial conveniences, as with us. Inthe streets there are noiseless trolleys (where they have not beenreplaced by public automobiles) which the long distances of the ampleground-plan make rather necessary, and the rivers are shot over withswift motor-boats; for the short distances you always expect to walk, orif you don't expect it, you walk anyway. The car-lines and boat-lines arepublic, and they are free, for the Altrurians think that the communityowes transportation to every one who lives beyond easy reach of thepoints which their work calls them to. 

Of course the great government stores are in the capitals, andpractically there are no stores in the villages, except for what youmight call emergency supplies. But you must not imagine, Dolly, thatshopping, here, is like shopping at home--or in America, as I am learningto say, for Altruria is home now. That is, you don't fill your purse withbank-notes, or have things charged. You get everything you want, withinreason, and certainly everything you need, for nothing. You have only toprovide yourself with a card, something like that you have to show at theArmy and Navy Stores in London, when you first go to buy there, whichcertifies that you belong to this or that working-phalanx, and that youhave not failed in the Obligatories for such and such a length of time. If you are not entitled to this card, you had better not go shopping, forthere is no possible equivalent for it which will enable you to carryanything away or have it sent to your house. At first I could not helpfeeling rather indignant when I was asked to show my work-card in thestores; I had usually forgotten to bring it, or sometimes I had broughtmy husband's card, which would not do at all, unless I could say that Ihad been ill or disabled, for a woman is expected to work quite the sameas a man. Of course her housework counts, and as we are on a sort ofpublic mission, they count our hours of travel as working-hours, especially as Aristides has made it a point of good citizenship for us tostop every now and then and join in the Obligatories when the villagerswere getting in the farm crops or quarrying stone or putting up a house. I am never much use in quarrying or building, but I come in strong in thehay-fields or the apple orchards or the orange groves. 

The shopping here is not so enslaving as it is with us--I mean, withyou--because the fashions do not change, and you get things only when youneed them, not when you want them, or when other people think you do. Thecostume was fixed long ago, when the Altrurian era began, by a commissionof artists, and it would be considered very bad form as well as badmorals to try changing it in the least. People are allowed to choosetheir own colors, but if one goes very wrong, or so far wrong as tooffend the public taste, she is gently admonished by the local artcommission. If she insists, they let her have her own way, but she seldomwants it when she knows that people think her a fright. Of course thecostume is modified somewhat for the age and shape of the wearer, butthis is not so often as you might think. There are no very lean or verystout people, though there are old and young, just as there are with us. But the Altrurians keep young very much longer than capitalistic peoplesdo, and the life of work keeps down their weight. You know I used toincline a little to over-plumpness, I really believe because I overate attimes simply to keep from thinking of the poor who had to undereat, butthat is quite past now; I have lost at least twenty-five pounds fromworking out-doors and travelling so much and living very, very simply. 

IX

I have to jot things down as they come into my mind, and I am afraid Iforget some of the most important. Everybody is so novel on this famoustour of ours that I am continually interested, but one has one'spreferences even in Altruria, and I believe I like best the wives of theartists and literary men whom one finds working in the galleries andlibraries of the capitals everywhere. They are not more intelligent thanother women, perhaps, but they are more sympathetic; and one sees solittle of those people in New York, for all they abound there. 

The galleries are not only for the exhibition of pictures, but each hasnumbers of ateliers, where the artists work and teach. The libraries arethe most wonderfully imagined things. You do not have to come and studyin them, but if you are working up any particular subject, the booksrelating to it are sent to your dwelling every morning and brought awayevery noon, so that during the obligatory hours you have them completelyat your disposition, and during the Voluntaries you can consult them withthe rest of the public in the library; it is not thought best that studyshould be carried on throughout the day, and the results seem to justifythis theory. If you want to read a book merely for pleasure, you areallowed to take it out and live with it as long as you like; the copy youhave is immediately replaced with another, so that you do not feelhurried and are not obliged to ramp through it in a week or a fortnight. 

The Altrurian books are still rather sealed books to me, but they aredelightful to the eye, all in large print on wide margins, with flexiblebindings, and such light paper that you can hold them in one handindefinitely without tiring. I must send you some with this, if I everget my bundle of letters off to you. You will see by the dates that I amwriting you one every day; I had thought of keeping a journal for you, but then I should have had left out a good many things that happenedduring our first days, when the impressions were so vivid, and I shouldhave got to addressing my records to myself, and I think I had betterkeep to the form of letters. If they reach you, and you read them atrandom, why that is very much the way I write them. 

I despair of giving you any real notion of the capitals, but if youremember the White City at the Columbian Fair at Chicago in 1893, you canhave some idea of the general effect of one; only there is nothingheterogeneous in their beauty. There is one classic rule in thearchitecture, but each of the different architects may characterize anedifice from himself, just as different authors writing the same languagecharacterize it by the diction natural to him. There are suggestions ofthe capitals in some of our cities, and if you remember CommonwealthAvenue in Boston, you can imagine something like the union of street andgarden which every street of them is. The trolleys run under theoverarching trees between the lawns, flanked by gravelled footpathsbetween flower-beds, and you take the cars or not as you like. As thereis no hurry, they go about as fast as English trams, and the clanger fromthem is practically reduced to nothing by the crossings dipping underthem at the street corners. The centre of the capital is approached bycolonnades, which at night bear groups of great bulbous lamps, and by dayflutter with the Altrurian and Regionic flags. Around this centre are thestores and restaurants and theatres, and galleries and libraries, witharcades over the sidewalks, like those in Bologna; sometimes the arcadesare in two stories, as they are in Chester. People are constantly comingand going in an easy way during the afternoon, though in the morning thestreets are rather deserted. 

But what is the use? I could go on describing and describing, and neverget in half the differences from American cities, with their hideousuproar, and their mud in the wet, and their clouds of swirling dust inthe wind. But there is one feature which I must mention, because you canfancy it from the fond dream of a great national highway which some ofour architects projected while they were still in the fervor ofexcitement from the beauty of the Peristyle, and other features of theWhite City. They really have such a highway here, crossing the wholeAltrurian continent, and uniting the circle of the Regionic capitals. Aswe travelled for a long time by the country roads on the beds of the oldrailways, I had no idea of this magnificent avenue, till one day myhusband suddenly ran our van into the one leading up to the first capitalwe were to visit. Then I found myself between miles and miles of statelywhite pillars, rising and sinking as the road found its natural levels, and growing in the perspective before us and dwindling behind us. I couldnot keep out of my mind a colonnade of palm-trees, only the fronds werelacking, and there were never palms so beautiful. Each pillar wasinscribed with the name of some Altrurian who had done something for hiscountry, written some beautiful poem or story, or history, made somescientific discovery, composed an opera, invented a universalconvenience, performed a wonderful cure, or been a delightful singer, ororator, or gardener, or farmer. Not one soldier, general or admiral, among them! That seemed very strange to me, and I asked Aristides howit was. Like everything else in Altruria, it was very simple; there hadbeen no war for so long that there were no famous soldiers tocommemorate. But he stopped our van when he came to the first of the manyarches which spanned the highway, and read out to me in English theAltrurian record that it was erected in honor of the first President ofthe Altrurian Commonwealth, who managed the negotiations when thecapitalistic oligarchies to the north and south were peacefully annexed, and the descendants of the three nations joined in the commemoration ofan event that abolished war forever on the Altrurian continent. 

Here I can imagine Mr. Makely asking who footed the bills for this beautyand magnificence, and whether these works were constructed at the cost ofthe nation, or the different Regions, or the abuttors on the differenthighways. But the fact is, you poor, capitalistic dears, they cost nobodya dollar, for there is not a dollar in Altruria. You must worry into theidea somehow that in Altruria you cannot buy anything except by working, and that work is the current coin of the republic: you pay for everythingby drops of sweat, and off your own brow, not somebody else's brow. Thepeople built these monuments and colonnades, and aqueducts and highwaysand byways, and sweet villages and palatial cities with their own hands, after the designs of artists, who also took part in the labor. But it wasa labor that they delighted in so much that they chose to perform itduring the Voluntaries, when they might have been resting, and not duringthe Obligatories, when they were required to work. So it was all joy andall glory. They say there never was such happiness in any country sincethe world began. While the work went on it was like a perpetual Fourth ofJuly or an everlasting picnic. 

But I know you hate this sort of economical stuff, Dolly, and I will makehaste to get down to business, as Mr. Makely would say, for I am reallycoming to something that you will think worth while. One morning, when wehad made half the circle of the capitals, and were on the homestretch tothe one where we had left our dear mother--for Aristides claims her, too--and I was letting that dull nether anxiety for her come to the top, though we had had the fullest telephonic talks with her every day, andknew she was well and happy, we came round the shoulder of a wooded cliffand found ourselves on an open stretch of the northern coast. At first Icould only exclaim at the beauty of the sea, lying blue and still beyonda long beach closed by another headland, and I did not realize that alarge yacht which I saw close to land had gone ashore. The beach wascrowded with Altrurians, who seemed to have come to the rescue, for theywere putting off to the yacht in boats and returning with passengers, andjumping out, and pulling their boats with them up on to the sand. 

I was quite bewildered, and I don't know what to say I was the nextthing, when I saw that the stranded yacht was flying the American flagfrom her peak. I supposed she must be one of our cruisers, she was solarge, and the first thing that flashed into my mind was a kind of amusedwonder what those poor Altrurians would do with a ship-of-war and hermarines and crew. I couldn't ask any coherent questions, and luckilyAristides was answering my incoherent ones in the best possible way bywheeling our van down on the beach and making for the point nearest theyacht. He had time to say he did not believe she was a government vessel, and, in fact, I remembered that once I had seen a boat in the North Rivergetting up steam to go to Europe which was much larger, and had her deckscovered with sailors that I took for bluejackets; but she was only theprivate yacht of some people I knew. These stupid things kept going andcoming in my mind while my husband was talking with some of theAltrurian girls who were there helping with the men. They said that theyacht had gone ashore the night before last in one of the sudden fogsthat come up on that coast, and that some people whom the sailors seemedto obey were camping on the edge of the upland above the beach, under alarge tent they had brought from the yacht. They had refused to go to theguest-house in the nearest village, and as nearly as the girls could makeout they expected the yacht to get afloat from tide to tide, and thenintended to re-embark on her. In the mean time they had provisionedthemselves from the ship, and were living in a strange way of their own. Some of them seemed to serve the others, but these appeared to be usedwith a very ungrateful indifference, as if they were of a different race. There was one who wore a white apron and white cap who directed thecooking for the rest, and had several assistants; and from time to timevery disagreeable odors came from the camp, like burning flesh. TheAltrurians had carried them fruits and vegetables, but the men-assistantshad refused them contemptuously and seemed suspicious of the variety ofmushrooms they offered them. They called out, "To-stoo!" and I understoodthat the strangers were afraid they were bringing toad-stools. One of theAltrurian girls had been studying English in the nearest capital, and shehad tried to talk with these people, pronouncing it in the Altrurian way, but they could make nothing of one another; then she wrote down what shewanted to say, but as she spelled it phonetically they were not able toread her English. She asked us if I was the American Altrurian she hadheard of, and when I said yes she lost no time in showing us to the campof the castaways. 

As soon as we saw their tents we went forward till we were met atthe largest by a sort of marine footman, who bowed slightly and saidto me, "What name shall I say, ma'am?" and I answered distinctly, sothat he might get the name right, "Mr. And Mrs. Homos. " Then he heldback the flap of the marquee, which seemed to serve these people as adrawing-room, and called out, standing very rigidly upright, to let uspass, in the way that I remembered so well, "Mr. And Mrs. 'Omos!" and asevere-looking, rather elderly lady rose to meet us with an air that wasboth anxious and forbidding, and before she said anything else she burstout, "You don't mean to say you speak English?"

I said that I spoke English, and had not spoken anything else but ratherpoor French until six months before, and then she demanded, "Have youbeen cast away on this outlandish place, too?"

I laughed and said I lived here, and I introduced my husband as well as Icould without knowing her name. He explained with his pretty Altrurianaccent, which you used to like so much, that we had ventured to come inthe hope of being of use to them, and added some regrets for theirmisfortune so sweetly that I wondered she could help responding in kind. But she merely said, "Oh!" and then she seemed to recollect herself, andfrowning to a very gentle-looking old man to come forward, she ignored myhusband in presenting me. "Mr. Thrall, Mrs. ----"

She hesitated for my name, and I supplied it, "Homos, " and as the old manhad put out his hand in a kindly way I took it. 

"And this is my husband, Aristides Homos, an Altrurian, " I said, andthen, as the lady had not asked us to sit down, or shown the least signof liking our being there, the natural woman flamed up in me as shehadn't in all the time I have been away from New York. "I am glad you areso comfortable here, Mr. Thrall. You won't need us, I see. The peopleabout will do anything in their power for you. Come, my dear, " and I wassweeping out of that tent in a manner calculated to give the eminentmillionaire's wife a notion of Altrurian hauteur which I must own wouldhave been altogether mistaken. 

I knew who they were perfectly. Even if I had not once met them I shouldhave known that they were the ultra-rich Thralls, from the multitudinouspictures of them that I had seen in the papers at home, not long afterthey came on to New York. 

He was beginning, "Oh no, oh no, " but I cut in. "My husband and I are onour way to the next Regionic capital, and we are somewhat hurried. Youwill be quite well looked after by the neighbors here, and I see that weare rather in your housekeeper's way. "

It _was_ nasty, Dolly, and I won't deny it; it was _vulgar_. But whatwould _you_ have done? I could feel Aristides' mild eye sadly on me, andI was sorry for him, but I assure him I was not sorry for them, till thatold man spoke again, so timidly: "It isn't my--it's my wife, Mrs. Homos. Let me introduce her. But haven't we met before?"

"Perhaps during my first husband's lifetime. I was Mrs. BellingtonStrange. "

"Mrs. P. Bellington Strange? Your husband was a dear friend of mine whenwe were both young--a good man, if ever there was one; the best in theworld! I am so glad to see you again. Ah--my dear, you remember myspeaking of Mrs. Strange?"

He took my hand again and held it in his soft old hands, as if hesitatingwhether to transfer it to her, and my heart melted towards him. You maythink it very odd, Dolly, but it was what he said of my dear, deadhusband that softened me. It made him seem very fatherly, and I felt theaffection for him that I felt for my husband, when he seemed more like afather. Aristides and I often talk of it, and he has no wish that Ishould forget him. 

Mrs. Thrall made no motion to take my hand from him, but she said, "Ithink I have met Mr. Strange, " and now I saw in the background, sittingon a camp-stool near a long, lank young man stretched in a hammock, avery handsome girl, who hastily ran through a book, and then dropped itat the third mention of my name. I suspected that the book was the SocialRegister, and that the girl's search for me had been satisfactory, forshe rose and came vaguely towards us, while the young man unfoldedhimself from the hammock, and stood hesitating, but looking as if herather liked what had happened. 

Mr. Thrall bustled about for camp-stools, and said, "Do stop and havesome breakfast with us, it's just coming in. May I introduce my daughter, Lady Moors and--and Lord Moors?" The girl took my hand, and the young manbowed from his place; but if that poor old man had known, peace was notto be made so easily between two such bad-tempered women as Mrs. Thralland myself. We expressed some very stiff sentiments in regard to theweather, and the prospect of the yacht getting off with the next tide, and my husband joined in with that manly gentleness of his, but we didnot sit down, much less offer to stay to breakfast. We had got to thedoor of the tent, the family following us, even to the noble son-in-law, and as she now realized that we are actually going, Mrs. Thrall gaspedout, "But you are not _leaving_ us? What shall we _do_ with all thesenatives?"

This was again too much, and I flamed out at her. "_Natives_! They arecultivated and refined people, for they are Altrurians, and I assure youyou will be in much better hands than mine with them, for I am onlyAltrurian by marriage!"

She was one of those leathery egotists that nothing will make a dint in, and she came back with, "But we don't speak the language, and they don'tspeak English, and how are we to manage if the yacht doesn't get afloat?"

"Oh, no doubt you will be looked after from the capital we have justleft. But I will venture to make a little suggestion with regard to thenatives in the mean time. They are not proud, but they are verysensitive, and if you fail in any point of consideration, they willunderstand that you do not want their hospitality. "

"I imagine our own people will be able to look after us, " she answeredquite as nastily. "We do not propose to be dependent on them. We can payour way here as we do elsewhere. "

"The experiment will be worth trying, " I said. "Come, Aristides!" and Itook the poor fellow away with me to our van. Mr. Thrall made somehopeless little movements towards us, but I would not stop or even lookback. When we got into the van, I made Aristides put on the full power, and fell back into my seat and cried a while, and then I scolded himbecause he would not scold me, and went on in a really scandalous way. Itmust have been a revelation to him, but he only smoothed me on theshoulder and said, "Poor Eveleth, poor Eveleth, " till I thought I shouldscream; but it ended in my falling on his neck, and saying I knew I washorrid, and what did he want me to do?

After I calmed down into something like rationality, he said he thoughtwe had perhaps done the best thing we could for those people in leavingthem to themselves, for they could come to no possible harm among theneighbors. He did not believe from what he had seen of the yacht from theshore, and from what the Altrurians had told him, that there was onechance in a thousand of her ever getting afloat. But those people wouldhave to convince themselves of the fact, and of several other facts intheir situation. I asked him what he meant, and he said he could tell me, but that as yet it was a public affair, and he would rather notanticipate the private interest I would feel in it. I did not insist; infact, I wanted to get that odious woman out of my mind as soon as Icould, for the thought of her threatened to poison the pleasure of therest of our tour. 

I believe my husband hurried it a little, though he did not shorten it, and we got back to the Maritime Region almost a week sooner than we hadfirst intended. I found my dear mother well, and still serenely happy inher Altrurian surroundings. She had begun to learn the language, and shehad a larger acquaintance in the capital, I believe, than any other oneperson. She said everybody had called on her, and they were the kindestpeople she had ever dreamed of. She had exchanged cooking-lessons withone lady who, they told her, was a distinguished scientist, and she hadtaught another, who was a great painter, a peculiar embroidery stitchwhich she had learned from my grandmother, and which everybody admired. These two ladies had given her most of her grammatical instruction inAltrurian, but there was a bright little girl who had enlarged hervocabulary more than either, in helping her about her housework, themother having lent her for the purpose. My mother said she was notashamed to make blunders before a child, and the little witch had takenthe greatest delight in telling her the names of things in the house andthe streets and the fields outside the town, where they went long walkstogether. 

X

Well, my dear Dorothea, I had been hoping to go more into detail about mymother and about our life in the Maritime Capital, which is to be ourhome for a year, but I had hardly got down the last words when Aristidescame in with a despatch from the Seventh Regionic, summoning us there onimportant public business: I haven't got over the feeling yet of beingespecially distinguished and flattered at sharing in public business; butthe Altrurian women are so used to it that they do not think anything ofit. The despatch was signed by an old friend of my husband's, CyrilChrysostom, who had once been Emissary in England, and to whom my husbandwrote his letters when he was in America. I hated to leave my mother sosoon, but it could not be helped, and we took the first electric expressfor the Seventh Regionic, where we arrived in about an hour and fortyminutes, making the three hundred miles in that time easily. I couldn'thelp regretting our comfortable van, but there was evidently haste in thesummons, and I confess that I was curious to know what the matter was, though I had made a shrewd guess the first instant, and it turned outthat I was not mistaken. 

The long and the short of it was that there was trouble with the peoplewho had come ashore in that yacht, and were destined never to go to seain her. She was hopelessly bedded in the sand, and the waves that werebreaking over her were burying her deeper and deeper. The owners wereliving in their tent as we had left them, and her crew were camped insmaller tents and any shelter they could get, along the beach. They hadbrought her stores away, but many of the provisions had been damaged, andit had become a pressing question what should be done about the people. We had been asked to consult with Cyril and his wife, and the otherRegionic chiefs and their wives, and we threshed the question out nearlythe whole night. 

I am afraid it will appear rather comical in some aspects to you and Mr. Makely, but I can assure you that it was a very serious matter with theAltrurian authorities. If there had been any hope of a vessel from thecapitalistic world touching at Altruria within a definite time, theycould have managed, for they would have gladly kept the yacht's peopleand owners till they could embark them for Australia or New Zealand, andwould have made as little of the trouble they were giving as they could. But until the trader that brought us should return with the crew, as thecaptain had promised, there was no ship expected, and any other wreck inthe mean time would only add to their difficulty. You may be surprised, though I was not, that the difficulty was mostly with the yacht-owners, and above all with Mrs. Thrall, who had baffled every effort of theauthorities to reduce what they considered the disorder of their life. 

With the crew it was a different matter. As soon as they had got drunk onthe wines and spirits they had brought from the wreck, and then had gotsober because they had drunk all the liquors up, they began to be moremanageable; when their provisions ran short, and they were made tounderstand that they would not be allowed to plunder the fields andwoods, or loot the villages for something to eat, they became almostexemplarily docile. At first they were disposed to show fight, andthe principles of the Altrurians did not allow them to use violence inbringing them to subjection; but the men had counted without their hostsin supposing that they could therefore do as they pleased, unless theypleased to do right. After they had made their first foray they werewarned by Cyril, who came from the capital to speak English with them, that another raid would not be suffered. They therefore attempted itby night, but the Altrurians were prepared for them with the flexiblesteel nets which are their only means of defence, and half a dozensailors were taken in one. When they attempted to break out, and theirshipmates attempted to break in to free them, a light current ofelectricity was sent through the wires and the thing was done. Thosewho were rescued--the Altrurians will not say captured--had hoes put intotheir hands the next morning, and were led into the fields and set towork, after a generous breakfast of coffee, bread, and mushrooms. Thechickens they had killed in their midnight expedition were buried, andthose which they had not killed lost no time in beginning to lay eggs forthe sustenance of the reformed castaways. As an extra precaution with the"rescued, " when they were put to work, each of them with a kind of shirtof mail, worn over his coat, which could easily be electrized by ametallic filament connecting with the communal dynamo, and under theseconditions they each did a full day's work during the Obligatories. 

As the short commons grew shorter and shorter, both meat and drink, atCamp Famine, and the campers found it was useless to attempt thievingfrom the Altrurians, they had tried begging from the owners in theirlarge tent, but they were told that the provisions were giving out there, too, and there was nothing for them. When they insisted the servants ofthe owners had threatened them with revolvers, and the sailors, who hadnothing but their knives, preferred to attempt living on the country. Within a week the whole crew had been put to work in the woods and fieldsand quarries, or wherever they could make themselves useful. They were, on the whole, so well fed and sheltered that they were perfectlysatisfied, and went down with the Altrurians on the beach during theVoluntaries and helped secure the yacht's boats and pieces of wreckagethat came ashore. Until they became accustomed or resigned to theAltrurian diet, they were allowed to catch shell-fish and the crabs thatswarmed along the sand and cook them, but on condition that they builttheir fires on the beach, and cooked only during an offshore wind, sothat the fumes of the roasting should not offend the villagers. 

Cyril acknowledged, therefore, that the question of the crew was for thepresent practically settled, but Mr. And Mrs. Thrall, and their daughterand son-in-law, with their servants, still presented a formidableproblem. As yet, their provisions had not run out, and they were livingin their marquee as we had seen them three weeks earlier, just aftertheir yacht went ashore. It could not be said that they were molestive inthe same sense as the sailors, but they were even more demoralizing inthe spectacle they offered the neighborhood of people dependent on hiredservice, and in their endeavors to supply themselves in perishableprovisions, like milk and eggs, by means of money. Cyril had held severalinterviews with them, in which he had at first delicately intimated, andthen explicitly declared, that the situation could not be prolonged. The two men had been able to get the Altrurian point of view in somemeasure, and so had Lady Moors, but Mrs. Thrall had remained stifflyobtuse and obstinate, and it was in despair of bringing her to termswithout resorting to rescue that he had summoned us to help him. 

It was not a pleasant job, but of course we could not refuse, and weagreed that as soon as we had caught a nap, and had a bite of breakfastwe would go over to their camp with Cyril and his wife, and see what wecould do with the obnoxious woman. I confess that I had some littleconsolation in the hope that I should see her properly humbled. 

XI

Mr. Thrall and Lord Moors must have seen us coming, for they met us atthe door of the tent without the intervention of the footman, and gave usquite as much welcome as we could expect in our mission, so disagreeableall round. Mr. Thrall was as fatherly with me as before, and Lord Moorswas as polite to Cyril and Mrs. Chrysostom as could have been wished. Infact he and Cyril were a sort of acquaintances from the time of Cyril'svisit to England where he met the late Earl Moors, the father of thepresent peer, in some of his visits to Toynbee Hall, and the WhitechapelSettlements. The earl was very much interested in the slums, perhapsbecause he was rather poor himself, if not quite slummy. The son was thenat the university, and when he came out and into his title he so farshared his father's tastes that he came to America; it was not slumming, exactly, but a nobleman no doubt feels it to be something like it. Aftera little while in New York he went out to Colorado, where so many needynoblemen bring up, and there he met the Thralls, and fell in love withthe girl. Cyril had understood--or rather Mrs. Cyril, --that it was alove-match on both sides, but on Mrs. Thrall's side it was business. Hedid not even speak of settlements--the English are so romantic when they_are_ romantic!--but Mr. Thrall saw to all that, and the young peoplewere married after a very short courtship. They spent their honeymoonpartly in Colorado Springs and partly in San Francisco, where theThralls' yacht was lying, and then they set out on a voyage round theworld, making stops at the interesting places, and bringing up on thebeach of the Seventh Region of Altruria, on route for the eastern coastof South America. From that time on, Cyril said, we knew their history. 

After Mr. Thrall had shaken hands tenderly with me, and cordially withAristides, he said, "Won't you all come inside and have breakfast withus? My wife and daughter"--

"Thank you, Mr. Thrall, " Cyril answered for us, "we will sit down here, if you please; and as your ladies are not used to business, we will notask you to disturb them. "

"I'm sure Lady Moors, " the young nobleman began, but Cyril waved himsilent. 

"We shall be glad later, but not now! Gentlemen, I have asked my friendsAristides Homos and Eveleth Homos to accompany my wife and me thismorning because Eveleth is an American, and will understand yourposition, and he has lately been in America and will be able to clarifythe situation from both sides. We wish you to believe that we areapproaching you in the friendliest spirit, and that nothing could be morepainful to us than to seem inhospitable. "

"Then why, " the old man asked, with business-like promptness, "do youobject to our presence here? I don't believe I get your idea. "

"Because the spectacle which your life offers is contrary to good morals, and as faithful citizens we cannot countenance it. "

"But in what way is our life immoral? I have always thought that I was agood citizen at home; at least I can't remember having been arrested fordisorderly conduct. "

He smiled at me, as if I should appreciate the joke, and it hurt me tokeep grave, but suspecting what a bad time he was going to have, Ithought I had better not join him in any levity. 

"I quite conceive you, " Cyril replied. "But you present to our people, who are offended by it, the spectacle of dependence upon hireling servicefor your daily comfort and convenience. "

"But, my dear sir, " Mr. Thrall returned, "don't we _pay_ for it? Do ourservants object to rendering us this service?"

"That has nothing to do with the case; or, rather, it makes it worse. Thefact that your servants do not object shows how completely they aredepraved by usage. We should not object if they served you fromaffection, and if you repaid them in kindness; but the fact that youthink you have made them a due return by giving them money shows how farfrom the right ideal in such a matter the whole capitalistic world is. "

Here, to my great delight, Aristides spoke up:

"If the American practice were half as depraving as it ought logically tobe in their conditions, their social system would drop to pieces. It wasalways astonishing to me that a people with their facilities for evil, their difficulties for good, should remain so kind and just and pure. "

"That is what I understood from your letters to me, my dear Aristides. Iam willing to leave the general argument for the present. But I shouldlike to ask Mr. Thrall a question, and I hope it won't be offensive. "

Mr. Thrall smiled. "At any rate I promise not to be offended. "

"You are a very rich man?"

"Much richer than I would like to be. "

"How rich?"

"Seventy millions; eighty; a hundred; three hundred; I don't just know. "

"I don't suppose you've always felt your great wealth a great blessing?"

"A blessing? There have been times when I felt it a millstone hangedabout my neck, and could have wished nothing so much as that I werethrown into the sea. Man, you don't _know_ what a curse I have felt mymoney to be at such times. When I have given it away, as I have bymillions at a time, I have never been sure that I was not doing more harmthan good with it. I have hired men to seek out good objects for me, andI have tried my best to find for myself causes and institutions andpersons who might be helped without hindering others as worthy, butsometimes it seems as if every dollar of my money carried a blight withit, and infected whoever touched it with a moral pestilence. It hasreached a sum where the wildest profligate couldn't spend it, and itgrows and grows. It's as if it were a rising flood that had touched mylips, and would go over my head before I could reach the shore. I believeI got it honestly, and I have tried to share it with those whose laborearned it for me. I have founded schools and hospitals and homes forold men and old women, and asylums for children, and the blind, and deaf, and dumb, and halt, and mad. Wherever I have found one of my old workmenin need, and I have looked personally into the matter, I have providedfor him fully, short of pauperization. Where I have heard of some giftedyouth, I have had him educated in the line of his gift. I have collecteda gallery of works of art, and opened it on Sundays as well as week-daysto the public free. If there is a story of famine, far or near, I sendfood by the shipload. If there is any great public calamity, my agentshave instructions to come to the rescue without referring the case to me. But it is all useless! The money grows and grows, and I begin to feelthat my efforts to employ it wisely and wholesomely are making me apublic laughing-stock as well as an easy mark for every swindler with ajob or a scheme. " He turned abruptly to me. "But you must often haveheard the same from my old friend Strange. We used to talk these thingsover together, when our money was not the heap that mine is now; and itseems to me I can hear his voice saying the very words I have beenusing. "

I, too, seemed to hear his voice in the words, and it was as if speakingfrom his grave. 

I looked at Aristides, and read compassion in his dear face; but the faceof Cyril remained severe and judicial. He said: "Then, if what you say istrue, you cannot think it a hardship if we remove your burden for thetime you remain with us. I have consulted with the National and Regionalas well as the Communal authorities, and we cannot let you continue tolive in the manner you are living here. You must pay your way. "

"I shall be only too glad to do that, " Mr. Thrall returned, morecheerfully. "We have not a great deal of cash in hand, but I can give youmy check on London or Paris or New York. "

"In Altruria, " Cyril returned, "we have no use for money. You must _pay_your way as soon as your present provision from your yacht is exhausted. "

Mr. Thrall turned a dazed look on the young lord, who suggested: "I don'tthink we follow you. How can Mr. Thrall pay his way except with money?"

"He must pay with _work_. As soon as you come upon the neighbors here forthe necessities of life you must all work. To-morrow or the next day ornext week at the furthest you must go to work, or you must starve. "

Then he came out with that text of Scripture which had been so efficientwith the crew of the _Little Sally_: "For even when we were with you thiswe commanded you, that if any would not work neither should he eat. "

Lord Moors seemed very interested, and not so much surprised as I hadexpected. "Yes, I have often thought of that passage and of itssusceptibility to a simpler interpretation than we usually give it. But--"

"There is but one interpretation of which it is susceptible, " Cyrilinterrupted. "The apostle gives that interpretation when he prefaces thetext with the words, 'For yourselves know how you ought to follow us; forwe behaved not ourselves disorderly among you. Neither did we eat anyman's bread for nought; but _wrought with travail_ night and day, that wemight not be chargeable to any of you: not because we have not power, butto make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us. ' The whole economyof Altruria is founded on these passages. "

"Literally?"

"Literally. "

"But, my dear sir, " the young lord reasoned, "you surely do not wrenchthe text from some such meaning as that if a man has money, he may payhis way without working?"

"No, certainly not. But here you have no money, and as we cannot sufferany to 'walk among us disorderly, working not at all, ' we must not exemptyou from our rule. "

XII

At this point there came a sound from within the marquee as of skirtssweeping forward sharply, imperiously, followed by a softer _frou-frou_, and Mrs. Thrall put aside the curtain of the tent with one hand, andstood challenging our little Altrurian group, while Lady Moors peeredtimidly at us from over her mother's shoulder. I felt a lust of battlerising in me at sight of that woman, and it was as much as I could do tocontrol myself; but in view of the bad time I knew she was going to have, I managed to hold in, though I joined very scantly in the politegreetings of the Chrysostoms and Aristides, which she ignored as if theyhad been the salutations of savages. She glared at her husband forexplanation, and he said, gently, "This is a delegation from theAltrurian capital, my dear, and we have been talking over the situationtogether. "

"But what is this, " she demanded, "that I have heard about our notpaying? Do they accuse us of not paying? You could buy and sell the wholecountry. "

I never imagined so much mildness could be put into such offensive wordsas Cyril managed to get into his answer. "We accuse you of not paying, and we do not mean that you shall become chargeable to us. The men andwomen who served you on shipboard have been put to work, and you must goto work, too. "

"Mr. Thrall--Lord Moors--have you allowed these people to treat you as ifyou were part of the ship's crew? Why don't you give them what they wantand let them go? Of course it's some sort of blackmailing scheme. But youought to get rid of them at any cost. Then you can appeal to theauthorities, and tell them that you will bring the matter to the noticeof the government at Washington. They must be taught that they cannotinsult American citizens with impunity. " No one spoke, and she added, "What do they really want?"

"Well, my dear, " her husband hesitated, "I hardly know how to explain. But it seems that they think our living here in the way we do isorderly, and--and they want us to go to work, in short. "

"To _work!_" she shouted. 

"Yes, all of us. That is, so I understand. "

"What nonsense!"

She looked at us one after another, and when her eye rested on me, Ibegan to suspect that insolent as she was she was even duller; in fact, that she was so sodden in her conceit of wealth that she was plainstupid. So when she said to me, "You are an American by birth, I believe. Can you tell me the meaning of this?" I answered:

"Cyril Chrysostom represents the authorities. If _he_ asks me to speak, Iwill speak. " Cyril nodded at me with a smile, and I went on. "It is avery simple matter. In Altruria everybody works with his hands threehours a day. After that he works or not, as he likes. "

"What have we to do with that?" she asked. 

"The rule has no exceptions. "

"But we are not Altrurians; we are Americans. "

"I am an American, too, and I work three hours every day, unless I ampassing from one point to another on public business with my husband. Even then we prefer to stop during the work-hours, and help in thefields, or in the shops, or wherever we are needed. I left my own motherat home doing her kitchen work yesterday afternoon, though it was out ofhours, and she need not have worked. "

"Very well, then, we will do nothing of the kind, neither I, nor mydaughter, nor my husband. He has worked hard all his life, and he hascome away for a much-needed rest. I am not going to have him breakinghimself down. "

I could not help suggesting, "I suppose the men at work in his mines, andmills, and on his railroads and steamship lines are taking a much-neededrest, too. I hope you are not going to let them break themselves down, either. "

Aristides gave me a pained glance, and Cyril and his wife looked grave, but she not quite so grave as he. Lord Moors said, "We don't seem to begetting on. What Mrs. Thrall fails to see, and I confess I don't quitesee it myself, is that if we are not here _in forma pauperis_--"

"But you _are_ here _in forma pauperis_, " Cyril interposed, smilingly. 

"How is that? If we are willing to pay--if Mr. Thrall's credit isundeniably good--"

"Mr. Thrall's credit is not good in Altruria; you can pay here only inone currency, in the sweat of your faces. "

"You want us to be Tolstoys, I suppose, " Mrs. Thrall said, contemptuously. 

Cyril replied, gently, "The endeavor of Tolstoy, in capitalisticconditions, is necessarily dramatic. Your labor here will be for yourdaily bread, and it will be real. " The inner dullness of the woman cameinto her eyes again, and he addressed himself to Lord Moors incontinuing: "If a company of indigent people were cast away on an Englishcoast, after you had rendered them the first aid, what should you do?"

The young man reflected. "I suppose we should put them in the way ofearning a living until some ship arrived to take them home. "

"That is merely what we propose to do in your case here, " Cyril said. 

"But we are not indigent--"

"Yes, you are absolutely destitute. You have money and credit, butneither has any value in Altruria. Nothing but work or love has any valuein Altruria. You cannot realize too clearly that you stand before us _informa pauperis_. But we require of you nothing that we do not require ofourselves. In Altruria every one is poor till he pays with work; then, for that time, he is rich; and he cannot otherwise lift himself abovecharity, which, except in the case of the helpless, we consider immoral. Your life here offers a very corrupting spectacle. You are manifestlyliving without work, and you are served by people whose hire you are notable to pay. "

"My dear sir, " Mr. Thrall said at this point, with a gentle smile, "Ithink they are willing to take the chances of being paid. "

"We cannot suffer them to do so. At present we know of no means of yourgetting away from Altruria. We have disused our custom of annuallyconnecting with the Australasian steamers, and it may be years before avessel touches on our coast. A ship sailed for Boston some months ago, with the promise of returning in order that the crew may cast in theirlot with us permanently. We do not confide in that promise, and you musttherefore conform to our rule of life. Understand clearly that thewillingness of your servants to serve you has nothing to do with thematter. That is part of the falsity in which the whole capitalistic worldlives. As the matter stands with you, here, there is as much reason whyyou should serve them as they should serve you. If on their side theyshould elect to serve you from love, they will be allowed to do so. Otherwise, you and they must go to work with the neighbors at the tasksthey will assign you. "

"Do you mean at once?" Lord Moors asked. 

"The hours of the obligatory labors are nearly past for the day. But ifyou are interested in learning what you will be set to doing to-morrow, the Communal authorities will be pleased to instruct you during theVoluntaries this afternoon. You may be sure that in no case will yourweakness or inexperience be overtasked. Your histories will be studied, and appropriate work will be assigned to each of you. "

Mrs. Thrall burst out, "If you think I am going into my kitchen--"

Then I burst in, "I left my mother in _her_ kitchen!"

"And a very fit place for her, I dare say, " she retorted, but Lady Moorscaught her mother's arm and murmured, in much the same distress as showedin my husband's mild eyes, "Mother! Mother!" and drew her within. 

XIII

Well, Dolly, I suppose you will think it was pretty hard for thosepeople, and when I got over my temper I confess that I felt sorry for thetwo men, and for the young girl whom the Altrurians would not call LadyMoors, but addressed by her Christian name, as they did each of theAmerican party in his or her turn; even Mrs. Thrall had to answer toRebecca. They were all rather bewildered, and so were the butler andthe footmen, and the _chef_ and his helpers, and the ladies' maids. These were even more shocked than those they considered their betters, and I quite took to my affections Lord Moors' man Robert, who was in anawe-stricken way trying to get some light from me on the situation. Hecontributed as much as any one to bring about a peaceful submission tothe inevitable, for he had been a near witness of what had happened tothe crew when they attempted their rebellion to the authorities; but hedid not profess to understand the matter, and from time to time he seemedto question the reality of it. 

The two masters, as you would call Mr. Thrall and Lord Moors, both tookan attitude of amiable curiosity towards their fate, and accepted it withinterest when they had partly chosen and partly been chosen by it. Mr. Thrall had been brought up on a farm till his ambition carried him intothe world; and he found the light gardening assigned him for his firsttask by no means a hardship. He was rather critical of the Altrurianstyle of hoe at first, but after he got the hang of it, as he said, heliked it better, and during the three hours of the first morning'sObligatoires, his ardor to cut all the weeds out at once had to berestrained rather than prompted. He could not be persuaded to take fiveminutes for rest out of every twenty, and he could not get over hislife-long habit of working against time. The Altrurians tried to makehim understand that here people must not work _against_ time, but mustalways work _with_ it, so as to have enough work to do each day;otherwise they must remain idle during the Obligatoires and tend todemoralize the workers. It seemed that Lady Moors had a passion forgardening, and she was set to work with her father on the border offlowers surrounding the vegetable patch he was hoeing. She knew aboutflowers, and from her childhood had amused herself by growing them, andso far from thinking it a hardship or disgrace to dig, she was delightedto get at them. It was easy to see that she and her father were cronies, and when I went round in the morning with Aristides to ask if we could doanything for them, we heard them laughing and talking gayly togetherbefore we reached them. They said they had looked their job (as Mr. Thrall called it) over the afternoon before during the Voluntaries, andhad decided how they would manage, and they had set to work that morningas soon as they had breakfast. Lady Moors had helped her mother get thebreakfast, and she seemed to regard the whole affair as a picnic, thoughfrom the look of Mrs. Thrall's back, as she turned it on me, when I sawher coming to the door of the marquee with a coffee-pot in her hand, Idecided that she was not yet resigned to her new lot in life. 

Lord Moors was nowhere to be seen, and I felt some little curiosity abouthim which was not quite anxiety. Later, as we were going back to ourquarters in the village, we saw him working on the road with a partyof Altrurians who were repairing a washout from an overnight rain. Theywere having all kinds of a time, except a bad time, trying to understandeach other in their want of a common language. It appeared that theAltrurians were impressed with his knowledge of road-making, and weredoing something which he had indicated to them by signs. We offeredour services as interpreters, and then he modestly owned in defence ofhis suggestions that when he was at Oxford he had been one of the band ofenthusiastic undergraduates who had built a piece of highway under Mr. Ruskin's direction. The Altrurians regarded his suggestions as ratheramateurish, but they were glad to act upon them, when they could, out ofpure good feeling and liking for him; and from time to time they rushedupon him and shook hands with him; their affection did not go further, and he was able to stand the handshaking, though he told us he hoped theywould not feel it necessary to keep it up, for it was really only a verysimple matter like putting a culvert in place of a sluice which they hadbeen using to carry the water off. They understood what he was saying, from his gestures, and they crowded round us to ask whether he would liketo join them during the Voluntaries that afternoon, in getting the stoneout of a neighboring quarry, and putting in the culvert at once. Weexplained to him, and he said he should be very happy. All the time hewas looking at them admirably, and he said, "It's really very good, " andwe understood that he meant their classic working-dress, and when headded, "I should really fancy trying it myself one day, " and we told themthey wanted to go and bring him an Altrurian costume at once. But wepersuaded them not to urge him, and in fact he looked very fit for hiswork in his yachting flannels. 

I talked him over a long time with Aristides, and tried to get his pointof view. I decided finally that an Englishman of his ancient lineage andhigh breeding, having voluntarily come down to the level of an Americanmillionaire by marriage, could not feel that he was lowering himself anyfurther by working with his hands. In fact, he probably felt that hismerely undertaking a thing dignified the thing; but of course this wasonly speculation on my part, and he may have been resigned to working fora living because like poor people elsewhere he was obliged to do it. Aristides thought there was a good deal in that idea, but it is hard foran Altrurian to conceive of being ashamed of work, for they regardidleness as pauperism, and they would look upon our leisure classes, sofar as we have them, very much as we look upon tramps, only they wouldmake the excuse for our tramps that they often cannot get work. 

We had far more trouble with the servants than we had with the masters inmaking them understand that they were to go to work in the fields andshops, quite as the crew of the yacht had done. Some of them refusedoutright, and stuck to their refusal until the village electricianrescued them with the sort of net and electric filament which had beenemployed with the recalcitrant sailors; others were brought to a bettermind by withholding food from them till they were willing to pay for itby working. You will be sorry to learn, Dolly, that the worst of therebels were the ladies' maids, who, for the honor of our sex, ought notto have required the application of the net and filament; but they hadnot such appetites as the men-servants, and did not mind starving somuch. However, in a very short time they were at work, too, and more orless resigned, though they did not profess to understand it. 

You will think me rather fickle, I am afraid, but after I made thepersonal acquaintance of Mr. Thrall's _chef, _ Anatole, I found myaffections dividing themselves between him and his lordship's man Robert, my first love. But Anatole was magnificent, a gaunt, little, aquilineman, with a branching mustache and gallant goatee, and having held anexalted position at a salary of ten thousand a year from Mr. Thrall, hecould easily stoop from it, while poor Robert was tormented withmisgivings, not for himself, but for Lord and Lady Moors and Mr. Thrall. It became my pleasing office to explain the situation to MonsieurAnatole, who, when he imagined it, gave a cry of joy, and confessed, whathe had never liked to tell Mr. Thrall, knowing the misconceptions ofAmericans on the subject, that he had belonged in France to a party ofwhich the political and social ideal was almost identical with thatof the Altrurians. He asked for an early opportunity of addressing thevillage Assembly and explaining this delightful circumstance in public, and he profited by the occasion to embrace the first Altrurian we met andkiss him on both cheeks. 

His victim was a messenger from the Commune, who had been sent to inquirewhether Anatole had a preference as to the employment which should beassigned to him, and I had to reply for him that he was a man of science;that he would be happy to serve the republic in whatever capacity hisconcitizens chose, but that he thought he could be most useful instudying the comestible vegetation of the neighborhood, and thesubstitution of the more succulent herbs for the flesh-meats to the useof which, he understood from me, the Altrurians were opposed. In thecourse of his preparation for the rôle of _chef_, which he had playedboth in France and America, he had made a specialty of edible fungi;and the result was that Anatole was set to mushrooming, and up to thismoment he has discovered no less than six species hitherto unknown to theAltrurian table. This has added to their dietary in several importantparticulars, the fungi he has discovered being among those highlydecorative and extremely poisonous-looking sorts which flourish in thedeep woods and offer themselves almost inexhaustibly in places near theruins of the old capitalistic cities, where hardly any other foods willgrow. Anatole is very proud of his success, and at more than one CommunalAssembly has lectured upon his discoveries and treated of theirpreparation for the table, with sketches of them as he found themgrowing, colored after nature by his own hand. He has himself become afanatical vegetarian, having, he confesses, always had a secret loathingfor the meats he stooped to direct the cooking of among the French andAmerican bourgeoisie in the days which he already looks back upon asamong the most benighted of his history. 

XIV

The scene has changed again, Dolly, and six months have elapsed withoutyour knowing it. Aristides and I long ago completed the tour of thecapitals which the Thrall incident interrupted, and we have been settledfor many months in the Maritime Capital, where it has been decided we hadbetter fill out the first two years of my husband's repatriation. I havebecome more and more thoroughly naturalized, and if I am not yet aperfect Altrurian, it is not for not loving better and better the bestAltrurian of them all, and not for not admiring and revering thiswonderful civilization. 

During the Obligatories of the forenoons I do my housework with my ownhands, and as my mother lives with us we have long talks together, andtry to make each other believe that the American conditions were a sortof nightmare from which we have happily awakened. You see how terriblyfrank I am, my dear, but if I were not, I could not make you understandhow I feel. My heart aches for you, there, and the more because I knowthat you do not want to live differently, that you are proud of youreconomic and social illogicality, and that you think America is the bestcountry under the sun! I can never persuade you, but if you could onlycome here, once, and see for yourselves! Seeing would be believing, andbelieving would be the wish never to go away, but to be at home herealways. 

I can imagine your laughing at me and asking Mr. Makely whether the_Little Sally_ has ever returned to Altruria, and how I can account forthe captain's failure to keep his word. I confess that is a sore pointwith me. It is now more than a year since she sailed, and, of course, wehave not had a sign or whisper from her. I could almost wish that thecrew were willing to stay away, but I am afraid it is the captain who iskeeping them. It has become almost a mania with me, and every morning, the first thing when I wake, I go for my before-breakfast walk along themarble terrace that overlooks the sea, and scan the empty rounding forthe recreant ship. I do not want to think so badly of human nature, as Imust if the _Little Sally_ never comes back, and I am sure you will notblame me if I should like her to bring me some word from you. I know thatif she ever reached Boston you got my letters and presents, and that youhave been writing me as faithfully as I have been writing you, and what asheaf of letters from you there will be if her masts ever piercethe horizon! To tell the truth, I do long for a little American news! Doyou still keep on murdering and divorcing, and drowning, and burning, andmommicking, and maiming people by sea and land? Has there been any warsince I left? Is the financial panic as great as ever, and is there asmuch hunger and cold? I know that whatever your crimes and calamitiesare, your heroism and martyrdom, your wild generosity and self-devotion, are equal to them. 

It is no use to pretend that in little over a year I can have becomeaccustomed to the eventlessness of life in Altruria. I go on for a goodmany days together and do not miss the exciting incidents you have inAmerica, and then suddenly I am wolfishly hungry for the old sensations, just as now and then I _want meat_, though I know I should loathe thesight and smell of it if I came within reach of it. You would laugh, Idare say, at the Altrurian papers, and what they print for news. Most ofthe space is taken up with poetry, and character study in the form offiction, and scientific inquiry of every kind. But now and then there isa report of the production of a new play in one of the capitals; or anaccount of an open-air pastoral in one of the communes; or the progressof some public work, like the extension of the National Colonnade; or thewonderful liberation of some section from malaria; or the story of somegood man or woman's life, ended at the patriarchal age they reach here. They also print selected passages of capitalistic history, from theearliest to the latest times, showing how in war and pestilence andneedless disaster the world outside Altruria remains essentially the samethat it was at the beginning of civilization, with some slight changesthrough the changes of human nature for the better in its slow approachesto the Altrurian ideal. In noting these changes the writers get some sadamusement out of the fact that the capitalistic world believes humannature cannot be changed, though cannibalism and slavery and polygamyhave all been extirpated in the so-called Christian countries, and thesethings were once human nature, which is always changing, while brutenature remains the same. Now and then they touch very guardedly on thatslavery, worse than war, worse than any sin or shame conceivable to theAltrurians, in which uncounted myriads of women are held and bought andsold, and they have to note that in this the capitalistic world iswithout the hope of better things. You know what I mean, Dolly; everygood woman knows the little she cannot help knowing; but if you had everinquired into that horror, as I once felt obliged to do, you would thinkit the blackest horror of the state of things where it must always existas long as there are riches and poverty. Now, when so many things inAmerica seem bad dreams, I cannot take refuge in thinking that a baddream; the reality was so deeply burnt into my brain by the words ofsome of the slaves; and when I think of it I want to grovel on the groundwith my mouth in the dust. But I know this can only distress you, for youcannot get away from the fact as I have got away from it; that there itis in the next street, perhaps in the next house, and that any night whenyou leave your home with your husband, you may meet it at the first stepfrom your door. 

You can very well imagine what a godsend the reports of Aristides and thediscussions of them have been to our papers. They were always taken downstenographically, and they were printed like dialogue, so that at alittle distance you would take them at first for murder trials or divorcecases, but when you look closer, you find them questions and answersabout the state of things in America. There are often humorous passages, for the Altrurians are inextinguishably amused by our illogicality, andwhat they call the perpetual _non sequiturs_ of our lives and laws. Inthe discussions they frequently burlesque these, but as they present themthey seem really beyond the wildest burlesque. Perhaps you will besurprised to know that a nation of working-people like these feel morecompassion than admiration for our working-people. They pity them, butthey blame them more than they blame the idle rich for the existingcondition of things in America. They ask why, if the American workmenare in the immense majority, they do not vote a true and just state, andwhy they go on striking and starving their families instead; they cannotdistinguish in principle between the confederations of labor and thecombinations of capital, between the trusts and the trades-unions, andthey condemn even more severely the oppressions and abuses of the unions. My husband tries to explain that the unions are merely provisional, andare a temporary means of enabling the employees to stand up against thetyranny of the employers, but they always come back and ask him if theworkmen have not most of the votes, and if they have, why they do notprotect themselves peacefully instead of organizing themselves infighting shape, and making a warfare of industry. 

There is not often anything so much like news in the Altrurian papers asthe grounding of the Thrall yacht on the coast of the Seventh Region, andthe incident has been treated and discussed in every possible phase bythe editors and their correspondents. They have been very frank about it, as they are about everything in Altruria, and they have not concealedtheir anxieties about their unwelcome guests. They got on without muchtrouble in the case of the few sailors of the _Little Sally_, but thecrew of the _Saraband_ is so large that it is a different matter. In thefirst place, they do not like the application of force, even in the mildelectrical form in which they employ it, and they fear that the effectwith themselves will be bad, however good it is for their guests. Besides, they dread the influence which a number of people, invested withthe charm of strangeness, may have with the young men and especially theyoung girls of the neighborhood. The hardest thing the Altrurians have tograpple with is feminine curiosity, and the play of this about thestrangers is what they seek the most anxiously to control. Of course, youwill think it funny, and I must say that it seemed so to me at first, butI have come to think it is serious. The Altrurian girls are cultivatedand refined, but as they have worked all their lives with their handsthey cannot imagine the difference that work makes in Americans; that itcoarsens and classes them, especially if they have been in immediatecontact with rich people, and been degraded or brutalized by theknowledge of the contempt in which labor is held among us by those whoare not compelled to it. Some of my Altrurian friends have talked it overwith me, and I could take their point of view, though secretly I couldnot keep my poor American feelings from being hurt when they said that tohave a large number of people from the capitalistic world thrown upontheir hands was very much as it would be with us if we had the samenumber of Indians, with all their tribal customs and ideals, thrown uponour hands. They say they will not shirk their duty in the matter, andwill study it carefully; but all the same, they wish the incident had nothappened. 

XV

I am glad that I was called away from the disagreeable point I left in mylast, and that I have got back temporarily to the scene of theAltrurianization of Mr. Thrall and his family. So far as it has gone itis perfect, if I may speak from the witness of happiness in thoseconcerned, except perhaps Mrs. Thrall; she is as yet only partiallyreconstructed, but even she has moments of forgetting her lost grandeurand of really enjoying herself in her work. She is an excellenthousekeeper, and she has become so much interested in making the marqueea simple home for her family that she is rather proud of showing it offas the effect of her unaided efforts. She was allowed to cater to themfrom the canned meats brought ashore from the yacht as long as they wouldstand it, but the wholesome open-air conditions have worked a wonderfulchange in them, and neither Mr. Thrall nor Lord and Lady Moors now haveany taste for such dishes. Here Mrs. Thrall's old-time skill as anexcellent vegetable cook, when she was the wife of a young mechanic, hascome into play, and she believes that she sets the best table in thewhole neighborhood, with fruits and many sorts of succulents and theeverlasting and ever-pervading mushrooms. 

As the Altrurians do not wish to annoy their involuntary guests, or tointerfere with their way of life where they do not consider it immoral, their control has ended with setting them to work for a living. Theyhave not asked them to the communal refectory, but, as long as they havebeen content to serve each other, have allowed them their private table. Of course, their adaptation to their new way of life has proceeded moreslowly than it otherwise would, but with the exception of Mrs. Thrallthey are very intelligent people, and I have been charmed in talking thesituation over with them. The trouble has not been so great with theship's people, as was feared. Such of these as have imagined their stayhere permanent, or wished it to be so, have been received into theneighboring communes, and have taken the first steps towardsnaturalization; those who look forward to getting away some time, orexpress the wish for it, are allowed to live in a community of their own, where they are not molested as long as they work in the three hours ofthe Obligatoires. Naturally, they are kept out of mischief, but aftertheir first instruction in the ideas of public property and theimpossibility of enriching themselves at the expense of any one else, they have behaved very well. The greatest trouble they ever gave was intrapping and killing the wild things for food; but when they were toldthat this must not be done, and taught to recognize the vast range ofedible fungi, they took not unwillingly to mushrooms and the rankertubers and roots, from which, with unlimited eggs, cheese, milk, andshell-fish, they have constructed a diet of which they do not complain. 

This brings me rather tangentially to Monsieur Anatole, who has become afanatical Altrurian, and has even had to be restrained in some of hisenthusiastic plans for the compulsory naturalization of his fellowcastaways. His value as a scientist has been cordially recognized, andhis gifts as an artist in the exquisite water-color studies of ediblefungi has won his notice in the capital of the Seventh Regional wherethey have been shown at the spring water-color exhibition. He has printedseveral poems in the _Regional Gazette_, villanelles, rondeaux, andtriolets, with accompanying versions of the French, into Altrurian by oneof the first Altrurian poets. This is a widow of about Monsieur Anatole'sown age; and the literary friendship between them has ripened intosomething much more serious. In fact they are engaged to be married. Isuppose you will laugh at this, Dolly, and at first I confess that therewas enough of the old American in me to be shocked at the idea of aFrench _chef_ marrying an Altrurian lady who could trace her descent tothe first Altrurian president of the Commonwealth, and who is universallyloved and honored. I could not help letting something of the kind escapeme by accident, to a friend, and presently Mrs. Chrysostom was sent tointerview me on the subject, and to learn just how the case appeared tome. This put me on my honor, and I was obliged to say how it would appearin America, though every moment I grew more and more ashamed of myselfand my native country, where we pretend that labor is honorable, and arealways heaping dishonor on it. I told how certain of our girls andmatrons had married their coachmen and riding-masters and put themselvesat odds with society, and I confessed that marrying a cook would beregarded as worse, if possible. 

Mrs. Chrysostom was accompanied by a lady in her second youth, verygraceful, very charmingly dressed, and with an expression of winningintelligence, whom she named to me simply as Cecilia, in the Altrurianfashion. She apparently knew no English, and at first Mrs. Chrysostomtranslated each of her questions and my answers. When I had got through, this lady began to question me herself in Altrurian, which I owned tounderstanding a little. She said:

"You know Anatole?"

"Yes, certainly, and I like him, as I think every one must who knowshim. "

"He is a skillful _chef_?"

"Mr. Thrall would not have paid him ten thousand dollars a year if he hadnot been. "

"You have seen some of his water-colors?"

"Yes. They are exquisite. He is unquestionably an artist of rare talent. "

"And it is known to you that he is a man of scientific attainments?"

"That is something I cannot judge of so well as Aristides; but _he_ saysM. Anatole is learned beyond any man he knows in edible fungi. "

"As an adoptive Altrurian, and knowing the American ideas from our pointof view, should you respect their ideas of social inequality?"

"Not the least in the world. I understand as well as you do that theirideas must prevail wherever one works for a living and another does not. Hose ideas are practically as much accepted in America as they are inEurope, but I have fully renounced them. "

You see, Dolly, how far I have gone!

The unknown, who could be pretty easily imagined, rose up and gave me herhand. "If you are in the Region on the third of May you must come to ourwedding. "

The same afternoon I had a long talk with Mr. Thrall, whom I found atwork replanting a strawberry-patch during the Voluntaries. He rose up atthe sound of my voice, and after an old man's dim moment for getting mementally in focus, he brightened into a genial smile, and said, "Oh, Mrs. Homos! I am glad to see you. "

I told him to go on with his planting, and I offered to get down on myknees beside him and help, but he gallantly handed me to a seat in theshade beside his daughter's flower-bed, and it was there that we had along talk about conditions in America and Altruria, and how he felt aboutthe great change in his life. 

"Well, I can truly say, " he answered much more at length than I shallreport, "that I have never been so happy since the first days of myboyhood. All care has dropped from me; I don't feel myself rich, and Idon't feel myself poor in this perfect safety from want. The only thingthat gives me any regret is that my present state has not been the effectof my own will and deed. If I am now following the greatest and truest ofall counsels it has not been because I have sold all and given to thepoor, but because my money has been mercifully taken from me, and I havebeen released from its responsibilities in a state of things where thereis no money. "

"But, Mr. Thrall, " I said, "don't you ever feel that you have a duty tothe immense fortune which you have left in America, and which must bedisposed of somehow when people are satisfied that you are not going toreturn and dispose of it yourself?"

"No, none. I was long ago satisfied that I could really do no good withit. Perhaps if I had had more faith in it I might have done some goodwith it, but I believe that I never did anything but harm, even when Iseemed to be helping the most, for I was aiding in the perpetuation of astate of things essentially wrong. Now, if I never go back--and I neverwish to go back--let the law dispose of it as seems best to theauthorities. I have no kith or kin, and my wife has none, so there is noone to feel aggrieved by its application to public objects. "

"And how do you imagine it will be disposed of?"

"Oh, I suppose for charitable and educational purposes. Of course a gooddeal of it will go in graft; but that cannot be helped. "

"But if you could now dispose of it according to your clearest ideas ofjustice, and if you were forced to make the disposition yourself, whatwould you do with it?"

"Well, that is something I have been thinking of, and as nearly as I canmake out, I ought to go into the records of my prosperity and ascertainjust how and when I made my money. Then I ought to seek out as fully aspossible the workmen who helped me make it by their labor. Their wages, which, were always the highest, were never a fair share, though I forcedmyself to think differently, and it should be my duty to inquire for themand pay them each a fair share, or, if they are dead, then their childrenor their next of kin. But even when I had done this I should not be surethat I had not done them more harm than good. "

How often I had heard poor Mr. Strange say things like this, and heardof other rich men saying them, after lives of what is called beneficence!Mr. Thrall drew a deep sigh, and cast a longing look at hisstrawberry-bed. I laughed, and said, "You are anxious to get back to yourplants, and I won't keep you. I wonder if Mrs. Thrall could see me if Icalled; or Lady Moors?"

He said he was sure they would, and I took my way over to the marquee. Iwas a little surprised to be met at the door by Lord Moors' man Robert. He told me he was very sorry, but her ladyship was helping his lordshipat a little job on the roads, which they were doing quite in theVoluntaries, with the hope of having the National Colonnade extended to agiven point; the ladies were helping the gentlemen get the place inshape. He was still sorrier, but I not so much, that Mrs. Thrall waslying down and would like to be excused; she was rather tired fromputting away the luncheon things. 

He asked me if I would not sit down, and he offered me one of thecamp-stools at the door of the marquee, and I did sit down for a moment, while he flitted about the interior doing various little things. At lastI said, "How is this, Robert? I thought you had been assigned to a placein the communal refectory. You're not here on the old terms?"

He came out and stood respectfully holding a dusting-cloth in his hand. "Thank you, not exactly, ma'am. But the fact is, ma'am, that the communalmonitors have allowed me to come back here a few hours in the afternoon, on what I may call terms of my own. "

"I don't understand. But won't you sit down, Robert?"

"Thank you, if it is the same to you, ma'am, I would rather stand whileI'm here. In the refectory, of course, it's different. "

"But about your own terms?"

"Thanks. You see, ma'am, I've thought all along it was a bit awkward forthem here, they not being so much used to looking after things, and Iasked leave to come and help now and then. Of course, they said thatI could not be allowed to serve for hire in Altruria; and one thing ledto another, and I said it would really be a favor to me, and I didn'texpect money for my work, for I did not suppose I should ever be where Icould use it again, but if they would let me come here and do it for--"

Robert stopped and blushed and looked down, and I took the word, "Forlove?"

"Well, ma'am, that's what they called it. "

Dolly, it made the tears come into my eyes, and I said very solemnly, "Robert, do you know, I believe you are the sweetest soul even in thisand flowing with milk and honey?"

"Oh, you mustn't say that, ma'am. There's Mr. Thrall and his lordship andher ladyship. I'm sure they would do the like for me if I needed theirhelp. And there are the Altrurians, you know. "

"But they are used to it, Robert, and--Robert! Be frank with me! What doyou think of Altruria?"

"Quite frank, ma'am, as if you were not connected with it, as you are?"

"Quite frank. "

"Well, ma'am, if you are sure you wouldn't mind it, or consider it out ofthe way for me, I should say it was--rum. "

"_Rum_? Don't you think it is beautiful here, to see people living foreach other instead of living _on_ each other, and the whole nation likeone family, and the country a paradise?"

"Well, that's just it, ma'am, if you won't mind my saying so. That's whatI mean by rum. "

"Won't you explain?"

"It doesn't seem _real_. Every night when I go to sleep, and think thatthere isn't a thief or a policeman on the whole continent, and only a fewharmless homicides, as you call them, that wouldn't hurt a fly, and not aperson hungry or cold, and no poor and no rich, and no servants and nomasters, and no soldiers, and no--disreputable characters, it seems as ifI was going to wake up in the morning and find myself on the _Saraband_and it all a dream here. "

"Yes, Robert, " I had to own, "that was the way with me, too, for a longwhile. And even now I have dreams about America and the way matters arethere, and I wake myself weeping for fear Altruria _isn't_ true. Robert!You must be honest with me! When you are awake, and it's broad day, andyou see how happy every one is here, either working or playing, and thewhole land without an ugly place in it, and the lovely villages and themagnificent towns, and everything, does it still seem--rum?"

"It's like that, ma'am, at times. I don't say at all times. "

"And you don't believe that the rest of the world--England andAmerica--will ever be rum, too?"

"I don't see how they can. You see the poor are against it as well as therich. Everybody wants to have something of his own, and the trouble seemsto come from that. I don't suppose it was brought about in a day, Altruria wasn't, ma'am?"

"No, it was whole centuries coming. "

"That was what I understood from that Mr. Chrysostom--Cyril, he wants meto call him, but I can't quite make up my mouth to it--who speaksEnglish, and says he has been in England. He was telling me about it, oneday when we were drying the dishes at the refectory together. He saysthey used to have wars and trusts and trades-unions here in the old days, just as we do now in civilized countries. "

"And you don't consider Altruria civilized?"

"Well, not in just that sense of the word, ma'am. You wouldn't callheaven civilized?"

"Well, not in just that sense of the word. Robert, "

"You see, it's rum here, because, though everything seems to go so right, it's against human nature. "

"The Altrurians say it isn't. "

"I hope I don't differ from you, ma'am, but what would people--the bestpeople--at home say? They would say it wasn't reasonable; they would sayit wasn't even possible. That's what makes me think it's a dream--thatit's rum. Begging your pardon, ma'am. "

"Oh, I quite understand, Robert. Then you don't believe a camel can evergo through the eye of a needle?"

"I don't quite see how, ma'am. "

"But you are proof of as great a miracle, Robert. "

"Beg your pardon, ma'am?"

"Some day I will explain. But is there nothing that can make you believeAltruria is true here, and that it can be true anywhere?"

"I have been thinking a good deal about that, ma'am. One doesn't quitelike to go about in a dream, or think one is dreaming, and I have got tosaying to myself that if some ship was to come here from England orAmerica, or even from Germany, and we could compare our feelings with thefeelings of people who were fresh to it, we might somehow get to believethat it was real. "

"Yes, " I had to own. "We need fresh proofs from time to time. There was aship that sailed from here something over a year ago, and the captainpromised his crew to let them bring her back, but at times I am afraidthat was part of the dream, too, and that we're all something I amdreaming about. "

"Just so, ma'am, " Robert said, and I came away downhearted enough, thoughhe called after me, "Mrs. Thrall will be very sorry, ma'am. "

Back in the Maritime Capital, and oh, Dolly, Dolly, Dolly! They havesighted the _Little Sally_ from the terrace! How happy I am! There willbe letters from you, and I shall hear all that has happened in America, and I shall never again doubt that Altruria is real! I don't know how Ishall get these letters of mine back to you, but somehow it can bemanaged. Perhaps the _Saraband's_ crew will like to take the _LittleSally_ home again; perhaps when Mr. Thrall knows the ship is here he willwant to buy it and go back to his money in America and the misery of it!Do you believe he will? Should I like to remind my husband of his promiseto take me home on a visit? Oh, my heart misgives me! I wonder if thecaptain of the _Little Sally_ has brought his wife and children with him, and is going to settle among us, or whether he has just let his men havethe vessel, and they have come to Altruria without him? I dare not askanything, I dare not think anything!

THE END