DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 The Glenn Negley Collection 
 of Utopian Literature 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/travelerfromaltOOhowe 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 IRomance 
 
 W. D. HOWELLS 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE COAST OF BOHEMIA"" "THE QUALITY OF MERCY ' 
 "A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES" ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1894 
 
Copyright, 1894, by William Dean Howells. 
 
 t 
 
 All rig-Zits reserved. 
 
 Electrotyped by J. A. Howells & Co.. Jefferson, Ohio. 
 

 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 I confess that with all my curiosity to meet an 
 Altrurian, I was in no hospitable mood towards the 
 traveler when he finally presented himself, pursuant 
 to the letter of advice sent me by the friend who in- 
 troduced him. It would be easy enough to take care 
 of him in the hotel ; I had merely to engage a room 
 for him, and have the clerk tell him his money was 
 not good if he tried to pay for anything. But I had 
 swung fairly into my story ; its people were about me 
 all the time ; I dwelt amidst its events and places, and 
 I did not see how I could welcome my guest among 
 them, or abandon them for him. Still, when he actu- 
 ally arrived, and I took his hand as he stepped from 
 the train, I found it less difficult to say that I was glad 
 to see him than I expected. In fact, I was glad, for I 
 could not look upon his face without feeling a glow of 
 
2 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRUKIA. 
 
 kindness for him. I had not the least trouble in iden- 
 tifying him, he was so unlike all the Americans who 
 dismounted from the train with him, and who all 
 looked hot, worried and anxious. He was a man no 
 longer young, but in what we call the heyday of life, 
 when our own people are so absorbed in making pro- 
 vision for the future that they may be said not to live 
 in the present at all. This Altrurian's whole counte- 
 nance, and especially his quiet, gentle eyes, expressed 
 a vast contemporaneity, with bounds of leisure re- 
 moved to the end of time ; or, at least, this was the 
 effect of something in them which I am obliged to re- 
 port in rather fantastic terms. He was above the 
 middle height and he carried himself vigorously. His 
 face was sun-burnt, or sea-burnt, where it was not 
 bearded ; and although I knew from my friend's letter 
 that he was a man of learning, and distinction in his 
 own country, I should never have supposed him a per- 
 son of scholarly life, he was so far from sicklied over 
 with anything liko the pale cast of thought. When 
 he took the hand I offered him in my half-hearted 
 welcome he gave it a grasp that decided me to confine 
 our daily greetings to something much less muscular. 
 " Let me have your bag," I said, as we do when we 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 3 
 
 meet people at the train, and he instantly bestowed a 
 rather heavy valise upon me, with a smile in his be- 
 nignant eyes, as if it had been the greatest favor. 
 " Have you got any checks ? " I ashed. 
 
 " Yes," he said, in very good English, but with an 
 accent new to me : " I bought two." He gave them 
 to me and I passed them to our hotel porter, who was 
 waiting there with the baggage cart. Then I proposed 
 that we should walk across the meadow to the house, 
 which is a quarter of a mile or so from the station. 
 We started, but he stopped suddenly and looked back 
 over his shoulder. " Oh, you needn't be troubled 
 about your trunks," I said. " The porter will get them 
 to the house all right. They'll be in your room by 
 the time we get there." 
 
 " But he's putting them into the wagon himself," 
 said the Altrurian. 
 
 " Yes ; he always does that. He's a strong young 
 fellow. He'll manage it. You needn't — " I could 
 not finish saying he need not mind the porter ; he 
 was rushing back to the station, and I had the mor 
 tification of seeing him take an end of each trunk 
 and help the porter toss it into the wagon ; some 
 lighter pieces he put in himself, and he did not stop 
 
4 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 till all the baggage the train had left was disposed of. 
 
 I stood holding his valise, unable to put it down in 
 my embarrassment at this eccentric performance, 
 which had been evident not to rne alone, but to all the 
 people who arrived by the train, and all their friends 
 "who came from the hotel to meet them. A number 
 of these passed me on the tally-ho coach ; and a lady, 
 who had got her husband with her for over Sunday, 
 and was in very good spirits, called gayly down to me : 
 " Your friend seems fond of exercise ! " 
 
 " Yes," I answered dryly ; the sparkling repartee 
 which ought to have come to my help failed to show 
 up. But it was impossible to be vexed with the Al- 
 trurian when he returned to me, unruffled by his bout 
 with the baggage, and serenely smiling. 
 
 " Do you know," he said, " I fancied that good fel- 
 low was ashamed of my helping him. I hope it didn't 
 seem a reflection upon him in any way before your 
 people? I ought to have thought of that." 
 
 " I guess we can make it right with him. I daro 
 say he felt more surprised than disgraced. But we 
 must make haste a little now ; your train was half an 
 hour late, and we shall not stand so good a chance for 
 supper if we are not there pretty promptly." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 5 
 
 " No ? " said the Altrurian. " Why ? " 
 
 " Well," I said, with evasive lightness, "first come, 
 first served, you know. That's human nature." 
 
 " Is it ? " he returned, and he looked at me as one 
 does who suspects another of joking. 
 
 " Well, isn't it ?" I retorted ; but I hurried to add : 
 " Besides, I want to have time after supper to show 
 you a bit of our landscape. I think you'll enjoy it." 
 I knew he had arrived in Boston that morning by 
 steamer, and I now thought it high time to ask him : 
 •"Well, what do you think of America, anyway?" I 
 ought really to have asked him this the moment he 
 stepped from the train. 
 
 " Oh," he said, " I'm intensely interested," and I 
 perceived that he spoke with a certain reservation. 
 "As the most advanced country of its time, I've always 
 been very curious to see it." 
 
 The last sentence raised my dashed spirits again, 
 and I said confidently : " You must find our system 
 of baggage checks delightful." I said this because 
 it is is one of the first things we brag of to for- 
 eigners, and I had the habit of it. " By the way," 
 I ventured to add, " I suppose you meant to say you 
 brought two checks when I asked you for them at 
 
6 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the train just now ? But you really said you bought 
 them." 
 
 "Yes," the Altrurian replied, " I gave half a dollar 
 apiece for them at the station in Boston. I saw other 
 people doing it," he explained, noting my surprise. 
 " Isn't it the custom ? " 
 
 " I'm happy to say it isn't yet, on most of our roads. 
 They were tipping the baggage man, to make sure 
 that he checked their baggage in time, and put it on 
 the train. I had to do that myself when I came up ; 
 otherwise it might have got along here sometime next' 
 day. But the system is perfect." 
 
 " The poor man looked quite worn out," said the 
 Altrurian, " and I am glad I gave him something. He 
 seemed to have several hundred pieces of baggage to 
 look after, and he wasn't embarassed like your porter 
 by mv helping him put my trunks into the car. May 
 I confess that the meanness of the station, its insuffi- 
 cient facilities, its shabby waiting rooms, and its whole 
 crowded and confused appearance gave me rather a 
 bad impression ?" 
 
 " I know," I had to own, " it's shameful ; but you 
 wouldn't have found another station in the city so 
 bad." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 7 
 
 "Ah, then," said the Altrurian, " I suppose this par- 
 ticular road is too poor to employ more baggage men, 
 or build new stations ; they seemed rather shabby all 
 the way up." 
 
 " Well, no," I was obliged to confess, " it's one of 
 the richest roads in the country. The stock stands at 
 about 180. But I'm really afraid we shall be late to 
 supper, if we don't get on," I broke off ; though I was 
 not altogether sorry to arrive after the porter had dis- 
 posed of the baggage. I dreaded another display of 
 active sympathy on the part of my strange companion; 
 I have often felt sorry myself for the porters of hotels, 
 but I have never thought of offering to help them 
 handle the heavy trunks that they manage. 
 
 The Altrurian was delighted with the hotel ; and in 
 fact it did look extremely pretty with its branching 
 piazzas full of well-dressed people, and its green lawns 
 where the children were playing. I led the way to 
 the room which I had taken for him next my own ; it 
 was simply furnished, but it was sweet with matting, 
 fresh linen and pure white-washed walls. I flung open 
 the window blinds and let him get a glimpse of the 
 mountains purpling under the sunset, the lake beneath, 
 and the deeply foliaged shores. 
 
8 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Glorious ! Glorious ! " he sighed. 
 
 " Yes," I modestly assented. " We think that's 
 rather fine." He stood tranced before the window, 
 and I thought I had better say, " Well, now I can't 
 give you much time to get the dust of travel off ; the 
 dining room doors close at eight, and we must hurry 
 down." 
 
 " I'll be with you in a moment," he said, pulling off 
 his coat. 
 
 I waited impatiently at the foot of the stairs, avoid- 
 ing the question I met on the lips and in the eyes of 
 my acquaintance. The fame of my friend's behavior 
 at the station must have spread through the whole 
 place ; and everybody wished to know who he was. I 
 answered simply he was a traveller from Altruria ; and 
 in some cases I went farther and explained that the 
 Altrurians were peculiar. 
 
 In much less time than it seemed my friend found 
 me ; and then I had a little compensation for my suf- 
 fering in his behalf. I could see that, whatever peo- 
 ple said of him, they felt the same mysterious liking 
 at sight of him that I had felt. He had made a little 
 change in his dress, and I perceived that the women 
 thought him not only good-looking, but well-dressed. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 9 
 
 They followed him with their eyes as we went into 
 the dining room, and I was rather proud of being with 
 him, as if I somehow shared the credit of his clothes 
 and good looks. The Altrurian himself seemed most 
 struck with the head waiter, who showed us to our 
 places, and while we were waiting for our supper I 
 found a chance to explain that he was a divinity stu- 
 dent from one of the fresh-water colleges, and was 
 serving here during his summer vacation. This seemed 
 to interest my friend so much that I went on to tell 
 him that many of the waitresses, whom he saw stand- 
 ing there subject to the order of the guests, were 
 country school mistresses in the winter. 
 
 "Ah, that is as it should be," he said ; "that is the 
 kind of thing I expected to meet with in America." 
 
 " Yes," I responded, in my flattered national vanity, 
 " if America means anything at all it means the honor 
 of work and the recognition of personal worth every- 
 where. I hope you are going to make a long stay 
 with us. We like to have travellers visit us who can 
 interpret the spirit of our institutions as well as read 
 their letter. As a rule, Europeans never Quite get 
 our point of view. Now a great many of these wait- 
 resses are ladies, in the true sense of the word : self- 
 
10 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 respectful, intelligent, refined, and fit to grace " 
 
 I was interrupted by the noise my friend made in 
 suddenly pushing back his chair and getting to his 
 feet. " What's the matter ? " I asked. " You're not 
 ill, I hope ? " 
 
 But he did not hear me. He had run half down 
 the dining hall toward the slender young girl who was 
 bringing us our supper. I had ordered rather gener- 
 ously, for my friend had owned to a good appetite, 
 and I was hungry myself with waiting for him, so 
 that the tray the girl carried was piled up with heavy 
 dishes. To my dismay I saw, rather than heard at 
 that distance, the Altrurian enter into a polite contro- 
 versy with her, and then, as if overcoming all her 
 scruples by sheer strength of will, possess himself of 
 the tray and make off with it toward our table. The 
 poor child followed him, blushing to her hair ; the 
 head waiter stood looking helplessly on ; the guests, 
 who at that late hour were fortunately few, were sim- 
 ply aghast at the scandal ; the Altrurian alone seemed 
 to think his conduct the most natural thing in the 
 world. He put the tray on the side table near us, and 
 in spite of our waitress's protests insisted upon arrang- 
 ing the little bird-bath dishes before our plates. Then 
 
A TRAVELER FROM AI/TRURIA. 11 
 
 at last lie sat down, and the girl, flushed and tremu- 
 lous, left the room, as I could not help suspecting, to 
 have a good cry in the kitchen: She did not come 
 back, and the head waiter, who was perhaps afraid to 
 send another in her place, looked after our few wants 
 himself. lie kept a sharp eye on my friend, as if he 
 were not quite sure he was safe, but the Altrurian re- 
 sumed the conversation with all that lightness of spir- 
 its which I noticed in him after he helped the porter 
 with the baggage. I did not think it the moment to 
 take him to task for what he had just done ; I was 
 not even sure that it was the part of a host to do so at 
 all, and between the one doubt and the other I left 
 the burden of the talk to him. 
 
 " What a charming young creature ! " he began. 
 " I never saw anything prettier than the way she had 
 of refusing my help, absolutely without coquetry or 
 affectation of any kind. She is, as you said, a perfect 
 lady, and she graces her work, as I am sure she would 
 grace any exigency of life. She quite realizes my 
 ideal of an American girl, and I see now what the 
 spirit of your country must be from such an expression 
 of it." I wished to tell him that while a country 
 school teacher who waits at table in a summer hotel is 
 
12 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 very much to be respected in her sphere, she is not 
 regarded with that high honor which some other wo- 
 men command among us ; but I did not find this very 
 easy, after what I had said of our esteem for labor ; 
 and while I was thinking how I could hedge, my friend 
 went on. " I liked England greatly, and I liked 
 the English, but I could not like the theory of their 
 civilization, or the aristocratic structure of their so- 
 ciety. It seemed to me iniquitous, for we believe 
 that inequality and iniquity are the same in the last 
 analysis." 
 
 At this I found myself able to say : " Yes, there is 
 something terrible, something shocking, in the frank 
 brutality with which Englishmen affirm the essential 
 inequality of men. The affirmation of the essential 
 equality of men was the first point of departure with 
 us, when we separated from them." 
 
 " I know," said the Altrurian. " How grandly it 
 is expressed in your glorious Declaration." 
 
 " Ah, you have read our Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence then ? " 
 
 " Every Altrurian has read that," answered my 
 friend. 
 
 " Well," I went on smoothly, and I hoped to ren- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 13 
 
 der what I was going to say the means of enlightening 
 him without offense concerning the little mistake he 
 he had just made with the waitress ; " of course we 
 don't take that in its closest literality." 
 
 " I don't understand you," he said. 
 
 " Why, you know it was rather the political than 
 the social traditions of England that we broke with, 
 in the revolution." 
 
 " How is that ? " he returned. " Didn't you break 
 with monarchy and nobility, and ranks and classes ? " 
 
 " Yes, we broke with all those things." 
 
 " But I found them a part of the social as well as 
 the political structure in England. You have no 
 kings or nobles here. Have you any ranks or classes ? " 
 
 " Well, not exactly in the English sense. Our ranks 
 and classes, such as we have, are what I may call vol- 
 untary." 
 
 " Oh, I understand. I suppose that from time to 
 time certain ones among you feel the need of serving, 
 and ask leave of the commonwealth to subordinate 
 themselves to the rest of the state, and perform all the 
 lowlier offices in it. Such persons must be held in 
 peculiar honor. Is it something like that ? " 
 
 " Well, no, I can't say it's quite like that. In fact, 
 
14 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 I think I'd better let you trust to your own observa- 
 tion of our life." 
 
 " But I'm sure," said the Altrurian, with a simplic- 
 ity so fine that it was a long time before I could believe 
 it quite real, " that I shall approach it so much more 
 intelligently with a little instruction from you. You 
 say that your social divisions are voluntary. But do 
 I understand that those who serve among you do not 
 wish to do so ? " 
 
 "Well, I don't suppose they would serve if they 
 cculd help it," I replied. 
 
 " Surely," said the Altrurian with a look of horror, 
 '• you don't mean that they are slaves." 
 
 " Oh, no ! Oh, no ! " I said ; " the War put an 
 end to that. W r e arc all free, now, black and 
 white." 
 
 " But if they do not wish to serve, and arc not held 
 in peculiar honor for serving " 
 
 " I sec that my word ' voluntary ' has misled you," 
 I put in. " It isn't the word exactly. The divisions 
 among us arc rather a process of natural selection. 
 You will see, as you get better acquainted with the 
 woi kings of our institutions, that there arc no arbitrary 
 distinctions here, but the fitness of the work for the 
 
A TRAVELER FROM AI/TRURIA. 15 
 
 man and the man for the work determines the social 
 rank that each one holds." 
 
 " Ah, that is fine ! " cried the Altrurian with a glow 
 of enthusiasm. " Then I suppose that these intelli- 
 gent young people who teach school in winter and 
 serve at table in the summer are in a sort of pro- 
 visional state, waiting for the process of natural selec- 
 tion to determine whether they shall finally be teacbers 
 or waiters." 
 
 " Yes, it might be stated in some such terms," I 
 assented, though I was not altogether easy in my 
 mind. It seemed to me that I was not quite candid 
 with this most candid spirit. I added, " You know 
 we are a sort of fatalists here in America. TVe are 
 great believers in the doctrine that it will all come out 
 right in the end." 
 
 " Ah, I don't wonder at that," said the Altrurian, 
 " if the process of natural selection works so perfectly 
 among you as you say. But I am afraid I don't un- 
 derstand this matter of your domestic service yet. I 
 believe you said that all honest work is honored in 
 America. Then no social slight attaches to service, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " Well, I can't sav that, exactly. The fact is, a cer- 
 2 
 
16 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 tain social slight does attach to service, and that is 
 one reason why I don't quite like to have students 
 wait at table. It won't be pleasant for them to re- 
 member it in after life, and it won't be pleasant for 
 their children to remember it." 
 
 " Then the slight would descend ? " 
 
 " I think it would. One wouldn't like to think 
 one's father or mother had been at service." 
 
 The Altrurian said nothing for a moment. Then 
 he remarked, " So it seems that while all honest work 
 is honored among you, there are some kinds of honest 
 work that are not honored so much as others." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because some occupations are more degrading 
 than others." 
 
 " But why ? " he persisted, as I thought a little un- 
 reasonably. 
 
 " Really," I said, " I think I must leave you to im- 
 agine." 
 
 " I am afraid I can't," he said sadly. " Then, if 
 domestic service is degrading in your eyes, and people 
 are not willingly servants among you, may I ask why 
 any are servants ? " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 17 
 
 " It is a question of bread and butter. They are 
 obliged to be." 
 
 " That is, they are forced to do work that is hateful 
 and disgraceful to them because they cannot live 
 without ? " 
 
 " Excuse me," I said, not at all liking this sort of 
 pursuit, and feeling it fair to turn even upon a guest 
 who kept it up. " Isn't it so with you in Altruria? " 
 
 " It was so once," he admitted, " but not now. In 
 fact, it is like a waking dream to find oneself in the 
 presence of conditions here that we outlived so long 
 ago." 
 
 There was an unconscious superiority in this speech 
 that nettled me, and stung me to retort : " We do not 
 expect to outlive them. "We regard them as final, and 
 as indestructibly based in human nature itself." 
 
 "Ah," said the Altrurian with a delicate and caress- 
 ing courtesy, " have I said something offensive ? " 
 
 " Not at all," I hastened to answer. " It is not 
 surprising that you do not get our point of view ex- 
 actly. You will, by and by, and then, I think, you 
 will see that it is the true one. We have found that 
 the logic of our convictions could not be applied to 
 the problem of domestic service. It is everywhere a 
 
18 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 very curious and perplexing problem. The simple old 
 solution of the problem was to own your servants ; 
 but we found that this was not consistent with the 
 spirit of our free institutions. As soon as it was 
 abandoned the anomaly began. "We had outlived the 
 primitive period when the housekeeper worked with 
 her domestics and they were her help, and were called 
 so ; and we had begun to have servants to do all the 
 household work, and to call them so. This state of 
 things never seemed right to some of our purest and 
 best people. They fancied, as you seem to have done, 
 that to compel people through their necessities to do 
 your hateful drudgery, and to wound and shame them 
 with a name which every American instinctively re- 
 sents, was neither republican nor Christian. Some of 
 our thinkers tried to mend matters by making their 
 domestics a part of their families ; and in the life of 
 Emerson you'll find an amusing account of his attempt 
 to have his servant eat at the same table with himself 
 and his wife. Tt wouldn't work. He and his wife 
 could stand it, but the servant couldn't." 
 
 I paused, for this was where the laugh ought to 
 have come in. The Altrurian did not laugh, he merely 
 asked : " Why ? " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 19 
 
 " "Well, because the servant knew, if they didn't, 
 that they were a whole world apart in their traditions, 
 and were no more fit to associate than New Englanders 
 and New Zealanders. In the mere matter of educa- 
 tion " 
 
 " But I thought you said that these young girls 
 who wait at table here were teachers." 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon ; I ought to have ex- 
 plained. By this time it had become impossible, as 
 it now is, to get American girls to take service except 
 on some such unusual terms as we have in a summer 
 hotel ; and the domestics were already ignorant for- 
 eigners, fit for nothing else. In such a place as this 
 it isn't so bad. It is more as if the girls worked in a 
 shop or a factory. They command their own time, in 
 a measure ; their hours are tolerably fixed, and they 
 have each other's society. In a private family they 
 would be subject to order at all times, and they would 
 have no social life. They would be in the family, 
 but not of it. American girls understand this, and 
 so they won't go out to service in the usual way. 
 Even in a summer hotel the relation has its odious 
 aspects. The system of giving fees seems to me de- 
 grading to those who have to take them. To offer a 
 
20 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA, 
 
 student or a teacher a dollar for personal service — it 
 isn't right, or I can't make it so. In fact, the whole 
 thing is rather anomalous with us. The best that 
 you can say of it is that it works, and we don't know 
 what else to do." 
 
 "But I don't see yet," said the Altrurian, "just 
 why domestic service is degrading in a country where 
 all kinds of work are honored." 
 
 " Well, my dear fellow, I have done my best to 
 explain. As I intimated before, Ave distinguish ; and 
 in the different kinds of labor we distinguish against 
 domestic service. I dare say it is partly because of 
 the loss of independence which it involves. People 
 naturally despise a dependent." 
 
 "Why?" asked the Altrurian, with that innocence 
 of his which I was beginning to find rather trying. 
 
 " Why ? " I retorted. " Because it implies weak- 
 ness." 
 
 " And is weakness considered despicable among 
 you ? " he pursued. 
 
 " In every community it is despised practically, if 
 not theoretically," I tried to explain. " The great 
 thing that America has done is to offer the race an 
 opportunity : the opportunity for any man to rise 
 
A TRAVELER FROM AI/TRURIA. 21 
 
 above the rest, and to take the highest place, if he is 
 able." I had always been proud of this fact, and I 
 thought I had put it very well, but the Altrurian did 
 not seem much impressed by it. 
 
 He said : "I do not see how it differs from any 
 country of the past in that. But perhaps you moan 
 that to rise carries with it an obligation to those 
 below. ' If any is first among you, let him be your 
 servant.' Is it something like that?" 
 
 " Well, it is not quite like that," I answered, re- 
 membering how very little our self-made men as a 
 class had done for others. " Everyone is expected to 
 look out for himself here. I fancy that there would 
 be very little rising if men were expected to rise for 
 the sake of others, in America. How is it with you 
 in Altruria ? " I demanded, hoping to get out of a cer- 
 tain discomfort I felt, in that way. " Do your risen 
 men generally devote themselves to the good of the 
 community after they get to the top ? " 
 
 " There is no rising among us," he said, with what 
 seemed a perception of the harsh spirit of my ques- 
 tion ; and he paused a moment before he asked in his 
 turn, " How do men rise among you ? " 
 
 " That would be rather a long story," I replied. 
 
22 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " But putting it in the rough, I should say that they 
 rose by their talents, their shrewdness, their ability 
 to seize an advantage and turn it to their own 
 account." 
 
 " And is that considered noble ? " 
 
 "It is considered smart. It is considered at the 
 worst far better than a dead level of equality. Are 
 all men equal in Altruria? Are they all alike gifted 
 or beautiful, or short or tall ? " 
 
 " No, they are only equal in duties and in rights. 
 But, as you said just now, that is a very long story. 
 Are they equal in nothing here ?" 
 
 "They are equal in opportunities." 
 
 " Ah ! " breathed the Altrurian, " I am glad to hear 
 that." 
 
 I began to feel a little uneasy, and I was not quite 
 sure that this last assertion of mine would hold water. 
 Everybody but ourselves had now left the dining 
 room, and I saw the head waiter eying us impatiently. 
 I pushed back my chair and said, " I'm sorry to seem 
 to hurry you, but I should like to show you a very 
 pretty sunset effect we have here before it is too 
 dark. When we get back, I want to introduce you 
 to a few of my friends. Of course, I needn't tell you 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRTTRIA. 23 
 
 that there is a good deal of curiosity about you, espe- 
 cially among the ladies." 
 
 " Yes, I found that the case in England, largely. 
 It was the women who cared most to meet me. I 
 understand that in America society is managed even 
 more by women than it is in England." 
 
 " It's entirely in their hands," I said, with the 
 satisfaction we all feel in the fact. "We have no 
 other leisure class. The richest men among us are 
 generally hard workers ; devotion to business is the 
 rule ; but as soon as a man reaches the point where 
 he can afford to pay for domestic service, his wife and 
 daughters expect to be released from it to the culti- 
 vation of their minds and the enjoyment of social 
 pleasures. It's quite right. That is what makes 
 them so delightful to foreigners. You must have 
 heard their praises chanted in England. The English 
 find our men rather stupid, I believe ; but they think 
 our women are charming." 
 
 " Yes, I was told that the wives of their nobility 
 were sometimes Americans," said the Altrurian. 
 " The English think that you regard such marriages 
 as a great honor, and that they are very gratifying to 
 your national pride." 
 
24 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRTJRIA. 
 
 " Well, I suppose that is so in a measure," I con- 
 fessed. " I imagine that it will not be long before 
 the English aristocracy derives as largely from Amer- 
 ican millionaires as from kings' mistresses. Not," I 
 added virtuously, " that Ave approve of aristocracy." 
 
 "No, I understand that," said the Altrurian. " I 
 shall hope to get your point of view in this matter 
 more distinctly by and by. As yet, I'm a little vague 
 about it." 
 
 " I think I can gradually make it clear to you," I 
 returned. 
 
II. 
 
 We left the hotel, and I began to walk my friend 
 across the meadow toward the lake. I wished him 
 to see the reflection of the afterglow in its still waters, 
 with the noble lines of the mountain range that 
 glassed itself there ; the effect is one of the greatest 
 charms of that lovely region, the sojourn of the sweet- 
 est summer in the world, and I am always impatient 
 to show it to strangers. 
 
 We climbed the meadow wall and passed through 
 a stretch of woods, to a path leading down to the 
 shore, and as we loitered along in the tender gloom 
 of the forest, the music of the hermit-thrushes rang 
 all round us, like crystal bells, like silver flutes, like 
 the drip of fountains, like the choiring of still-eyed 
 cherubim. We stopped from time to time and list- 
 ened, while the shy birds sang unseen in their covert 
 of shadows ; but we did not speak till we emerged 
 from the trees and suddenly stood upon the naked 
 knoll overlooking the lake. 
 
26 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 Then I explained, "The woods used to come down 
 to the shore here, and we had their mystery and 
 music to the water's edge ; but last winter the owner 
 cut the timber off. It looks rather ragged now." I 
 had to recognize the fact, for I saw the Altrurian 
 staring about him over the clearing, in a kind of hor- 
 ror. It was a squalid ruin, a graceless desolation, 
 which not even the pitying twilight could soften. 
 The stumps showed their hideous mutilation every- 
 where ; the brush had been burned, and the fires had 
 scorched and blackened the lean soil of the hill slope, 
 and blasted it with sterility. A few weak saplings, 
 withered by the flames, drooped and straggled about ; 
 it would be a century before the forces of nature could 
 repair the waste. 
 
 " You say the owner did this," said the Altrurian. 
 " Who is the owner ? " 
 
 " Well, it does seem too bad," I answered eva- 
 sively. " There has been a good deal of feeling about 
 it. The neighbors tried to buy him off before he be- 
 gan the destruction, for they knew the value of the 
 woods as an attraction to summer-boarders ; the city 
 cottagers, of course, wanted to save them, and to- 
 gether they offered for the land pretty nearly as much 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 27 
 
 as the timber was worth. But he had got it into his 
 head that the land here by the lake would sell for 
 building lots if it was cleared, and he could make 
 money on that as well as on the trees ; and so they 
 had to go. Of course, one might say that he was de- 
 ficient in public spirit, but I don't blame him, alto- 
 gether." 
 
 " No," the Altrurian assented, somewhat to my 
 surprise, I confess. 
 
 I resumed, " There was no one else to look after his 
 interests, and it was not only his right but his duty 
 to get the most he could for himself and his own, ac- 
 cording to his best light. That is what I tell people 
 when they fall foul of him for his want of public 
 spirit." 
 
 " The trouble seems to be, then, in the system that 
 obliges each man to be the guardian of his own inter- 
 ests. Is that what you blame ? " 
 
 " No, I consider it a very perfect system. It is 
 based upon individuality, and we believe that indi- 
 viduality is the principle that differences civilized 
 men from savages, from the lower animals, and makes 
 us a nation instead of a tribe or a herd. There isn't 
 one of us, no matter how much he censured this 
 
28 A TKAVELEK FROM ALTKUKIA. 
 
 man's want of public spirit, l>ut would resent the 
 slightest interference with his property rights. The 
 woods were his ; lie had the right to do what he 
 pleased with his own." 
 
 " Do I understand you that, in America, a man 
 may do what is wrong with his own l " 
 
 " He may do anything with his own." 
 
 " To the injury of others ? " 
 
 " Well, not in person or property. But he may 
 hurt them in taste and sentiment as much as he likes. 
 < Jan't a man do what he pleases with his own in Al- 
 truria ? " 
 
 " Js T o, he can only do right with his own." 
 
 " And if he tries to do wrong, or what the commu- 
 nity thinks is wrong ? " 
 
 "Then the community takes his own from him." 
 Before I could think of anything to say to this he 
 went on : " But I wish you would explain to me why 
 it was left to this man's neighbors to try and get 
 him to sell his portion of the landscaj 
 
 " Why, bless my soul ! " I exclaimed, " who else 
 was there ? You wouldn't have expected to take up 
 a collection among the summer-boarders ? " 
 
 " That wouldn't have been so unreasonable; but I 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 29 
 
 didn't mean that. Was there no provision for such 
 an exigency in your laws ? Wasn't the state empow- 
 ered to buy him off at the full value of his timber 
 and his land ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," I replied. " That would be rank 
 paternalism." 
 
 It began to get dark, and I .suggested that we had 
 better be going back to the hotel. The talk seemed 
 already to have taken us away from all pleasure in 
 the prospect ; I said, as we found our way through 
 the rich, balsam-scented twilight of the woods, where 
 one joy-haunted thrush was still singing, " You know 
 that in America the law is careful not to meddle with 
 a man's private affairs, and Ave don't attempt to legis- 
 late personal virtue." 
 
 " But marriage," he said, " surely you have the in- 
 stitution of marriage ? " 
 
 I was really annoyed at this. I returned sarcas- 
 tically, " Yes, I am glad to say that there we can 
 meet your expectation ; we have marriage, not only 
 consecrated by the church, but established and de- 
 fended by the state. What has that to do with the 
 question ? " 
 
 " And you consider marriage," he pursued, " the 
 
30 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 citadel of morality, the fountain of all that is pure 
 and good in your private life, the source of home and 
 the image of heaven ? " 
 
 " There are some marriages," I said with a touch 
 of our national humor, " that do not quite fill the bill, 
 but that is certainly our ideal of marriage." 
 
 " Then why do you say that you have not legis- 
 lated persona] virtue in America I " he asked. " You 
 have laws, I believe, against theft and murder and 
 slander and incest and perjury and drunkenness?" 
 
 " Why, certainly." 
 
 " Then it appears to me that you have legislated 
 honesty, regard for human life, regard for character, 
 abhorence of unnatural vice, good faith and sobriety. 
 I was told on the train coming up, by a gentleman 
 who was shocked at the sight of a man beating his 
 horse, that you even had laws against cruelty to ani- 
 mals."' 
 
 " Yes, and I am happy to say that they are en- 
 forced to such a degree that a man cannot kill a cat 
 cruelly without being punished for it." The Altru- 
 rian did not follow up his advantage, and I resolved 
 not to be outdone in magnanimity. " Come, I will 
 own that you have the best of me on those points. I 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 31 
 
 must say you've trapped me very neatly, too ; I can 
 enjoy a thing of that kind when it's well done, and I 
 frankly knock under. But I had in mind something 
 altogether different when I spoke. I was thinking of 
 those idealists who want to bind us hand and foot, 
 and render us the slaves of a state where the most in- 
 timate relations of life shall be penetrated by legisla- 
 tion, and the very hearthstone shall be a tablet of 
 laws." 
 
 " Isn't marriage a rather intimate relation of life ? " 
 asked the Altrurian. " And I understood that gentle- 
 man on the train to say that you had laws against 
 cruelty to children and societies established to see 
 them enforced. You don't consider such laws an in- 
 vasion of the home, do you, or a violation of its 
 immunities ? I imagine," he went on, " that the dif- 
 ference between your civilization and ours is only 
 one of degree, after all, and that America and Altruria 
 are really one at heart." 
 
 I thought his compliment a bit hyperbolical, but I 
 saw that it was honestly meant, and as we Americans 
 are first of all patriots, and vain for our country be- 
 fore we are vain for ourselves, I was not proof against 
 the flattery it conveyed to me civically if not person- 
 ally. 
 
32 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 We were now drawing near the hotel, and I felt at 
 certain glow of pleasure in its gay effect, on the pretty 
 knoll where it stood. In its artless and accidental 
 architecture it was not unlike one of our immense 
 coastwise steamboats. The twilight had thickened to 
 dusk, and the edifice was brilliantly lighted with elec- 
 trics, story above story, which streamed into the 
 gloom around like the lights of saloon and stateroom. 
 The corner of wood making into the meadow hid the 
 station ; there was no other building in sight ; the 
 hotel seemed riding at anchor on the swell of a placid 
 sea. I was going to call the Altrurian's attention to 
 this fanciful resemblance when I remembered that he 
 had not been in our country long enough to have 
 seen a Fall River boat, and I made toward the house 
 without wasting the comparison upon him. But I 
 treasured it up in my own mind, intending some day 
 to make a literary use of it. 
 
 The guests were sitting in friendly groups about 
 the piazzas or in rows against the walls, the ladies 
 with their gossip and the gentlemen with their cigars. 
 The night had fallen cool after a hot day, and they all 
 had the effect of having cast off care with the burden 
 of the week that was past and to be steeping them- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 33 
 
 selves in the innocent and simple enjoyment of the 
 hour. They were mostly middle-aged married folk, 
 but some were old enough to have sons and daughters 
 among the young people who went and came in a 
 long, wandering promenade of the piazzas, or wove 
 themselves through the waltz past the open windows 
 of the great parlor ; the music seemed one with the 
 light that streamed far out on the lawn flanking the 
 piazzas. Everyone was well dressed and comfortable 
 and at peace, and I felt that our hotel was in some 
 sort a microcosm of the republic. 
 
 We involuntarily paused, and I heard the Altrurian 
 murmur, " Charming, charming ! This is really de- 
 lightful ! " 
 
 " Yes, isn't it ? " I returned, with a glow of pride. 
 " Our hotel here is a type of the summer hotel every- 
 where ; it's characteristic in not having anything char- 
 acteristic about it ; and I rather like the notion of the 
 people in it being so much like the people in all the 
 others that you would feel yourself at home wherever 
 you met such a company in such a house. All over 
 the country, north and south, wherever you find a 
 group of hills or a pleasant bit of water or a stretch 
 of coast, you'll find some such refuge as this for our 
 
84 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 weary toilers. We began to discover some time ago 
 that it would not do to cut open the goose that laid 
 our golden eggs, even if it looked like an eagle, and 
 kept on perching on our banners just as if nothing 
 had happened. We discovered that, if we continued 
 to kill ourselves with hard work, there would be no 
 Americans pretty soon." 
 
 The Altrurian laughed. " How delightfully you 
 put it ! How quaint ! How picturesque ! Excuse 
 me, but I can't help expressing my pleasure in it. 
 Our own humor is so very different." 
 
 " Ah, " I said ; " what is your humor like ? " 
 
 " I could hardly tell you, I'm afraid ; I've never 
 been much of a humorist myself." 
 
 Again a cold doubt of something ironical in the 
 man went through me, but I had no means of verify- 
 ing it, and so I simply remained silent, waiting for 
 him to prompt me if he wished to know anything 
 further about our national transformation from bees 
 perpetually busy into butterflies occasionally idle. 
 " And when you had made that discovery ? " he sug- 
 gested. 
 
 " Why, we're nothing if not practical, you know, 
 and as soon as we made that discovery we stopped 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 35 
 
 killing ourselves and invented the summer resort. 
 There are very few of our business or professional 
 men, now, who don't take their four or five weeks 
 vacation. Their wives go off early in the summer, 
 and if they go to some resort within three or four 
 hours of the city, the men leave town Saturday after- 
 noon and run out, or come up, and spend Sunday 
 with their families. For thirty-eight hours or so, a 
 hotel like this is a nest of happy homes." 
 
 " That is admirable," said the Altrurian. " You 
 are truly a practical people. The ladies come early 
 in the summer, you say?" 
 
 " Yes, sometimes in the beginning of June." 
 
 " What do they come for ? " asked the Altrurian. 
 
 " What for ? Why, for rest ! " I retorted with 
 some little temper. 
 
 "But I thought you told me awhile ago that as 
 soon as a husband could afford it he relieved his wife 
 and daughters from all household work." 
 
 " So he does." 
 
 " Then what do the ladies wish to rest from ? " 
 
 "From care. It is not work alone that kills. 
 They are not relieved from household care even when 
 they are relieved from household work. There is 
 
36 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 nothing so killing as household care. Besides, the 
 sex seems to be born tired. To be sure, there arc 
 some observers of our life who contend that with the 
 advance of athletics among our ladies, with boating 
 and bathing, and lawn-tennis and mountain climbing 
 and freedom from care, and these long summers of 
 repose, our women are likely to become as superior to 
 the men physically as they now are intellectually. It 
 is all right. We should like to see it happen. It 
 would be part of the national joke ? " 
 
 "Oh, have you a national joke? "asked the Altru- 
 rian. " But, of course ! You have so much humor. 
 I wish you could give me some notion of it." 
 
 " Well, it is rather damaging to any joke to explain 
 it," I replied, " and your only hope of getting at ours 
 is to live into it. One feature of it is the confusion 
 of foreigners at the sight of our men's willingness to 
 subordinate themselves to our women." 
 
 " Oh, I don't find that very bewildering," said the 
 Altrurian. " It seems to me a generous and manly 
 trait of the American character. I'm proud to say 
 that it is one of the points at which your civilization 
 and our own touch. There can be no doubt that the 
 influence of women in your public affairs must be of 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 37 
 
 the greatest advantage to you ; it has been so with us." 
 
 I turned and stared at him, but he remained in- 
 sensible to my astonishment, perhaps because it was 
 now too dark for him to see it. " Our women have 
 no influence in public affairs," I said quietly, after a 
 moment. 
 
 " They haven't ? Is it possible ? But didn't I un- 
 derstand you to imply just now that your women 
 were better educated than your men ? " 
 
 " Well, I suppose that, taking all sorts and condi- 
 tions among us, the women are as a rule better 
 schooled, if not better educated." 
 
 " Then, apart from the schooling, they arc not 
 more cultivated ? " 
 
 " In a sense you might say they were. They cer- 
 tainly go in for a lot of things : art and music, and 
 Browning and the drama, and foreign travel and 
 psychology, and political economy and heaven knows 
 what all. They have more leisure for it ; they have 
 all the leisure there is, in fact; our young men have 
 to go into business. I suppose you may say our 
 women are more cultivated than our men ; yes, I 
 think there's no questioning that. They are the great 
 readers among us. We poor devils of authors would 
 
38 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 be badly off if it were not for our women. In fact, 
 no author could make a reputation among us without 
 them. American literature exists because American 
 women appreciate it and love it." 
 
 " But surely your men read books ? " 
 
 "Some of them ; not many, comparatively. You 
 will often hear a complacent ass of a husband and 
 father say to an author : ' My wife and daughters 
 know your books, but I can't find time for anything 
 but the papers nowadays. I skim them over at 
 breakfast, or when I'm going in to business on the 
 train.' He isn't the least ashamed to say that he 
 reads nothing but the newspapers." 
 
 " Then you think that it would be better for him 
 to read books ? " 
 
 " Well, in the presence of four or five thousand 
 journalists with drawn scalping knives I should not 
 like to say so. Besides, modesty forbids." 
 
 " No, but really," the Altrurian persisted, " you 
 think that the literature of a book is more carefully 
 pondered than the literature of a daily newspaper ? " 
 
 " I suppose even the four or five thousand journal- 
 ists with drawn scalping knives would hardly deny 
 that." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 39 
 
 " And it stands to reason, doesn't it, that the 
 hahitual reader of carefully pondered literature ought 
 to be more thoughtful than the readers of literature 
 which is not carefully pondered, and which they 
 merely skim over on their way to business ? " 
 
 " I believe we began by assuming the superior 
 culture of our women, didn't we ? You'll hardly find 
 an American that isn't proud of it." 
 
 " Then," said the Altrurian, " if your women are 
 generally better schooled than your men, and more 
 cultivated and more thoughtful, and are relieved of 
 household work in such great measure, and even of 
 domestic cares, why have they no part in your public 
 affairs ? " 
 
 I laughed, for I thought I had my friend at last. 
 " For the best of all possible reasons ; they don't 
 want it." 
 
 " Ah, that's no reason," he returned. " Why don't 
 they want it ! " 
 
 " Really," I said, out of all patience, " I think I 
 must let you ask the ladies themselves," and I turned 
 and moved again toward the hotel, but the Altrurian 
 gently detained me. 
 
 " Excuse me," he began. 
 
40 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " No, no," I said : 
 
 ' The feast is set, the guests are met, 
 May'st hear the merry din.' 
 Come in and see the young people dance ! " 
 
 " Wait," he entreated, " tell me a little more about 
 the old people first. This digression about the ladies 
 has been very interesting, but I thought you were go- 
 ing to speak of the men here. Who are they, or 
 rather, what are they ? " 
 
 " Why, as I said before, they are all business men 
 and professional men ; people who spend their lives 
 in studies and counting rooms and offices, and have 
 come up here for a few weeks or a few days of well- 
 earned repose. They are of all kinds of occupations : 
 they are lawyers and doctors and clergymen and mer- 
 chants and brokers and bankers. There's hardly any 
 calling you won't find represented among them. As 
 I was thinking just now, our hotel is a sort of micro- 
 cosm of the American republic." 
 
 " I am most fortunate in finding you here, where I 
 can avail myself of your intelligence in making my 
 observations of your life under such advantageous cir 
 cumstances. It seems to me that with your help I 
 might penetrate the fact of American life, possess my 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTKURIA. 41 
 
 self of the mystery of your national joke, without stir- 
 ring beyond the piazza of your hospitable hotel," said 
 my friend. I doubted it, but one does not lightly put 
 aside a compliment like that to one's intelligence, and 
 I said I should be very happy to be of use to him. 
 He thanked me, and said, " Then, to begin with, I 
 understand that these gentlemen are here because they 
 are all overworked." 
 
 " Of course. You can have no conception of how 
 hard our business men arid our professional men work. 
 I suppose there is nothing like it anywhere else in the 
 world. But, as I said before, we are beginning to 
 find that we cannot burn the candle at both ends and 
 have it last long. So we put one end out for a little 
 while every summer. Still, there are frightful wrecks 
 of men strewn all along the course of our prosperity, 
 wrecks of mind and body. Our insane asylums are 
 full of madmen who have broken under the tremen- 
 dous strain, and every country in Europe abounds in 
 our dyspeptics." I was rather proud of this terrible 
 fact ; there is no doubt but we Americans are proud 
 of overworking ourselves ; heaven knows why. 
 
 The Altrurian murmured, "Awful ! Shocking ! " 
 but I thought some how he had not really followed me 
 
42 A TRAVELER FROM ALTKUKIA. 
 
 very attentively in my celebration of our national vio- 
 lation of the laws of life and its consequences. " I 
 am glad," he went on, " that your business men and 
 professional men are beginning to realize the folly and 
 wickedness of overwork. Shall I find some of your 
 other weary workers here, too ? " 
 
 " What other weary workers ? " I asked in turn, for 
 I imagined I had gone over pretty much the whole 
 list. 
 
 " Why," said the Altrurian, " your mechanics and- 
 day laborers, your iron moulders and glass blowers, 
 your miners and farmers, your printers and mill 
 operatives, your trainmen and quarry hands. Or do 
 thcyprefer to go to resorts of their own ? " 
 
Ill 
 
 It was not easy to make sure of such innocence as 
 prompted tins inquiry of my Altrurian friend. The 
 doubt whether he could really be in earnest was some- 
 thing that I had already felt ; and it was destined to 
 beset me, as it did now, again and again. My first 
 thought was that of course he was trying a bit of 
 cheap irony on me, a mixture of the feeble sarcasm 
 and false sentiment that makes us smile when we find 
 it in the philippics of the industrial agitators. For a 
 moment I did not know but I had fallen victim to a 
 walking-delegate on his vacation, who was employing 
 his summer leisure in going about the country in the 
 guise of a traveler from Altruria, and foisting himself 
 upon people who would have had nothing to do with 
 him in his real character. But in another moment I 
 perceived that this was impossible. I could not sup- 
 pose that the friend who had introduced him to me 
 would be capable of seconding so poor a joke, and be- 
 
44 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 sides I could not imagine why a walking-delegate 
 should wish to address his clumsy satire to me partic- 
 ularly. For the present, at least, there was nothing 
 for it but to deal with this inquiry as if it were made 
 in good faith, and in the pursuit of useful information. 
 It struck me as grotesque ; but it would not have been 
 decent to treat it as if it were so. I was obliged to 
 regard it seriously, and so I decided to shirk it. 
 
 " Well," I said, "that opens up rather a large field, 
 which lies somewhat outside of the province of my 
 own activities. You know, I am a writer of romantic 
 fiction, and my time is so fully occupied in manipu- 
 lating the destinies of the good old-fashioned hero 
 and heroine, and trying always to make them end in 
 a happy marriage, that I have hardly had a chance to 
 look much into the lives of agriculturists or artisans ; 
 and to tell you the truth I don't know what they do 
 with their leisure. I'm pretty certain, though, you 
 won't meet any of them in this hotel ; they couldn't 
 afford it, and I fancy they would find themselves out 
 of their element among our guests. We respect them 
 thoroughly ; every American does ; and we know that 
 the prosperity of the country rests with them ; wc 
 have a theory that they are politically sovereign, but 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 45 
 
 we see very little of them, and we don't associate with 
 them. In fact, our cultivated people have so little 
 interest in them socially that they don't like to meet 
 them, even in fiction ; they prefer refined and polished 
 ladies and gentlemen, whom they can have some sym- 
 pathy with ; and I always go to the upper classes for 
 my types. It won't do to suppose, though, that we 
 are indifferent to the working-classes in their place. 
 Their condition is being studied a good deal just now, 
 and there are several persons here who will be able to 
 satisfy your curiosity on the points you have made, I 
 think. I will introduce you to them." 
 
 The Altrurian did not try to detain me this time. 
 He said he should be very glad indeed to meet my 
 friends, and I led the way toward a little group at the 
 corner of the piazza. They were men whom I partic- 
 ularly liked, for one reason or another ; they were 
 intelligent and open-minded, and they were thoroughly 
 American. One was a banker ; another was a minis- 
 ter ; there was a lawyer, and there was a doctor ; there 
 was a professor of political economy in one of our 
 colleges ; and there was a retired manufacturer — I do 
 not know what he used to manufacture : cotton or 
 iron, or something like that. They all rose politely 
 
46 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 as I came up with my Altrurian, and I fancied in 
 them a sensation of expectancy created by the rumor 
 of Ins eccentric behavior "which must have spread 
 through the hotel. But they controlled this if they 
 had it, and I could see, as the light fell upon his face 
 from a spray of electrics on the nearest pillar, that 
 sort of liking kindle in theirs which I had felt myself 
 at first sight of him. 
 
 I said, " Gentlemen, I wish to introduce my friend, 
 Mr. Homos," and then I presented them severally to 
 him by name. We all sat down, and I explained : 
 " Mr. Homos is from Altruria. He is visiting our 
 country for the first time, and is greatly interested in 
 the "working of our institutions. He has been asking 
 me some rather hard questions about certain phases 
 of our civilization ; and the fact is that I have launched 
 him upon you because I don't feel quite able to cope 
 with him." 
 
 They all laughed civilly at this sally of mine, but 
 the professor asked, with a sarcasm that I thought I 
 hardly merited, " What point in our polity can be ob- 
 scured to the author of ' Glove and Gauntlet ' and 
 ' Airs and Graces ' ? " 
 
 They all laughed again, not so civilly, I felt, and 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 47 
 
 then the banker asked my friend, " Is it long since 
 yon left Altruria ? " 
 
 "It seems a great while ago," the Altrurian an- 
 swered, " but it is really only a few weeks." 
 
 " You came by way of England, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes ; there is no direct line to America," said the 
 Altrurian. 
 
 " That seems rather odd," I ventured, with some 
 patriotic grudge. 
 
 " Oh, the English have direct lines everywhere," 
 the banker instructed me. 
 
 " The tariff has killed our shipbuilding," said the 
 professor. No one took up this firebrand, and the 
 professor added, " Your name is Greek, isn't it, Mr. 
 Homos ? " 
 
 " Yes ; we arc of one of the early Hellenic fami- 
 lies," said the Altrurian. 
 
 " And do you think," asked the lawyer, who, like 
 most lawyers, was a lover of romance, and was well 
 read in legendary lore especially, " that there is any 
 reason for supposing that Altruria is identical with 
 the fabled Atlantis ? " 
 
 " No, I can't say that I do. We have no traditions 
 
 of a submergence of the continent, and there arc only 
 4 
 
48 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the usual evidences of a glacial epoch which you find 
 everywhere, to support such a theory. Besides, our 
 civilization is strictly Christian, and dates back to no 
 earlier period than that of the first Christian commune 
 after Christ. It is a matter of history with us that 
 one of these communists, when they were dispersed, 
 brought the gospel to our continent ; he was cast away 
 on our eastern coast on his way to Britain." 
 
 " Yes, we know that," the minister intervened, 
 " but it is perfectly astonishing that an island so large 
 as Altruria should have been lost to the knowledge of 
 the rest of the world ever since the beginning of our 
 era. You would hardly think that there was a space 
 of the ocean's surface a mile square which had not 
 been traversed by a thousand keels since Columbus 
 sailed westward." 
 
 " No, you wouldn't. And I wish," the doctor sug- 
 gested in his turn, " that Mr. Homos would tell us 
 something about his country, instead of asking us 
 about ours." 
 
 " Yes," I coincided, " I'm sure we should all find it 
 a good deal easier. At least I should ; but I brought 
 our friend up in the hope that the professor would like 
 nothing better than to train a battery of hard facts 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 49 
 
 upon a defenseless stranger." Since the professor 
 had given me that little stab, I was rather anxious to 
 see how he would handle the desire for information 
 in the Altrurian which I had found so prickly. 
 
 This turned the laugh on the professor, and he 
 pretended to be as curious about Altruria as the rest, 
 and said he would rather hear of it. But the Altru- 
 rian said : " I hope } t ou will excuse me. Sometime I 
 shall be glad to talk of Altruria as long as you like ; 
 or if you will come to us, I shall be still happier to 
 show you many things that I couldn't make you un- 
 derstand at a distance. But I am in America to learn, 
 not to teach, and I hope you will have patience with 
 my ignorance. I begin to be afraid that it is so great 
 as to seem a little incredible. I have fancied in my 
 friend here," he went on, with a smile toward me, " a 
 suspicion that I was not entirely single in some of the 
 inquiries I have made, but that I had some ulterior 
 motive, some wish to censure or satirize." 
 
 " Oh, not at all ! " I protested, for it was not polite 
 to admit a conjecture so accurate. " "We are so well 
 satisfied with our condition that we have nothing but 
 pity for the darkened mind of the foreigner, though we 
 believe in it fully : we are used to the English tourist." 
 
50 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 My friends Jaughed, and the Altrurian continued : 
 " I am very glad to hear it, for I feel myself at a 
 peculiar disadvantage among you. I am not only a 
 foreigner, but I am so alien to you in all the traditions 
 and habitudes that I find it very difficult to get upon 
 common ground with you. Of course I know theo- 
 retically what you are, but to realize it practically is 
 another thing. I had read so much about America 
 and understood so little that I could not rest without 
 coming to see for myself. Some of the apparent con- 
 tradictions were so colossal" — 
 
 " We have everything on a large scale here," said 
 the banker, breaking off the ash of his cigar with the 
 end of his little finger, "and we rather pride ourselves 
 on the size of our inconsistencies, even. I know 
 something of the state of things in Altruria, and, to 
 be frank with you, I will say that it seems to me pre- 
 posterous. I should say it was impossible, if it were 
 not an accomplished fact ; but I always feel bound to 
 recognize the thing done. You have hitched your 
 wagon to a star and you have made the star go ; there 
 is never any trouble with wagons, but stars are not 
 easily broken to harness, and you have managed to 
 get yours well in hand. As I said, I don't believe in 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRTJRIA. 51 
 
 you, but I respect you." I thought 'this charming; 
 myself; perhaps because it stated my own mind about 
 Altruria so exactly and in terms so just and generous. 
 
 " Pretty good," said the doctor, in a murmur of 
 satisfaction, at my ear, " for a bloated bond-holder." 
 
 " Yes," I whispered back, " I wish I had said it. 
 What an American way of putting it ! Emerson 
 would have liked it himself. After all, he was our 
 prophet." 
 
 " He must have thought so from the way we kept 
 stoning him," said the doctor, with a soft laugh. 
 
 " Which of our contradictions," asked the banker, 
 in the same tone of gentle bonhomie, " has given you 
 and our friend pause, just now ? " 
 
 The Altrurian answered after a moment : " I am 
 not sure that it is a contradiction, for as yet I have 
 not ascertained the facts I was seeking. Our friend 
 was telling me of the great change that had taken 
 place in regard to work, and the increased leisure 
 that your professional people are now allowing them- 
 selves ; and I was asking him where your workingmen 
 spent their leisure." 
 
 He went over the list of those he had specified, 
 and I hung my head in shame and pity ; it really had 
 
52 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 such an effect of mawkish sentimentality. But my 
 friends received it in the best possible way. They 
 did not laugh ; they heard him out, and then they 
 quietly deferred to the banker, who made answer for 
 us all : 
 
 " Well, I can be almost as brief as the historian of 
 Iceland in his chapter on snakes : those people have 
 no leisure to spend." 
 
 " Except when they go out on a strike, " said the 
 manufacturer, with a certain grim humor of his own ; 
 I never heard anything more dramatic than the ac- 
 count he once gave of the way he broke up a labor- 
 union. " I have seen a good many of them at leisure 
 then." 
 
 " Yes, " the doctor chimed in, " and in my younger 
 days, when I necessarily had a good deal of charity- 
 practice, I used to find them at leisure when they 
 were ' laid off.' It always struck me as such a pretty 
 euphemism. It seemed to minify the harm of the 
 thing so. It seemed to take all the hunger and cold 
 and sickness out of the fact. To be simply ' laid off ' 
 was so different from losing your work and having to 
 face beggary or starvation ! " 
 
 "Those people," said the professor, " never put 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 53 
 
 anything by. They are wasteful and improvident, 
 almost to a man ; and they learn nothing by experi- 
 ence, though they know as well as we do that it is 
 simply a question of demand and supply, and that the 
 day of overproduction is sure to come, when their 
 work must stop unless the men that give them work 
 are willing to lose money." 
 
 "And I've seen them lose it, sometimes, rather 
 than shut down, " the manufacturer remarked ; "lose 
 it hand over hand, to keep the men at work ; and 
 then as soon as the tide turned the men would strike 
 for higher wages. You have no idea of the ingrati- 
 tude of those people." He said this towards the 
 minister, as if he did not wish to be thought hard ; 
 and in fact he was a very kindly man. 
 
 "Yes," replied the minister, "that is one of the 
 most sinister features of the situation. They seem 
 really to regard their employers as their enemies, j 
 don't know how it will end." 
 
 " I know how it would end if I had my way, " 
 said the professor. " There wouldn't be any labor- 
 unions, and there wouldn't be any strikes." 
 
 " That is all very well, " said the lawyer, from that 
 judicial mind which I always liked in him, " as far as 
 
54 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the strikes are concerned, but I don't understand that 
 the abolition of the unions would affect the imperson- 
 al process of laying-off. The law of demand and 
 supply I respect as much as any one — it's something 
 like the constitution ; but all the same I should object 
 extremely to have my income stopped by it every 
 now and then. I'm probably not so wasteful as a 
 workingman generally is ; still I haven't laid by 
 enough to make it a matter of indifference to me 
 whether my income went on or not. Perhaps the 
 professor has." The professor did not say, and we 
 all took leave to laugh. The lawyer concluded, " I 
 don't see how those fellows stand it." 
 
 " They don't, all of them, " said the doctor. " Or 
 their wives and children don't. Some of them die." 
 
 " I wonder, " the lawyer pursued, " what has be- 
 come of the good old American fact that there is 
 always work for those who are willing to work ? I 
 notice that wherever five thousand men strike in the 
 forenoon, there are five thousand men to take their 
 places in the afternoon — and not men who are turn- 
 ing their hands to something new, but men who are 
 used to doing the very thing the strikers have done. " 
 
 "That is one of the things that teach the futility 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 55 
 
 of strikes, " the professor made haste to interpose, as 
 if lie had not quite liked to appear averse to the in- 
 terests of the workman ; no one likes to do that. 
 " If there were anything at all to be hoped from them, 
 it would be another matter." 
 
 " Yes, but that isn't the point, quite, " said the 
 the lawyer. 
 
 "By the way, what is the point?" I asked, with 
 my humorous lightness. 
 
 " Why, I supposed, " said the banker, " it was the 
 question how the working-classes amused their elegant 
 leisure. But it seems to be almost anything else." 
 
 We all applauded the neat touch, but the Altrurian 
 eagerly entreated : " No, no ! never mind that, now. 
 That is a matter of comparatively little interest. I 
 would so much rather know something about the 
 status of the workingman among you." 
 
 " Do you mean his political status ? It's that of 
 every other citizen." 
 
 " I don't mean that. I suppose that in America 
 you have learned, as we have in Altruria, that equal 
 political rights are only means to an end, and as an 
 end have no value or reality. I meant the economic 
 status of the workingman, and his social status." 
 
56 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 I do not know why we were so long girding up our 
 loins to meet this simple question. I myself could 
 not have hopefully undertaken to answer it : but the 
 others were each in their way men of affairs, and 
 practically acquainted with the facts, except perhaps 
 the professor ; but he had devoted a great deal of 
 thought to them, and ought to have been qualified to 
 make some some sort of response. But even he was 
 silent ; and I had a vague feeling that they were all 
 somehow reluctant to formulate their knowledge, as 
 if it were uncomfortable or discreditable. The bank- 
 er continued to smoke quietly on for a moment ; then 
 he suddenly threw his cigar away. 
 
 "I like to free my mind of cant, " he said, with a 
 short laugh, "when I can afford it, and I propose to 
 cast all sorts of American cant out of it, in answering 
 your question. The economic status of the working- 
 man among us is essentially the same as that of the 
 workingman all over the civilized world. You will 
 find plenty of people here, especially about election 
 time, to tell you differently, but they will not be tell- 
 ing you the truth, though a great many of them think 
 they are. In fact, I suppose most Americans hon- 
 estly believe because we have a republican form of 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 57 
 
 government, and manhood-suffrage, and so on, that 
 our economic conditions are peculiar, and that our 
 workingman has a status higher and better than that 
 of the workingman anywhere else. But he has noth- 
 ing of the kind. His circumstances are better, and 
 provisionally his wages are higher, but it is only a 
 question of years or decades when his circumstances 
 will be the same and his wages the same as the 
 European workingman's. There is nothing in our 
 conditions to prevent this." 
 
 " Yes, I understood from our friend here, " said 
 the Altrurian, nodding toward me, "that you had 
 broken only with the political tradition of Europe, in 
 your revolution ; and he has explained to me that 
 you do not hold all kinds of labor in equal esteem ; 
 but"— 
 
 " What kind of labor did he say we did hold in 
 esteem ? " asked the banker. 
 
 " Why, I understood him to say that if America 
 meant anything at all it meant the honor of work, but 
 that you distinguished and did not honor some kinds 
 of work so much as others: for instance, domestic 
 service, or personal attendance of any kind." 
 
 The banker laughed again. "Oh, he drew the line 
 
58 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 there, did lie ? Well, we all have to draw the line 
 somewhere. Our friend is a novelist, and I will tell 
 you in strict confidence that the line he has drawn is 
 imaginary. We don't honor any kind of work any 
 more than any other people. If a fellow gets up, the 
 papers make a great ado over his having been a 
 wood-chopper, or a bobbin-boy, or something of that 
 kind, but I doubt if the fellow himself likes it ; he 
 dosen't if he's got any sense. The rest of us feel 
 that it's infra dig., and hope nobody will find out 
 that we ever worked with our hands for a living. 
 I'll go farther," said the banker, with the effect of 
 whistling prudence down the wind, " and I will 
 challenge any of you to gainsay me from his own 
 experience or observation. How does esteem usually 
 express itself ? When we wish to honor a man, what 
 do we do ? " 
 
 " Ask him to dinner, " said the lawyer. 
 
 "Exactly. AVe offer him some sort of social recog- 
 nition. Well, as soon as a fellow gets up, if he gets 
 up high enough, we offer him some sort of social 
 recognition ; in fact, all sorts ; but upon condition 
 that he has left off working with his hands for a 
 living. We forgive all you please to his past on ac- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 59 
 
 count of the present. But there isn't a workingman I 
 venture to say, in any city, or town, or even large vil- 
 lage, in the whole length and breadth of the United 
 States who has any social recognition, if he is still 
 working at his trade. I don't mean, merely, that he 
 is excluded from rich and fashionable society, but 
 from the society of the average educated and culti- 
 vated people. I'm not saying he is fit for it ; but I 
 don't care how intelligent and agreeable he might 
 be — and some of them are astonishingly intelligent, 
 and so agreeable in their tone of mind, and their 
 original way of looking at things, that I like nothing- 
 better than to talk with them — all of our invisible 
 fences are up against him." 
 
 The minister said : "I wonder if that sort of exclu- 
 siveness is quite natural ? Children seem to feel no 
 sort of social difference among themselves." 
 
 " We can hardly go to children for a type of social 
 order, " the professor suggested. 
 
 " True, " the minister meekly admitted. "But 
 somehow there is a protest in us somewhere against 
 these arbitrary distinctions ; something that questions 
 whether they are altogether right. We know that 
 they must be, and always have been, and always will 
 
60 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 be, and yet — well, I will confess it — I never feel at 
 peace when I face them." 
 
 " Oh, " said the banker, " if you come to the 
 question of right and wrong, that is another matter. 
 I don't say it's right. I'm not discussing that ques- 
 tion ; though I'm certainly not proposing to level the 
 fences ; I should be the last to take my own down. 
 I say simply that you are no more likely to meet a 
 workingman in American society than you are to 
 meet a colored man. Now you can judge, " he 
 ended, turning directly to the Altrurian, "how much 
 we honor labor. And I hope I have indirectly sat- 
 isfied your curiosity as to the social status of the 
 workingman among us." 
 
 We were all silent. Perhaps the others were 
 occupied like myself in trying to recall some instance 
 of a workingman whom they had met in society, and 
 perhaps we said nothing because Ave all failed. 
 
 The Altrurian spoke at last. 
 
 " You have been so very full and explicit that I 
 feel as if it were almost unseemly to press any 
 further inquiry ; but I should very much like to know 
 how your workingmen bear this social exclusion." 
 
 " I'm sure I can't say, " returned the banker. " A 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 61 
 
 man docs not care much to get into society until he 
 has something to eat, and how to get that is always 
 the first question with the workingman." 
 
 " But you wouldn't like it yourself ? " 
 
 " No, certainly, I shouldn't like it myself. I 
 shouldn't complain of not being asked to people's 
 houses, and the workingmen don't ; you can't do 
 that ; but I should feel it an incalculable loss. "We 
 may laugh at the emptiness of society, or pretend to 
 be sick of it, but there is no doubt that society is the 
 flower of civilization, and to be shut out from it is to 
 be denied the best privilege of a civilized man. 
 There are society-women — we have all met them — 
 whose graciousness and refinement of presence are 
 something of incomparable value ; it is more than a 
 liberal education to have been admitted to it, but it is 
 as inaccessible to the workingman as — what shall I 
 say ? The thing is too grotesquely impossible for 
 any sort of comparison. Merely to conceive of its 
 possibility is something that passes a joke ; it is a 
 kind of offence." 
 
 Again we were silent. 
 
 " I don't know, " the banker continued, how the 
 notion of our social equality originated, but I think 
 
62 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 it lias been fostered mainly by the expectation of 
 foreigners, who argued it from our political 
 equality. As a matter of fact, it never existed, 
 except in our poorest and most primitive commun- 
 ities, in the pioneer days of the West, and among 
 the gold-hunters of California. It was not dreamt 
 of in our colonial society, either in Virginia, or 
 Pennsylvania, or New York, or Massachusetts ; and 
 the fathers of the republic, who were mostly slave- 
 holders, were practically as stiffnecked aristocrats 
 as any people of their day. We have not a polit- 
 ical aristocracy, that is all ; but there is as abso- 
 lute a division between the orders of men, and as 
 little love, in this country as in any country on 
 the globe. The severance of the man who works 
 for his living with his hands from the man who 
 does not work for his living with his hands is so 
 complete, and apparently so final, that nobody even 
 imagines anything else, not even in fiction. Or, 
 how is that?" he asked, turning to me. "Do you 
 fellows still put the intelligent, high-spirited, hand- 
 some young artisan, wdio wins the millionaire's 
 daughter into your books ? I used sometimes to find 
 him there." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 63 
 
 "You might still find him in the fiction of the 
 weekly story -papers ; but, " I was obliged to own, 
 " he would not go down with my readers. Even in 
 the story-paper fiction he would leave off working 
 as soon as he married the millionaire's daughter, and 
 go to Europe, or he would stay here and become a 
 social leader, but he would not receive workingmen 
 in his gilded halls." 
 
 The others rewarded my humor with a smile, but 
 the banker said : "Then I wonder you were uot 
 ashamed of filling our friend up with that stuff about 
 our honoring some kinds of labor. It is true that 
 we don't go about openly and explicitly despising any 
 kind of honest toil — people don't do that anywhere, 
 now ; but we contemn it in terms quite as unmistak- 
 able. The workingman acquiesces as completely as 
 anybody else. He does not remain a workingman a 
 moment longer than he can help ; and after he gets 
 up, if he is weak enough to be proud of having been 
 one it is because he feels that his low origin is a 
 proof of his prowess in rising to the top against 
 unusual odds. I don't suppose there is a man in 
 the whole civilized world — outside of Altruria, of 
 
 course — who is proud of working at a trade, except 
 5 
 
64 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the shoemaker Tolstoy, and he is a count, and he 
 does not make very good shoes." 
 
 We all laughed again : those shoes of Count 
 Tolstoy's arc always such an infallible joke. The 
 Altrurian, however, was cocked and primed with an- 
 other question ; he instantly exploded it. " But are 
 all the workingmen in America eager to rise above 
 their condition ? Is there none willing to remain 
 among the mass because the rest could not rise with 
 him, and from /the hope of yet bringing labor to 
 honor ? " 
 
 The banker answered : " I never heard of any. No, 
 the American ideal is not to change the conditions for 
 all, but for each to rise above the rest if he can." 
 
 " Do you think it is really so bad as that ? " asked 
 the minister timidly. 
 
 The banker answered : " Bad ? Do you call that 
 bad ? I thought it was very good. But good or bad, 
 I don't think you'll find it deniable, if you look into 
 the facts. There may be workingmen willing to re- 
 main so for other workingmen's sake, but I have never 
 met any — perhaps because the workingman never 
 goes into society." 
 
 The unfailing question of the Altrurian broke the 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 65 
 
 silence -which ensued : " Are there many of your 
 workingmcn who are intelligent and agreeable — of 
 the type you mentioned a moment since ? " 
 
 " Perhaps, " said the banker, "I had better refer 
 you to one of our friends here, who has had a great 
 deal more to do with them than I have. He is a 
 manufacturer and he has had to do with all kinds of 
 work-people. " 
 
 " Yes, for my sins, " the manufacturer assented ; 
 and he added, " They are often confoundedly intel- 
 ligent, though I haven't often found them very agree- 
 able, either in their tone of mind or their original 
 way of looking at things." 
 
 The banker amiably acknowledged his thrust, and 
 the Altrurian asked, " Ah, they are opposed to your 
 own ? " 
 
 " Well, we have the same trouble here that you 
 must have heard of in England. As you know now 
 that the conditions are the same here, you won't be 
 surprised at the fact." 
 
 " But the conditions," the Altrurian pursued ; " do 
 you expect them always to continue the same ? " 
 
 "Well, I don't know," said the manufacturer. 
 " We can't expect them to change of themselves, and 
 
66 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 I shouldn't know how to change them. It was ex- 
 pected that the rise of the trusts and the syndicates 
 would break the unions, but somehow they haven't. 
 The situation remains the same. The unions are 
 not cutting one another's throats, now, any more than 
 we are. The war is on a larger scale — that's all." 
 
 " Then let me see," said the Altrurian, " whether I 
 clearly understand the situation, as regards the work- 
 ingman in America. He is dependent upon the em- 
 ployer for his chance to earn a living, and he is never 
 sure of this. He may be thrown out of work by his 
 employer's disfavor or disaster, and his willingness to 
 work goes for nothing ; there is no public provision 
 of work for him ; there is nothing to keep him from 
 want, nor the prospect of anything." 
 
 " We are all in the same boat," said the professor. 
 
 " But some of us have provisioned ourselves rather 
 better and can generally weather it through till we 
 are picked up," the lawyer put in. 
 
 " I am always saying the workingman is improvi- 
 dent," returned the professor. 
 
 " There are the charities," the minister suggested. 
 
 " But his economical status," the Altrurian pursued, 
 " is in a state of perpetual uncertainty, and to save 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 67 
 
 himself in some measure he has organized, and so has 
 constituted himself a danger to the public peace ? " 
 
 " A very great danger," said the professor. 
 
 " I guess we can manage him," the manufacturer 
 remarked. 
 
 " And socially he is non-existent ? " 
 
 The Altrurian turned with this question to the 
 hanker, who said, " He is certainly not in society." 
 
 " Then," said my guest, " if the workingman's 
 wages are provisionally so much better here than in 
 Europe, why should they be discontented ? What is 
 the real cause of their discontent ? " 
 
 I have always been suspicious, in the company of 
 practical men, of an atmosphere of condescension to 
 men of my calling, if nothing worse. I fancy they 
 commonly regard artists of all kinds as a sort of 
 harmless eccentrics, and that literary people they look 
 upon as something droll, as weak and soft, as not 
 quite right. I believed that this particular group, in- 
 deed, was rather abler to conceive of me as a rational 
 person than most others, but I knew that if even they 
 had expected me to be as reasonable as themselves 
 they would not have been greatly disappointed if I 
 were not ; and it seemed to me that I had put myself 
 
68 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 wrong with them in imparting to the Altrurian that 
 romantic impression that we hold labor in honor here. 
 I had really thought so, but I could not say so now, 
 and I wished to retrieve myself somehow. I wished 
 to show that I was a practical man, too, and so I made 
 answer : " What is the cause of the workingman's dis- 
 content ? It is very simple : the walking-delegate." 
 
IV. 
 
 I suppose I could not have fairly claimed any great 
 originality for my notion that the walking-delegate 
 was the cause of the labor troubles : he is regularly 
 assigned as the reason of a strike in the newspapers, 
 and is reprobated for his evil agency by the editors, 
 who do not fail to read the workingmen many solemn 
 lessons, and fervently warn them against him, as soon 
 as the strike begins to go wrong — as it nearly always 
 does. I understand from them that the walking-del- 
 egate is an irresponsible tyrant, who emerges from 
 the mystery that habitually hides him and from time 
 to time orders a strike in mere rancor of spirit and 
 plenitude of power, and then leaves the workingmen 
 and their families to suffer the consequences, while 
 
70 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 he goes off somewhere and rolls in the lap of luxury, 
 careless of the misery he has created. Between his 
 debauches of vicious idleness and his accesses of bale- 
 ful activity he is employed in poisoning the mind of 
 the workingmen against his real interests and real 
 friends. This is perfectly easy, because the American 
 workingmen, though singularly shrewd and sensible 
 in other respects, is the victim of an unaccountable 
 obliquity of vision which keeps him from seeing his 
 real interests and real friends — or at least from know- 
 ing them when he sees them. 
 
 There could be no doubt, I thought, in the mind of 
 any reasonable person that the walking-delegate was 
 the source of the discontent among our proletariat, 
 and I alleged him with a confidence which met the 
 approval of the professor, apparently, for he nodded, 
 as if to say that I had hit the nail on the head this 
 time ; and the minister seemed to be freshly impressed 
 with a notion that could not be new to him. The 
 lawyer and the doctor were silent, as if waiting for 
 the banker to speak again ; but he was silent, too. 
 The manufacturer, to my chagrin, broke into a laugh. 
 " I'm afraid," he said, with a sardonic levity which 
 surprised me, " you'll have to go a good deal deeper 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 71 
 
 than the walking-delegate. He's a symptom ; he isn't 
 the disease. The thing keeps on and on, and it seems 
 to be always about wages ; but it isn't about wages at 
 the bottom. Some of those fellows know it and 
 some of them don't, but the real discontent is with 
 the whole system, with the nature of things. I had 
 a curious revelation on that point the last time I tried 
 to deal with my men as a union. They were always 
 bothering me about this and about that, and there 
 was no end to the bickering. I yielded point after 
 point, but it didn't make any difference. It seemed 
 as if the more I gave the more they asked. At last 
 I made up my mind to try to get at the real inward- 
 ness of the matter, and I didn't wait for their com- 
 mittee to come to me — I sent for their leading man, 
 and said I wanted to have it out with him. He wasn't 
 a bad fellow, and when I got at him, man to man that 
 way, I found he had sense, and he had ideas — it's no 
 use pretending those fellows are fools ; he had thought 
 about his side of the question, any way. I said : 
 ' Now what does it all mean ? Do you want the 
 earth, or don't you ? When is it going to end ? ' I 
 offered him something to take, but he said he didn't 
 drink, and we compromised on cigars. ' Now when 
 
72 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 is it going to end ? ' said I, and I pressed it home, 
 and wouldn't let him fight off from the point. ' Do 
 you mean when it is all going to end ? ' said he. 
 ' Yes,' said I, ' all. I'm sick of it. If there's any 
 way out I'd like to know it.' ' Well,' said he, ' I'll 
 tell you, if you want to know. It's all going to end 
 when you get the same amount of money for the 
 same amount of work as we do.' " 
 
 We all laughed uproariously. The thing was de- 
 liciously comical ; and nothing, I thought, attested 
 the Altrurian's want of humor like his failure to 
 appreciate this joke. He did not even smile in ask- 
 ing, " And what did you say ? " 
 
 " Well," returned the manufacturer, with cosy en- 
 joyment, " I asked him if the men would take the 
 concern and run it themselves." We laughed again ; 
 this seemed even better than the other joke. " But 
 he said < No ; ' they would not like to do that. And 
 then I asked him just what they would like, if they 
 could have their own way, and he said they would 
 like to have me run the business, and all share alike. 
 I asked him what was the sense of that, and why if 
 I could do something that all of them put together 
 couldn't do I shouldn't be paid more than all of them 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 73 
 
 put together ; and hie said that if a man did his best he 
 ought to be paid as much as the best man. I ashed him 
 if that was the principle their union was founded on, 
 and he said < Yes,' that the very meaning of their union 
 was the protection of the weak by the strong, and the 
 equalization of earnings among all who do their best." 
 
 We waited for the manufacturer to go on, but he 
 made a dramatic pause at this point, as if to let it sink 
 into our minds; and he did not speak until the Altru- 
 rian prompted him with the question, " And what did 
 you finally do ? " 
 
 " I saw there was only one way out for me, and I 
 told the fellow I did not think I could do business 
 on that principal. We parted friends but the next 
 Saturday I locked them out, and smashed their union. 
 They came back, most of them — they had to — but 
 I've treated with them ever since ' as individuals.' " 
 
 " And they're much better off in your hands than 
 they were in the union," said the professor. 
 
 " I don't know about that," said the manufacturer, 
 " but I'm sure I am." 
 
 We laughed with him, all but the minister, whose 
 mind seemed to have caught upon some other point, 
 and who sat absently by. 
 
74 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " And is it your opinion, from what you know of 
 the workingmen generally, that they all have this twist 
 in their heads ? " the professor asked. 
 
 " They have, until they begin to rise. Then they 
 get rid of it mighty soon. Let a man save something 
 — enough to get a house of his own, and take a 
 hoarder or two, and perhaps have a little money at 
 interest — and he sees the matter in another light." 
 
 " Do you think he sees it more clearly ? " asked 
 the minister. 
 
 " He sees it differently." 
 
 " What do you think ? " the minister pursued, turn- 
 ing to the lawyer. " You are used to dealing with 
 questions of justice" — 
 
 " Rather more with questions of law, I'm afraid," 
 the other returned pleasantly, putting his feet to- 
 gether before him and looking down at them, in a 
 way he had. " But still, I have a great interest in 
 questions of justice, and I confess that I find a cer- 
 tain wild equity in this principle, which I see nobody 
 could do business on. It strikes me as idyllic — it's a 
 touch of real poetry in the rough-and-tumble prose of 
 our economic life." 
 
 He referred this to me as something I might appre- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 75 
 
 ciate in my quality of literary man, and I responded 
 in my quality of practical man, " There's certainly 
 more rhyme than reason in it." 
 
 He turned again to the minister : 
 
 " I suppose the ideal of the Christain state is the 
 family ? " 
 
 " I hope so," said the minister, with the gratitude 
 that I have seen people of his cloth show when men of 
 the world conceded premises which the world usually 
 contests ; it has seemed to me pathetic. 
 
 " And if that is the, case, why the logic of the pos- 
 tulate is that the prosperity of the weakest is the 
 sacred charge and highest happiness of all the 
 stronger. But the law has not recognized any such 
 principle, in economics at least, and if the labor unions 
 are based upon it they are outlaw, so far as any hope 
 of enforcing it is concerned ; and it is bad for men to 
 feel themselves outlaw. How is it," the lawyer contin- 
 ued, turning to the Altrurian, " in your country ? We 
 can see no issue here, if the first principle of organ- 
 ized labor antagonizes the first principle of business." 
 
 " But I don't understand precisely yet what the 
 first principle of business is," returned my guest. 
 
 " Ah, that raises another interesting question," said 
 
76 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the lawyer. " Of course every business man solves 
 the problem practically according to his temperament 
 and education, and I suppose that on first thoughts 
 every business man would answer you accordingly. 
 But perhaps the personal equation is something you 
 wish to eliminate from the definition." 
 
 " Yes, of course." 
 
 " Still, I would rather not venture upon it first," 
 said the lawyer. " Professor, what should you say 
 was the first principle of business ? " 
 
 " Buying in the cheapest market and selling in the 
 dearest," the professor promptly answered. 
 
 " We will pass the parson and the doctor and the 
 novelist as witnesses of no value. They can't possibly 
 have any cognizance of the first principle of business ; 
 their affair is to look after the souls and bodies and 
 fancies of other people. But what should you say it 
 was ? " he asked the banker. 
 
 " I should say it was an enlightened conception of 
 one's own interests." 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 The manufacturer had no hesitation in answering : 
 " The good of Number One first, last, and all the time. 
 There may be a difference of opinion about the best 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 77 
 
 way to get at it ; the long way may be the better, or 
 the short way ; the direct way or the oblique way, or 
 the purely selfish way, or the partly selfish way ; but 
 if you ever lose sight of that end you might as well 
 shut up shop. That seems to be the first law of 
 nature, as well as the first law of business." 
 
 " Ah, we mustn't go to nature for our morality," 
 the minister protested. 
 
 " We were not talking of morality," said the man- 
 ufacturer, " we were talking of business." 
 
 This brought the laugh on the minister, but the 
 lawyer cut it short : " Well, then, I don't really see 
 why the trades-unions are not as business-like as the 
 syndicates in their dealings with all those outside of 
 themselves. Within themselves they practice an 
 altruism of the highest order, but it is a tribal altru- 
 ism ; it is like that which prompts a Sioux to share 
 his last mouthful with a starving Sioux, and to take 
 the scalp of a starving Apaehe. How is it with your 
 trades-unions in Altruria ? " he asked my friend. 
 
 " We have no trades-unions in Altruria," he began. 
 
 " Happy Altruria ! " cried the professor. 
 
 " We had them formerly," the Altrurian went on, 
 " as you have them now. They claimed, as I suppose 
 
78 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 yours do, that they were forced into existence by the 
 necessities of the case ; that without union the work- 
 ingman was unable to meet the capitalist on anything 
 like equal terms, or to withstand his encroachments 
 and oppressions. But to maintain themselves they 
 had to extinguish industrial liberty among the work- 
 ingmen themselves, and they had to practice great 
 cruelties against those who refused to join them or 
 who rebelled against them." 
 
 " They simply destroy them here," said the pro- 
 fessor. 
 
 " Well," said the lawyer, from his judicial mind, 
 " the great syndicates have no scruples in destroying 
 a capitalist who won't come into them, or who tries 
 to go out. They don't club him or stone him, but 
 they undersell him and freeze him out ; they don't 
 break his head, but they bankrupt him The princi- 
 ple is the same." 
 
 " Don't interrupt Mr. Homos," the banker en- 
 treated. " I am very curious to know just how they 
 got rid of labor unions in Altruria." 
 
 " We had syndicates, too, and finally we had the 
 reductio ad absurdum — we had a federation of labor 
 unions and a federation of syndicates, that divided 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 79 
 
 the nation into two camps. The situation was not 
 only impossible, but it was insupportably ridiculous." 
 
 I ventured to say, " It hasn't become quite so much 
 of a joke with us yet." 
 
 " Isn't it in a fair way to become so ? " asked the 
 doctor ; and he turned to the lawyer : " What should 
 you say was the logic of events among us for the last 
 ten or twenty years ? " 
 
 " There's nothing so capricious as the logic of 
 events. It's like a woman's reasoning — you can't 
 tell what it's aimed at, or where it's going to fetch 
 up ; all that you can do is to keep out of the way if 
 possible. We may come to some such condition of 
 things as they have in Altruria, where the faith of 
 the whole nation is pledged to secure every citizen in 
 the pursuit of happiness ; or we may revert to some 
 former condition, and the master may again own the 
 man ; or we may hitch and joggle along indefinitely, 
 as we are doing now." 
 
 " But come, now," said the banker, while he laid a 
 
 caressing touch on the Altrurian's shoulder, " you 
 
 don't mean to say honestly that everybody works 
 
 with his hands in Altruria ? " 
 
 " Yes, certainly. We are mindful, as a whole peo- 
 6 
 
80 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 pie, of the divine law, ' In the sweat of thy brow shalt 
 thou eat bread.' " 
 
 " But the capitalists ? I'm anxious about Number 
 One, you see." 
 
 " We have none." 
 
 " I forgot, of course. But the lawyers, the doctors, 
 the parsons, the novelists?" 
 
 " They all do their share of hand work." 
 
 The lawyer said : " That seems to dispose of the 
 question of the working-man in society. But how 
 about your minds ? When do you cultivate your 
 minds? When do the ladies of Altruria cultivate 
 their minds, if they have to do their own work, as I 
 suppose they do ? Or is it only the men who work, if 
 they happen to be the husbands and fathers of the 
 upper classes?" 
 
 The Altrurian seemed to be sensible of the kindly 
 skepticism which persisted in our reception of his 
 statements, after all we had read of Altruria. He 
 smiled indulgently, and said : " You mustn't imagine 
 that work in Altruria is the same as it is here. As 
 we all work, the amount that each one need do is very 
 little, a few hours each day at the most, so that every 
 man and woman has abundant leisure and perfect 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 81 
 
 spirits for the higher pleasures which the education 
 of their whole youth has fitted them to enjoy. If you 
 can understand a state of things where the sciences 
 and arts and letters are cultivated for their own sake, 
 and not as a means of livelihood " — 
 
 " No," said the lawyer, smiling, " I'm afraid we 
 can't conceive of that. "We consider the pinch of 
 poverty the highest incentive that a man can have. 
 If our gifted friend here," he said, indicating me, 
 " were not kept like a toad under the harrow, with 
 his nose on the grindstone, and the poorhouse staring 
 him in the face " — 
 
 " For heaven's sake," I cried out, " don't mix your 
 metaphors so, anyway ! " 
 
 " If it were not for that and all the other hardships 
 that literary men undergo — 
 
 1 Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail ' — 
 
 his novels probably wouldn't be worth reading." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the Altrurian, as if he did not quite 
 follow this joking ; and to tell the truth, I never find 
 the personal thing in very good taste. " You will 
 understand, then, how extremely difficult it is for me 
 to imagine a condition of things like yours — although 
 
82 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 I have it under my very eyes — where the money con- 
 sideration is the first consideration." 
 
 " Oh, excuse me ! " urged the minister, " I don't 
 think that's quite the case." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said the Altrurian, sweetly ; 
 " you can see how easily I go astray." 
 
 " Why, I don't know," the banker interposed, 
 " that you are so far out in what you say. If you had 
 said that money was always the first motive, I should 
 have been inclined to dispute you, too ; but when you 
 say that money is the first consideration, I think you 
 are quite right. Unless a man secures his financial 
 basis for his work, he can't do his work. It's non- 
 sense to pretend otherwise. So the money consider- 
 ation is the first consideration. People here have to 
 live by their work, and to live they must have money. 
 Of course, Ave all recognize a difference in the quali- 
 ties, as well as in the kinds, of work. The work of 
 the laborer may be roughly defined as the necessity 
 of his life ; the work of the business man as the 
 means, and the work of the artist and scientist as the 
 end. We might refine upon these definitions and 
 make them closer, but they will serve for illustration 
 as they are. I don't think there can be. any question 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 83 
 
 as to. which is the highest kind of work ; some truths 
 are self-evident. He is a fortunate man whose work 
 is an end, and every business man sees this, and 
 owns it to himself, at least when he meets some man 
 of an aesthetic or scientific occupation. He knows 
 that this luckier fellow has a joy in his work, which he 
 can never feel in business ; that his success in it can 
 never be embittered by the thought that it is the 
 failure of another ; that if he does it well, it is pure 
 good ; that there cannot be any competition in it — 
 there can be only a noble emulation, as far as the work 
 itself is concerned. He can always look up to his 
 work, for it is something above him ; and a business 
 man often has to look down upon his business, for it is 
 often beneath him, unless he is a pretty low fellow." 
 I listened to all this in surprise ; I knew that the 
 banker was a cultivated man, a man of university 
 training, and that he was a reader and a thinker ; but 
 he had always kept a certain reserve in his talk, 
 which he now seemed to have thrown aside for the 
 sake of the Altrurian, or because the subject had a 
 charm that lured him out of himself. " Well, now," 
 he continued, " the question is of the money consid- 
 eration, which, is the first consideration with us all : 
 
84 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 does it, or doesn't it degrade the work, which is the 
 life, of those among us whose work is the highest ? I 
 understand that this is the misgiving which troubles 
 you in view of our conditions ? " 
 
 The Altrurian assented, and I thought it a proof of 
 the banker's innate delicacy that he did not refer the 
 matter, so far as it concerned the aesthetic life and 
 work, to me ; I was afraid he was going to do so. But 
 he courteously proposed to keep the question imper- 
 sonal, and he went on to consider it himself. " Well, 
 I don't suppose any one can satisfy you fully. But I 
 should say that it put such men under a double strain, 
 and perhaps that is the reason why so many of them 
 break down in a calling that is certainly far less ex- 
 hausting than business. On one side, the artist is 
 kept to the level of the workingman, of the animal, 
 of the creature whose sole affair is to get something 
 to eat and somewhere to sleep. This is through bis 
 necessity. On the other side, he is exalted to the 
 height of beings who have no concern but with the 
 excellence of their work, which they were born and 
 divinely authorized to do. This is through his pur- 
 pose. Between the two, I should say that he got 
 mixed, and that his work shows it." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 85 
 
 None of the others said anything, and since I had 
 not been personally appealed to, I felt the freer to 
 speak. " If you will suppose me to be speaking from 
 observation rather than experience, ' I began. 
 
 "By all means," said the banker, " go on," and the 
 rest made haste in various forms to yield me the word. 
 
 " I should say that such a man certainly got mixed, 
 but that his work kept itself pure from the money 
 consideration, as it were, in spite of him. A painter, 
 or actor, or even a novelist, is glad to get all he can 
 for his work, and, such is our fallen nature, he does 
 get all he knows how to get ; but when he has once 
 fairly passed into his work, he loses himself in it. He 
 does not think whether it will pay or not, whether it 
 will be popular or not, but whether he can make it 
 good or not." 
 
 "Well, that is conceivable," said the banker. 
 " But wouldn't he rather do something he would get 
 less for, if he could afford it, than the thing he knows 
 he will get more for ? Doesn't the money considera- 
 tion influence his choice of subject ? " 
 
 " Oddly enough, I don't believe it docs," I ans- 
 wered, after a moment's reflection. " A man makes 
 his choice once for all when he embraces the aesthetic 
 
86 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 life, or rather it is made for him ; no other life seems 
 possible. I know there is a general belief that an ar- 
 tist does the kind of thing he has made go because it 
 pays ; but this only shows the prevalence of business 
 ideals. If he did not love to do the thing he does he 
 could not do it well, no matter how richly it paid." 
 
 " I am glad to hear it," said the banker, and he 
 added to the Altrurian : "So you see we are not so 
 bad as one would think. We are illogically better, 
 in fact." 
 
 " Yes," the other assented. " I knew something 
 of your literature as well as your conditions before I 
 left home, and I perceived that by some anomaly, the 
 one was not tainted by the other. It is a miraculous 
 proof of the divine mission of the poet." 
 
 " And the popular novelist," the lawyer whispered 
 in my ear, but loud enough for the rest to hear, and 
 they all testified their amusement at my cost. 
 
 The Altrurian, with his weak sense of humor, 
 passed the joke. "It shows no signs of corruption 
 from greed, but I can't help thinking that line as it 
 is, it might have been much finer if the authors who 
 produced it had been absolutely freed to their work, 
 and had never felt the spur of need.'' 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 87 
 
 "Are they absolutely freed to it in Altruria?" 
 asked the professor. " I understood you that every- 
 body had to work for his living in Altruria." 
 
 " That is a mistake. Nobody works for his living 
 in Altruria ; he works for others' living." 
 
 " Ah, that is precisely what our workingmen object 
 to doing here ! " said the manufacturer. " In that 
 last interview of mine with the walking-delegate he 
 had the impudence to ask me why my men should 
 work for my living as well as their own." 
 
 " He couldn't imagine that you were giving them 
 the work to do — the very means of life," said the 
 professor. 
 
 " Oh, no, that's the last thing those fellows want 
 to think of." 
 
 " Perhaps," the Altrurian suggested, " they might 
 not have have found it such a hardship to work for 
 your living if their own had been assured, as it is 
 with us. If you will excuse my saying it, we should 
 think it monstrous in Altruria for any man to have 
 another's means of life in his power ; and in our con- 
 dition it is hardly imaginable. Do you really have it 
 in your power to take away a man's opportunity to 
 earn a living ? " 
 
88 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 The manufacturer laughed uneasily. " It is in my 
 power to take away bis life ; but I don't habitually 
 shoot my fellow men, and I never dismissed a man 
 yet without good reason." 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon," said the Altrurian. " I 
 didn't dream of accusing you of such inhumanity. 
 But you see our whole system is so very different 
 that, as I said, it is hard for me to conceive of yours, 
 and I am very curious to understand its workings. 
 If you shot your fellowman, as you say, the law would 
 punish you ; but if for some reason that you decided 
 to be good you took away his means of living, and he 
 actually starved to death" — 
 
 " Then the law would have nothing to do with it," 
 the professor replied for the manufacturer, who did 
 not seem ready to answer. " But that is not the way 
 things fall out. The man would be supported in idle- 
 ness, probably, till he got another job, by his union, 
 which would take the matter up." 
 
 " But I thought that our friend did not employ 
 union labor," returned the Altrurian. 
 
 I found all this very uncomfortable, and tried to 
 turn the talk back to a point that 1 felt curious about. 
 " But in Altruria, if the literary class is not exempt 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 89 
 
 from the rule of manual labor where do they find time 
 and strength to write ? " 
 
 " Why, you must realize that our manual labor is 
 never engrossing or exhausting. It is no more than 
 is necessary to keep the body in health. I do not see 
 how you remain well here, you people of sedentary 
 occupations." 
 
 " Oh, we all take some sort of exercise. We walk 
 several hours a day, or we row, or we ride a bicycle, 
 or a horse, or we fence." 
 
 " But to us," returned the Altrurian, with a grow- 
 ing frankness, which nothing but the swectuess of his 
 manner would have excused, " exercise for exercise 
 would appear stupid. , The barren expenditure of 
 force that began and ended in itself, and produced 
 nothing, we should — if you will excuse my saying so 
 — look upon as childish, if not insane or immoral." 
 
V. 
 
 At this moment, the lady who had hailed me so 
 gaily from the top of the coach while I stood waiting 
 for the Altrurian to help the porter with the baggage, 
 just after the arrival of the train, came up with her 
 husband to our little group and said to me : " I want 
 to introduce my husband to you. He adores your 
 books." She went on much longer to this effect, 
 while the other men grinned round and her husband 
 tried to look as if it were all true, and her eyes wan- 
 dered to the Altrurian, who listened gravely. I knew 
 perfectly well that she was using her husband's zeal 
 for my fiction to make me present my friend ; but I 
 did not mind that, and I introduced him to both of 
 them. She took possession of him at once and began 
 walking him off down the piazza, while her husband 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRTJRIA. 91 
 
 remained with me, and the members of our late con- 
 ference drifted apart. I was not sorry to have it 
 broken up for the present; it seemed to me that it 
 had lasted quite long enough, and I lighted a cigar 
 with the husband, and we strolled together in the 
 direction his wife had taken. 
 
 He began, apparently in compliment to literature 
 in my person, " Yes, I like to have a book where I 
 can get at it when we're not going out to the theatre, 
 and I want to quiet my mind down after business. I 
 don't care much what the book is ; my wife reads to 
 me till I drop off, and then she finishes the book her- 
 self and tells me the rest of the story. You see, 
 business takes it out of you so ! Well, I let my wife 
 do most of the reading, anyway. She knows pretty 
 much everything that's going in that line. We 
 haven't got any children, and it occupies her mind. 
 She's up to all sorts of things — she's artistic, and 
 she's musical, and she's dramatic, and she's literary. 
 Well, I like to have her. Women are funny, anyway." 
 
 He was a good-looking, good-natured, average 
 American of the money-making type ; I believe he 
 was some sort of a broker, but I do not quite know 
 what his business was. As we walked up and down 
 
92 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the piazza, keeping a discreet little distance from the 
 corner where his wife had run off to with her capture, 
 he said he wished he could get more time with her in 
 the summer — but he supposed I knew what business 
 was. He was glad she could have the rest, anyway ; 
 she needed it. 
 
 "By the way," he asked, "who is this friend of 
 yours ? The women are all crazy about him, and it's 
 been an even thing between my wife and Miss 
 Groundsel which would fetch him first. But I'll bet 
 on my wife every time, when it comes to a thing like 
 that. He's a good looking fellow — some kind of for- 
 eigner, I believe ; pretty eccentric, too, I guess. 
 Where is Altruria, anyway ? " 
 
 I told him, and he said : " Oh, yes. Well, if we 
 are going to restrict immigration, I suppose we 
 sha'n't see many more Altrurians, and we'd better 
 make the most of this one. Heigh ? " 
 
 I do not know why this innocent pleasantry piqued 
 me to say : " If I understand the Altrurians, my dear 
 fellow, nothing could induce them to emigrate to 
 America. As far as I can make out, they would re- 
 gard it very much as we should regard settling among 
 the Esquimaux." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM AL.TRURIA. 93 
 
 " Is that so ? " asked my new acquaintance, with 
 perfect good temper. " Why ? " 
 
 "Really, I can't say, and I don't know that I've 
 explicit authority for my statement." 
 
 " They are worse than the English used to be," he 
 went on. " I didu't know that there were any for- 
 eigners who looked at us in that light now. I 
 thought the War settled all that." 
 
 I sighed. " There are a good many things that 
 the war didn't settle so definitely as we've been used 
 to thinking, I'm afraid. But for that matter, I fancy 
 an Altrurian would regard the English as a little lower 
 in the scale of savagery than ourselves even." 
 
 "Is that so? Well, that's pretty good on the 
 English, anyway," said my companion, and he laughed 
 with an easy satisfaction that I envied him. 
 
 " My dear ! " his wife called to him from where 
 she was sitting with the Altrurian, " I wish you would 
 go for my shawl. I begin to feel the air a little." 
 
 " I'll go if you'll tell me where," he said, and he 
 confided to me, " Never knows where her shawl is, 
 one-quarter of the time." 
 
 " Well, I think I left it in the office somewhere. 
 You might ask at the desk ; or, perhaps it's in the 
 
94 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 rack by the dining room door — or maybe up in our 
 room." 
 
 " I thought so," said her husband, Avith another 
 glance at me, as if it were the greatest fun in the 
 world, and he started amiably off. 
 
 I went and took a chair by the lady and the Altru- 
 rian, and she began at once : " Oh, I'm so glad 
 you've come ! I have been trying to enlighten Mr. 
 Homos about some of the little social peculiarities 
 among us, that he finds so hard to understand. He 
 was just now," the lady continued, " wanting to know 
 why all the natives out here were not invited to go in 
 and join our young people in the dance, and I've been 
 trying to tell him that we consider it a great favor to 
 let them come and take up so much of the piazza and 
 look in at the windows." 
 
 She gave a little laugh of superiority, and twitched 
 her pretty head in the direction of the young country 
 girls and country fellows who were thronging the 
 place that night in rather unusual numbers. They 
 were well enough looking, and as it was Saturday 
 night they were in their best. I suppose their dress 
 could have been criticised ; the young fellows were 
 clothed by the ready-made clothing store, and the 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 95 
 
 young girls after their own devices from the fashion- 
 papers ; but their general effect was good and 
 their behavior was irreproachable ; they were very 
 quiet — if anything, too quiet. They took up a part 
 of the piazza that was yielded them by common 
 usage, and sat watching the hop inside, not so much 
 enviously, I thought, as wistfully ; and for the first 
 time it struck me as odd that they should have no 
 part in the gayety. I had often seen them there be- 
 fore, but I had never thought it strange they should 
 be shut out. It had always seemed quite normal, but 
 now, suddenly, for one baleful moment, it seemed 
 abnormal. I suppose it was the talk we had been 
 having about the workingmen in society which caused 
 me to see the thing as the Altrurian must have seen 
 it ; but I was, nevertheless, vexed with him for having 
 asked such a question, after he had been so fully in- 
 structed upon the point. It was malicious of him, or 
 it was stupid. I hardened my heart, and answered : 
 " You might have told him, for one thing, that they 
 were not dancing because they had not paid the 
 piper." 
 
 " Then the money consideration enters even into 
 your social pleasures?" asked the Altrurian. 
 
96 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Very much. Doesn't it with you ? " 
 
 He evaded this question, as lie evaded all straight- 
 forward questions concerning his country : " We have 
 no money consideration, you know. But do I under- 
 stand that all your social entertainments are paid for 
 hy the guests?" 
 
 " Oh, no, not so bad as that, quite. There are a 
 great many that the host pays for. Even here, in a 
 hotel, the host furnishes the music and the room free 
 to the guests of the house." 
 
 " And none are admitted from the outside ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, people are welcome from all the other 
 hotels and boarding-houses and the private cottages. 
 The young men are especially welcome ; there are not 
 enough young men in the hotel to go round, you see." 
 In fact, we could see that some of the pretty girls 
 within were dancing with other girls ; half-grown boys 
 were dangling from the waists of tall young ladies 
 and waltzing on tiptoe. 
 
 " Isn't that rather droll ? " asked the Altrurian. 
 
 " It's grotesque ! " I said, and I felt ashamed of it. 
 " But what are you to do ? The young men are hard 
 at work in the cities, as many as can get work there, 
 and the rest are out West, growing up with the coun- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 97 
 
 try. There are twenty young girls for every young 
 man at all the summer-resorts in the East." 
 
 " But what would happen if these young farmers — 
 I suppose they are farmers — were invited in to take 
 part in the dance ? " asked my friend. 
 
 " But that is impossible." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Really, Mrs. Makely, I think I shall have to give 
 him back to you ! " I said. 
 
 The lady laughed. "I am not sure that I want 
 him back." 
 
 " Oh, yes," the Altrurian entreated, with unwonted 
 perception of the humor. " I know that I must be 
 very trying with my qncstions ; but do not abandon 
 me to the solitude of my own conjectures. They are 
 dreadful ! " 
 
 " Well, I won't," said the lady, with another laugh. 
 " And I will try to tell you what would happen if 
 those farmers or farm hands, or whatever they are, 
 were asked in. The mammas would be very indig- 
 nant, and the young ladies would be scared, and 
 nobody would know what to do, and the dance would 
 stop." 
 
98 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Then the young ladies prefer to dance with one 
 another and with little hoys" — 
 
 " No, they prefer to dance with young men of their 
 own station ; they would rather not dance at all than 
 dance with people heneath them. I don't say any- 
 thing against these natives here ; they are very civil 
 and decent. But they have not the same social 
 traditions as the young ladies ; they would he out of 
 place with them, and they would feel it." 
 
 " Yes, I can see that they are not fit to associate 
 with them," said the Altrurian, with a gleam of com- 
 mon sense that surprised me, " and that as long as 
 your present conditions endure, they never can be. 
 You must excuse the confusion which the difference 
 between your political ideals and your economic ideals 
 constantly creates in me. I always think of you 
 politically first, and realize you as a perfect democracy; 
 then come these other facts, in which I cannot per- 
 ceive that you differ from the aristocratic countries of 
 Europe in theory or practice. It is very puzzling. 
 Am I right in supposing that the effect of your 
 economy is to establish insuperable inequalities among 
 you, and to forbid the hope of the brotherhood which 
 your polity proclaims ? " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 99 
 
 Mrs. Makely looked at me, as if she were helpless 
 to grapple with his meaning, and for fear' of worse, I 
 thought best to evade it. I said, " I don't believe 
 that anybody is troubled by those distinctions. We 
 are used to them, and everybody acquiesces in them, 
 which is a proof that they are a very good thing." 
 
 Mrs. Makely now came to my support. "The 
 Americans are very high-spirited, in every class, and 
 I don't believe one of those nice farm boys would like 
 being asked in any better than the young ladies. You 
 can't imagine how proud some of them are." 
 
 "So that they suffer from being excluded as in- 
 feriors ? " 
 
 "Oh, I assure you they don't feel themselves 
 inferior ! They consider themselves as good as any- 
 body. There are some very interesting characters 
 among them. Now, there is a young girl sitting at 
 the first window, with her profile outlined by the 
 light, whom I feel it an honor to speak to. That's 
 her brother, standing there with her — that tall, gaunt 
 young man with a Roman face ; it's such a common 
 type here in the mountains. Their father was a sol- 
 dier, and he distinguished himself so in one of the 
 last battles that he was promoted. He was badly 
 
100 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 wounded, but he never took a pension ; he just came 
 back to his farm and worked on till he died. Now 
 the son has the farm, and he and his sister live there 
 with their mother. The daughter takes in sewing, 
 and in that way they manage to make both ends 
 meet. The girl is really a first-rate semptress, and so 
 cheap ! I give her a good deal of my work in the 
 summer, and we are quite friends. She's very fond of 
 reading ; the mother is an invalid, but she reads aloud 
 while the daughter sews, and you've no idea how 
 many books they get through. When she comes for 
 sewing, I like to talk with her about them ; I always 
 have her sit down ; it's hard to realize that she isn't a 
 lady. I'm a good deal criticised, I know, and I sup- 
 pose I do spoil her a little ; it puts notions into such 
 people's heads, if you meet them in that way ; they're 
 pretty free and independent as it is. But when I'm 
 with Lizzie I forget that there is any difference be- 
 tween us ; I can't help loving the child. You must 
 take Mr. Homos to see them, Mr. Twelvemough. 
 They've got the father's sword hung up over the head 
 of the mother's bed ; it's very touching. But the 
 poor little place is so bare ! " 
 
 Mrs. Makely sighed, and there fell a little pause, 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 101 
 
 which she broke with a question she had the effect of 
 having kept back. 
 
 " There is one thing I should like to ask you, too, 
 Mr. Homos. Is it true that everybody in Altruria 
 does some kind of manual labor ? " 
 
 " Why, certainly," he answered, quite as if he had 
 been an American. 
 
 " Ladies, too ? Or perhaps you have none ! " 
 
 I thought this rather offensive, but I could not sec 
 that the Altrurian had taken it ill. " Perhaps we had 
 better try to understand each other clearly before I 
 answer that question. You have no titles of nobility 
 as they have in England" — 
 
 " No, indeed ! I hope we have outgrown those 
 superstitions," said Mrs. Makely, with a republican 
 fervor that did my heart good. " It is a word that 
 we apply first of all to the moral qualities of a 
 person." 
 
 " But you said just now that you sometimes forgot 
 that your semptress was not a lady. Just what did 
 you mean by that ? " 
 
 Mrs. Makely hesitated. " I meant — I suppose I 
 meant — that she had not the surroundings of a lady ; 
 the social traditions." 
 
102 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Then it has something to do with social as well 
 as moral qualities- — with ranks and classes ? " 
 
 " glasses, yes ; but as you know, we have no ranks 
 in America," The Altrurian took ofE his hat and 
 rubbed an imaginable perspiration from his forehead. 
 He sighed deeply. " It is all very difficult." 
 
 "Yes," Mrs. Makely assented, "I suppose it is. 
 All foreigners find it so. In fact it is something that 
 you have to live into the notion of ; it can't be ex- 
 plained." 
 
 " Well, then, my dear madam, will you tell me 
 without further question, what you understand by a 
 lady, and let me live into the notion of it at my 
 leisure ? " 
 
 " I will do my best," said Mrs. Makely. " But it 
 would be so much easier to tell you who was or who 
 was not a lady ! However, your acquaintance is so 
 limited yet, that I must try to do something in the 
 abstract and impersonal for you. In the first place, 
 a lady must be above the sordid anxieties in every 
 way. She need not be very rich, but she must have 
 enough, so 'that she need not be harrassed about 
 making both ends meet, when she ought to be devot- 
 ing herself to her social duties. The time is passed 
 
A TRAVELER PROM ALTRURIA. 103 
 
 with us when a lady could look after the dinner, and 
 perhaps cook part of it herself, and then rush in to 
 receive her guests, and do the amenities. She must 
 have a certain kind of house, so that her entourage 
 won't seem cramped and mean, and she must have 
 nice frocks, of course, and plenty of them. She 
 needn't be of the smart set ; that isn't at all necessary; 
 but she can't afford to be out of the fashion. Of 
 course she must have a certain training. She must 
 have cultivated tastes ; she must know about art, and 
 literature, and music, and all those kind of things, 
 and though it isn't necessary to go in for anything in 
 particular, it won't hurt her to have a fad or two. 
 The nicest kind of fad is charity ; and people go in 
 for that a great deal. I think sometimes they use it 
 to work up with, and there are some who use religion 
 in the same way ; I think it's horrid ; but it's perfectly 
 safe ; you can't accuse them of doing it. I'm happy to 
 say, though, that mere church association doesn't count 
 socially so much as it used to. Charity is a great 
 deal more insidious. But you see how hard it is to 
 define a lady. So much has to be left to the nerves, 
 in all these things ! And then it's changing all the 
 time ; Europe's coming in, and the old American 
 
104 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 ideals arc passing away. Things that people did ten 
 years ago would be impossible now, or at least ridic- 
 ulous. You wouldn't be considered vulgar, quite, 
 but you would certainly be considered a back number, 
 and that's almost as bad. Really," said Mrs. Makely, 
 " I don't believe I can tell you what a lady is." 
 
 We all laiiffhed together at her frank confession. 
 The Altrurian asked, " But do I understand that one 
 of her conditions is that she shall have nothing what- 
 ever to do ? " 
 
 " Nothing to do! " cried Mrs. Makely. " A lady is 
 busy from morning till night! She always goes to 
 bed perfectly worn out." 
 
 " But with what ? " asked the Altrurian. 
 
 " With making herself agreeable and her house 
 attractive, with going to lunches, and teas, and din- 
 ners, and concerts, and theatres, and art exhibitions, 
 and charity meetings, and receptions, and with 
 writing a thousand and one notes about them, and 
 accepting and declining, and giving lunches and 
 dinners, and making calls and receiving them, and I 
 don't know what all. It's the most hideous slavery !" 
 Her voice rose into something like a shriek ; one 
 could see that her nerves were ffoinsj at the mere 
 
A TRAVELER FR03I ALTRURIA. 105 
 
 thought of it all. " You don't have a moment to 
 yourself ; your life isn't your own ! " 
 
 " But the lady isn't allowed to do any useful kind 
 of work?" 
 
 •' Work ! Don't you call all that work, and useful? 
 I'm sure I envy the cook in my kitchen at times ; I 
 envy the woman that scrubs my floors. Stop ! Don't 
 ask why I don't go into my kitchen, or get down on 
 my knees with the mop ! It isn't possible ! You 
 simply can't ! Perhaps you could if you were very 
 grand dame, but if you're anywhere near the line of 
 necessity, or ever have been, you can't. Besides, if 
 we did do our own household work, as I understand 
 your Altrurian ladies do, what would become of the 
 the servant class ? We should be taking away their 
 living, and that would be wicked." 
 
 " It would certainly be wrong to take away the 
 living of a fellow-creature," the Altrurian gravely 
 admitted, " and I see the obstacle in your way." 
 
 " It's a mountain," said the lady, with exhaustion 
 in her voice, but a returning amiability ; his forbear- 
 ance must have placated her. 
 
 " May I ask what the use of your society life is ? " 
 he ventured, after a moment. 
 
106 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Use ? Why should it have any ? It kills time." 
 
 " Then you are shut up to a hideous slavery with- 
 out use, except to kill time, and you cannot escape 
 from it without taking away the living of those 
 dependant on you ? " 
 
 " Yes," I put in, " and that is a difficulty that 
 meets us at every turn. It is something that Matthew 
 Arnold urged with great effect in his paper on that 
 crank of a Tolstoy. He asked what would become 
 of the people who need the work, if we served and 
 waited on ourselves, as Tolstoy preached. The ques- 
 tion is unanswerable." 
 
 " That is true ; in your conditions, it is unanswer- 
 able," said the Altrurian. 
 
 "I think," said Mrs. Makely, "that under the 
 circumstances we do pretty well." 
 
 " Oh, I don't presume to censure you. And if you 
 believe that your conditions are the best" — 
 
 " We believe them the best in the best of all 
 possible worlds," I said devoutly ; and it struck me 
 that if ever we came to have a national church, some 
 such affirmation as that concerning our economical 
 conditions ought to be in the confession of faith. 
 
 The Altrurian's mind had not followed mine so far. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 107 
 
 " And your young girls ? " he asked of Mrs. Makely, 
 " how is their time occupied ? " 
 
 "You mean after they come out in society? " 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 She seemed to reflect. " I don't know that it is 
 very differently occupied. Of course, they have their 
 own amusements ; they have their dances, and little 
 clubs, and their sewing societies. I suppose that even 
 an Altrurian would applaud their sewing for the 
 poor ? " Mrs. Makely asked rather satirically. 
 
 " Yes," he answered ; and then he asked, " Isn't it 
 taking work away from some needy sempstress, 
 though ? But I suppose you excuse it to the thought- 
 lessness of youth." 
 
 Mrs. Makely did not say, and he went on : " What 
 I find it so hard to understand is how you ladies can 
 endure a life of mere nervous exertion, such as you 
 have been describing to me. I don't see how you 
 keep well." 
 
 " We don't keep well," said Mrs. Makely, with the 
 greatest amusement. " I don't suppose that when you 
 get above the working classes, till you reach the very 
 rich, you would find a perfectly well woman in 
 America." 
 
108 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Isn't that rather extreme ? " I ventured to ask. 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Makely, " it's shamefully moder- 
 ate," and she seemed to delight in having made out 
 such a bad case for her sex. You can't stop a woman 
 of that kind when she gets started ; I had better left 
 it alone. 
 
 " But," said the Altrurian, " if you are forbidden 
 by motives of humanity from doing any sort of man- 
 ual labor, which you must leave to those who live by 
 it, I suppose you take some sort of exercise ? " 
 
 '• Well," said Mrs. Makely, shaking her head gaily, 
 " we prefer to take medicine." 
 
 "You must approve of that," I said to the Altru- 
 rian, " as you consider exercise for its own sake 
 insane or immoral. But, Mrs. Makely," I entreated, 
 " you're giving me away at a tremendous rate. I 
 have just been telling Mr. Homos that you ladies go 
 in for athletics so much, now, in your summer out- 
 ings, that there is danger of your becoming physically 
 as well as intellectually superior to us poor fellows. 
 Don't take that consolation from me ! " 
 
 " I won't, altogether," she said. " I couldn't have 
 the heart to, after the pretty way you've put it. I 
 don't call it very athletic, sitting around on hotel 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 109 
 
 piazzas all summer long, as nineteen-twentieth of us 
 do. But I don't deny that there is a Remnant, as 
 Matthew Arnold calls them, who do go in for tennis, 
 and boating, and bathing, and tramping and climb- 
 ing." She paused, and then she concluded gleefully, 
 "And you ought to see what wrecks they get home 
 in the fall ! " 
 
 The joke was on me ; I could not help laughing, 
 though I felt rather sheepish before the Altrurian! 
 Fortunately, he did not pursue the inquiry; his 
 curiosity had been given a slant aside from it. 
 
 "But your ladies," he asked, "they have the 
 summer for rest, however they use it. Do they gen- 
 erally leave town? I understood Mr. Twelvemough 
 to say so," he added with a deferential glance at 
 me. 
 
 " Yes, you may say it is the universal custom in 
 the class that can afford it," said Mrs. Makely. She 
 proceeded as if she felt a tacit censure in his question. 
 " It wouldn't be the least use for us to stay and fry 
 through our summers in the city, simply because our 
 fathers and brothers had to. Besides, we are worn 
 out at the end of the season, and they want us to 
 come away as much as we want to come." 
 
110 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Ah, I have always heard that the Americans arc 
 beautiful in their attitude towards women." 
 
 " They are perfect dears," said Mrs. Makely, " and 
 here comes one of the best of them." 
 
 At that moment her husband came up and laid her 
 shawl across her shoulders. " Whose character is 
 that your blasting ?'" he asked, jocosely. 
 
 " Where in the world did you rind it ? " she asked, 
 meaning the shawl. 
 
 " It was where you left it : on the sofa, in the side 
 parlor. I had to take my life in my hand, when I 
 crossed among all those waltzers in there. There 
 must have been as many as three couples on the floor. 
 Poor girls ! I pity them, off at these places. The 
 fellows in town have a good deal better time. They've 
 got their clubs, and they've got the theatre, and when 
 the weather gets too much for them, they can run 
 off down to the shore for the night. The places any- 
 where within an hour's ride are full of fellows. The 
 girls don't have to dance with one another there, or 
 with little boys. Of course, that's all right if they 
 like it better." He laughed at his wife, and winked 
 at me, and smoked swiftly, in emphasis of his irony. 
 
 " Then the young gentlemen whom the young 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. HI 
 
 ladies here usually meet in society, are all at work in 
 the cities ? " the Altrurian asked him, rather need- 
 lessly, as I had already said so. 
 
 "Yes, those who are not out West, growing up 
 with the country, except, of course, the fellows who 
 have inherited a fortune. They're mostly off on 
 yachts." 
 
 " But why do your young men go West to grow 
 up with the country ? " pursued my friend. 
 
 "Because the East is grown up. They have got 
 to hustle, and the West is the place to hustle. To 
 make money," added Makely, in response to a puzzled 
 glance of the Altrurian. 
 
 "Sometimes," said his wife, "I almost hate the 
 name of money." 
 
 "Well, so long as you don't hate the thing, 
 Peggy." 
 
 "Oh, we must have it, I suppose," she sighed. 
 " They used to say about the girls who grew into old 
 maids just after the Rebellion that they had lost their 
 chance in the war for the union. I think quite as 
 many lose their chance now in the war for the dollar." 
 
 " Mars hath slain his thousands, but Mammon hath 
 slain his tens of thousands," I suggested lightly ; Ave 
 
112 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 all like to recognize the facts, so long as we are not 
 expected to do anything about them ; then, we deny 
 them. 
 
 " Yes, quite as bad as that," said Mrs. Makely. 
 
 " Well, my dear, you are expensive, you know," 
 said her husband, " and if we want to have you, why 
 we've got to hustle, first." 
 
 " Oh, I don't blame you, you poor things ! There's 
 nothing to be done about it ; it's just got to go on 
 and on ; I don't see how it's ever to end." 
 
 The Altrurian had been following us with that air 
 of polite mystification which I had begun to dread in 
 him. " Then, in your good society you postpone, 
 and even forego, the happiness of life in the struggle 
 to be rich ? " 
 
 " Well, you see," said Makely, " a fellow don't like 
 to ask a girl to share a home that isn't as nice as the 
 home she has left." 
 
 " Sometimes," his wife put in, rather sadly, " I 
 think that it's all a mistake, and that we'd be willing 
 to share the privations of the man we loved." 
 
 " Well," said Makely, with a laugh, " we wouldn't 
 like to risk it." 
 
 I laughed with him, but his wife did not, and in the 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 113 
 
 silence that ensued there was nothing to prevent the 
 Altrurian from coming in with another of his questions. 
 " How far does this state of things extend down- 
 ward ? " Does it include the working-classes, too ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! " we all answered together, and Mrs. 
 Makely said : " With your Altrurian ideas I suppose 
 you would naturally sympathize a great deal more 
 with the lower classes, and think they had to endure 
 all the hardships in our system ; but if you could 
 realize how the struggle goes on in the best society, 
 and how we all have to fight for what we get, or don't 
 get, you would be disposed to pity our upper classes, 
 too." 
 
 " I am sure I should," said the Altrurian. 
 
 Makely remarked, " I used to hear my father say 
 that slavery was harder on the whites than it was on 
 the blacks, and that he wanted it done away with for 
 the sake of the masters." 
 
 Makely rather faltered in conclusion, as if he were 
 not quite satisfied with his remark, and I distinctly 
 felt a want of proportion in it ; but I did not wish to 
 say anything. His wife had no reluctance. 
 
 " Well, there's no comparison between the two 
 things, but the struggle certainly doesn't affect the 
 
114 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 working classes as it does us. They go on marrying 
 and giving in marriage in the old way. They have 
 nothing to lose, and so they can afford it." 
 
 " Blessed am dem what don't expect nuffin ! Oh, 
 I tell jou it's a working-man's country," said Makely, 
 through his cigar smoke. " You ought to see them 
 in town, these summer nights, in the parks and 
 squares and cheap theatres. Their girls are not off 
 for their health, anywhere, and their fellows are not 
 off growing up with the country. Their day's work 
 is over and they're going in for a good time. And, 
 then, walk through the streets where they live, and 
 see them out on the stoops with their wives and child- 
 ren ! I tell you, it's enough to make a fellow wish he 
 was poor himself." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Makely, " it's astonishing how 
 strong and well those women keep, with their great 
 families and their hard work. Sometimes I really 
 envy them." 
 
 " Do you suppose," said the Altrurian, " that they 
 are aware of the sacrifices which the ladies of the 
 upper classes make in leaving all the work to them, 
 and suffering from the nervous debility which seems 
 to be the outcome of your society life ? " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 115 
 
 " They have not the remotest idea of it ! They 
 have no conception of what a society woman goes 
 through with. They think we do nothing. They 
 envy us, too, and sometimes they're so ungrateful and 
 indifferent, if you try to help them, or get on terms 
 with them, that I believe they hate us." 
 
 " But that comes from ignorance ' " 
 
 " Yes, though I don't know that they are really any 
 more ignorant of us than we are of them. It's the 
 other half on both sides." 
 
 " Isn't that a pity, rather ? " 
 
 " Of course it's a pity, but what can you do ? You 
 can't know what people are like unless you live like 
 them, and then the question is whether the game is 
 worth the candle. I should like to know how you 
 manage in Altruria." 
 
 "Why, we have so^ed the problem in the only 
 way, as you say, that it can be solved. We all live 
 alike." 
 
 " Isn't that a little, just a very trifling little bit 
 monotonous % " Mrs. Makely asked, with a smile. 
 " But there is everything, of course, in being used to 
 it. To an unregenerate spirit — like mine, for exam- 
 ple — it seems intolerable." 
 
116 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " But why ? When you were younger, before you 
 were married, you all lived at home together. — Or, 
 perhaps, you were an only child ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, indeed ! There were ten of us." 
 " Then you all lived alijee, and shared equally ? " 
 " Yes, but we were a family." 
 " We do not conceive of the human race except as 
 a family." 
 
 " Now, excuse me, Mr. Homos, that is all nonsense. 
 You cannot have the family feeling without love, and 
 it is impossible to love other people. That talk about 
 the neighbor, and all that, is all well enough" — She 
 stopped herself, as if she dimly remembered Who be- 
 gan that talk, and then went on : " Of course I accept 
 it as a matter of faith, and the spirit of it, nobody 
 denies that ; but what I mean is, that you must have 
 frightful quarrels all the time." She tried to look as 
 if this were where she really meant to bring up, and 
 he took her on the ground she had chosen. 
 
 " Yes, we have quarrels. Hadn't you at home ? " 
 " We fought like little cats and dogs, at times." 
 Makely and I burst into a laugh at her magnani- 
 mous frankness. The Altrurian remained serious. 
 " But because you lived alike, you knew each other ; 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 117 
 
 and so you easily made up your quarrels. It is quite 
 as simple with us, in our life as a human family." 
 
 This notion of a human family seemed to amuse 
 Mrs. Makely more and more ; she laughed and laughed 
 again. " You must excuse me ! " she panted, at last. 
 " But I cannot imagine it ! No, it is too ludicrous. 
 Just fancy the jars of an ordinary family multiplied 
 by the population of a whole continent ! Why, you 
 must be in a perpetual squabble ! You can't have 
 any peace of your lives ! It's worse, far worse, than 
 our way ! " 
 
 " But, madam," he began, " you are supposing our 
 family to be made up of people with all the antago- 
 nistic interests of your civilization. As a matter of 
 fact"— 
 
 " No, no ! / know human nature, Mr. Homos ! " 
 She suddenly jumped up and gave him her hand. 
 " Good night ! " she said, sweetly, and as she drifted 
 off on her husband's arm, she looked back at us and 
 nodded in gay triumph. 
 
 The Altrurian turned upon me with unabated in- 
 terest. " And have you no provision in your system 
 for finally making the lower classes understand the 
 sufferings and sacrifices of the upper classes in their 
 
118 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 behalf ? Do you expect to do nothing to bring them 
 together in mutual kindness ? 
 
 " Well, not this evening," I said, throwing the end 
 of my cigar away. " I'm going to bed, aren't you ? " 
 
 " Not yet." 
 
 " Well, good night. Are you sure you can find 
 your room ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. Good night." 
 
VI. 
 
 I left my guest abruptly, with a feeling of vexation 
 not very easily definable. His repetition of questions 
 about questions which society has so often answered, 
 and always in the same way, was not so bad in him 
 as it would have been in a person of our civilization ; 
 he represented a wholly different state of things, the 
 inversion of our own, and much could be forgiven 
 him for that reason, just as in Russia much could be 
 forgiven to an American, if he formulated his curiosity 
 concerning imperialism from a purely republican ex- 
 perience. I knew that in Altruria, for instance, the 
 possession of great gifts, of any kind of superiority, 
 involved the sense of obligation to others, and the 
 wish to identify one's self with the great mass of 
 
120 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 men, rather than the ambition to distinguish one's 
 self from them ; and that the Altrurians honored their 
 gifted men in the measure they did this. A man 
 reared in such a civilization must naturally find it 
 difficult to get our point of view ; with social inclu- 
 sion as the ideal, he could with difficulty conceive of 
 our ideal of social exclusion ; but I think we had all 
 been very patient with him ; we should have made 
 short work with an American who had approached us 
 with the same inquiries. Even from a foreigner, the 
 citizen of a Republic founded on the notion, elsewhere 
 exploded ever since Cain, that one is his brother's 
 keeper, the things he asked seemed inoffensive only 
 because they were puerile ; but they certainly were 
 puerile. I felt that it ought to have been self-evident 
 to him that when a commonwealth of sixty million 
 Americans based itself upon the great principle of 
 self-seeking, self-seeking was the best thing, and 
 whatever hardship it seemed to work, it must carry 
 with it unseen blessings in ten-fold measure. If a 
 few hundred thousand favored Americans enjoyed 
 the privilege of socially contemning all the rest, it 
 was as clearly right and just that they should do so, 
 as that four thousand American millionaires should 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 121 
 
 be richer than all the other Americans put together. 
 Such a status, growing out of our political equality 
 and our material prosperity must evince a divine 
 purpose to any one intimate with the designs of pro- 
 vidence, and it seemed a kind of impiety to doubt its 
 perfection. I excused the misgivings, which I could 
 not help seeing in the Altrurian to his alien traditions, 
 and I was aware that my friends had done so, too. 
 But if I could judge from myself he must have left 
 them all sensible of their effort ; and this was not 
 pleasant. I could not blink the fact that although I 
 had openly disagreed with him on every point of 
 ethics and economics, I was still responsible for him 
 as a guest. It was as if an English gentleman had 
 introduced a blatant American democrat into tory 
 society; or, rather, as if a southerner of the olden 
 time had harbored a northern abolitionist, and per- 
 mitted him to inquire into the workings of slavery 
 among his neighbors. People would tolerate him 
 as my guest for a time, but there must be an end of 
 their patience with the tacit enmity of his sentiments, 
 and the explicit vulgarity of his ideals, and when the 
 end came, I must be attainted with him. 
 
 I did not like the notion of this, and I meant to 
 
122 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 escape it if I could. I confess that I would have 
 willingly disowned him, as I had already disavowed 
 his opinions, hut there was no way of doing it short 
 of telling him to go away, and I was not ready to do 
 that. Something in the man, I do not know what, 
 mysteriously appealed to me. He was not contempt- 
 ibly puerile without being lovably childlike, and I 
 could only make up my mind to be more and more 
 frank with him, and to try and shield him, as well as 
 myself, from the effects I dreaded. 
 
 I fell asleep planning an excursion further into the 
 mountains, which should take up the rest of the week 
 that I expected him to stay with me, and would 
 keep him from following up his studies of American 
 life where they would be so injurious to both of 
 us as they must in our hotel. A knock at my door 
 roused me, and I sent a drowsy " Come in ! " towards 
 it from the bed-clothes without looking that way. 
 
 " Good morning ! " came back in the rich, gentle 
 voice of the Altrurian. I lifted my head with a jerk 
 from the pillow, and saw him standing against the 
 closed door, with my shoes in his hand. " Oh, I am 
 sorry I waked you ! I thought " — 
 
 " Not at all, not at all ! " I said. "It's quite time, 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 123 
 
 I dare say. But you oughtn't to have taken the 
 trouble to bring- my shoes in ! " 
 
 " I wasn't altogether disinterested in it," lie re- 
 turned. " I wished you to compliment me on them. 
 Don't you think they are pretty well done, for an 
 amateur ? " He came toward my bed, and turned 
 them about in his hands, so that they would catch the 
 light, and smiled down upon me. 
 
 " I don't understand," I began. 
 
 " Why," he said, " I blacked them, you know." 
 
 " You blacked them ! " 
 
 " Yes," he returned, easily. " I thought I would 
 go into the baggage-room, after we parted last night, 
 to look for a piece of mine that had not been taken 
 to my room, and I found the porter there, with his 
 wrist bound up. He said he had strained it in hand- 
 ling a lady's Saratoga — he said a Saratoga was a large 
 trunk — and I begged him to let me relieve him at 
 the boots he was blacking. He refused, at first, but 
 I insisted upon trying my hand at a pair, and then he 
 let me go on with the men's boots ; he said he could 
 varnish the ladies' without hurting his wrist. It need- 
 ed less skill than I supposed, and after I had done a 
 few pairs he said I could black boots as well as he." 
 
124 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Did anybody see you ? " I gasped, and I felt a 
 cold perspiration break out on me. 
 
 " No, we bad tbe wbole midnight bour to ourselves. 
 Tbe porter's work with tbe baggage was all over, and 
 there was nothing to interrupt tbe delightful chat we 
 fell into. lie is a very intelligent man, and he told 
 me all about that custom of feeing which you depre- 
 cate. He says that the servants hate it as much as 
 the guests ; they have to take the tips, now, because 
 the landlords figure on them in the wages, and they 
 cannot live without them. He is a fine, manly 
 fellow, and " — 
 
 " Mr. Homos," I broke in, with the strength I found 
 in his assurance that no one had seen him helping the 
 porter black boots, " I want to speak very seriously 
 with you, and I hope you will not be hurt if I speak 
 very plainly about a matter in which I have your 
 good solely at heart." This was not quite true, and 
 I winced inwardly a little when lie thanked me with 
 that confounded sincerity of bis, which was so much 
 like irony ; but I went on : " It is my duty to you, as 
 my guest, to tell you that this thing of doing for 
 others is not such a simple matter here, as your pecu- 
 liar training leads you to think. You have been de- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 125 
 
 ceived by a superficial likeness ; but, really, I do not 
 understand how you could have read all you have 
 done about us, and not realized before coming here 
 that America and Altruria are absolutely distinct and 
 diverse in their actuating principles. They are both 
 republics, I know ; but America is a republic where 
 every man is for himself, and you cannot help others 
 as you do at home ; it is dangerous — it is ridiculous. 
 You must keep this fact in mind, or you will fall into 
 errors that will be very embarassing to you in your 
 stay among us, and," I was forced to add "to all 
 your friends. Now, I certainly hoped, after what I 
 had said to you, and what my friends had explained 
 of our civilization, that you would not have done a 
 thing of this kind. I will see the porter, as soon as 
 I am up, and ask him not to mention the matter to 
 any one, but I confess I don't like to take an apolo- 
 getic tone Avith him ; your conditions are so alien to 
 ours that they will seem incredible to him, and he 
 will think I am stuffing him." 
 
 " I don't believe he will think that," said the Altru- 
 rian, " and I hope you won't find the case so bad as 
 it seems to you. I am extremely sorry to have done 
 wronsr " — 
 
126 A TRAVELER FROM ALTKURIA. 
 
 " Oh, the thing wasn't wrong in itself. It was only 
 wrong under the circumstances. Abstractly, it is 
 quite right to help a fellow-being who needs help ; no 
 one denies that, even in a country where every one is 
 for himself." 
 
 " I am so glad to hear it," said the Altrurian. 
 " Then at least, I have not gone radically astray ; and 
 I do not think you need take the trouble to explain 
 the Altrurian ideas to the porter. I have done that 
 already, and they seemed quite conceivable to him ; 
 he said that poor folks had to act upon them, even 
 here, more or less, and that if they did not act upon 
 them, there would be no chance for them at all. He 
 says they have to help each other, very much as we 
 do at home, and that it is only the rich folks among 
 you who are independent. I really don't think you 
 need speak to him at all, unless you wish ; and I was 
 very careful to guard my offer of help at the point 
 where I understood from you and your friends that it 
 might do harm. I asked him if there was not some 
 one who would help him out with his hootblacking 
 for money, because in that case I should he glad to 
 pay him ; but he said there was no one about who 
 would take the job; that he had to agree to black the 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRT7RTA, 127 
 
 boots, or else he would not have got the place of por- 
 ter, but that all the rest of the help would consider it 
 a disgrace, and would not help him for love or money. 
 So it seemed quite safe to offer him my services." 
 
 I felt that the matter was almost hopeless, but I 
 asked, "And what he said, didn't that suggest any- 
 thing else to you ? " 
 
 " How, anything else ? " asked the Altrurian, in his 
 turn. 
 
 " Didn't it occur to you that if none of his fellow 
 servants were willing to help him black boots, and if 
 he did it only because he was obliged to, it was hardly 
 the sort of work for you ? " 
 
 " Why, no," said the Altrurian, with absolute sim- 
 plicity. He must have perceived the despair I fell 
 into at this answer, for he asked, " Why should I 
 have minded doing for others what I should have been 
 willing to do for myself ? " 
 
 " There are a great many things we are willing to 
 do for ourselves that we are not willing to do for 
 others. But even on that principle, which I think 
 false and illogical, you could not be justified. A gen- 
 tleman is not willing to black his own boots. It is 
 
 offensive to his feelings, to his self-respect; it is 
 9 
 
128 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 something he will not do if he can get anybody else 
 to do it for him." 
 
 " Then, in America," said the Altrurian, " it is not 
 offensive to the feelings of a gentleman to let another 
 do for him what he would not do for himself ? " 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 " Ah," he returned, " then we understand some- 
 thing altogether different by the word gentleman in 
 Altruria. I see, now, how I have committed a 
 mistake. I shall be more careful hereafter." 
 
 I thought I had better leave the subject, and, " By 
 the way," I said, " how would you like to take a little 
 tramp with me to-day, farther up into the mountains ?" 
 
 " I should be delighted," said the Altrurian, so 
 gratefully, that I was ashamed to think why I was 
 proposing the pleasure to him. 
 
 " Well, then, I shall be ready to start as soon as 
 we have had breakfast. I will join you down stairs 
 in half an hour." 
 
 lie left me at this hint, though really I was half 
 afraid he might stay and offer to lend me a hand at 
 my toilet, in the expression of his national character. 
 I found him with Mrs. Makely, when I went down, 
 and she began, with a parenthetical tribute to the 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 129 
 
 beauty of the. mountains in the morning light, " Don't 
 be surprised to see me up at this unnatural hour. I 
 don't know whether it was the excitement of our talk 
 last night, or what it was, but my sulfonal wouldn't 
 act, though I took fifteen grains, and I was up with 
 the lark, or should have been, if there had been any 
 lark outside of literature to be up with. However, 
 this air is so glorious that I don't mind losing a 
 night's sleep, now and then. I believe that with a 
 little practice one could get along without any sleep 
 at all, here ; at least / could. I'm sorry to say, poor 
 Mr. Makely can't, apparently. He's making up for 
 his share of my vigils, and I'm going to breakfast 
 without him. Do you know, I've done a very bold 
 thing : I've got the head waiter to give you places at 
 our table ; I know you'll hate it, Mr. Twelvemough, 
 because you naturally want to keep Mr. Homos to 
 yourself, and I don't blame you at all ; but I'm simply 
 not going to let you, and that's all there is about it." 
 The pleasure I felt at this announcement was not 
 unmixed, but I tried to keep Mrs. Makely from think- 
 ing so, and I was immensely relieved when she found 
 a chance to say to me in a low voice, " I know just 
 how you're feeling, Mr. Twelvemough, and I'm going 
 
 ... 
 
130 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 to help you keep him from doing anything ridiculous, 
 if I can. I like him, and I think it's a perfect shame 
 to have people laughing at him. I know we can 
 manage him between us." 
 
 AVe so far failed, however, that the Altrurian shook 
 hands with the head waiter, when he pressed open 
 the wire netting door to let us into the dining-room, 
 and made a bow to our waitress of the sort one makes 
 to a lady. But we thought it best to ignore these 
 little errors of his, and reserve our moral strength for 
 anything more spectacular. Fortunately we got 
 through our breakfast with nothing worse than his 
 jumping up, and stooping to hand the waitress a 
 spoon she let fall ; but this could easily pass for 
 some attention to Mrs. Makely at a little distance. 
 There were not many people down to breakfast, yet ; 
 but I could see that there was a good deal of subdued 
 sensation among the waitresses, standing with folded 
 arms behind their tables, and that the head waiter's 
 handsome face was red with anxiety. 
 
 Mrs. Makely asked if we were going to church. 
 She said she was driving that way and would be glad 
 to drop us. " I'm not going myself," she explained, 
 " because I couldn't make anything of the sermon, 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRUKIA. 131 
 
 with my head in the state it is, and I'm going to com- 
 promise on a good action. I want to carry some 
 books and papers over to Mrs. Camp. Don't you 
 think that will be quite as acceptable, Mr. Homos?" 
 
 " I should venture to hope it," he said, with a 
 tolerant seriousness not altogether out of keeping with 
 her lightness. 
 
 " Who is Mrs. Camp ? " I asked, not caring to 
 commit myself on the question. 
 
 "Lizzie's mother. You know I told you about 
 them last night. I think she must have got through 
 the books I lent her, and I know Lizzie didn't like to 
 ask me for more, because she saw me talking with 
 you and didn't want to interrupt us. Such a nice 
 girl ! I think the Sunday papers must have come, 
 and I'll take them over, too ; Mrs. Camp is always so 
 glad to get them, and she is so delightful when she 
 gets going about public events. But perhaps you 
 don't approve of Sunday papers, Mr. Homos." 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know, madam. I haven't seen 
 them yet. You know this is the first Sunday I've 
 been in America." 
 
 " Well, I'm sorry to say you won't see the old 
 Puritan Sabbath," said Mrs. Makely, with an abrupt 
 
132 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 deflection from the question of the Sunday papers. 
 " Though you ought to, up in these hills. The only 
 thing left of it is rye-and-Indian bread, and these 
 baked beans and fish-balls." 
 
 " But they are very good ? " 
 
 " Yes, I dare say they are not the worst of it." 
 
 She was a woman who tended to levity, and I was 
 a little afraid she might be going to say something 
 irreverent, but if she were, she was forestalled by the 
 Altrurian asking, " Would it be very indiscreet, 
 madam, if I were to ask you some time to introduce 
 me to that family ? " 
 
 "The Camps?" she returned. "Not at all. I 
 should be perfectly delighted." The thought seemed 
 to strike her, and she asked, " Why not go with me 
 this morning, unless you are inflexibly bent on going 
 to church, you and Mr. Twelvemough ? " 
 
 The Altrurian glanced at me, and I said I should 
 be only too glad, if I could carry some books, so that 
 I could compromise on a good action, too. " Take 
 one of your own," she instantly suggested. 
 
 "Do. you think they wouldn't be too severe upon 
 it ? " I asked. 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Camp might," Mrs. Makely consented, 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 133 
 
 with a smile. " She goes in for rather serious fiction; 
 but I think Lizzie would enjoy a good, old-fashioned 
 love-story, where everybody got married, as they do 
 in your charming books." 
 
 I winced a little, for every one likes to be regarded 
 seriously, and I did not enjoy being remanded to the 
 young-girl public ; but I put a bold face on it, and 
 said, "My good action shall be done in behalf of 
 Miss Lizzie." 
 
 Half an hour later, Mrs. Makely having left word 
 with the clerk where we were gone, so that her hus- 
 band need not be alarmed when he got up, we were 
 striking into the hills on a two seated buckboard, with 
 one of the best teams of our hotel, and one of the 
 most taciturn drivers. Mrs. Makely had the Altru- 
 rian get into the back seat with her, and, after some 
 attempts to make talk with the driver, I leaned over 
 and joined in their talk. The Altrurian was greatly 
 interested, not so much in the landscape — though he 
 owned its beauty, when we cried out over it from 
 point to point — but in the human incidents and fea- 
 tures. He noticed the cattle in the fields, and the 
 horses we met on the road, and the taste and comfort 
 of the buildings, the variety of the crops, and the 
 
134 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 promise of the harvest. I was glad of the respite his 
 questions gave me from the study of the intimate 
 character of our civilization, for they were directed 
 now at these more material facts, and I willingly joined 
 Mrs. Makely in answering them. We explained that 
 the finest teams we met were from the different hotels 
 or boarding-houses, or at least from the farms where 
 the people took city people to board ; and that certain 
 shabby equipages belonged to the natives who lived 
 solely by cultivating the soil. There was not very 
 much of the soil cultivated, for the chief crop was 
 hay, with here and there a patch of potatoes or beans, 
 and a few acres in sweet-corn. The houses of the na- 
 tives, when they were for their use only, were no better 
 than their turnouts ; it was where the city boarder had 
 found shelter that they were modern and pleasant. 
 Now and then we came to a deserted homestead, and 
 I tried to make the Altrurian understand how farming 
 in New England had yielded to the competition of the 
 immense agricultural operations of the west. " You 
 know," I said, "that agriculture is really an operation 
 out there, as much as coal-mining is in Pennsylvania, 
 or finance in Wall street ; you have no idea of the vast- 
 ness of the scale." Perhaps I swelled a little with 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 135 
 
 pride in my celebration of the national prosperity, as 
 it flowed from our western farms of five, and ten, and 
 twenty thousand acres ; I could not very well help put- 
 ting on the pedal in these passages. Mrs. Makely 
 listened almost as eagerly as the Altrurian, for, as a 
 cultivated American woman, she was necessarily quite 
 ignorant of her own country, geographically, politically 
 and historically. " The only people left in the hill 
 country of New England, " I concluded, " are those 
 who are too old or too lazy to get away. Any young 
 man of energy would be ashamed to stay, unless he 
 wanted to keep a boarding-house or live on the city 
 vacationists in summer. If he doesn't, he goes west 
 and takes up some of the new land, and comes back 
 in middle-life, and buys a deserted farm to spend his 
 summers on." 
 
 " Dear me ! " said the Altrurian, " Is it so simple 
 as that ? Then we can hardly wonder at their owners 
 leaving these worn-out farms ; though I suppose it 
 must be with the pang of exile, sometimes." 
 
 " Oh, I fancy there isn't much sentiment involved/' 
 I answered, lightly. 
 
 "Whoa!" said Mrs. Makely, speaking to the 
 horses, before she spoke to the driver, as some women 
 
136 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 will. He pulled them up, and looked round at lier. 
 
 " Isn't that Reuben Camp, now, over there by that 
 house ? " she asked, as if we had been talking of him; 
 that is another way some women have. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am," said the driver. 
 
 " Oh, well, then ! " and " Reuben ! " she called to 
 the young man, who was prowling about the door- 
 yard of a sad-colored old farmhouse, and peering into 
 a window here and there. " Come here a moment — 
 won't you, please ? " 
 
 He lifted his head and looked round, and when he 
 had located the appeal made to him, he came down 
 the walk to the gate and leaned over it, waiting for 
 further instructions. I saw that it was the young 
 man whom we had noticed with the girl Mrs. Makely 
 called Lizzie, on the hotel piazza, the night before. 
 
 "Do you know whether I should find Lizzie at 
 home, this morning ? " 
 
 "Yes, she's there with mother," said the young 
 fellow, with neither liking nor disliking in his tone. 
 
 " Oh, I'm so glad ! " said the lady. " I didn't know 
 but she might be at church. What in the world has 
 happened here ? Is there anything unusual going on 
 inside ? " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 137 
 
 " No, I was just looking to see if it was all right. 
 The folks wanted I should come round." 
 
 " Why, where are they ? " 
 
 " Oh, they're gone." 
 
 "Gone?" 
 
 " Yes ; gone west. They've left the old place, be- 
 cause they couldn't make a living here, any longer." 
 
 " Why, this is quite a case in point," I said. 
 " Now, Mr. Homos, here is a chance to inform your- 
 self at first hand about a very interesting fact of our 
 civilization ; " and I added, in a low voice, to Mrs. 
 Makely, " Won't you introduce us ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! Mr. Camp, this is Mr. Twelvemough, 
 the author — you know his books, of course ; and Mr. 
 Homos, a gentleman from Altruria." 
 
 The young fellow opened the gate he leaned on, 
 and came out to us. He took no notice of me, but 
 he seized the Altrurian's hand and wrung it. " I've 
 heard of you" be said. " Mrs. Makely, were you go- 
 ing to our place ?" 
 
 " Why, yes." 
 
 " So do, then ! Mother would give almost anything 
 to see Mr. Homos. We've heard of Altruria, over 
 our way," he added, to our friend. " Mother's been 
 
138 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 reading up all she can about it. She'll want to talk 
 with you, and she won't give the rest of us much of a 
 chance, I guess." 
 
 " Oh, I shall be glad to see her," said the Altrurian, 
 " and to tell her everything I can. But won't you 
 explain to me first something about your deserted 
 farms here ? It's quite a new thing to me." 
 
 " It isn't a new thing to us," said the young fellow, 
 with a short laugh. " And there isn't much to ex- 
 plain about it. You'll see them all through New 
 England. When a man finds he can't get his fu- 
 neral expenses out of the land, he don't feel like 
 staying to be buried in it, and he pulls up and goes." 
 
 " But people used to get their living expenses 
 here," I suggested. " Why can't they now ? " 
 
 " Well, they didn't use to have western prices to 
 fight with ; and then the land wasn't wornout so, and 
 the taxes were not so heavy. How would you like to 
 pay twenty to thirty dollars on the thousand, and as- 
 sessed up to the last notch, in the city ? " 
 
 " Why, what in the world makes your taxes so 
 heavy ? " 
 
 " Schools and roads. We've got to have schools, 
 and you city folks want good roads when you come 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRITRIA. 139 
 
 here in the summer, don't you? Then the season is 
 short and sometimes we can't make a crop. The frost 
 catches the corn in the field, and you have your 
 trouble for your pains. Potatoes are the only thing 
 we can count on, except grass, and when everybody 
 raises potatoes, you know where the price goes." 
 
 " Oh, but now, Mr. Camp," said Mrs. Makely, lean- 
 ing over towards him, and speaking in a cosy and 
 coaxing tone, as if he must not really keep the truth 
 from an old friend like her, " isn't it a good deal be- 
 cause the farmers' daughters want pianos, and the 
 farmers' sons want buggies ? I heard Professor 
 Lumen saying, the other day, that if the farmers were 
 willing to work, as they used to work, they could still 
 get a good living off their farms, and that they gave 
 up their places because they were too lazy, in many 
 cases, to farm them properly." 
 
 "He'd better not let me hear him saying that," 
 said the young fellow, while a hot flush passed over 
 his face. He added, bitterly, "If he wants to see 
 how easy it is to make a living up here, he can take 
 this place and try, for a year or two ; he can get it 
 cheap. But I guess he wouldn't want it the year 
 round ; he'd only want it a few months in the sum- 
 
140 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 mcr, when lie could enjoy the sightliness of it, and 
 see me working over there on my farm, while he 
 smoked on his front porch." He turned round and 
 looked at the old house, in silence a moment. Then, 
 as he went on, his voice lost its angry ring. " The 
 folks here bought this place from the Indians, and 
 they'd been here more than two hundred years. Do 
 you think they left it because they were too lazy to 
 run it, or couldn't get pianos and buggies out of it, 
 or were such fools as not to know whether they were 
 well off? It was their home; they were born, and 
 lived and died here. There is the family burying 
 ground, over there." 
 
 Neither Mrs, Makely nor myself was ready with a 
 reply, and we left the word with the Altrurian, who 
 suggested, " Still, I suppose they will be more pros- 
 perous in the west, on the new land they take up ? " 
 
 The young fellow leaned his arms on the wheel by 
 which he stood. " What do you mean by taking up 
 new land \ " 
 
 " Why, out of the public domain " — 
 
 " There ain't any public domain that's worth hav- 
 ing. All the good land is in the hands of railroads, 
 and farm syndicates, and speculators ; and if you want 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 141 
 
 a farm in the west you've got to buy it ; the east is 
 the only place where folks give them away, because 
 they ain't worth keeping. If you haven't got the 
 ready money, you can buy one on credit, and pay ten 
 twenty and thirty per cent, interest, and live in a dug- 
 out on the plains — till your mortgage matures." The 
 young man took his arms from the wheel and moved 
 a few steps backward, as he added, " I'll see you over 
 at the house later." 
 
 The driver touched his horses, and we started 
 briskly off again. But I confess I had quite enough 
 of his pessimism, and as we drove away I leaned back 
 toward the Altrurian, and said, " Now, it is all per- 
 fect nonsense to pretend that things are at that pass 
 with us. There are more millionaires in America, 
 probably, than there are in all the other civilized 
 countries of the globe, and it is not possible that the 
 farming population should be in such a hopeless con- 
 dition. All wealth comes out of the earth, and you 
 may be sure they get their full share of it." 
 
 " I am glad to hear you say so," said the Altrurian, 
 " What is the meaning of this new party in the west 
 that seems to have held a convention lately ? I read 
 something of it in the train yesterday." 
 
142 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Oh, that is a lot of crazy Hayseeds, who don't 
 want to pay back the money they have borrowed, or 
 who find themselves unable to meet their interest. It 
 will soon blow over. We are always having these 
 political flurries. A good crop will make it all right 
 with them." 
 
 " But is it true that they have to pay such rates of 
 interest as our young friend mentioned .- " 
 
 " Well," I said, seeing the thing in the humorous 
 light, which softens for us Americans so many of the 
 hardships of others, " I suppose that man likes to 
 squeeze his brother man, when he gets him in his 
 grip. That's human nature, you knew." 
 
 " Is it ? " asked the Altrurian. 
 
 It seemed to me that he had asked something like 
 that before when I alleged human nature in defense 
 of some piece of everyday selfishness. But I thought 
 best not to notice it, and I went on : " The land is so 
 rich out there that a farm will often pay for itself 
 with a single crop." 
 
 " Is it possible ? " cried the Altrurian. " Then I 
 suppose it seldom really happens that a mortgage is 
 foreclosed, in the way our young friend insinuated ? " 
 
 " Well, I can't say that exactly," and having ad- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 143 
 
 mitted so much, I did not feel bound to impart a fact 
 that popped perversely into my mind. I was once 
 talking with a western money-lender, a very good 
 sort of fellow, frank and open as the day ; I asked 
 him whether the farmers generally paid off their 
 mortages, and he answered me that if the mortgage 
 was to the value of a fourth of the land, the farmer 
 might pay it off, but if it were to a half or a third 
 even, he never paid it, but slaved on and died in his 
 debts. " You may be sure, however," I concluded, 
 " that our young friend takes a jaundiced view of the 
 situation." 
 
 " Now, really," said Mrs. Makely, " I must insist 
 upon dropping this everlasting talk about money. I 
 think it is perfectly disgusting, and I believe it was 
 Mr. Makely's account of his speculations that kept me 
 awake last night. My brain got running on figures 
 till the dark seemed to be all sown with dollar marks, 
 like the stars in the milky way. I — ugh ! "What in 
 the world is it ? Oh, you dreadful little things ! " 
 
 Mrs. Makely passed swiftly from terror to hysteri- 
 cal laughter as the driver pulled up short, and a group 
 of bare-footed children broke in front of his horses, 
 
 and scuttled out of the dust into the roadside bushes 
 10 
 
144 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 like a covey of quails. There seemed to be a dozen 
 of them, nearly all the same in size, but there turned 
 out to be only five or six ; or at least no more showed 
 their gleaming eyes and teeth through the underbrush 
 in quiet enjoyment of the lady's alarm. 
 
 " Don't you know that you might have got killed ?" 
 she demanded with that severity good women feel for 
 people who have just escaped with their lives. " How 
 lovely the dirty little dears are !" she added, in the 
 next wave of emotion. One bold fellow of six showed 
 a half length above the bushes, and she asked, " Don't 
 you know that you oughn't to play in the road when 
 there are so many teams passing ? Are all those your 
 brothers and sisters ? " 
 
 He ignored the first question. " One's my cousin." 
 I pulled out a half-dozen coppers, and held my hand 
 toward him. " See if there is one for each." They 
 had no difficulty in solving the simple mathematical 
 problem except the smallest girl, who cried for fear 
 and baffled longing. I tossed the coin to her, and a 
 little fat dog darted out at her feet and caught it up 
 m his mouth. " Oh, good gracious ! " I called out in 
 my light, humorous way. " Do you suppose he's 
 going to spend it for candy ? " The little people 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 145 
 
 thought that a famous joke, and they laughed with 
 the gratitude that even small favors inspire. " Bring 
 your sister here," I said to the boldest boy, and when 
 he came up with the little woman, I put another 
 copper into her hand. " Look out that the greedy 
 dog doesn't get it," I said, and my gaiety met with 
 fresh applause. " Where do you live ? " I asked with 
 some vague purpose of showing the Altrurian the 
 kindliness that exists between our upper and lower 
 classes. 
 
 " Over there," said the boy. I followed the twist 
 of his head, and glimpsed a wooden cottage on the bor- 
 der of the forest, so very new that the sheathing had 
 not yet been covered with clapboards. I stood up in 
 the buckboard and saw that it was a story and a half 
 high, and could have had four or five rooms in it. The 
 bare, curtainless windows were set in the unpainted 
 frames, but the front door seemed not to be hung 
 yet. The people meant to winter there, however, for 
 the sod was banked up against the wooden underpin- 
 ning ; a stove-pipe stuck out of the roof of a little 
 wing behind. While I gazed, a young-looking woman 
 came to the door, as if -she had been drawn by our 
 talk with the children, and then she jumped down 
 
146 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 from the threshhold, which still wanted a doorstep, 
 and came slowly out to us. The children ran to her 
 with their coppers, and then followed her back to us. 
 
 Mrs. Makely called to her before she reached us, 
 " I hope you weren't frightened. We didn't, drive 
 over any of them." 
 
 " Oh, I wasn't frightened," said the young woman. 
 " It's a very safe place to bring up children, in the 
 country, and I never feel uneasy about them." 
 
 " Yes, if they are not under the horses' feet," said 
 Mrs. Makely, mingling instruction and amusement 
 very judiciously in her reply. " Are they all yours ?" 
 
 " Only five," said the mother, and she pointed to 
 the alien in her flock. " He's my sisters' s. She lives 
 just below here." Her children had grouped them- 
 selves about her, and she kept passing her hands 
 caressingly over their little heads as she talked. " My 
 sister has nine children, but she has the rest at church 
 with her today." 
 
 " You don't speak like an American," Mrs. Makely 
 suggested. 
 
 " No, we're English. Our husbands work in the 
 quarry. That's my little palace." The woman 
 nodded her head toward the cottasre. 
 
y 
 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRTJRIA. 147 
 
 "It's going to be very nice," said Mrs. Makely, 
 with an evident perception of her pride in it. 
 
 •' Yes, if we ever get money to finish it. Thank 
 you for the children ! " 
 
 " Oh, it was this gentleman." Mrs. Makely indi- 
 cated me, and I bore the merit of my good action as 
 modestly as I could. 
 
 " Then, thank you, sir," said the young woman, and 
 she asked Mrs. Makely, " You're not living about 
 here, ma'am ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, we're staying at the hotel." 
 
 " At the hotel ! It must be very dear, there." 
 
 " Yes, it is expensive," said Mrs. Makely, with a 
 note of that satisfaction in her voice which we all 
 feel in spending a great deal of money. 
 
 " But I suppose you can afford it," said the woman, 
 whose eye was running hungrily over Mrs. Makely's 
 pretty costume. " Some are poor, and some are rich. 
 That's the way the world has to be made up, isn't it ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Makely, very dryly, and the talk 
 languished from this point, so that the driver felt 
 warranted in starting up his horses. When we had 
 driven beyond earshot she said, " I knew she was not 
 an American, as soon as she spoke, by her accent, and 
 
148 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 then those foreigners have no self-respect. That was 
 a pretty bold bid for a contribution to finish up her 
 ' little palace ! ' I'm glad you didn't give her any- 
 thing, Mr. Twelvemough. I was afraid your sympa 
 thies had been wrought upon." 
 
 " Oh, not at all ! " I answered. " I saw the mischief 
 I had done with the children." 
 
 The Altrurian, who had not asked anything for a 
 long time, but had listened with eager interest to all 
 that passed, now came up smiling with his question : 
 " Will you kindly tell me what harm would have been 
 done by offering the woman a little money to help 
 finish up her cottage ? " 
 
 I did not allow Mrs. Makely to answer, I was so ea- 
 ger to air my political economy. "The very greatest 
 harm. It would have pauperized her. You have no 
 idea how quickly they give way to the poison of that 
 sort of thing. As soon as they get any sort of help 
 they expect more ; they count upon it, and they begin 
 to live upon it. The sight of those coppers which I 
 gave her children — more out of joke than charity — 
 demoralized the woman. She took us for rich people, 
 and wanted us to build her a house. You have to 
 guard against every approach to a thing of that sort." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 149 
 
 "I don't believe," said Mrs. Makely, "that an 
 American would have hinted, as she did." 
 
 "No, an American would not have done that, I'm 
 thankful to say. They take fees, but they don't ask' 
 charity, yet." We went on to exult in the noble in- 
 dependence of the American character in all classes, 
 at some length. We talked at the Altrurian, but he 
 did not seem to hear us. At last, be asked with a 
 faint sigh, " Then, in your conditions, a kindly im- 
 pulse to aid one who needs your help, is something to 
 be guarded against as possibly pernicious ? " 
 
 " Exactly," I said. « And now you see what diffi- 
 culties beset us in dealing with tbe problem of poverty. 
 We cannot let people suffer, for that would be cruel ; 
 and we cannot relieve their need without pauperizing 
 them." S 
 
 " I see," he answered. " It is a terrible quandary." 
 
 " I wish," said Mrs. Makely, « that you would tell 
 us just how you manage with the poor in Altruria." 
 
 " We have none," he replied. 
 
 " But the comparatively poor— you have some peo- 
 ple who are richer than others ? " 
 
 "No. We should regard that as the worst in- 
 civism." 
 
150 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " What is incivism ? " 
 
 I interpreted, " Bad citizenship." 
 
 " Well then, if you will excuse me, Mr. Homos," 
 she said, " I think that is simply impossible. There 
 must be rich and there must be poor. There always 
 have been, and there always will be. That woman 
 said it as well as anybody. Didn't Christ himself 
 say, ' The poor ye have always with you ' \ " 
 
VII 
 
 The Altrurian looked at Mrs. Makely with an 
 amazement visibly heightened by the air of compla- 
 cency she put on after delivering this poser : " Do you 
 really think Christ meant that you ought always to 
 have the poor with you ? " he asked. 
 
 " Why, of course ! " she answered triumphantly. 
 " How else are the sympathies of the rich to be culti- 
 vated ? The poverty of some and the wealth of 
 others, isn't that what forms the great tie of human 
 brotherhood? If we were all comfortable, or all 
 shared alike, there could not be anything like charity, 
 and Paul said ' the greatest of these is charity. ' I 
 believe it's ' love ' in the new version, but it comes to 
 the same thing." 
 
 The Altrurian gave a kind of gasp and then lapsed 
 
152 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 into a silence that lasted until we came in sight of 
 the Camp farmhouse. It stood on the crest of a road- 
 side upland, and looked down the beautiful valley, 
 bathed in Sabbath sunlight, and away to the ranges 
 of hills, so far that it was hard to say whether it was 
 sun or shadow that dimmed their distance. Decidedly, 
 the place was what the country people call sightly. 
 The old house, once painted a Brandon red, crouched 
 low to the ground, with its lean-to in the rear, and its 
 flat-arched wood-sheds and wagon-houses, stretching 
 away at the side to the barn, and covering the 
 approach to it with an unbroken roof. There were 
 flowers in the beds along the under-pinning of the 
 house, which stood close to the street, and on one 
 side of the door was a clump of Spanish willow ; an 
 old-fashioned June rose climbed over it from the 
 other. An aged dog got stiffly to his feet from the 
 threshold stone, and whimpered, as our buckboard 
 drew up ; the poultry picking about the path and 
 among the chips, lazily made way for us, and as our 
 wheels ceased to crunch upon the gravel, Ave heard 
 hasty steps, and Reuben Camp came round the corner 
 of the house in time to give Mr$. Makely his hand, 
 and help her spring to the ground, which she did very 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 153 
 
 lightly ; her remarkable mind had kept her body in a 
 sort of sympathetic activity, and at thirty-five she had 
 the gracile ease and self-command of a girl. 
 
 " Ah, Reuben," she sighed, permitting herself to 
 call him by his first name, with the emotion which 
 expressed itself more definitely in the words that fol- 
 lowed, " how I envy you all this dear old, home-like 
 place ! I never come here without thinking of my 
 grandfather's farm in Massachusetts, where I used to 
 go every summer when I was a little girl. If I had a 
 place like this, I should never leave it." 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Makely," said young Camp, "you can 
 have this place cheap, if you really want it. Or 
 almost any other place in the neighborhood." 
 
 "Don't say such a thing!" she returned. "It 
 makes one feel as if the foundations of the great deep 
 were giving way. I don't know what that means, 
 exactly, but I suppose it's equivalent to mislaying 
 George's hatchet, and going back on the Declaration 
 generally ; and I don't like to hear you talk so." 
 
 Camp seemed to have lost his bitter mood, and he 
 answered pleasantly, " The Declaration is all right, as 
 far as it goes, but it don't help us to compete with 
 the western farm operations." 
 
154 A TRAVELER PROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Wliy, you believe every one was Lorn free and 
 equal, don't you ? " Mrs. Makely asked. 
 
 " Ob, yes, I believe tbat; but" — 
 
 " Tben why do you object to free and equal com- 
 petition ? " 
 
 Tbe young fellow laughed, and said, as be opened 
 the door for us : " Walk right into the parlor, please. 
 Mother will be ready for you in a minute." ITe 
 added, " I guess sbe's putting on her best cap, for 
 you, Mr. llomos. It's a great event for her, your 
 coming here. It is for all of us. We're glad to 
 have you." 
 
 " And I'm glad to be here," said the Altrurian, as 
 simply as the other. He looked about the best room 
 of a farm-house that had never adapted itself to tbe 
 tastes or needs of the city boarder, and was as stiffly 
 repellant in its upholstery, and as severe in its deco- 
 ration as haircloth chairs and dark brown wall-paper 
 of a trellis-pattern, with drab roses, could make it. 
 Tbe windows were sbnt tight, and our host did not 
 offer to open them. A fly or two crossed the door- 
 way into the hall, but made no attempt to penetrate 
 the interior, where we sat in an obscurity that left the 
 high-hung family photographs on the walls vague and 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 155 
 
 uncertain. I made a mental note of it as a place 
 where it would be very charactistic to have a rustic 
 funeral take place ; and I was pleased to have Mrs. 
 Makely drop into a sort of mortuary murmur, as she 
 said: " I hope your mother is as well as usual, this 
 morning ? " I perceived that this murmur was pro- 
 duced by the sepulchral influence of the room. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Camp, and at that moment a door 
 opened from the room across the hall, and his sister 
 seemed to bring in some of the lio-ht from it to us, 
 where we sat. She shook hands with Mrs. Makely, 
 who introduced me to her, and then presented the 
 Altrurian. She bowed very civilly to me, but with a 
 touch of severity, such as country people find neces- 
 sary for the assertion of their self-respect with strang- 
 ers. I thought it very pretty, and instantly saw that 
 I could work it into some picture of character ; and I 
 was not at all sorry that she made a difference in 
 favor of the Altrurian. 
 
 "Mother will be so glad to see you," she said to 
 him, and, " Won't you come right in ? " she added to 
 us all. 
 
 We followed her and found ourselves in a large, 
 low, sunny room on the southeast corner of the house, 
 
156 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 which had no doubt once been the living room, but 
 which was now given up to the bed-ridden invalid ; a 
 door opened into the kitchen behind, where the table 
 was already laid for the midday meal, with the plates 
 turned down in the country fashion, and some netting 
 drawn over the dishes to keep the flics away. 
 
 Mrs. Makely bustled up to the bedside with her 
 energetic, patronizing cheerfulness. " Ah, Mrs. 
 Camp, I am glad to see you looking so well this 
 morning. I've been meaning to run over for several 
 days past, but I couldn't find a moment till this morn- 
 ing, and I knew you didn't object to Sunday visits." 
 She took the invalid's hand in hers, and with the air 
 of showing how little she felt any inequality between 
 them, she leaned over and kissed her, where Mrs. 
 Camp sat propped against her pillows. She had a 
 large, nobly-moulded face of rather masculine contour, 
 and at the same time the most motherly look in the 
 world. Mrs. Makely bubbled and babbled on, and 
 every one waited patiently till she had done, and 
 turned and said, toward the Altrurian, " I have ven- 
 tured to bring my friend, Mr. Homos, with me. He 
 is from Altruria." Then she turned to me, and said, 
 " Mr. Twelvemough, you know already through his 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 157 
 
 delightful books ; " but although she paid me this 
 perfunctory compliment, it was perfectly apparent to 
 me that in the esteem of this disingenuous woman the 
 distinguished stranger was a far more important per- 
 son than the distinguished author. Whether Mrs. 
 Camp read my perception of this fact in my face or 
 not, I cannot say, but she was evidently determined 
 that I should not feel a difference in her. She held 
 out her hand to me first, and said that I never could 
 know how many heavy hours I had helped to lighten 
 for her, and then she turned to the Altrurian, and 
 took his hand. " Oh ! " she said, with a long, deep, 
 drawn sigh, as if that were the supreme moment of 
 her life. " And are you really from Altruria ? It 
 seems too good to be true ! " Her devout look and 
 her earnest tone gave the commonplace words a quality 
 that did not inhere in them, but Mrs. Makely took 
 them on their surface. 
 
 " Yes, doesn't it ? " she made haste to interpose, 
 before the Altrurian could say anything. " That is 
 just the way we all feel about it, Mrs. Camp. I 
 assure you, if it were not for the accounts in the 
 papers, and the talk about it everywhere, I couldn't 
 believe there tvas any such place as Altruria ; and if it 
 
158 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 were not for Mr. Twelvemough here — who has to keep 
 all his inventions for his novels, as a mere matter of 
 business routine, — I might really suspect him and Mr. 
 Homos of — well, working us, as my husband calls it." 
 
 The Altrurian smiled politely, but vaguely, as if he 
 had not quite caught her meaning, and I made answer 
 for both : " I am sure, Mrs. Makely, if you could un- 
 derstand my peculiar state of mind about Mr. Homos, 
 you would never believe that I was in collusion with 
 him. I find him quite as incredible as you do. There 
 are moments when he seems so entirely subjective 
 with me, that I feel as if he were no more definite or 
 tangible than a bad conscience." 
 
 " Exactly ! " said Mrs. Makely, and she laughed out 
 her delight in my illustration. 
 
 The Altrurian must have perceived that we were 
 joking, though the Camps all remained soberly silent. 
 " I hope it isn't so bad as that," he said, " though I 
 have noticed that I seem to affect you all with a kind 
 of misgiving. I don't know just what it is ; but if I 
 could remove it, I should be very glad to do so." 
 
 Mrs. Makely very promptly seized her chance : 
 " Well, then, in the first place, my husband and I 
 were talking it over last night, after we left you, and 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 159 
 
 that was one of the things that kept us awake ; it 
 turned into money afterward. It isn't so much that a 
 whole continent, as big as Australia, remained undis- 
 coved till within such a very few years, as it is the 
 condition of things among you : this sort of all living 
 for one another, and not each one for himself. My 
 husband says that is simply moonshine ; such a thing 
 never was and never can be ; it is opposed to human 
 nature, and would take away incentive, and all motive 
 for exertion and advancement and enterprise. I don't 
 know what he didn't say against it ; but one thing : 
 he says it's perfectly un-American." The Altrurian re- 
 mained silent, gravely smiling, and Mrs. Makely added 
 with her most engaging little manner : " I hope you 
 won't feel hurt, personally or patriotically, by what 
 I've repeated to you. I know my husband is awfully 
 Philistine, though he is such a good fellow, and I 
 don't, by any means, agree with him on all those 
 points ; but I would like to know what you think of 
 them. The trouble is, Mrs. Camp," she said, turning 
 to the invalid, " that Mr. Hoinos is so dreadfully re- 
 ticent about his own country, and I am so curious to 
 hear of it at first hands, that I consider it justifiable 
 to use any means to make him open up about it." 
 
160 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRTJRIA. 
 
 "There is no offense," the Altrurian answered for 
 himself, " in what Mr. Makely says, though, from the 
 Altrurian point of view, there is a good deal of error. 
 Does it seem so strange to you," he asked, addressing 
 himself to Mrs. Camp, " that people should found a 
 civilization on the idea of living for one another, in- 
 stead of each for himself ? " 
 
 " No, indeed ! " she answered. " Poor people have 
 always had to live that way, or they could not have 
 lived at all." 
 
 " That was what I understood your porter to say 
 last night," said the Altrurian to me. lie added, to 
 the company generally : "I suppose that even in 
 America there are more poor people than there are 
 rich people ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know about that," I said. " I sup- 
 pose there are more people independently rich than 
 there are people independently poor." 
 
 " We will let that formulation of it stand. If it 
 is true, I do not see why the Altrurian system should 
 be considered so very un-American. Then, as to 
 whether there is or ever was really a practical altruism, 
 a civic expression of it, I think it cannot be denied 
 that among the first Christians, those who immediately 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRITRIA. 161 
 
 followed Christ, and might he supposed to he directly 
 influenced hy his life, there was an altruism practiced 
 as radical as that which we have organized into a 
 national polity and a working economy in Altruria." 
 
 " Ah, hut you know," said Mrs. Makely, with the 
 air of advancing a point not to he put aside, " they 
 had to drop that. It was a dead failure. They found 
 that they couldn't make it go at all, among cultivated 
 people, and that, if Christianity was to advance, they 
 would have to give up all that crankish kind of idol- 
 atry of the mere letter. At any rate," she went on, 
 with the satisfaction we all feel in getting an opponent 
 into close quarters, " you must confess that there is a 
 much greater play of individuality here." 
 
 Before the Altrurian could reply, young Camp said: 
 " If you want to see American individuality, the real, 
 simon-pure article, you ought to go down to one of 
 our hig factory towns, and look at the mill-hands 
 coming home in droves after a day's work, young 
 girls and old women, hoys and men, all fluffed over 
 with cotton, and so dead-tired that they can hardly 
 walk. They come shamhling along with all the in- 
 dividuality of a flock of sheep." 
 
 " Some," said Mrs. Makely, heroically, as if she 
 
162 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 were one of these, " must be sacrificed. Of course, 
 some are not so individual as others. A great deal 
 , depends upon temperament." 
 
 " A great deal more depends upon capital," said 
 Camp, with an offensive laugh. " If you have capital 
 in America, you can have individuality ; if you haven't, 
 you can't." 
 
 His sister, who had not taken part in the talk be- 
 fore, said demurely : "It seems to me you've got a 
 good deal of individuality, Reub, and you haven't got 
 a great deal of capital, either," and the two young 
 people laughed together. 
 
 Mrs. Makely was one of those fatuous women whose 
 eagerness to make a point, excludes the consideration 
 even of their own advantage. " I'm sure," she said, as 
 if speaking for the upper classes, " ive haven't got any 
 individualty at all. We are as like as so many peas, 
 or pins. In fact, you have to be so, in society. If you 
 keep asserting your own individuality too much, people 
 avoid you. It's very vulgar, and the greatest bore." 
 
 " Then you don't find individuality so desirable, 
 after all," said the Altrurian. 
 
 " I perfectly detest it ! " cried the lady, and evi- 
 dently she had not the least notion where she was in 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 163 
 
 the argument. " For my part, I'm never happy, 
 except when I've forgotten myself and the whole 
 individual bother." 
 
 Her declaration seemed somehow to close the in- 
 cident, and we were all silent a moment, which I 
 employed in looking about the room, and taking in 
 with my literary sense, the simplicity and even bare- 
 ness of its furnishing. There was the bed where the 
 invalid lay, and near the head, a table with a pile of 
 books and a kerosene lamp on it, and I decided that 
 she was a good deal wakeful, and that she read by 
 that lamp, when she could not sleep at night. Then 
 there were the hard chairs we sat on, and some home- 
 made hooked rugs, in rounds and ovals, scattered 
 about the clean floor; there was a small melodeon 
 pushed against the wall ; the windows had paper 
 shades, and I recalled that I had not seen any blinds 
 on the outside of the house. Over the head of the 
 bed hung a cavalryman's sword, with its belt; the 
 sword that Mrs. Makely had spoken of. It struck me 
 as a room where a great many things might have hap- 
 pened, and I said : " You can't think, Mrs. Camp, how 
 glad I am to see the inside of your house. It seems 
 to me so typical." 
 
164 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 A pleased intelligence showed itself in her face, 
 and she answered : " Yes, it is a real old-fashioned 
 farmhouse. We have never taken boarders and so 
 we have kept it as it was built, pretty much, and only 
 made such changes in it as we needed or wanted for 
 ourselves." 
 
 " It's a pity, " I went on, following up what I 
 thought a fortunate lead, " that we city people see so 
 little of the farming life, when we come into the 
 country. I have been here now for several seasons, 
 and this is the first time I have been inside a farmer's 
 house." 
 
 " Is it possible ! " cried the Altrurian, with an air 
 of utter astonishment ; and when I found the fact 
 appeared so singular to him, I began to be rather 
 proud of its singularity. 
 
 " Yes, I suppose that most city people come and 
 go, year after year, in the country, and never make 
 any sort of acquaintance with the people who live 
 there the year round. We keep to ourselves in the 
 hotels, or if we go out at all, it is to make a call upon 
 some city cottager, and so we do not get out of the 
 vicious circle of our own over-intimacy with ourselves, 
 and our ignorance of others." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 165 
 
 " And you regard that as a great misfortune ? " 
 asked the Altrurian. 
 
 " Why, it's inevitable. There is nothing to bring 
 us together, unless it's some happy accident, like the 
 present. But we don't have a traveler from Altruria 
 to exploit every day, and so we have no business to 
 come into people's houses." 
 
 " You would have been welcome in ours, long ago, 
 Mr. Twclvemough," said Mrs. Camp. 
 
 "But, excuse me!" said the Altrurian. "What 
 you say really seems dreadful to me. Why, it is as 
 if you were not the same race, or kind of men ! " 
 
 " Yes," I answered. " It has sometimes seemed 
 to me as if our big hotel there were a ship, anchored 
 off some strange coast. The inhabitants come out 
 with supplies, and carry on their barter with the ship's 
 steward, and we sometimes see them over the side, 
 but we never speak to them, or have anything to do 
 with them. We sail away at the close of the season, 
 and that is the end of it till next summer." 
 
 The Altrurian turned to Mrs. Camp. " And how 
 do you look at it ? How does it seem to you ? " 
 
 " I don't believe we have thought about it very 
 much ; but now that Mr. Twelvemough has spoken of 
 
166 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 it, I can sec that it does look that way. And it seems 
 very strange, doesn't it, for we are all the same people, 
 and have the same language, and religion and country 
 — the country that my husband fought for, and I sup- 
 pose I may say, died for ; he was never the same man 
 after the Avar. It does appear as if we had some in- 
 terests in common, and might find it out if we ever 
 came together." 
 
 " It's a great advantage, the city people going into 
 the country so much as they do now," said Mrs. 
 Makely. " They bring five million dollars into the 
 state of New Hampshire, alone, every summer." 
 
 She looked round for the general approval which 
 this fact merited, and young Camp said : " And it 
 shows how worthless the natives are, that they can't 
 make both ends meet, with all that money, but have 
 to give up their farms and go west, after all. I sup- 
 pose you think it comes from wanting buggies and 
 pianos." 
 
 " Well, it certainly comes from something," said 
 Mrs. Makely, with the courage of her convictions. 
 
 She was evidently not going to be put down by that 
 sour young fellow, and I was glad of it, though 1 
 must say I thought the thing she left to rankle in his 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 167 
 
 mind from our former meeting had not been said in 
 very good taste. I thought, too, that she would not 
 fare best in any encounter of wits with him, and I 
 rather trembled for the result. I said, to relieve the 
 strained situation, " I wish there was some way of our 
 knowing each other better. I'm sure there's a great 
 deal of good will on both sides." 
 
 " No, there isn't," said Camp, " or at least I can 
 answer for our side, that there isn't. You come into 
 the country to get as much for your money as you can, 
 and we mean to let you have as little as we can. 
 That's the whole story, and if Mr. Homos believes 
 anything different, he's very much mistaken." 
 
 " I hadn't formed any conclusion in regard to the 
 matter, which is quite new to me," said the Altrurian, 
 mildly. " But why is there no basis of mutual kind- 
 ness between you ? " 
 
 " Because it's like everything else with us, it's a 
 question of supply and demand, and there is no room 
 for any mutual kindness in a question of that kind. 
 Even if there were, there is another thing that would 
 kill it. The summer folks, as we call them, look down 
 on the natives, as they call us, and we know it." 
 
 " Now, Mr. Camp, I am sure that you cannot say / 
 
168 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 look down on the natives," said Mrs. Makely, with an 
 air of argument. 
 
 The young fellow laughed. " Oh, yes, you do," he 
 said, not unamiably, and he added, " and you've got 
 the right to. We're not fit to associate with you, and 
 you know it, and we know it. You've got more 
 money, and you've got nicer clothes, and you've got 
 prettier manners. You talk about things that most 
 natives never heard of, and you care for things they 
 never saw. I know it's the custom to pretend differ- 
 ently, but I'm not going to pretend differently." I 
 recalled what my friend, the banker, said about throw- 
 ing away cant, and I asked myself if I were in the 
 presence of some such free spirit again. I did not 
 see how young Camp could afford it ; but then I re- 
 flected that he had really nothing to lose by it, for he 
 did not expect to make anything out of us ; Mrs. 
 Makely would probably not give up his sister as 
 seamstress, if the girl continued to work so well and 
 so cheaply as she said. " Suppose," he went on, 
 " that some old native took you at your word, and 
 came to call upon you at the hotel, with his wife, just 
 as one of the city cottagers would do if he wanted to 
 make your acquaintance ? " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 169 
 
 " I should be perfectly delighted ! " said Mrs. 
 Makely, and I should receive them with the greatest 
 possible cordiality." 
 
 " The same kind of cordiality that you would show 
 to the cottagers ? " 
 
 " I suppose that I should feel that I had more in 
 common with the cottagers. We should be interested 
 in the same things, aud Ave should probably know the 
 same people and have more to talk about " — 
 
 " You would both belong to the same class, and 
 that tells the whole story. If you were out west, and 
 the owner of one of those big, twenty thousand acre 
 farms called on you with his wife, would you act to- 
 ward them as you would toward our natives 1 You 
 wouldn't ! You would all be rich people together, 
 and you would understand each other because you 
 had money." 
 
 " Now, that is not so," Mrs. Makely interrupted. 
 " There are plenty of rich people one wouldn't wish 
 to know at all, and who really can't get into society ; 
 who are ignorant and vulgar. And then when you 
 come to money, I don' t see but what country people 
 are as glad to get it as anybody." 
 
 " Oh, gladder," said the young man. 
 
170 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 "Well?" demanded Mrs. Makely, as if this were a 
 final stroke of logic. The young- man did not reply, 
 and Mrs. Makely continued : " Now I will appeal to 
 your sister to say whether she has ever seen any diff- 
 erence in my manner toward her from what I show to 
 all the young- ladies in the hotel." The young girl 
 flushed, and seemed reluctant to answer. " Why, 
 Lizzie ! " cried Mrs. Makely, and her tone showed 
 that she was really hurt. 
 
 The scene appeared to me rather cruel and I 
 glanced at Mrs. Camp, with an expectation that she 
 would say something to relieve it. But she did not. 
 Her large, benevolent face expressed only a quiet 
 interest in the discussion. 
 
 " You know very well, Mrs. Makely," said the girl, 
 " you don't regard me as you do the young ladies in 
 the hotel." 
 
 There was no resentment in her voice or look, but 
 only a sort of regret, as if, but for this grievance, she 
 could have loved the woman from whom she had 
 probably had much kindness. The tears came into 
 Mrs. Makely's eyes, and she turned toward Mrs. 
 Camp. " And is this the way you all feel toward 
 us ? " she asked. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRTJRIA. 171 
 
 " Why shouldn't we ? " asked the invalid, in her 
 jturn. " But, no, it isn't the way all the country peo- 
 ple feel. Many of them feel as you Avould like to 
 have them feel ; but that is because they do not think. 
 When they think, they feel as we do. But I don't 
 blame you. You can't help yourselves, any more than 
 we can. We're all bound up together in that, at 
 least." 
 
 At this apparent relenting, Mrs. Makely tricked her 
 beams a little, and said, plaintively, as if offering her- 
 self for further condolence : " Yes, that is what that 
 woman at the little shanty back there said : some have 
 to be rich, and some have to be poor ; it takes all 
 kinds to make a world." 
 
 " How would you like to be one of those that have 
 to be poor?" asked young Camp, with an evil grin. 
 
 " I don't know," said Mrs. Makely, with unexpected 
 spirit ; " but I am sure that I should respect the feel- 
 ings of all, rich or poor." 
 
 " I am sorry if we have hurt yours, Mrs. Makely," 
 said Mrs. Camp, with dignity. " You asked us cer. 
 tain questions, and we thought you wished us to reply 
 truthfully. We could not answer you with smooth 
 things." 
 
172 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " But sometimes you do," said Mrs. Makely, and 
 the tears stood in her eyes again. " And you know 
 how fond I am of you all ! " 
 
 Mrs. Camp wore a bewildered look. " Perhaps we 
 have said more than we ought. But I couldn't help 
 it, and I don't see how the children could, when you 
 asked them here, before Mr. Homos." 
 
 I glanced at the Altrurian, sitting attentive and 
 silent, and a sudden misgiving crossed my mind con- 
 cerning him. AVas he really a man, a human entity, 
 a personality like ourselves, or was he merely a sort of 
 spiritual solvent, sent for the moment to precipitate 
 whatever sincerity there was in us, and show us what 
 the truth was concerning our relations to each other ? 
 It was a fantastic conception, but I thought it was one 
 that I might employ in some sort of purely romantic 
 design, and I w r as professionally grateful for it. I 
 said, with a humorous gaiety ; " Yes, we all seem to 
 have been compelled to be much more honest than we 
 like ; and if Mr. Homos is going to write an account 
 of his travels, when he gets home, he can't accuse us 
 of hypocrisy, at any rate. And I always used to 
 think it was one of our virtues ! What with Mr. 
 Camp, here, and my friend, the banker, at the hotel, 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 173 
 
 I don't think he'll have much reason to complain even 
 of our reticence." 
 
 " Well, whatever he says of us," sighed Mrs. 
 Makely, with a pious glance at the sword over the 
 bed, " he will have to say that, in spite of our divis- 
 ions and classes, we are all Americans, and if we 
 haven't the same opinions and ideas on minor matters, 
 we all have the same country." 
 
 " I don't know about that," came from Reuben 
 Camp, with shocking promptness. " I don't believe 
 we all have the same country. America is one thing 
 for you, and it's quite another thing for us. America 
 means case, and comfort, and amusement for you, 
 year in and year out, and if it means work, it's work 
 that you wish to do. For us, America means work 
 that we have to do, and hard work, all the time, if 
 we're going to make both ends meet. It means liberty 
 for you ; but what liberty has a man got who doesn't 
 know where his next meal is coming from ? Once I 
 was in a strike, when I was working on the railroad, 
 and I've seen men come and give up their liberty for 
 a chance to earn their family's living. They knew 
 they were right, and that they ought to have stood up 
 for their rights ; but they had to lie down, and lick 
 
174 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the hand that fed them ! Yes, we are all Americans, 
 but I guess we haven't all got the same country, Mrs. 
 Makely. What sort of a country has a black-listed 
 man got ? " 
 
 " A black-listed man ? " she repeated. " I don't 
 know what you mean." 
 
 " Well, a kind of man I've seen in the mill towns, 
 that the bosses have all got on their books as a man 
 that isn't to be given work on any account; that's to 
 be punished with hunger and cold, and turned into 
 the street, for having offended them ; and that's to be 
 made to suffer through his helpless family, for having 
 offended them." 
 
 " Excuse me, Mr. Camp," I interposed, " but isn't 
 a black-listed man usually a man who has made him- 
 self prominent in some labor trouble ? " 
 
 " Yes," the young fellow answered, without seeming 
 sensible of the point I had made. 
 
 " Ah ! " I returned. " Then you can hardly blame 
 the employers for taking it out of him in any way 
 they can. That's human nature." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " the Altrurian cried out. " Is it 
 possible that in America it is human nature to take 
 away the bread of a man's family, because he has 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 175 
 
 gone counter to your interest or pleasure on some 
 economical question ? " 
 
 "Well, Mr. Twelvemough seems to think so," 
 sneered the young man. "But whether it's human 
 nature or not, it's a fact that they do it, and you can 
 guess how much a black-listed man must love the 
 country where such a thing can happen to him. What 
 should you call such a thing as black-listing in Altru- 
 ria ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," Mrs. Makely pleaded, " do let us get 
 him to talking about Altruria, on any terms. I think 
 all this about the labor question is so tiresome ; don't 
 you, Mrs. Camp ? " 
 
 Mrs. Camp did not answer ; but the Altrurian said, 
 in reply to her son : " We should have no name for 
 such a thing, for with us such a thing would be im- 
 possible. There is no crime so henious, with us, that 
 the punishment would take away the criminal's chance 
 of earning his living." 
 
 " Oh, if he was a criminal," said young Camp, " he 
 would be all right, here. The state would give him a 
 chance to earn his living, then." 
 
 " But if he had no other chance of earning his liv- 
 ing, and had committed no offense against the laws" — 
 12 
 
176 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Then the state would let him take to the road. 
 Like that fellow ! " 
 
 He pulled aside the shade of the window, where he 
 sat, and we saw pausing hefore the house, and glanc- 
 ing doubtfully at the door-step, where the dog lay, a 
 vile and loathsome-looking tramp, a blot upon the 
 sweet and wholesome landscape, a scandal to the 
 sacred day. His rags burlesqued the form which they 
 did not wholly hide ; his broken shoes were covered 
 with dust ; his coarse hair came in a plume 
 through his tattered hat ; his red, sodden face, at once 
 fierce and timid, was rusty with a fortnight's beard. 
 He offended the eye like a visible stench, and the 
 wretched carrion seemed to shrink away from our 
 gaze, as if he were aware of his loathsomeness. 
 
 " Really," said Mrs. Makely, " I thought those fel- 
 lows were arrested, now. It is too bad to leave them 
 at large. They are dangerous." Young Camp left 
 the room and we saw him going out toward the tramp. 
 
 " Ah, that's quite right ! " said the lady. " I hope 
 Reuben is going to send him about his business. 
 Why, surely he's not going to feed the horricL crea- 
 ture ! " she added, as Camp, after a moment's parley 
 with the tramp, turned with him, and disappeared 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 177 
 
 round the corner of the house. " Now, Mrs. Camp, 
 I think that is really a very bad example. It's en- 
 couraging them. Very likely, he'll go to sleep in 
 your barn, and set it on fire with his pipe. What do 
 you do with tramps in Altruria, Mr. Homos ? " 
 
 The Altrurian seemed not to have heard her. He 
 said to Mrs. Camp : " Then I understand from some- 
 thing your son let fall that he has not always been 
 at home with you, here. Does he reconcile himself 
 easily to the country after the excitement of town life ? 
 I have read that the cities in America are draining 
 the country of the young people." 
 
 " I don't think he was sorry to come home," said 
 the mother with a touch of fond pride. " But there 
 was no choice for him after his father died ; he was 
 always a good boy, and he has not made us feel that 
 we were keeping him away from anything better. 
 When his father was alive we let him go, because then 
 we were not so dependent, and I wished him to try 
 his fortune in the world, as all boys long to do. But 
 he is rather peculiar, and he seems to have got quite 
 enough of the world. To be sure, I don't suppose 
 he's seen the brightest side of it. He first went to 
 work in the mills down at Ponkwasset, but he was 
 
178 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 laid off there, when the hard times came, and there 
 was so much overproduction, and he took a job of 
 railroading, and was braking on a freight train when 
 his father left us." 
 
 Mrs. Makely said, smiling, " No, I don't think that 
 was the brightest outlook in the world. No wonder 
 he has brought back such gloomy impressions. I am 
 sure that if he could have seen life under brighter 
 auspices he would not have the ideas he has." 
 
 " Very likely," said the mother dryly. " Our ex- 
 periences have a great deal to do with forming our 
 opinions. But I am not dissatisfied with my son's 
 ideas. I suppose Reuben got a good many of his 
 ideas from his father : he's his father all over again. 
 My husband thought slavery was wrong, and he went 
 into the war to fight against it. He used to say when 
 the war was over that the negroes were emancipated, 
 but slavery was not abolished yet." 
 
 "What in the world did he mean by that?" de- 
 manded Mrs. Makely. 
 
 " Something you wouldn't understand as we do. I 
 tried to carry on the farm after he first went, and be- 
 fore Reuben was large enough to help me much, and 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 179 
 
 ought to be in school, and I suppose I overdid. At 
 any rate that was" when I had my first shock of paral- 
 ysis. I never was very strong, and I presume my, 
 health was weakened by my teaching school so much, 
 and studying, before I was married. But that doesn't 
 matter now, and hasn't for many a year. The place 
 was clear of debt, then, but I had to get a mortgage 
 put on it. The savings bank down in the village took 
 it, and we've been paying the interest ever since. 
 My husband died paying it, and my son will pay it 
 all my life, and then I suppose the bank will foreclose. 
 The treasurer was an old playmate of my hus- 
 band's, and he said that as long as either of us lived, 
 the mortgage could lie." 
 
 " How splendid of him ! " said Mrs. Makely. " I 
 should think you had been very fortunate." 
 
 " I said that you would not see it as we do," said 
 the invalid patiently. 
 
 The Altrurian asked : " Are there mortgages on 
 many of the farms in the neighborhood ? " 
 
 " Nearly all," said Mrs. Camp. " We seem to own 
 them, but in fact they own us." 
 
 Mrs. Makely hastened to say : " My husband thinks 
 it's the best way to have your property. If you 
 
180 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 mortgage it close up, you have all your capital free, 
 and you can keep turning it over. That's what you 
 ought to do, Mrs. Camp. But what was the slavery 
 that Captain Camp said was not abolished yet ? " 
 
 The invalid looked at her a moment without reply- 
 ing, and just then the door of the kitchen opened, 
 and young Camp came in, and began to gather some 
 food from the table on a plate. 
 
 " Why don't you bring him to the table, Reub ? " 
 his sister called to him. 
 
 " Oh, he says he'd rather not come in, as long as 
 we have company, He says he isn't dressed for din- 
 ner ; left his spike-tail in the city." 
 
 The young man laughed and his sister with him. 
 
VIII. 
 
 Young Camp carried out the plate of victuals to 
 the tramp, and Mrs. Makely said to his mother, " I 
 suppose you would make the tramp do some sort of 
 work to earn his breakfast on week-days ? " 
 
 " Not always," Mrs. Camp replied. " Do the 
 boarders at the hotel always work to earn their break- 
 fast ? " 
 
 " No, certainly not," said Mrs. Makely, with the 
 sharpness of offence. " But they always pay for it." 
 
 " I don't think that paying for a thing is earning it. 
 Perhaps some one else earned the money that pays 
 for it. But I believe there is too much work in the 
 world. If I were to live my life over again, I should 
 not work half so hard. My husband and I took this 
 
182 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 place when we were young married people, and began 
 working to pay for it. We wanted to feel that it was 
 ours, that we owned it, and that our children should 
 own it afterwards. We both worked all day long like 
 slaves, and many a moonlight night we were up till 
 morning, almost, gathering the stones from our fields, 
 and burying them in deep graves that we had dug for 
 them. But we buried our youth, and strength, and 
 health in those graves, too, and what for? I don't 
 own the farm that we worked so hard to pay for, and 
 my children won't. That is what it has all come to. 
 We were rightly punished for our greed, I suppose. 
 Perhaps no one has a right to own any portion of the 
 earth. Sometimes I think so, but my husband and I 
 earned this farm, and now the savings bank owns it. 
 That seems strange, doesn't it ? I suppose you'll say 
 that the bank paid for it. Well, perhaps so ; but the 
 bank didn't earn it. When I think of that I don't al- 
 ways think that a person who pays for his breakfast 
 has the best right to a breakfast." 
 
 I could see the sophistry of all this, but I had not 
 the heart to point it out ; I felt the pathos of it, too. 
 Mrs. Makely seemed not to see the one nor to feel the 
 other, very distinctly. " Yes, but surely," she said, 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 183 
 
 " if you give a tramp his breakfast without making 
 him work for it, you must sec that it is encouraging 
 idleness. And idleness is very corrupting — the sight 
 of it." 
 
 " You mean to the country people ? "Well, they 
 have to stand a good deal of that. The summer folks 
 that spend four or five months of the year here, don't 
 seem to do anything from morning till night." 
 
 " Ah, but you must recollect that they are resting! 
 You have no idea how hard they all work in town dur- 
 ing the winter," Mrs. Makely urged, with an air of 
 argument. 
 
 " Perhaps the tramps are resting, too. At any 
 rate, I don't think the sight of idleness in rags, and 
 begging at back doors, is very corrupting to the coun- 
 try people ; I never heard of a single tramp who had 
 started from the country ; they all come from the 
 cities. It's the other kind of idleness that tempts our 
 young people. The only tramps that my son says he 
 ever envies are the well dressed, strong young fellows 
 from town, that go tramping through the mountains 
 for exercise every summer." 
 
 The ladies both paused. They seemed to have got 
 to the end of their tether ; at least Mrs. Makely had 
 
184 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 apparently nothing else to advance, and I said lightly, 
 " But that is just the kind of tramps that Mr. Homos 
 would most disapprove of. He says that in Altruria 
 they would consider exercise for exercise' sake a 
 wicked waste of force, and little short of lunacy." 
 
 I thought my exaggeration might provoke him to 
 denial, but he seemed not to have found it unjust. 
 "Why, you know," he said to Mrs. Camp, " in Altru- 
 ria every one works with his hands, so that the hard 
 work shall not all fall to any one class ; and this 
 manual labor of each is sufficient to keep the body in 
 health, as well as to earn a living. After the three 
 hours' work, which constitutes a day's work with us, 
 is done, the young people have all sorts of games and 
 sports, and they carry them as late into life as the 
 temperament of each demands. But what I was say- 
 ing to Mr. Twelvemough — perhaps I did not make 
 myself clear — was that we should regard the sterile 
 putting forth of strength in exercise, if others were 
 each day worn out with hard manual labor, as insane 
 or immoral. But I can account for it differently with 
 you, because I understand that in your conditions a 
 person of leisure could not do any manual labor with- 
 out taking away the work of some one who needed it 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 185 
 
 to live by ; and could not even relieve an overworked 
 laborer, and give him the money for the work without 
 teaching him habits of idleness. In Altruria we can 
 all keep ourselves well by doing each his share of 
 hard work, and we can help those who are exhausted, 
 when such a thing happens, without injuring them 
 materially or morally." 
 
 Young Cam]) entered at this moment and the Altru- 
 rian hesitated. " Oh, do go on ! " Mrs. Makely en- 
 treated. She added to Camp, " We've got him to 
 talking about Altruria at last, and we wouldn't have 
 him stopped for worlds." 
 
 The Altrurian looked around at all our faces, and 
 no doubt read our eager curiosity in them. He smiled, 
 and said, " I shall be very glad I'm sure. But I do not 
 think you will find anything so remarkable in our 
 civilization, if you will conceive of it as the outgrowth 
 of the neighborly instinct. In fact, neighborliness is 
 the essence of Altrurianism. If you will imagine 
 having the same feeling toward all," he explained to 
 Mrs. Makely, " as you have toward your next door 
 neighbor " — 
 
 " My next door neighbor ! " she cried. " But I don't 
 know the people next door ! We live in a large 
 
186 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 apartment house, some forty families, and I assure 
 you I do not know a soul among them." 
 
 He looked at her with a puzzled air, and she con- 
 tinued, " Sometimes it does seem rather hard. One 
 day the people on the same landing 'with us, lost one 
 of their children, and I should never have been a 
 whit the wiser, if my cook hadn't happened to men- 
 tion it. The servants all know each other ; they meet 
 in the back elevator, and get acquainted. I don't en- 
 courage it. You can't tell what kind of families they 
 belong to." 
 
 " But surely," the Altrurian persisted, " you have 
 friends in the city whom you think of as your neigh- 
 bors ? " 
 
 " No, I can't say that I have," said Mrs. Makely. 
 " I have my visiting list, but I shouldn't think of any- 
 body on that as a neighbor." 
 
 The Altrurian looked so blank and baffled that I 
 could hardly help laughing. " Then I should not 
 know how to explain Altruria to you, I'm afraid." 
 
 " AVell," she returned lightly, " if it's anything like 
 neighborliness, as I've seen it in small places, deliver 
 me from it ! I like being independent. That's why 
 I like the city. You're let alone." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 187 
 
 " I was down in New York, once, and I went 
 through some of the streets and houses where the poor 
 people live," said young Camp, " and they seemed to 
 know each other, and to be quite neighborly." 
 
 "And would you like to be all messed in with each 
 other, that way ? " demanded the lady. 
 
 " Well, I thought it was better than living as we do 
 in the country, so far apart that we never see each 
 other, hardly. And it seems to me better than not 
 having any neighbors at all." 
 
 " Well, every one to his taste," said Mrs. Makely. 
 " I wish you would tell us how people manage with 
 you, socially, Mr. Homos." 
 
 " Why, you know," he began, "we have neither city 
 nor country in your sense, and so we are neither so 
 isolated nor so crowded together. You feel that you 
 lose a great deal, in not seeing each other oftener ? " 
 he asked Camp. 
 
 " Yes. Folks rust out, living alone. It's human 
 nature to want to get together." 
 
 " And I understand Mrs. Makely that it is human 
 nature to want to keep apart ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, but to come together independently," she 
 answered. 
 
188 A TKAVELEll FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Well that is what we have contrived in our life 
 at home. I should have to say, in the first place, 
 that "— 
 
 " Excuse me, just one moment, Mr. Homos ! " said 
 Mrs. Makely. This perverse woman was as anxious to 
 hear about Altruria as any of us, hut she was a wom- 
 an who would rather hear the sound of her own voice 
 than any other, even if she were dying, as she would 
 call it, to hear the other. The Altrurian stopped 
 politely, and Mrs. Makely went on : " I have been 
 thinking of what Mr. Cainp was saying about the 
 black-listed men, and their all turning into tramps " — 
 
 " But I didn't say that, Mrs. Makely," the young 
 fellow protested, in astonishment. 
 
 " Well, it stands to reason that if the tramps have 
 all been black-listed men " — 
 
 " But I didn't say that, either ! " 
 
 " No matter ! AVhat I am trying to get at is this : 
 if a workman has made himself a nuisance to the 
 employers, haven't they a right to punish him in any 
 way they can ? " 
 
 " I believe there's no law yet, against black-listing," 
 said Camp. 
 
 " Very well, then, I don't see what they've got to 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 189 
 
 complain of. The employers surely know their own 
 business. " 
 
 " They claim to know the men's too. That's what 
 they're always saying ; they will manage their own 
 affairs in their own way. But no man, or company, 
 that does business on a large scale, has any affairs 
 that are not partly other folks' affairs, too. All the 
 saying in the world won't make it different." 
 
 " Very well, then," said Mrs. Makely, with a force 
 of argument which she seemed to think was irresis- 
 tible, " I think the workmen had better leave things 
 to the employers, and then they won't get black-listed. 
 It's as broad as it's long." I confess, that although I 
 agreed with Mrs. Makely in regard to what the work- 
 men had better do, her position had been arrived at 
 by such extraordinary reasoning that I blushed for 
 her ; at the same time, I wanted to laugh. She con- 
 tinued triumphantly, " You see, the employers have 
 ever so much more at stake." 
 
 " The men have everything at stake ; the work of 
 their hands," said the young fellow. 
 
 " Oh, but surely," said Mrs. Makely, "you wouldn't 
 set that against capital ? You wouldn't compare the 
 two ? " 
 
190 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Yes, I should," said Camp, and I could see his 
 eye kindle and his jaw stiffen. 
 
 " Then, I suppose you would say that a man ought 
 to get as much for his work as an employer gets for 
 his capital. If you think one has as much at stake as 
 the other, you must think they ought to be paid 
 alike." 
 
 " That is just what I think," said Camp, and Mrs. 
 Makely burst into a peal of amiable laughter. 
 
 " Nov/, that is too preposterous! " 
 
 " Why is it preposterous ? " he demanded, with a 
 quivering nostril. 
 
 " Why, simply because it is," said the lady, but 
 she did not say why, and although I thought so, too, 
 I was glad she did not attempt to do it, for her con- 
 clusions seemed to me much better than her reasons. 
 
 The old wooden clock in the kitchen began to 
 strike, and she rose briskly to her feet, and went and 
 laid the books she had been holding in her lap on the 
 table beside Mrs. Camp's bed. " We must really be 
 going," she said, as she leaned over and kissed the 
 invalid. " It is your dinner time, and we shall barely 
 get back for lunch, if we go by the Loop road ; and I 
 want very much to have Mr. Homos see the Witch's 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 191 
 
 Falls, on the way. I have got two or three of the 
 books here that Mr. Makely brought me last night — I 
 sha'n't have time to read them at once — and I'm 
 smuo-o-lino- in one of Mr. Twelvemouo-h's, that he's 
 too modest to present for himself." She turned a gay 
 glance upon me, and Mrs. Camp thanked me, and a 
 number of civilities followed from all sides. In the 
 process of their exchange, Mrs. Makely's spirits per- 
 ceptibly rose, and she came away in high good-humor 
 with the whole Camp family. " Well, now, I am 
 sure," she said to the Altrurian, as we began the long 
 ascent of the Loop road, " you must allow that you 
 have seen some very original characters. But how 
 warped people get living alone so much ! That is the 
 great drawback of the country. Mrs. Camp thinks the 
 savings bank did her a real injury in taking a mort- 
 gage on her place, and Reuben seems to have seen 
 just enough of the outside world to get it all wrong ! 
 But they are the best-hearted creatures in the world, 
 and I know you won't misunderstand them. That un- 
 sparing country bluntness, don't you think it's per- 
 fectly delightful ? I do like to stir poor Reuben up, 
 and get him talking. He is a good boy, if he is so 
 
 wrong-headed, and he's the most devoted son and 
 13 
 
192 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 brother in the world. Very few young fellows would 
 waste their lives on an old farm like that; I suppose 
 when his mother dies he will marry and strike out for 
 himself in some growing place." 
 
 " He did not seem to think the world held out any 
 very bright inducements for him to leave home," the 
 Altrurian suggested. 
 
 " Oh, let him get one of these lively, pushing 
 Yankee girls for a wife, and he will think very differ- 
 ently," said Mrs. Makely. 
 
 The Altrurian disappeared that afternoon, and I 
 saw little or nothing of him till the next day at 
 supper. Then he said he had been spending the time 
 with young Camp, who had shown him something of 
 the farm work, and introduced him to several of the 
 neighbors ; he was very much interested in it all, be- 
 cause at home he was, at present, engaged in farm 
 work himself, and he was curious to contrast the Amer- 
 ican and Altrurian methods. AVe began to talk of the 
 farming interest again, later in the day, when the 
 members of our little group came together, and I told 
 them what the Altrurian had been doing. The doctor 
 had been suddenly called back to town ; but the 
 minister was there, and the lawyer, and the professor, 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 193 
 
 and the banker, and the manufacturer. It was the 
 hanker who began to comment on what I said, and 
 he seemed to be in the frank humor of the Saturday 
 night before. " Yes," he said, " it's a hard life, and 
 they have to look sharp, if they expect to make both 
 ends meet. I would not like to undertake it myself, 
 with their resources." 
 
 The professor smiled, in asking the Altrurian : 
 " Did your agricultural friends tell you anything of 
 the little rural traffic in votes that they carry on about 
 election time ? That is one of the side means they 
 have of making both ends meet." 
 
 " I don't understand," said the Altrurian. 
 
 " Why, you know that you can buy votes among our 
 virtuous yeoman, from two dollars up, at the ordinary 
 elections. When party feeling runs high, and there 
 are vital questions at stake, the votes cost more." 
 
 The Altrurian looked round at us all, aghast : " Do 
 you mean that Americans buy votes ? " 
 
 The professor smiled again. " Oh, no ; I only 
 mean that they sell them. Well, I don't wonder that 
 they rather prefer to blink the fact ; but it is a fact, 
 nevertheless, and pretty notorious." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " cried the Altrurian. " And 
 
194 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 what defense have the) T for such treason ? I don't 
 mean those who sell ; from what I have seen of the 
 bareness and hardship of their lives, I could well im- 
 agine that there might, sometimes, come a pinch 
 when they would be glad of the few dollars that they 
 could get in that way ; but what have those who buy 
 to say ? " 
 
 " Well," said the professor, " it isn't a transaction 
 that's apt to be talked about, much, on either side." 
 
 "I think," the banker interposed, "that there is 
 some exaggeration about that business ; but it certainly 
 exists, and I suppose it is a growing evil in the country. 
 I fancy it arises, somewhat, from a want of clear 
 thinking on the subject. Then, there is no doubt but 
 it comes, sometimes, from poverty. A man sells his 
 vote, as a woman sells her person, for money, when 
 neither can turn virtue into cash. They feel that 
 they must live, and neither of them would be satisfied 
 if Dr. Johnson told them he didn't see the necessity. 
 In fact, I shouldn't, myself, if I were in their places. 
 You can't have the good of a civilization, like ours, with- 
 out having the bad ; but I am not going to deny that 
 the bad is bad. Some people like to do that ; but I 
 don't find my account in it. In either case, I confess 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 195 
 
 that I think the buyer is worse than the seller — in- 
 comparably worse. I suppose you are not troubled 
 with either case, in Altruria? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said the Altrurian, with an utter horror, 
 which no repetition of his words can give the sense 
 of. " It would be unimaginable." 
 
 " Still," the banker suggested, " you have cakes 
 and ale, and at times the ginger is hot in the mouth?" 
 
 " I don't pretend that we have immunity from 
 error ; but upon such terms as you have described, 
 we have none. It would be impossible." 
 
 The Altrurian's voice expressed no contempt, but 
 only a sad patience, a melancholy surprise, such as a 
 celestial angel might feel in being suddenly confronted 
 with some secret shame and horror of the Pit. 
 
 " Well," said the banker, " with us, the only way 
 is to take the business view and try to strike an aver- 
 age somewhere." 
 
 " Talking of business," said the professor, turning 
 to the manufacturer, who had been quietly smoking, 
 " why don't some of you capitalists take hold of farm- 
 ing, here in the east, and make a business of it as 
 they do in the west ? " 
 
 " Thank you," said the other, " if you mean me, I 
 
196 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 would rather not invest." lie was silent a moment, 
 and then he went on, as if the notion were heginning 
 to win upon him : " It may eome to something like 
 that, though. If it does, the natural course, I should 
 think, would be through the railroads. It would he a 
 very easy matter for them to buy up all the good 
 farms along their lines and put tenants on them, and 
 run them in their own interest. Really, it isn't a had 
 scheme. The waste in the present method is enor- 
 mous, and there is no reason why the roads should 
 not own the farms, as they arc beginning to own the 
 mines. They could manage them better than the 
 small farmers do, in every way. I wonder the thing 
 hasn't occurred to some smart railroad man." 
 
 "We all laughed a little, perceiving the semi-ironical 
 spirit of his talk ; but the Altrurian must have taken 
 it in dead earnest : " But, in that case, the number of 
 people thrown out of work would be very great, 
 wouldn't it ? And what would become of them ? " 
 
 " Well, they would have whatever their farms 
 brought, to make a new start with somewhere else ; 
 and, besides, that question of what would become of 
 people thrown out of work by a given improvement, 
 is something that capital cannot consider. We used 
 
A TRAVELER PROM ALTRURIA. 197 
 
 to introduce a bit of machinery, every now and then, 
 in the mill, that threw out a dozen, or a hundred peo- 
 ple ; but we couldn't stop for that." 
 
 " And you never knew what became of them ? " 
 
 " Sometimes. Generally not. We took it for 
 granted that they would light on their feet, somehow." 
 
 " And the state — the whole people — the govern- 
 ment — did nothing for them ? " 
 
 " If it became a question of the poor-house, yes." 
 
 " Or the jail," the lawyer suggested. 
 
 " Speaking of the poor-house," said the professor, 
 " did our exemplary rural friends tell you how they 
 sell out their paupers to the lowest bidder, and get 
 them boarded sometimes as low as a dollar and a 
 quarter a week ? " 
 
 "Yes, young Mr. Camp told me of that. He 
 seemed to think it was terrible." 
 
 " Did he ? Well, I'm glad to hear that of young 
 Mr. Camp. From all that I've been told before, he 
 seems to reserve his conscience for the use of capi- 
 talists. What does he propose to do about it ? " 
 
 " He seems to think the state ought to find work 
 for them." 
 
 " Oh, paternalism ! Well, I guess the state wont." 
 
198 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " That was his opinion, too." 
 
 " It seems a hard fate," said the minister, " that 
 the only provision the law makes for people who are 
 worn out by sickness or a life of work should be 
 something that assorts them with idiots and lunatics, 
 and brings such shame upon them that it is almost as 
 terrible as death." 
 
 " It is the only way to encourage independence and 
 individuality," said the professor. " Of course, it has 
 its dark side. But anything else would be sentimen- 
 tal and unbusinesslike, and in fact, un-American." 
 
 " I am not so sure that it would be un-Christian," 
 the minister timidly ventured, in the face of such an 
 authority on political economy. 
 
 "Oh, as to that, I must leave the question to the 
 reverend clergy," said the professor. 
 
 A very unpleasant little silence followed. It was 
 broken by the lawyer, who put his feet together, and 
 after a glance down at them, began to say, " I was 
 very much interested this afternoon by a conversation 
 I had with some of the young fellows in the hotel. 
 You know most of them are graduates, and they are 
 taking a sort of supernumerary vacation this summer, 
 before they plunge into the battle of life in the autumn. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 199 
 
 They were talking of some other fellows, classmates 
 of theirs, who were not so lucky, hut had been ob- 
 liged to begin the fight at once. It seems that our 
 fellows here are all going in for some sort of profes- 
 sion : medicine, or law, or engineering, or teaching, or 
 the church, and they were commiserating those other 
 fellows not only because they were not having the 
 supernumerary vacation, but because they were going 
 into business. That struck me as rather odd, and I 
 tried to find out what it meant, and as nearly as I 
 could find out, it meant that most college graduates 
 would not go into business if they could help it. 
 They seemed to feel a sort of incongruity between 
 their education and the business life. They pitied 
 the fellows that had to go in for it, and apparently 
 the fellows that had to go in for it pitied themselves, 
 for the talk seemed to have begun about a letter that 
 one of the chaps here had got from poor Jack or Jim 
 somebody, who had been obliged to go into his 
 father's business, and was groaning over it. The 
 fellows who were going to study professions were 
 hugging themselves at the contrast between their fate 
 and his, and were making remarks about business 
 that were to say the least unbusinesslike. A few 
 
200 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 years ago we should have made a summary disposi- 
 tion of the matter, and I believe some of the newspa- 
 pers still are in doubt about the value of a college 
 education to men who have got to make their way. 
 What do you think ? " 
 
 The lawyer addressed his question to the manufac- 
 turer, who answered with a comfortable satisfaction, 
 that he did not think those young men if they went 
 into business would find that they knew too much. 
 
 " But they pointed out," said the lawyer, " that 
 the great American fortunes had been made by men 
 who had never had their educational advantages, and 
 they seemed to think that what we call the education 
 of a gentleman was a little too good for money-mak- 
 ing purposes." 
 
 "Well," said the other, "they can console them- 
 selves with the reflection that going into business 
 isn't necessarily making money ; it isn't necessarily 
 making a living, even." 
 
 " Some of them seem to have caught on to that 
 fact ; and they pitied Jack or Jim partly because the 
 chances were so much against him. But they pitied 
 him mostly because in the life before him he would 
 have no use for his academic training, and he had 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 201 
 
 better not gone to college at all. They said he would 
 be none the better for it, and would always be miser- 
 able when he looked back to it." 
 
 The manufacturer did not reply, and the professor, 
 after a preliminary hemming, held his peace. It was 
 the banker who took the word. " Well, so far as 
 business is concerned, they were right. It is no use 
 to pretend that there is any relation between business 
 and the higher education. There is no business man 
 who will pretend that there is not often an actual in- 
 compatibility, if he is honest. I know that when we 
 get together at a commercial or financial dinner, we 
 talk as if great merchants and great financiers were 
 beneficent geniuses, who evoked the prosperity of 
 mankind by their schemes from the conditions that 
 would otherwise have remained barren. Well, very 
 likely they are, but we must all confess that they do 
 not know it at the time. What they are consciously 
 looking out for then is the main chance. If general 
 prosperity follows, all well and good ; they are willing 
 to be given the credit for it. But, as I said, with bus- 
 iness as business, the ' education of a gentleman ' has 
 nothing to do. That education is always putting the 
 old Ciceronian question : whether the fellow arriving 
 
202 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 at a starving city with a cargo of grain is bound to 
 tell the people before he squeezes them, that there are 
 half a dozen other fellows with grain just below the 
 horizon. As a gentleman he would have to tell them, 
 because he could not take advantage of their necess- 
 ities ; but as a business man, he would think it bad 
 business to tell them, or no business at all. The 
 principle goes all through ; I say, business is business; 
 and I am not going to pretend that business will ever 
 be anything else. In our business battles, we don't 
 take off our hats to the other side, and say, ' Gentle- 
 men of the French Guard, have the goodness to fire. ' 
 That may be war, but it is not business. We seize 
 all the advantages wc can ; very few of us would act- 
 ually deceive ; but if a fellow believes a thing, and we 
 know he is wrong, we do not usually take the trouble 
 to set him right, if we are going to lose anything by 
 undeceiving him. That would not be business. I 
 suppose you think that is dreadful ? " lie turned 
 smilingly to the minister. 
 
 " I wish — I wisli," said the minister, gently, " it 
 could be otherwise." 
 
 " Well, I wish so, too," returned the ban- 
 ker. " But it isn't. Am I right or am I wrong \ " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 203 
 
 he demanded of the manufacturer, who laughed. 
 
 " I am not conducting this discussion. I will not 
 deprive you of the floor." 
 
 " What you say," I ventured to put in, " reminds 
 me of the experience of a friend of mine, a brother 
 novelist. He wrote a story where the failure of a 
 business man turned on a point just like that you have 
 instanced. The man could have retrieved himself if 
 he had let some people believe that what was so was 
 not so, but his conscience stepped in and obliged him 
 to own the truth. There was a good deal of talk 
 about the case, I suppose because it was not in real 
 life, and my friend heard divers criticisms. He heard 
 of a group of ministers who blamed him for exalting 
 a case of common honesty, as if it were something 
 extraordinary ; and he heard of some business men 
 who talked it over, and said he had worked the case 
 up splendidly, but he was all wrong in the outcome ; 
 the fellow would never have told the other fellows. 
 They said it Avould not have been business." 
 
 We all laughed except the minister and the Altru- 
 rian, the manufacturer said, " Twenty-five years hence, 
 the fellow who is going into business, may pity the 
 fellows who arc pitying him for his hard fate now." 
 
204 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 "Very possibly, but not necessarily," said the 
 banker. " Of course, tbe business man is on top, ;is 
 far as money goes ; be is tbe fellow who makes the 
 big fortunes ; the millionaire lawyers, and doctors, 
 and ministers are exceptional. But his risks are tre- 
 mendous. Ninety-five times out of a hundred he 
 fails. To be sure, he picks up and goes on, but he 
 seldom gets there, after all." 
 
 " Then in your system," said the Altrurian, " the 
 great majority of those who go into what you call the 
 battle of life, are defeated ? " 
 
 " The killed, wounded and missing sum up a fright- 
 ful total," the banker admitted. "But whatever the 
 end is, there is a great deal of prosperity on the way. 
 The statistics are correct, but they do not tell the 
 whole truth. It is not so bad as it seems. Still, 
 simply looking at the material chances, I don't blame 
 those young fellows for not wanting to go into busi- 
 ness. And when you come to other considerations ! 
 We used to cut the knot of the difficulty pretty sharp- 
 ly ; we said a college education was wrong ; or, the hot 
 and hot Americans preadeaglers did. Business is the 
 national ideal, and the successful business man is the 
 American type. It is a business man's country." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 205 
 
 "Then, if I understand you," said the Altrurian, 
 "and I am very anxious to have a clear understanding 
 of the matter, the effect of the university with you is 
 to unfit a youth for business life." 
 
 " Oh, no. It may give him great advantages in it, 
 and that is the theory and expectation of most fathers 
 who send their sons to the university. But, undoubt- 
 edly, the effect is to render business-life distasteful. 
 The university nurtures all sorts of lofty ideals, which 
 business has no use for." 
 
 " Then the effect is undemocratic ? " 
 
 " No, it is simply unbusinesslike. The boy is a 
 better democrat when he leaves college, than he will 
 be later, if he goes into business. The university has 
 taught him and equipped him to use his own gifts 
 and powers for his advancement, but the first lesson 
 of business and the last, is to use other men's gifts 
 and powers. If he looks about him at all, he sees 
 that no man gets rich simply by his own labor, no 
 matter how mighty a genius he is, and that if you 
 want to get rich, you must make other men work for 
 you, and pay you for the privilege of doing so. 
 Isn't that true ? " 
 
 The banker turned to the manufacturer with this 
 
206 A TRAVELER FR03I ALTRURIA 
 
 question, and the other said, " The theory is, that we 
 give people work," and they both laughed. 
 
 The minister said, " I believe that in Altruria, no 
 man works for the profit of another ? " 
 
 " No ; each works for the profit of all," replied the 
 Altrurian. 
 
 " Well," said the banker, " you seem to have made 
 it go. Nobody can deny that. But we couldn't 
 make it go here." 
 
 " Why ? I am very curious to know why our sys- 
 tem seems so impossible to you ! " 
 
 " Well, it is contrary to the American spirit. It is 
 alien to our love of individuality." 
 
 " But we prize individuality ; too, and we think we 
 secure it under our system. Under yours, it seems 
 to me that while the individuality of the man who 
 makes other men work for him is safe, except from 
 itself, the individuality of the workers " — 
 
 " Well, that is their lookout. We have found that 
 upon the whole, it is best to let every man look out 
 for himself. I know that, in a certain light, the re- 
 sult has an ugly aspect ; but, nevertheless, in spite of 
 all, the country is enormously prosperous. The pur- 
 suit of happiness, which is one of the inalienable 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 207 
 
 rights secured to us by the Declaration is, and always 
 has been, a dream ; but the pursuit of the dollar yields 
 tangible proceeds, and we get a good deal of excite- 
 ment out of it, as it goes on. You can't deny that 
 we are the richest nation in the world. Do you call 
 Altruria a rich country ? " 
 
 I could not quite make out whether the banker was 
 serious or not in all this talk ; sometimes I suspected 
 him of a fine mockery, but the Altrurian took him 
 upon the surface of his words. 
 
 " I hardly know whether it is or not. The question 
 of wealth does not enter into our scheme. I can say 
 that we all have enough, and that no one is even in 
 the fear of want." 
 
 " Yes, that is very well. But we should think it 
 was paying too much for it, if we had to give up the 
 hope of eve-r having more than we wanted," and at 
 this point the "banker uttered his jolly laugh, and I 
 perceived that he had been trying to draw the Altru- 
 rian out, and practice upon his patriotism. It was a 
 great relief to find that he had been joking, in so much 
 that seemed a dead give-away of our economical posi- 
 tion. " In Altruria," he asked, "who is your ideal 
 
 great man ? I don't mean personally, but abstractly." 
 14 
 
20S A TRAVELER PROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 The Altrurian thought a moment. " With, us, there 
 is so little ambition for distinction, as you understand 
 it, that your question is hard to answer. But I 
 should say, speaking largely, that it was some man 
 who had been able for the time being, to give the 
 greatest happiness to the greatest number — some art- 
 ist, or poet, or inventor, or physician." 
 
 I was somewhat surprised to have the banker take 
 this preposterous statement seriously, respectfully. 
 "Well, that is quite conceivable with your system. 
 What should you say," he demanded of the rest of 
 us, generally, " was our ideal of greatness ? " 
 
 No one replied at once, or at all, till the manufac- 
 turer said, " We will let you continue to run it." 
 
 " Well, it is a very curious inquiry, and I have 
 thought it over a good deal. I should say that within 
 a generation our ideal had changed twice. Before 
 the war, and during all the time from the revolution 
 onward, it was undoubtedly the great politician, the 
 publicist, the statesman. As we grew older and be- 
 gan to have an intellectual life of our own, I think the 
 literary fellows had a pretty good share of the honors 
 that were going ; that is, such a man as Longfellow 
 was popularly considered a type of greatness. When 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 209 
 
 the war came, it brought the soldier to the front, and 
 there was a period of ten or fifteen years when he 
 denominated the national imagination. That period 
 passed, and the great era of material prosperity set 
 in. The big fortunes began to tower up, and heroes 
 of another sort began to appeal to our admiration. I 
 don't think there is any doubt but the millionaire is 
 now the American ideal. It isn't very pleasant to 
 think so, even for people who have got on, but it can't 
 very hopefully be denied. It is the man with the 
 most money who now takes the prize in our national 
 cake-walk." 
 
 The Altrurian turned curiously toward me, and I 
 did my best to tell him what a cake-walk was. When 
 I had finished, the banker resumed, only to say, as 
 he rose from his chair to bid us good-night, " In any 
 average assembly of Americans, the greatest million- 
 aire would take the eyes of all from the greatest 
 statesman, the greatest poet, or the greatest soldier, 
 we ever had. That," he added to the Altrurian, 
 " will account to you for many things, as you travel 
 through our country." 
 
IX. 
 
 The next time the members of our little group came 
 together, the manufacturer began at once upon the 
 banker : 
 
 " I should think that our friend, the professor, 
 here, would hardly like that notion of yours, that 
 business, as business, has nothing to do with the edu- 
 cation of a gentleman. If this is a business man's 
 country, and if the professor has nothing in stock but 
 the sort of education that business has no use for, I 
 should suppose that he would want to go into some 
 other line." 
 
 The banker mutely referred the matter to the pro- 
 fessor, who said, with that cold grin of his which I 
 hated : 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 211 
 
 " Perhaps we sliall wait for business to purge and 
 live cleanly. Then it will have some use for the edu- 
 cation of a gentleman." 
 
 " I see," said the banker, " that I have touched the 
 quick in both of you, when I hadn't the least notion 
 of doing so. But I shouldn't, really, like to prophesy 
 which will adapt itself to the other : education or bus- 
 iness. Let us hope there will be mutual concessions. 
 There are some pessimists who say that business 
 methods, especially on the large scale of the trusts 
 and combinations, have grown worse, instead of 
 better; but this may be merely what is called a 
 ' transition state.' Hamlet must be cruel to be kind ; 
 the darkest hour comes before dawn : and so on. 
 Perhaps when business gets the whole affair of life 
 into its hands, and runs the republic, as its enemies 
 now accuse it of doing, the process of purging and 
 living cleanly will begin. I have known lots of fel- 
 1< >ws who started in life rather scampishly ; but when 
 they felt secure of themselves, and believed that they 
 could afford to be honest, they became so. There's 
 no reason why the same thing shouldn't happen on a 
 large scale. We must never forget that we are still 
 a very novel experiment, though we have matured so 
 
212 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 rapidly in some respects, that we have come to re- 
 gard ourselves as an accomplished fact. We are, really, 
 less so than we were forty years ago, with all the 
 tremendous changes since the war. Before that, we 
 could take certain matters for granted. If a man got 
 out of work, he turned his hand to something else ; 
 if a man failed in business, he started in again from 
 some other direction ; as a last resort, in both cases, 
 he went West, pre-empted a quarter section of public 
 land, and grew up with the country. Now, the coun- 
 try is grown up ; the public land is gone ; business is 
 full on all sides, and the hand that turned itself to 
 something else has lost its cunning. The struggle for 
 life has changed from a free fio-fit to an encounter of 
 disciplined forces, and the free fighters that are left 
 get ground to pieces between organized labor and 
 organized capital. Decidedly, we are in a transition 
 state, and if the higher education tried to adapt itself 
 to business needs, there are chances that it might sac- 
 rifice itself without helping business. After all, how 
 much education does business need ? Were our great 
 fortunes made by educated men, or men of university 
 training? I don't know but these young fellows are 
 right about that." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 213 
 
 " Yes, that may all be," I pat in. « Bat it seems 
 to me that you give Mr. Homos, somehow, a wrong 
 impression of our economic life by your generaliza^ 
 tions. You are a Harvard man yourself." 
 
 " Yes, and I am not a rich man. A million or two, 
 more or less ; but what is that? I have suffered, at 
 the start and all along, from the question as to what 
 a man with the education of a gentleman ought to do 
 iu such and such a juncture. The fellows who have 
 not that sort of education have not that sort of ques- 
 tion, and they go in and win." 
 
 "So you admit, then," said the professor, "that the 
 higher education elevates a business man's standard 
 of morals ? " 
 
 11 Undoubtedly. That is one of its chief draw- 
 backs," said the banker, with a laugh. 
 
 " Well," I said, with the deference due even to a 
 man who had only a million or two, more or less, » we 
 must allow you to say such things. But if the case 
 is so bad with the business men who have made the 
 great fortunes— the business men who have never had 
 the disadvantage of a university education— I wish 
 you would explain to Mr. Homos why, in every public 
 exigency, we instinctively appeal to the business sense 
 
214 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 of the community, as if it were the fountain of wis- 
 dom, probity and equity. Suppose there were some 
 question of vital interest — I won't say financial, but 
 political, or moral, or social — on which it was nec- 
 essary to rouse public opinion ; what would be the 
 first thing to do ? To call a meeting, over the signa- 
 tures of the leading business men ; because no other 
 names appeal with such force to the public. You 
 might get up a call signed by all the novelists, artists, 
 ministers, lawyers and doctors in the state, and it 
 would not have a tithe of the effect, with the people 
 at large, that a call signed by a few leading merchants, 
 bank presidents, railroad men and trust officers, would 
 have. What is the reason ? It seems strange that I 
 should be asking you to defend yourself against your- 
 self." 
 
 "Not at all, my dear fellow, not at all !" the ban- 
 ker replied, with his caressing bonhomie. " Though 
 I will confess, to begin with, that I do not expect to 
 answer your question to your entire satisfaction. I 
 can only do my best — on the installment plan." 
 lie turned to the Altrurian, and then went on : 
 " As I said the other night, this is a business man's 
 country. We are a purely commercial people ; money 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 215 
 
 is absolutely to the fore ; and business, which is the 
 means of getting the most money, is the American 
 ideal. If you like, you may call it the American 
 fetish ; I don't mind calling it so myself. The fact 
 that business is our ideal, or our fetish, will account 
 for the popular faith in business men, who form its 
 priesthood, its hierarchy. I don't know, myself, any 
 other reason for regarding business men as solider 
 than novelists, or artists, or ministers, not to mention 
 lawyers and doctors. They are supposed to have long 
 heads ; but it appears that ninety-five times out of a 
 hundred they haven't. They are supposed to be very 
 reliable ; but it is almost invariably a business man, of 
 some sort, who gets out to Canada while the state 
 examiner is balancing his books, and it is usually the 
 longestdieaded business men who get plundered by 
 him. No, it is simply because business is our national 
 ideal, that the business man is honored above all 
 other men among us. In the aristocratic countries 
 they forward a public object under the patronage of 
 the nobility and gentry ; in a plutocratic country they 
 get the business men to endorse it. I suppose that 
 the average American citizen feels that they wouldn't 
 endorse a thing unless it was safe ; and the average 
 
216 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 American citizen likes to be safe — lie is cautions. As 
 a matter of fact, business men are always taking 
 risks, and business is a game of chance, in a certain 
 degree. Have I made myself intelligible ? " 
 
 " Entirely so," said the Altrurian ; and he seemed 
 so thoroughly well satisfied, that he forebore asking 
 any question farther. 
 
 No one else spoke. The banker lighted a cigar, 
 and resumed at the point where he left off when I 
 ventured to enter upon the defense of his class with 
 him. I must say that he had not convinced me at all. 
 At that moment, I would rather have trusted him, in 
 any serious matter of practical concern, than all the 
 novelists I ever heard of. But I thought I would leave 
 the word to him, without further attempt to reinstate 
 him in his self-esteem. In fact, he seemed to be get- 
 ting along very well without it ; or else he was feeling 
 that mysterious control from the Altrurian which I 
 had already suspected him of using. Voluntarily or 
 involuntarily, the banker proceeded with his contribu- 
 tion to the Altrurian's stock of knowledge concerning 
 our civilization : 
 
 " I don't believe, however, that the higher educa- 
 tion is any more of a failure, as a provision for a 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 217 
 
 business career, than the lower education is for the 
 life of labor. I suppose that the hypercritical observer 
 might say that in a wholly commercial civilization, 
 like ours, the business man really needed nothing 
 beyond the three R's, and the workingman needed no 
 R at all. As a practical affair, there is a good deal to 
 be said in favor of that view. The higher education 
 is part of the social ideal which we have derived 
 from the past, from Europe. It is part of the provi- 
 sion for the life of leisure, the life of the aristocrat, 
 which nobody of our generation leads, except women. 
 Our women really have some use for the education of 
 a gentleman, but our men have none. How will 
 that do for a generalization ? " the banker asked of 
 me. 
 
 " Oh," I admitted, with a laugh, " it is a good deal 
 like one of my own. I have always been struck with 
 that phase of our civilization." 
 
 " Well, then," the banker resumed, " take the lower 
 education. This is part of the civic ideal which, I 
 suppose, I may say we evolved from the depths of our 
 inner consciousness of what an American citizen 
 ought to be. It includes instruction in all the R's, 
 and in several other letters of the alphabet. It is given 
 
218 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 free by the state, and no one can deny that it is 
 thoroughly socialistic in conception and application." 
 
 " Distinctly so," said the professor. " Now that 
 the text-books are furnished by the state, we have 
 only to go a step farther, and provide a good, hot 
 lunch for the children every day, as they do in Paris." 
 
 " Well," the banker returned, " I don't know that I 
 should have much to say against that. It seems as 
 reasonable as anything in the system of education 
 which we force upon the working-classes. They 
 know, perfectly well, whether we do or not, that the 
 three It's will not make their children better me- 
 chanics or laborers, and that, if the fight for a mere 
 living is to go on, from generation to generation, they 
 will have no leisure to apply the little learning they 
 get in the public schools for their personal culture. In 
 the meantime, we deprive the parents of their chil- 
 dren's labor, in order that they may be better citizens 
 for their schooling, as we imagine ; I don't know 
 whether they are or not. We offer them no sort of 
 compensation for their time, and I think we ought to 
 feel obliged to them for not wanting wages for their 
 children while we are teaching them to be better cit- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 219 
 
 " You know," said the professor, " that has been 
 suggested by some of their leaders." 
 
 " No, really ? Well, that is too good ! " The banker 
 threw back his head, and roared, and we all laughed 
 with him. When we had sobered down again, he 
 said : " I suppose that when a working man makes all 
 the use he can of his lower education, he becomes a 
 business man, and then he doesn't need the higher. 
 Professor, you seem to be left out in the cold, by our 
 system, whichever way you take it." 
 
 " Oh," said the professor, " the law of supply and 
 demand works both ways ; it creates the demand, if 
 the supply comes first ; and if we keep on giving the 
 sons of business men the education of a gentleman, 
 we may yet make them feel the need of it. We shall 
 evolve a new sort of business man." 
 
 " The sort that can't make money, or wouldn't 
 exactly like to, on some terms ? " asked the banker. 
 " Well, perhaps we shall work out our democratic sal- 
 vation in that way. When you have educated your 
 new business man to the point where he can't consent 
 to get rich at the obvious cost of others, you've got 
 him on the way back to work with his hands. He will 
 sink into the ranks of labor, and give the fellow with 
 
220 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the lower education a chance. I've no doubt he'll 
 take it. I don't know but you're right, professor." 
 
 The lawyer had not spoken, as yet. Now he said : 
 " Then, it is education, after all, that is to bridge the 
 chasm between the classes and the masses, though it 
 seems destined to go a long way around about it. 
 There was a time, I believe, when we expected 
 religion to do that." 
 
 " Well, it may still be doing it, for all I know," 
 said the banker. " What do you say ? " he asked, 
 turning to the minister. "You ought to be able to 
 give us some statistics on the subject with that large 
 congregation of yours. You preach to more people 
 than any other pulpit in your city." 
 
 The banker named one of the principal cities in 
 the east, and the minister answered, with modest 
 pride : " I am not sure of that ; but our society is 
 certainly a very large one." 
 
 " Well, and how many of the lower classes are 
 there in it — people who work for their living with 
 their hands ? " 
 
 The minister stirred uneasily in his chair, and at 
 last he said, with evident unhappiness : " They — 1 
 suppose — they have their own churches. I have never 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 221 
 
 thought that such a separation of the classes was 
 right ; and I have had some of the very hest people — 
 socially and financially — with me in the wish that 
 there might be more brotherliness between the rich 
 and poor among us. But as yet" — 
 
 He stopped ; the banker pursued : "Do you mean 
 there are no working-people in your congregation ? " 
 
 " I cannot think of any," returned the minister so 
 miserably that the banker forbore to press the point. 
 
 The lawyer broke the awkward pause which fol- 
 lowed : " I have heard it asserted that there is no 
 country in the world, where the separation of the 
 classes is so absolute as in ours. In fact, I once 
 heard a Russian revolutionist, who had lived in exile 
 all over Europe, say that he had never seen anywhere 
 such a want of kindness or sympathy between rich 
 and poor, as he had observed in America. I doubted 
 whether he was right. But he believed that, if it 
 ever came to the industrial revolution with us, the 
 fight would be more uncompromising than any such 
 fight that the world had ever seen. There was no re- 
 spect from low to high, he said, and no consideration 
 from high to low, as there were in countries with tra- 
 ditions and old associations." 
 
222 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Well," said the banker, " there may be something 
 in that. Certainly, so far as the two forces have 
 come into conflict here, there has been no disposition, 
 on either side, to ' make war with the water of roses.' 
 It's astonishing, in fact, to see how ruthless the fel- 
 lows who have just got up are towards the fellows 
 who are still down. And the best of us have been up 
 only a generation or two — and the fellows who are 
 still down know it." 
 
 " And what do you think would be the outcome of 
 such a conflict ? " I asked, with my soul divided be- 
 tween fear of it, and the perception of its excellence 
 as material. My fancy vividly sketched the outline 
 of a story which should forecast the struggle and its 
 event, somewhat on the plan of the Battle of Dorking. 
 
 " We should beat," said the banker, breaking his 
 cigar-ash off with his little finger ; and I instantly cast 
 him, with his ironic calm, for the part of a great pa- 
 trician leader, in my Fall of the Republic. Of course, 
 I disguised him somewhat, and travestied his worldly 
 bonhomie with the bluff sang-froid of the soldier ; 
 these things are easily done. 
 
 " What makes you think we should beat?" asked 
 the manufacturer, with a certain curiosity. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 223 
 
 " "Well, all the good jingo reasons : we have got the 
 materials for beating. Those fellows throw away 
 their strength whenever they begin to fight, and 
 they've been so badly generaled, up to the present 
 time, that they have wanted to fight at the outset of 
 every quarrel. They have been beaten in every quar- 
 rel, but still they always want to begin by fighting. 
 That is all right. When they have learned enough 
 to begin by voting, then we shall have to look out. 
 But if they keep on fighting, and always putting 
 themselves in the wrong and getting the worst of it, 
 perhaps we ean fix the voting so we needn't be any 
 more afraid of that than we are of the fighting. It's 
 astonishing how shortsighted they are. They have 
 no conception of any cure for their grievances, except 
 more wages and fewer hours." 
 
 " But," I asked, " do you really think they have 
 any just grievances ? " 
 
 " Of course not, as a business man," said the ban- 
 ker. " If I were a workingman, I should probably 
 think differently. But we will suppose for the sake 
 of argument, that their day is too long and their pay 
 is too short. How do they go about to better them- 
 selves ? They strike. Well, a strike is a fight, and 
 15 
 
224 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 in a fight, now-a-days, it is always skill and money 
 that win. The workingmen can't stop till they have 
 put themselves outside of the public sympathy which 
 the newspapers ,say is so potent in their behalf ; I 
 never saw that it did them the least good. They be- 
 gin by boycotting, and breaking the heads of the men 
 who want to work. They destroy property, and they 
 interfere . with business — the -two absolutely sacred 
 things in the American religion. Then we call out 
 the militia, and shoot a few of them, and their leaders 
 declare the strike off. It is perfectly simple." 
 
 " But will it be quite as simple," I asked, reluctant 
 in behalf of my projected romance, to have the matter 
 so soon disposed of, " will it be quite so simple if 
 their leaders ever persuade the workingmen to leave 
 the militia, as they threaten to do, from time to time ? " 
 
 " No, not quite so simple," the banker admitted. 
 " Still, the fight would be comparatively simple. 
 In the first place, I doubt — though I won't be certain 
 about it — whether there are a great many workingmen 
 in the militia now. I rather fancy it is made up, for 
 the most part, of clerks and small tradesmen, and 
 book-keepers, and such employees of business as have 
 time and money for it. I may be mistaken." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 225 
 
 No one seemed able to say whether he was mistaken 
 or not ; and, after waiting a moment, he proceeded : 
 " I feel pretty sure that it is so in the city companies 
 and regiments, at any rate, and that if every working- 
 man left them, it would not seriously impair their 
 effectiveness. But when the workingmen have left 
 the militia, what have they done ? They have elim- 
 inated the only thing that disqualifies it for prompt 
 and unsparing use against strikers. As long as they 
 are in it, we might have our misgivings, but if they 
 were once out of it, we should have none. And what 
 would they gain ? They would not be allowed to 
 arm and organize as an inimical force. That was 
 settled once for all, in Chicago, in the case of the 
 International Groups. A few squads of policemen 
 would break them up. Why," the banker exclaimed, 
 with his good-humored laugh, " how preposterous 
 they are when you come to look at it ! They are in 
 the majority, the immense majority, if you count the 
 farmers, aud they prefer to behave as if they were the 
 hopeless minority. They say they want an eight-hour 
 law, and every now and then they strike, and try to 
 fight it. Why don't they vote it ? They could make 
 it the law in six months, by such overwhelming num- 
 
226 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 bers that no one would dare to evade or defy it. 
 They can make any law they want, but they prefer to 
 break such laws as we have. That ' alienates public 
 sympathy,' the newspapers say, but the spectacle of 
 their stupidity and helpless wilfulness is so lamentable 
 that I could almost pity them. If they chose, it 
 would take only a few years to transform our govern- 
 ment into the likeness of anything they wanted. But 
 they would rather not have what they want, appar- 
 ently, if they can only keep themselves from getting 
 it, and they have to work hard to do that ! " 
 
 " I suppose," I said, " that they are misled by the 
 un-American principles and methods of the socialists 
 among them." 
 
 " Why, no," returned the banker, " I shouldn't say 
 that. As far as I understand it, the socialists are the 
 only fellows among them who propose to vote their 
 ideas into laws, and nothing can be more American 
 than that. I don't believe the socialists stir up the 
 strikes, at least among our workingmen, though the 
 newspapers convict them of it, generally without try- 
 ing them. The socialists seem to accept the strikes 
 as the inevitable outcome of the situation, and they 
 make use of them as proofs of the industrial disco n- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 227 
 
 tent. But, luckily for the status, our labor leaders 
 are not socialists, for your socialist, whatever you 
 may say against him, has generally thought himself 
 into a socialist. He knows that until the workingmen 
 stop fighting, and get down to voting — until they con- 
 sent to be the majority — there is no hope for them. 
 I am not talking of anarchists, mind you, but of so- 
 cialists, whose philosophy is more law, not less, and 
 who look forward to an order so just that it can't be 
 disturbed." 
 
 " And what," the minister faintly said, " do you 
 think will be the outcome of it all ? " 
 
 " We had that question the other night, didn't we 1 
 Our legal friend, here, seemed to feel that we might 
 rub along indefinitely as we are doing, or work out an 
 Altruria of our own ; or go back to the patriarchial 
 stage, and own our workingmen. lie seemed not to 
 have so much faith in the logic of events as I have. 
 I doubt if it is altogether a woman's logic. Parole 
 feminine, fatti maschi, and the logic of events isn't 
 altogether words ; it's full of hard knocks, too. But 
 I'm no prophet. I can't forecast the future ; I prefer 
 to take it as it comes. There's a little tract of Wil- 
 liam Morris's though — I forget just what he calls it 
 
228 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 — that is full of curious and interesting speculation 
 on this point. He thinks that if we keep the road we 
 are now going, the last state of labor will be like its 
 first, and it will be owned." 
 
 " Oh, I don't believe that will ever happen in Amer- 
 ica," I protested. 
 
 " Why not ? " asked the banker". " Practically, it is 
 owned already in a vastly greater measure than we 
 recognize. And where would the great harm be ? 
 The new slavery would not be like the old. There 
 needn't be irresponsible whipping and separation of 
 families, and private buying and selling. The prole- 
 tariat would probably be owned by the state, as it 
 was at one time in Greece ; or by large corporations, 
 which would be much more in keeping with the gen- 
 ius of our free institutions : and an enlightened public 
 opinion would cast safeguards about it in the form of 
 law to guard it from abuse. But it would be strictly 
 policed, localized, and controlled. There would prob- 
 ably be less suffering than there is now, when a man 
 may be cowed into submission to any terms through 
 the suffering of his family ; when he may be starved 
 out and turned out if he is unruly. You may be sure 
 that nothing of that kind would happen in the new 
 
A. TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 229 
 
 slavery. We have not had nineteen hundred years of 
 Christianity for nothing." 
 
 The hanker paused, and as the silence continued 
 he broke it with a laugh, which was a prodigious re- 
 lief to my feelings, and I suppose to the feelings of all. 
 I perceived that he had been joking, and I was con- 
 firmed in this when he turned to the Altrurian and 
 laid his hand upon his shoulder. " You see," he said, 
 " I'm a kind of Altrurian myself. What is the reason 
 why we should not found a new Altruria here on the 
 lines I've drawn ? Have you never had philosophers 
 — well, call them philanthropists ; I don't mind — of 
 my way of thinking among you ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes," said the Altrurian. "At one time, 
 just before we emerged from the competitive condi- 
 tions, there was much serious question whether capital 
 should not own labor, instead of labor owning capital. 
 That was many hundred years ago." 
 
 "I am proud to find myself such an advanced 
 thinker," said the banker. " And how came you to 
 decide that labor should own capital ? " 
 
 " We voted it," answered the Altrurian. 
 
 " Well," said the banker, " our fellows are still 
 fighting it, and getting beaten." 
 
230 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 I found him later in the evening, talking with Mrs. 
 Makely. " My dear sir," I said, " I liked your frank- 
 ness with my Altrurian friend immensely ; and it 
 may be well to put the worst foot foremost ; but what 
 is the advantage of not leaving us a leg to stand 
 upon ? " 
 
 He was not in the least offended at my boldness, 
 as I had feared he might be, but he said with that 
 jolly laugh of his, " Capital ! Well, perhaps I have 
 worked my candor a little too hard ; I suppose there 
 is such a thing. But don't you see that it leaves me 
 in the best possible position to carry the war into 
 Altruria, when we get him to open up about his native 
 land ? " 
 
 " Ah ! If you can get him to do it." 
 
 "Well, we were just talking about that. Mrs. 
 Makely has a plan." 
 
 " Yes," said the lady, turning an empty chair near 
 her own, toward me. ' " Sit down and listen ! " 
 
X. 
 
 I sat down, and Mrs. Makely continued : " I have 
 thought it all out, and I want you to confess that in 
 all practical matters a woman's brain is better than a 
 man's. Mr. Bullion, here, says it is, and I want you 
 to say so, too." 
 
 " Yes," the banker admitted, " when it comes down 
 to business, a woman is worth any two of us." 
 
 "And we have just been agreeing," I coincided, 
 " that the only gentlemen among us are women. Mrs. 
 Makely, I admit, without further dispute, that the 
 most unworldly woman is wordlier than the worldliest 
 man ; and that in all practical matters we fade into 
 dreamers and doctrinaires beside you. Now, go on !" 
 
 But she did not mean to let me off so easily. She 
 
232 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 began to brag berself up, as women do, whenever you 
 make them the slightest concession. 
 
 " Here, you men," she said, " have been trying for 
 a whole week to get something out of Mr. Homos 
 about his country, and you have left it to a poor, 
 weak woman, at last, to think how to manage it. I 
 do believe that you get so much interested in your 
 own talk, when you are with him, that you don't let 
 him get in a word, and that's the reason you haven't 
 found out anything about Altruria, yet, from him." 
 
 In view of the manner in which she had cut in at 
 Mrs. Camp's, and stopped Homos on the very verge 
 of the only full and free confession he had ever been 
 near making about Altruria, I thought this was pretty 
 cool, but, for fear of worse, I said : 
 
 " You're quite right, Mrs. Makely. I'm sorry to 
 say that there has been a shameful want of self-con- 
 trol among us, and that, if we learn anything at all 
 from him, it will be because you have taught us how." 
 
 She could not resist this bit of taffy. She scarcely 
 gave herself time to gulp it, before she said : 
 
 " Oh, it's very well to say that, now ! But where 
 would you have been, if I hadn't set my wits to work? 
 Now, listen ! Tt just popped into my mind, like an 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 233 
 
 inspiration, when T was thinking of something alto- 
 gether different. It flashed upon me in an instant : a 
 good object, and a public occasion." 
 
 " Well ? " I said, finding this explosive and electri- 
 cal inspiration rather enigmatical. 
 
 " Why, you know, the Union chapel, over in the 
 village, is in a languishing condition, and the ladies 
 have been talking all summer about doing something 
 for it, getting up something — a concert, or theatricals, 
 or a dance, or something — and applying the proceeds 
 to repainting and papering the visible church ; it needs 
 it dreadfully. But, of course, those things are not 
 exactly religious, don't you know ; and a fair is so 
 much trouble ; and such a bore, when you get the arti- 
 cles ready, even ; and everybody feels swindled ; and 
 now people frown on raffles, so there is no use think- 
 ing of them. What you want is something striking. 
 We did think of a parlor-reading, or perhaps ventril- 
 oquism ; but the performers all charge so much that 
 there wouldn't be anything left after paying expenses." 
 
 She seemed to expect some sort of prompting at 
 this point ; so I said, " Well ? " 
 
 " Well," she repeated, " that is just where your 
 Mr. Homos comes in." 
 
234 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Oh ! How does he come in there ? " 
 
 " Why, get him to deliver a Talk on Altruria. As 
 soon as he knows it's for a good object, he will be on 
 fire to do it ; and they must live so much in common 
 there, that the public occasion will be just the thing 
 that will appeal to him." 
 
 It did seem a good plan to me, and I said so. But 
 Mrs. Makely was so much in love with it, that she 
 was not satisfied with my modest recognition. 
 
 " Good ? It's magnificent ! It's the very thing ! 
 And I have thought it out, down to the last detail " — 
 
 " Excuse me ! " I interrupted. " Do you think 
 there is sufficient general interest in the subject, out- 
 side of the hotel, to get a full house for him ? I 
 shouldn't like to see him subjected to the mortifica- 
 tion of empty benches." 
 
 " What in the world arc you thinking of ? Why, 
 there isn't a farm-house, anywhere within ten miles, 
 where they haven't heard of Mr. Homos ; and there 
 isn't a servant under this roof, or in any of the board- 
 ing-houses, who doesn't know something about Altru- 
 ria and want to know more. It seems that your 
 friend has been much oftener with the porters and 
 the stable boys than he has been with us." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 235 
 
 I had only too great reason to fear so. In spite of 
 my warnings and entreaties, lie liad continued to 
 behave toward every human being he met, exactly as 
 if they were equals. He apparently could not con- 
 ceive of that social difference which difference of 
 occupation creates among us. He owned that he saw 
 it, and from the talk of our little group, he knew it 
 existed ; but when I expostulated with him upon some 
 act in gross violation of society usage, he only 
 answered that he could not imagine that what he saw 
 and knew could actually be. It was quite impossible 
 to keep him from bowing with the greatest deference 
 to our waitress ; he shook hands with the head waiter 
 every morning as well as with me ; there was a fearful 
 story current in the house, that he had been seen run- 
 ning down one of the corridors to relieve a chamber- 
 maid laden with two heavy waterpails, which she was 
 carrying to the rooms to fill up the pitchers. This 
 was probably not true, but I myself saw him helping 
 in the hotel hayfield one afternoon, shirt-sleeved like 
 any of the hired men. lie said that it was the best 
 possible exercise, and that he was ashamed he could 
 give no better excuse for it than the fact that without 
 something of the kind he should suffer from indiges- 
 
236 A TRAVELER FR03I ALTRURIA. 
 
 tion. It was grotesque, and out of all keeping with a 
 man of his cultivation and breeding. He was a gen- 
 tleman and a scholar, there was no denying, and yet 
 he did things in contravention of good form at every 
 opportunity, and nothing I could say had any effect 
 with him. I was perplexed beyond measure, the day 
 after I had reproached him for his labor in the hay- 
 field, to find him in a group of table-girls, who were 
 listening while the head waiter read aloud to them in 
 the shade of the house ; there was a corner looking 
 toward the stables which was given up to them by 
 tacit consent of the guests during a certain part of the 
 afternoon. I feigned not to see him, but I could not 
 forbear speaking to him about it afterwards. He took 
 it m good part, but he said he had been rather disap- 
 pointed in the kind of literature they liked, and the 
 comments they made on it ; he had expected that with 
 the education they had received, and with their ex- 
 perience of the seriousness of life, they would prefer 
 something less trivial. He supposed, however, that a 
 romantic love story, where a poor American girl mar- 
 ries an English lord, formed a refuge for them from 
 the real world which promised them so little and held 
 them so cheap. It was quite useless for one to try to 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 237 
 
 make him realize his behavior in consorting with ser- 
 vants as a kind of scandal. 
 
 The worst of it was that his behavior, as I could 
 see, had already begun to demoralize the objects of 
 his misplaced politeness. At first, the servants stared 
 and resented it, as if it were some tasteless joke ; but 
 in an incredibly short time, when they saw that he 
 meant his courtesy in good faith they took it as their 
 due. I had always had a good understanding with 
 the head waiter, and I thought I could safely smile 
 with him at the queer conduct of my friend toward 
 himself and his fellow servants. To my astonishment 
 he said, " I don't see why he shouldn't treat them as 
 if they were ladies and gentlemen. Doesn't he treat 
 you and your friends so ? " 
 
 It was impossible to answer this, and I could only 
 suffer in silence, and hope the Altrurian would soon 
 go. I had dreaded the moment when the landlord 
 should tell me that his room was wanted ; now I al- 
 most desired it, but he never did. On the contrary, 
 the Altrurian was in high favor with him. He said 
 he liked to see a man make himself pleasant with ev- 
 erybody ; and that he did not believe he had ever had 
 a guest in the house who was so popular all round. 
 
238 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 "Of course," Mrs. Makcly went on, "I don't criti- 
 cise him — with his peculiar traditions. I presume I 
 should be just so myself if I had been brought up in 
 Altruria, which thank goodness, I wasn't. But Mr. 
 Homos is a perfect dear, and all the women in the 
 house are in love with him, from the cook's helpers, 
 up and down. No, the only danger is that there 
 won't be room in the hotel parlors -for all the people 
 that wiM want to hear him, and we shall have to make 
 the admission something that will be prohibitive in 
 most cases. We shall have to make it a dollar." 
 
 " Well," I said, " I think that will settle the ques- 
 tion as far as the farming population is concerned. 
 It's twice as much as they ever pay for a reserved 
 seat in the circus, and four times as much as a simple 
 admission. I'm afraid, Mrs. Makcly, you're going to 
 be very few, though fit." 
 
 " Well, I've thought it all over, and I'm going to 
 put the tickets at one dollar." 
 
 " Very good. Have you caught your hare ? " 
 
 " No, I haven't, yet. And I want you to help me 
 catch him. What do you think is the best way to go 
 about it ? " 
 
 The banker said he would leave us to the discussion 
 
A TRAVELER FR03I ALTRTTRIA. 239 
 
 of that question, but Mrs. Makely could count upon 
 him in everything, if she could only get the man to 
 talk. At the end of our conference we decided to 
 interview the Altrurian together. 
 
 I shall always be ashamed of the way that woman 
 wheedled the Altrurian, when we found him the next 
 morning, walking up and down the piazza, before 
 breakfast. That is, it was before our breakfast ; when 
 we asked him to go in with us, he said he had just 
 had his breakfast, and was waiting for Reuben Camp, 
 who had promised to take him up as he passed with 
 a load of hay for one of the hotels in the village. 
 
 " Ah, that reminds me, Mr. Homos,' 1 the unscru- 
 pulous woman began on him, at once. " We want to 
 interest you in a little movement we're getting up for 
 the Union chapel in the village. You know it's the 
 church where all the different sects have their services, 
 alternately. Of course, it's rather an original way of 
 doing, but there is sense in it where the people are 
 too poor to go into debt for different churches, and — " 
 
 " It's admirable ! " said the Altrurian. " I have 
 
 heard about it from the Camps. It is an emblem of 
 
 the unity which ought to prevail among Christians of 
 
 all professions. How can I help you, Mrs. Makely ? " 
 16 
 
240 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " I knew you would approve of it ! " she exulted. 
 "Well, it's simply this: The poor little place has got 
 so shabby that Fm almost ashamed to be seen going 
 into it, for one ; and want to raise money enough to 
 give it a new coat of paint outside and put on some 
 kind of pretty paper, of an ecclesiastical pattern, on 
 the inside. I declare, those staring white walls, 
 with the cracks in the plastering zigzagging every 
 which way, distract me so that I can't put my mind 
 on the sermon. Don't you think that paper, say of 
 a gothic design, would be a great improvement? I'm 
 sure it would ; and it's Mr. Twelvemough's idea, too." 
 
 I learned this fact now for the first time ; but, with 
 Mrs. Makely's warning eye upon me, I could not say 
 so, and I made what sounded to me like a gothic 
 murmur of acquiescence. It sufficed for Mrs. Make- 
 ly's purpose, at any rate, and she went on, without 
 giving the Altrurian a chance to say what he thought 
 the educational effect of wall paper would be : 
 
 " Well, the long and short of it is that we want you 
 to make this money for us, Mr. Homos." 
 
 " I ? " He started in a kind of horror. " My dear 
 lady, I never made any money in my life ! I should 
 think it wrong to make money ! " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 241 
 
 " In Altruria, yes. We all know how it is in your 
 delightful country, and I assure you that no one could 
 respect your conscientious scruples more than I do. 
 But you must remember that you are in America, 
 now. In America you have to make money, or else 
 — get left. And then you must consider the object, 
 and all the good you can do, indirectly, by a little 
 Talk on Altruria." 
 
 He answered, blandly: "A little Talk on Altruria? 
 How in the world should I get money by that ? " 
 
 She was only too eager to explain, and she did it 
 with so much volubility and at such great length, that 
 I, who am good for nothing till I have had my cup of 
 coffee in the morning, almost perished of an elucida- 
 tion which the Altrurian bore with the sweetest 
 patience. 
 
 When she gave him a chance to answer, at last, he 
 said • " I shall be very happy to do what you wish, 
 madam." 
 
 " Will you ? " she screamed. " Oh, I'm so glad ! 
 You have been so slippery about Altruria, you know, 
 that I expected nothiug but a point-blank refusal. 
 Of course, I knew you would be kind about it. Oh, 
 I can hardly believe my senses ! You can't think 
 
242 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 what a dear you are." I knew she had got that word 
 from some English people who had been in the hotel ; 
 and she was working it rather wildly, but it was not 
 my business to check her. " Well, then, all you have 
 got to do is to leave the whole thing to me, and not 
 bother about it a bit till I send and tell you we are 
 ready to listen. There comes Reuben with his ox- 
 team ! Thank you so much, Mr. Homos. No one 
 need be ashamed to enter the house of God " — she 
 said Gawd, in an access of piety — "after we get that 
 paint and paper on it ; and we shall have them on be- 
 fore two Sabbaths have passed over it." 
 
 She wrung the Altrurian's hand ; I was only afraid 
 she was going to kiss him. 
 
 " There is but one atipulation I should like to 
 make," he began. 
 
 " Oh, a thousand," she cut in. 
 
 " And that is, there shall be no exclusion from my 
 lecture on account of occupation or condition. That 
 is a thing that I can in no wise countenance, even in 
 America ; it is far more abhorrent to me even than 
 money-making, though they are each a part and parcel 
 of the other." 
 
 " I thought it was that ! " she retorted joyously. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 243 
 
 " And I can assure you, Mr. Homos, there shall be 
 nothing of that kind. Every one — I don't care who 
 it is, or what they do — shall hear you who buys a 
 ticket. Now, will that do ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," said the Altrurian, and he let her 
 wring his hand again. 
 
 She pushed hers through my arm as we started for 
 the dining-room, and leaned over to whisper jubil 
 antly : " That will fix it ! He will see how much his 
 precious lower classes care for Altruria if they have 
 to pay a dollar apiece to hear about it. And I shall 
 keep faith with him to the letter." 
 
 I could not feel that she would keep it in the 
 spirit ; but I could only groan inwardly and chuckle 
 outwardly at the woman's depravity. 
 
 It seemed to me, though I could not approve of it, 
 a capital joke, and so it seemed to all the members of 
 the little group whom I had made especially ac- 
 quainted with the Altrurian. It is true that the 
 minister was somewhat troubled with the moral ques- 
 tion, which did not leave me wholly at peace ; and the 
 banker affected to find a question of taste involved, 
 which he said he must let me settle, however, as the 
 man's host ; if I could stand it, he could. No one 
 
24:4 A TRA\ r ELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 said anything against the plan to Mrs. Makely, and 
 this energetic woman made ns take two tickets apiece, 
 as soon as she got them printed, over in the village. 
 She got little hand-hills printed, and had them scat- 
 tered about through the neighborhood, at all the 
 hotels, boarding-houses and summer cottages, to give 
 notice of the time and place of the talk on Altruria. 
 She fixed this for the following Saturday afternoon, 
 in our hotel parlor ; she had it in the afternoon so as 
 not to interfere with the hop in the evening ; she put 
 tickets on sale at the principal houses, and at the 
 village drug-store, and she made me go about with her 
 and help her sell them at some of the cottages in per- 
 son. 
 
 I must say I found this extremely distasteful, 
 especially where the people were not very willing to 
 buy, and she had to urge them. They all admitted 
 the excellence of the object, but they were not so sure 
 about the means. At several places the ladies asked 
 who was this Mr. Homos, anyway ; and how did she 
 know he was really from Altruria ? He might be an 
 imposter. 
 
 Then Mrs. Makely would put me forward, and I 
 would be obliged to give such account of him as I- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 245 
 
 could, and to explain just how and why he came to be 
 my guest ; with the cumulative effect of bringing back 
 all the misgivings which I had myself felt at the out- 
 set concerning him, and which I had dissmissed as 
 too fantastic. 
 
 The tickets went off rather slowly, even in our own 
 hotel ; people thought them too dear ; and some, as 
 soon as they knew the price, said frankly they had 
 heard enough about Altruria already, and were sick 
 of the whole thing. 
 
 Mrs. Makely said this was quite what she had ex- 
 pected of those people; that they were horrid, and 
 stingy and vulgar ; and she should see what face they 
 would have to ask her to take tickets when they were 
 trying to get up something. She began to be vexed 
 with herself, she confessed, at the joke she was play 
 ing on Mr. Homos, and I noticed that she put herself 
 rather defiantly en evidence in his company, whenever 
 she could in the presence of these reluctant ladies. 
 She told me she had not the courage to ask the clerk 
 how many of the tickets he had sold out of those she 
 had left at the desk. One morning, the third or 
 fourth, as I was going m to breakfast with her, the 
 head waiter stopped her as he opened- the door, and 
 
246 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 asked modestly if she could spare him a few tickets, 
 for lie thought he could sell some. To my amazement 
 the unprincipled creature said, "Why, certainly. 
 How many ? " and instantly took a package out of her 
 pocket, where she seemed always to have them. He 
 asked, Would twenty be more than she could spare ? 
 and she answered, " Not at all ! Here are twenty- 
 five," and bestowed the whole package upon him. 
 
 That afternoon Reuben Camp came lounging up 
 toward us, where I sat with her on the corner of the 
 piazza, and said that if she would like to let him try 
 his luck with some tickets for the Talk he would see 
 what he could do. 
 
 " You can have all you want, Reuben," she said, 
 " and I hope you'll have better luck than I have. 
 I'm perfectly disgusted with people." 
 
 She fished several packages out of her pocket this 
 time, and he asked, " Do you mean that I can have 
 them all?" 
 
 " Every one, and a band of music into the bar- 
 gain" she answered recklessly. But she seemed a 
 little daunted when he quietly took them. " You 
 know there are a hundred here ? " 
 
 " Yes, I should like to see what I can do amongst 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 247 
 
 the natives. Then, there is a construction train over 
 at the junction, and I know a lot of the fellows. I 
 guess some of 'em would like to come." 
 
 " The tickets are a dollar each, you know," she 
 suggested. 
 
 " That's all right," said Camp. " Well, good after- 
 noon." 
 
 Mrs. Makely turned to me with a kind of gasp, as 
 he shambled away. " I don't know about that ! " 
 
 " About having the whole crew of a construction 
 train at the Talk ? I dare say it won't be pleasant to 
 the ladies who have bought tickets." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mrs. Makely with astonishing con- 
 tepmt, " I don't care what they think. But Reuben 
 has got all my tickets, and suppose he keeps them so 
 long that I won't have time to sell any, and then throws 
 them back on my hands ? I know ! she added joy- 
 ously. " I can go around now, and tell people that 
 my tickets arc all gone ; and I'll go instantly and have 
 the clerk hold all he has left at a premium." 
 
 She came back looking rather blank. 
 
 " He hasn't got a single one left. He says an old 
 native came in this morning and took every last one 
 of them — he doesn't remember just how many. I 
 
248 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 believe they're going to speculate on them ; and if 
 Reuben Camp serves me a trick like that — Why ! " 
 she broke off, " I believe I'll speculate on them my- 
 self ! I should like to know Avhy I shouldn't ! Oh, 
 I should just like to make some of those creatures pay 
 double, or treble, for the chances they've refused. Ah, 
 Mrs. Bulkham," she called out to a lady who was 
 coming down the veranda toward us, " you'll be glad 
 to know I've got rid of all my tickets ! Such a 
 relief ! " 
 
 "You have?' 1 '' Mrs. Bulkham retorted. 
 " Every one." 
 
 " I thought," said Mrs. Bulkham, " that you under- 
 stood I wanted one for my daughter and myself, if 
 she came." 
 
 " I certainly didn't," said Mrs. Makely, with a wink 
 of concentrated wickedness at me. " But if you do, 
 you will have to say so now, without any ifs or ands 
 about it ; and if any of the tickets come back — I let 
 friends have a few on sale — I will give you two." 
 "Well, I do," said Mrs. Bulkham, after a moment. 
 " Very well, it will be five dollars for the two. I 
 feel bound to get all I can for the cause. Shall I put 
 your name down ? " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 249 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Bulkham, rather crossly ; but 
 Mrs. Makely inscribed her name on her tablets with a 
 radiant amiability, which suffered no eclipse when, 
 within the next fifteen minutes, a dozen other ladies 
 hurried up, and bought in at the same rate. 
 
 I could not stand it, and I got up to go away, 
 feeling extremely particeps criminis. Mrs. Makely 
 seemed to have a conscience as light as air. 
 
 " If Reuben Camp or the head waiter don't bring 
 back some of those tickets I don't know what I shall 
 do. I shall have to put chairs into the isles, and 
 charge five dollars apiece for as many people as I can 
 crowd in there. I never knew anything so perfectly 
 providential." 
 
 " I envy you the ability to see it in that light, Mrs. 
 Makely," I said, faint at heart. " Suppose Camp 
 crowds tbe place full of his train men, how will the 
 ladies that you've sold tickets to at five dollars apiece 
 like it ? " 
 
 " Pooh ! What do I care how they like it ! Horrid 
 things ! And for repairs on the house of Gawd, it's 
 the same as being in church, where everybody is 
 equal." 
 
 The time passed. Mrs. Makely sold chances to all 
 
250 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the ladies in the house ; on Friday night Reuben Camp 
 brought her a hundred dollars ; the head waiter had 
 already paid in twenty-five. " I didn't dare to ask 
 them if they speculated on them," she confided to 
 me. " Do you suppose they would have the con 
 science ? " 
 
 They had secured the large parlor of the hotel, 
 where the young people danced in the evening, and 
 where entertainments were held, of the sort usually 
 given in summer hotels ; we had already had a dra- 
 matic reading, a time with the phonograph, an 
 exhibition of necromancy, a concert by a college glee 
 club, and I do not know what else. The room would 
 hold perhaps two hundred people, if they were closely 
 seated, and by her own showing, Mrs. Makely had 
 sold above two hundred and fifty tickets and chances. 
 All Saturday forenoon she consoled herself with the 
 belief that a great many people at the other hotels 
 and cottages had bought seats merely to aid the 
 cause, and would not really come ; she estimated that 
 at least fifty would stay away : but if Reuben Camp 
 had sold his tickets among the natives, we might 
 expect every one of them to come and get his money's 
 worth ; she did not dare to ask the head waiter how 
 he had got rid of his twenty-five tickets. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 251 
 
 The hour set for the Talk to begin was three 
 o'clock, so that people could have their naps comfort- 
 ably over, after the one o'clock dinner, and be just in 
 the right frame of mind for listening. But long 
 before the appointed time, the people who dine at 
 twelve, and never take an afternoon nap, began to 
 arrive, on foot, in farm-wagons, smart buggies, mud- 
 crusted carryalls, and all manner of ramshackle 
 vehicles. They arrived as if coming to a circus, old 
 husbands and wives, young couples and their children, 
 pretty girls and their fellows, and hitched their 
 horses to the tails of their wagons, and began to make 
 a picnic lunch in the shadow of the grove lying 
 between the hotel and the station. About two, we 
 heard the snorting of a locomotive at a time when no 
 tram was due, and a construction train came in view, 
 with the men waving their handkerchiefs from the 
 windows, and apparently ready for all the fun there 
 was to be in the thing. Some of them had a small 
 flag in each hand, the American stars and stripes, and 
 the white flag of Altruna, in compliment to my guest, 
 I suppose. A good many of the farmers came over 
 to the hotel to buy tickets, which they said they 
 expected to get after they came, and Mrs. Makely 
 
252 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 was obliged to pacify them with all sorts of lying 
 promises. From moment to moment she was in con- 
 sultation with the landlord, who decided to throw 
 open the dining-room, which connected with the 
 parlor, so as to allow the help and the neighbors to 
 hear, without incommoding the hotel guests. She 
 said that this took a great burden off her mind, and 
 that now she should feel perfectly easy, for now no 
 one could complain about being mixed up with the 
 servants and the natives, and yet every one could 
 hear perfectly. 
 
 She could not rest until she had sent for Homos 
 and told him of this admirable arrangement. I did 
 not know whether to be glad or not, when he in- 
 stantly told her that, if there was to be any such sep- 
 aration of his auditors, in recognition of our class 
 distinctions, he must refuse to speak at all. 
 
 " Then, what in the world are we to do ? " she 
 wailed out, and the tears came into her eyes. ' •" 
 
 " Have you got the money for all your tickets ? " 
 he asked with a sort of disgust for the whole trans- 
 action in his tone. 
 
 " Yes, and more, too. I don't believe there's a 
 soul, in the hotel or out of it that hasn't paid at least 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 253 
 
 a dollar to hear you : and that makes it so very em- 
 barrassing. Oh, dear Mr. Homos ! You won't be so 
 implacably high-principled as all that ! Think that 
 you are doing it for the house of Gawd." 
 
 The woman made me sick. 
 
 " Then, no one," said the Altrurian, " can feel 
 aggrieved, or unfairly used, if I say what I have to 
 say in the open air, where all can listen equallv, 
 without any manner of preference or distinction. We 
 will go up to the edge of the grove over-looking the 
 tennis-court, and hold our meeting there, as the Altru- 
 rian meetings are always held, with the sky for a 
 roof, and with no walls but the horizon." 
 
 " The very thing ! " cried Mrs. Makely. "Who 
 would ever have thought you were so practical, Mr. 
 Homos ? I don't believe you're an Altrurian, after all : 
 I believe you are an American in disguise." 
 
 The Altrurian turned away, without making any 
 response to this flattering attribution of our national- 
 ity to him ; but Mrs. Makely had not waited for any. 
 She had flown off, and I next saw her attacking the 
 landlord, with such apparent success, that he slapped 
 himself on the leg and vanished, and immediately the 
 porters and bell-boys and all the men-servants began 
 
 # 
 
25-± A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 carrying out chairs to the tennis-court, which was 
 already well set round with benches. In a little 
 while the whole space was covered, and settees were 
 placed well up the ground toward the grove. 
 
 By half past two, the guests of the hotel came out, 
 and took the best seats, as by right, and the different 
 tallyhoes and mountain wagons began to arrive from 
 the other hotels, with their silly hotel cries, and their 
 gay groups dismounted and dispersed themselves 
 over the tennis court until all the chairs were taken. 
 It was fine to see how the natives and the trainmen 
 and the hotel servants, with an instinctive perception 
 of the proprieties, yielded these places to their 
 superiors, and, after the summer folks were all seated, 
 scattered themselves on the grass and the pine-needles 
 about the border of the grove. I should have liked 
 to instance the fact to the Altrurian, as a proof that 
 this sort of subordination was a part of human nature, 
 and that a principle which pervaded our civilization, 
 after the democratic training of our whole national 
 life, must be divinely implanted. But there was no 
 opportunity for me to speak with him after the fact 
 had accomplished itself, for by this time he had taken 
 his place in front of a little clump of low pines and 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 255 
 
 was waiting for the assembly to quiet itself before be 
 began to speak. I do not think there could have 
 been less tban five hundred present, and the scene 
 bad that accidental picturesqueness which results from 
 the grouping of all sorts of faces and costumes. 
 Many of our ladies had pretty hats and brilliant 
 parasols, but I must say that the soberer tone of 
 some of the old farm-wives' brown calicoes and out- 
 dated bonnets contributed to enrich the coloring, and 
 there was a certain gayety in the sunny glisten of the 
 men's straw-hats, everywhere, that was very good. 
 
 Tbe sky overhead was absolutely stainless, and the 
 light of the cool afternoon sun dreamed upon the 
 slopes of the solemn mountains to the east. The tall 
 pines in the background blackened themselves against 
 tbe horizon ; nearer they showed more and more 
 decidedly their bluish green, and the yellow of the 
 newly-fallen needles painted their aisles deep into the 
 airy shadows. 
 
 A little wind stirred their tops, and for a moment, 
 
 just before the Altrurian began to speak, drew from 
 
 them an organ-tone that melted delicately away as his 
 
 powerful voice rose. 
 17 
 
XL 
 
 " I could not give you a clear account of the 
 present state of things in my country," the Altrurian 
 began, " without first telling you something of our 
 conditions before the time of our Evolution. It seems 
 to be the law of all life, that nothing can come to 
 fruition without dying and seeming to make an end. 
 It must be sown in corruption before it can be raised 
 in incorruption. The truth itself must perish to our 
 senses before it can live to our souls ; the Son of Man 
 must suffer upon the cross before we can know the 
 Son of God. 
 
 " It was so with His message to the world, which 
 we received in the old time as an ideal realized by the 
 earliest Christians, who loved one another and who 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 257 
 
 had all things common. The apostle cast away upon 
 our heathen coasts, won us with the story of this first 
 Christian republic, and he established a commonwealth 
 of peace and goodwill among us in its likeness. That, 
 commonwealth perished, just as its prototype perished, 
 or seemed to perish ; and long ages of civic and eco- 
 nomic warfare succeeded, when every man's hand was 
 against his neighbor, and might was the rule that got 
 itself called right. Religion ceased to be the hope of 
 this world, and became the vague promise of the next. 
 We descended into the valley of the shadow, and 
 dwelt amid chaos for ages, before we groped again 
 into the light. 
 
 " The first glimmerings were few and indistinct, 
 but men formed themselves about the luminous points 
 here and there, and when these broke and dispersed 
 into lesser gleams, still men formed themselves about 
 each of them. There arose a system of things, 
 better, indeed, than that darkness, but full of war, 
 and lust, and greed, in wdiich the weak rendered hom- 
 age to the strong, and served them in the field and in 
 the camp, and the strong in turn gave the weak pro- 
 tection against the other strong. It was a juggle in 
 which the weak did not see that their safety was 
 
258 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 after all from themselves ; but it was an image of 
 peace, however false and fitful, and it endured for a 
 time. It endured for a limited time, if we measure 
 by the life of the race ; it endured for an unlimited 
 time if we measure by the lives of the men who were 
 born and died while it endured. 
 
 " But that disorder, cruel and fierce and stupid, 
 which endured because it sometimes masked itself as 
 order, did at last pass away. Here and there one of 
 the strong overpowered the rest ; then the strong be- 
 came fewer and fewer, and in their turn they all 
 yielded to a supreme lord, and throughout the land 
 there was one rule, as it was called then, or one mis- 
 rule, as we should call it now. This rule, or this 
 misrule, continued for ages more; and again, in the 
 immortality of the race, men toiled and struggled, and 
 died without the hope of better things. 
 
 "Then the time came when the long nightmare 
 Avas burst with the vision of a future in which all 
 men were the law, and not one man, or any less num- 
 ber of men than all. 
 
 " The poor, dumb beast of humanity rose, and the 
 throne tumbled, and the scepter was broken, and the 
 crown rolled away into that darkness of the past. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 259 
 
 We thought that heaven had descended to us, and 
 that liberty, equality and fraternity were ours. We 
 could not sec what should again alienate us from one 
 another, or how one brother could again oppress an- 
 other. With a free field and no favor, we believed 
 we should prosper on together, and there would be 
 peace and plenty for all. We had the republic, 
 again, after so many ages now, and the republic, as 
 we knew it in our dim annals, was brotherhood and 
 universal happiness. All but a very few who proph- 
 esied evil of our lawless freedom, were wrapped in 
 a delirium of hope. Men's minds and men's hands 
 were suddenly released to an activity unheard of be- 
 fore. Invention followed inveution ; our rivers and 
 seas became the warp of commerce where the steam- 
 sped shuttles carried the woof of enterprise to and 
 fro with tireless celerity. Machines to save labor 
 multiplied themselves as if they had been procreative 
 forces ; and wares of every sort were produced with 
 incredible swiftness and cheapness. Money seemed 
 to flow from the ground ; vast fortunes ' rose like an 
 exhalation,' as your Milton says. 
 
 "At first we did not know that they were the 
 breath of the nethermost pits of hell, and that the 
 
260 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 love of money which was becoming universal with us, 
 was filling the earth with the hate of men. It was 
 long before we came to realize that in the depths of 
 our steamships were those who fed the fires with their 
 lives, and that our mines from which we dug our 
 wealth were the graves of those who had died to the 
 free light and air, without finding the rest of death. 
 "We did not see that the machines for saving labor 
 were monsters that devoured women and children, 
 and wasted men at the bidding of the power which no 
 man must touch. 
 
 " That is, we thought we must not touch it, for it 
 called itself prosperity, and wealth, and the public 
 good, and it said that it gave bread, and it impudently 
 bade the toiling myriads consider what would become 
 of them, if it took away their means of wearing them- 
 selves out in its service. It demanded of the state 
 absolute immunity and absolute impunity, the right 
 to do its will wherever and however it would, without 
 question from the people who were the final law. It 
 had its way, and under its rule we became the richest 
 people under the sun. The Accumulation, as we 
 called this power, because we feared to call it by its 
 true name, rewarded its own with gains of twenty, of 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 261 
 
 a hundred, of a thousand per cent., and to satisfy its 
 need, to produce the labor that operated its machines, 
 there came into existence a hapless race of men who 
 bred their kind for its service, and whose little ones 
 were its prey almost from their cradles. Then the 
 infamy became too great, and the law, the voice of 
 the people, so long guiltily silent, was lifted in behalf 
 of those who had no helper. The Accumulation came 
 under control, for the first time, and could no longer 
 work its slaves twenty hours a day amid perils to life 
 and limb from its machinery and in conditions that 
 forbade them decency and morality. The time of a 
 hundred and a thousand per cent, passed; but still 
 the Accumulation demanded immunity and impunity, 
 and in spite of its conviction of the enormities it had 
 practiced, it declared itself the only means of civiliza- 
 tion and progress. It began to give out that it was 
 timid, though its history was full of the boldest frauds 
 and crimes, and it threatened to withdraw itself if it 
 were ruled or even crossed ; and again it had its way, 
 and we seemed to prosper more and more. The land 
 was filled with cities where the rich flaunted their 
 splendor in palaces, and the poor swarmed in squalid 
 tenements. The country was drained of its life and 
 
262 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 force, to feed the centers of commerce and industry. 
 The whole land was bound together with a network 
 of iron roads that linked the factories and foundries 
 to the fields and mines, and blasted the landscape 
 with the enterprise that spoiled the lives of men. 
 
 "Then, all at once, when its work seemed perfect 
 and its dominion sure, the Accumulation was stricken 
 with consciousness of the lie always at its heart. It 
 had hitherto cried out for a free field and no favor, 
 for unrestricted competition ; but, in truth, it had 
 never prospered, except as a monopoly. Whenever 
 and wherever competition had play, there had been 
 nothing but disaster to the rival enterprises, till one 
 rose over the rest. Then there was prosperity for 
 that one. 
 
 "The Accumulation began to act upon its new 
 consciousness. The iron roads united ; the warring 
 industries made peace, each kind under a single lead- 
 ership. Monopoly, not competition, was seen to be 
 the beneficent means of distributing the favors and 
 blessings of the Accumulation to mankind. But as 
 before, there was alternately a glut and dearth of 
 things, and it often happened that when starving men 
 went ragged through the streets, the storehouses were 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 263 
 
 piled full of rotting harvests that the farmers toiled 
 from dawn till dusk to grow, and the warehouses fed 
 the moth with the stuffs that the operative had woven 
 his life into at his loom. Then followed, with a blind 
 and mad succession, a time of famine, when money 
 could not buy the superabundance that vanished, none 
 knew how or why. 
 
 " The money itself vanished from time to time, and 
 disappeared into the vaults of the Accumulation, for 
 no better reason than that for which it poured itself 
 out at other times. Our theory was that the people, 
 that is to say the government of the people, made the 
 people's money, but, as a matter of fact, the Accumu- 
 lation made it, and controlled it, and juggled with it ; 
 and now you saw it, and now you did not see it. 
 The government made gold coins, but the people had 
 nothing but the paper money that the Accumulation 
 made. But whether there was scarcity or plenty, the 
 failures went on with a continuous ruin that nothing 
 could check, while our larger economic life proceeded 
 in a series of violent shocks, which we called 
 financial panics, followed by long periods of exhaus- 
 tion and recuperation. There was no law in our 
 economy, but as the Accumulation had never cared 
 
264 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 for the nature of law, it did not trouble itself for its 
 name in our order of things. It had always bought 
 the law it needed for its own use, first through the 
 voter at the polls in the more primitive days, and 
 then, as civilization advanced, in the legislatures and 
 the courts. But the corruption even of these methods 
 was far surpassed when the era of consolidation came, 
 and the necessity for statutes and verdicts and 
 decisions became more stringent. Then we had such 
 a burlesque of" — 
 
 " Look here ! " a sharp nasal voice snarled across 
 the rich, full pipe of the Altrurian, and we all 
 instantly looked there. The voice came from an old 
 farmer, holding himself stiffly up, with his hands in 
 his pockets and his lean frame bent toward the 
 speaker. " When are you goin' to get to Altrury ? 
 We know all about Ameriky." 
 
 He sat down again, and it was a moment before 
 the crowd caught on. Then a yell of delight and a 
 roar of volleyed laughter went up from the lower 
 classes, in which, I am sorry to say, my friend, the 
 banker, joined, so far as the laughter was concerned. 
 •' Good ! That's it ! First-rate ! " came from a hundred 
 vulvar throats. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 265 
 
 " Isn't it a perfect shame ? " Mrs. Makely de- 
 manded. " I think some of you gentlemen ought to 
 say something ! AVhat will Mr. Homos think of our 
 civilization if we let such interruptions go unre- 
 buked ! " 
 
 She was sitting between the banker and myself, 
 and her indignation made him laugh more and more. 
 " Oh, it serves him right," he said. Don't you see 
 that he is hoist with his own petard ? Let him alone. 
 He's in the hands of his friends." 
 
 The Altrurian waited for the tumult to die away, 
 and then he said gently : •' I don't understand." 
 
 The old farmer jerked himself to his feet again : 
 " It's like this : I paid my dolla' to hear about a 
 country where there wa'n't no co'perations, nor no 
 monop'lies, nor no buyin' up cou'ts ; and I ain't 
 agoin' to have no allegory shoved down my throat, 
 instead of a true history, noways. I know all about 
 how it is here. Fi'st, run their line through your 
 backya'd, and then kill off your cattle, and keep 
 kerryin' on it up from cou't to cou't, till there ain't 
 hide or hair on 'em left — " 
 
 " Oh, set down, set down ! Let the man go on ! 
 He'll make it all right with you," one of the construe- 
 
266 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 tion gang called out ; but the farmer stood his ground, 
 and I could hear him through the laughing and shout- 
 ing, keep saying something from time to time, about 
 not wanting to pay no dolla' for no talk about co'pera- 
 tions and monop'lies that we had right under our own 
 noses the whole while, and you might say, in your 
 very bread troughs ; till, at last, I saw Reuben Camp 
 make his way towards him, and, after an energetic 
 expostulation, turn to leave him again. 
 
 Then he faltered out, " I guess it's all right," and 
 dropped out of sight in the group he had risen from. 
 I fancied his wife scolding him there, and all but 
 shaking him in public. 
 
 " I should be very sorry," the Altrurian proceeded, 
 " to have anyone believe that I have not been giving 
 you a bona fide account of conditions in my country 
 before the Evolution, when we first took the name of 
 Altruria in our great, peaceful campaign against the 
 Accumulation. As for offering you any allegory or 
 travesty of your own conditions, I will simply say 
 that I do not know them well enough to do so intelli- 
 gently. But, whatever they are, God forbid that the 
 likeness which you seem to recognize should ever go 
 so far as the desperate state of things which we 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 267 
 
 finally reached. I will not trouble you with details ; 
 in fact, I have been afraid that I had already treated 
 of our affairs too abstractly ; but, since your own ex- 
 perience furnishes you the means of seizing my mean- 
 ing-, I will go on as before. 
 
 " You will understand me when I explain that the 
 Accumulation had not erected itself into the sov- 
 ereignty with us unopposed. The workingmen who 
 suffered most from its oppression had early begun to 
 band themselves against it, with the instinct of self- 
 preservation, first trade by trade, and art by art, and 
 then in congresses and federations of the trades and 
 arts, until finally they enrolled themselves in one vast 
 union, which included all the workingmen whom 
 their necessity or their interest did not leave on the 
 side of the Accumulation. This beneficent and gen- 
 erous association of the weak for the sake of the 
 weakest did not accomplish itself fully till the baleful 
 instinct of the Accumulation had reduced the mo- 
 nopolies to one vast monopoly, till the stronger had 
 devoured the weaker among its members, and the 
 supreme agent stood at the head of our affairs, in 
 everything but name, our imperial ruler. We had 
 hugged so long the delusion of each man for himself, 
 
268 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 that we had suffered all realty to he taken from us. 
 The Accumulation owned the land as well as the 
 mines under it and the shops over it ; the Accumula- 
 tion owned the seas and the ships that sailed the 
 seas, and the fish that swam in their depths ; it owned 
 transportation and distribution, and the wares and 
 products that were to be carried to and fro ; and by a 
 logic irresistible and inexorable, the Accumulation 
 teas, and we were not. 
 
 " But the Accumulation, too, had forgotten some- 
 thing. It had found it so easy to buy legislatures 
 and courts, that it did not trouble itself about the 
 polls. It left us the suffrage, and let us amuse our- 
 selves with the periodical election of the political clay 
 images which it manipulated and moulded to any 
 shape and effect, at its pleasure. The Accumulation 
 knew that it was the sovereignty, whatever figure-head 
 we called president, or governor, or mayor : we had 
 other names for these officials, but I use their ana- 
 logues for the sake of clearness, and I hope my good 
 friend over there will not think I am still talking 
 about America." 
 
 •' No," the old farmer called back, without rising, 
 " we hain't got there, quite, yit." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 269 
 
 " No hurry," said a trainman. " All in good time. 
 Go on ! " he called to the Altrurian. 
 
 The Altrurian resumed : 
 
 " There had been, from the beginning, an almost 
 ceaseless struggle between the Accumulation and the 
 proletariate. The Accumulation always said that it 
 was the best friend of the proletariate, and it de- 
 nounced, through the press which it controlled, the 
 proletarian leaders who taught that it was the enemy 
 of the proletariat, and who stirred up strikes and 
 tumults of all sorts, for higher wages and fewer hours. 
 But the friend of the proletariat, whenever occasion 
 served, treated the proletariat like a deadly enemy. 
 In seasons of over-production, as it was called, it 
 locked the workmen out, or laid them off, and left 
 their families to starve, or ran light work, and claimed 
 the credit of public benefactors for running at all. It 
 sought every chance to reduce wages; it had laws 
 passed to forbid or cripple the workmen in their 
 strikes ; and the judges convicted them of conspiracy, 
 and wrested the statutes to their hurt, in cases where 
 there had been no thought of embarrassing them, even 
 among the legislators. God forbid that you should 
 ever come to such a pass in America ; but, if you ever 
 
270 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 should, God grant that you may find your way out as 
 simply as we did at last, when freedom had perished 
 in everything hut name among us, and justice had 
 become a mockery. 
 
 " The Accumulation had advanced so smoothly, so 
 lightly, in all its steps to the supreme power, and had 
 at last so thoroughly quelled the uprisings of the pro- 
 letariat, that it forgot one thing: it forgot the 
 despised and neglected suffrage. The ballot, because 
 it had been so easy to annul its effect, had been left in 
 the people's hands ; and when, at last, the leaders of 
 the proletariat ceased to counsel strikes, or any form 
 of resistance to the Accumulation that could be tor- 
 mented into the likeness of insurrection against the 
 government, and began to urge them to attack it in 
 the political way, the deluge that swept the Accumu- 
 lation out of existence came trickling and creeping 
 over the land. It appeared first in the country, a 
 spring from the ground ; then it gathered head in the 
 villages ; then it swelled to a torrent in the cities. I 
 cannot stay to trace its course ; but suddenly, one day, 
 when the Accumulation's abuse of a certain power 
 became too gross, it was voted out of that power. 
 You will perhaps be interested to know that it was 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 271 
 
 with the telegraphs that the rebellion against the Ac- 
 cumulation began, and the government was forced by 
 the overwhelming majority which the proletariat sent 
 to our parliament, to assume a function which the 
 Accumulation had impudently usurped. Then the 
 transportation of smaller and more perishable wares" — 
 " Yes," a voice called, " express business. Go on." 
 " Was legislated a function of the post office," the 
 Altrurian went on. " Then all transportation was 
 taken into the hands of the political government, 
 which had always been accused of great corruption in 
 its administration, but which showed itself immacu- 
 lately pure, compared with the Accumulation. The 
 common ownership of mines necessarily followed, with 
 an allotment of lands to anyone who wished to live 
 by tilling the land ; but not a foot of the land was 
 remitted to private hands for purposes of selfish 
 pleasure or the exclusion of any other from the land- 
 scape. As all businesses had been gathered into the 
 grasp of the Accumulation, and the manufacture of 
 everything they used and the production of everything 
 that they ate was in the control of the Accumulation, 
 its transfer to the government was the work of a 
 
 single clause in the statute. 
 18 
 
272 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " The Accumulation, which had treated the first 
 menaces of resistance with contempt, awoke to its 
 peril too late. When it turned to wrest the suffrage 
 from the proletariat, at the first election where it at- 
 tempted to make head against them, it was simply 
 snowed under, as your picturesque phrase is. The 
 Accumulation had no voters, except the few men at 
 its head, and the creatures devoted to it hy interest 
 and ignorance. It seemed, at one moment, as if it 
 would offer an armed resistance to the popular will, 
 but, happily, that moment of madness passed. Our 
 Evolution was accomplished without a drop of blood- 
 shed, and the first great political brotherhood, the 
 commonwealth of Altruria, was founded. 
 
 " I wish that I had time to go into a study of some 
 of the curious phases of the transformation from a 
 civility in which the people lived upon each other to 
 one in which they lived for each other. There is a 
 famous passage in the inaugural message of our first 
 Altrurian president, which compares the new civic 
 consciousness with that of a disembodied spirit re- 
 leased to the life beyond this and freed from all the 
 selfish cares and greeds of the flesh. But perhaps I 
 shall give a sufficiently clear notion of the triumph of 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 273 
 
 the change among us, when I say that within half a 
 decade after the fall of the old plutocratic oligarchy 
 one of the chief directors of the Accumulation pub- 
 licly expressed his gratitude to God that the Accumu- 
 lation had passed away forever. You will realize the 
 importance of such an expression in recalling the 
 declarations some of your slaveholders have made 
 since the civil war, that they would not have slavery 
 restored for any earthly consideration. 
 
 " But now, after this preamble, which has been so 
 much longer than I meant it to be, how shall I give 
 you a sufficiently just conception of the existing Altru- 
 ria, the actual state from which I come ? " 
 
 " Yes," came the nasal of the old farmer, again, 
 " that's what we are here fur. I wouldn't give a cop- 
 per to know all you went through beforehand. It's 
 too dumn like what we have been through ourselves, 
 as fur as heard from." 
 
 A shout of laughter went up from most of the 
 crowd, but the Altrurian did not seem to see any fun 
 in it. 
 
 " Well," he resumed, " I will tell you, as well as I 
 can, what Altruria is like, but, in the first place, you 
 will have to cast out of your minds all images of civil- 
 
274 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 ization with which your experience has filled them. 
 For a time, the shell of the old Accumulation re- 
 mained for our social habitation, and we dwelt in the 
 old competitive and monopolistic forms after the life 
 had gone out of them. That is, we continued to live 
 in populous cities, and we toiled to heap up riches for 
 the moth to corrupt, and we slaved on in making 
 utterly useless things, merely because we had the habit 
 of making them to sell. For a while we made the old 
 sham things, which pretended to be useful things and 
 were worse than the confessedly useless things. I 
 will give you an illustration from the trades, which you 
 will all understand. The proletariat, in the competi- 
 tive and monopolistic time, used to make a kind of 
 shoes for the proletariat, or the women of the prole- 
 tariat, which looked like fine shoes of the best quality. 
 It took just as much work to make these shoes as to 
 make the best fine shoes ; but they were shams through 
 and through. They wore out in a week, and the peo- 
 ple called them, because they were bought fresh for 
 every Sunday " — 
 
 " Sat'd'y night shoes," screamed the old farmer. 
 "I know 'em. My gals buy 'em. Half dolla' a pai', 
 and not wo'th the monev." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 275 
 
 "Well," said the Altrurian, "they were a cheat 
 and a lie, in every way, and under the new system it 
 was not possible, when public attention was called to 
 the fact, to continue the falsehood they embodied. As 
 soon as the Saturday night shoe realized itself to the 
 public conscience, an investigation began, and it was 
 found that the principle of the Saturday night shoe 
 underlay half our industries and made half the work 
 that was done. Then an immense reform took place. 
 We renounced, in the most solemn convocation of the 
 whole economy, the principle of the Saturday night 
 shoe, and those who had spent their lives in producing 
 sham shoes — " 
 
 "Yes," said the professor, rising from his seat near 
 us, and addressing the speaker, " I shall be very glad 
 to know what became of the worthy and industrious 
 operatives who were thrown out of employment by 
 this explosion of economic virtue." 
 
 " Why," the Altrurian replied, " they were set to 
 work making honest shoes ; and as it took no more 
 time to make a pair of honest shoes which lasted a 
 year, than it took to make a pair of dishonest shoes 
 that lasted a week, the amount of labor in shoemak- 
 ing was at once enormously reduced." 
 
276 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " Yes," said the professor 1 , " I understand that. 
 What became of the shoemakers ? " 
 
 " They joined the vast army of other laborers who 
 had been employed, directly or indirectly, in the fab- 
 rication of fradulent wares. These shoemakers — 
 lasters, buttonholers, binders, and so on — no longer 
 wore themselves out over their machines. One hour 
 sufficed where twelve hours were needed before, and 
 the operatives were released to the happy labor of the 
 fields, where no one with us toils killingly, from dawn 
 till dusk, but does only. as much work as. is needed to 
 keep the body in health. We had a continent to 
 refine and beautify ; we had climates to change, and 
 seasons to modify, a whole system of meteorology to 
 readjust, and the public works gave employment to 
 the multitudes emancipated from the soul-destroying 
 service of shams. I can scarcely give you a notion of 
 the vastness of the improvements undertaken and car- 
 ried through, or still in process of accomplishment. 
 But a single one will, perhaps, afford a sufficient illus- 
 tration. Our southeast coast, from its vicinity to the 
 pole, had always suffered from a winter of antarctic 
 rigor ; but our first president conceived the plan of 
 cutting off a peninsula, which kept the equatorial 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 277 
 
 current from making in to our shores ; and the work 
 was begun in his term, though the entire strip, twenty 
 miles in width and ninety-three in length, was not 
 severed before the end of the first Altrurian decade. 
 Since that time the whole region of our southeastern 
 coast has enjoyed the climate of your Mediterrean 
 countries. 
 
 " It was not only the makers of fradulent things 
 who were released to these useful and wholesome 
 labors, but those who had spent themselves in con- 
 triving ugly and stupid and foolish things were set 
 free to the public employments. The multitude of 
 these monstrosities and iniquities was as great as that 
 of the shams " — 
 
 Here I lost some words, for the professor leaned 
 over and whispered to me : " He has got that out of 
 William Morris. Depend upon it, the man is a hum- 
 bug. He is not an Altrurian at all." 
 
 I confess that my heart misgave me ; but I signalled 
 the professor to be silent, and again gave the Altrurian 
 — if he was an Altrurian — my whole attention. 
 
XII. 
 
 "And so," the Altrurian continued, " when the 
 labor of the community was emancipated from the 
 bondage of the false to the free service of the true, it. 
 was also, by an inevitable implication, dedicated to 
 beauty and rescued from the old slavery to the ugly, 
 the stupid and the trivial. The thing that was honest 
 and useful became, by the operation of a natural law, 
 a beautiful thing. Once we had not time enough to 
 make things beautiful, we were so overworked in 
 making false and hideous things to sell ; but now we 
 had all the time there was, and a glad emulation arose 
 among the trades and occupations to the end that 
 everything done should be done finely as well as done 
 honestly. The artist, the man of genius, who worked 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 279 
 
 from the love of his work became the normal man, 
 and in the measure of his ability and of his calling 
 each wrought in the spirit of the artist. We got back 
 the pleasure of doing a thing beautifully, which was 
 God's prunal blessing upon all his working children, 
 but which we had lost in the horrible days of our 
 need and greed. There is not a working man within 
 the sound of my voice, but has known this divine 
 delight, and would gladly know it always if he only 
 had the time. Well, now we had the time, the Evolu- 
 tion had given us the time, and in all Altruria there 
 was not a furrow driven or a swath mown, not a 
 hammer struck on house or on ship, not a stitch sewn 
 or a stone laid, not a line written or a sheet printed, 
 not a temple raised or an engine built, but it was 
 done with an eye to beauty as well as to use. 
 
 " As soon as we were freed from the necessity of 
 preying upon one another, we found that there was no 
 hurry. The good work would wait to be well done ; 
 and one of the earliest effects of the Evolution was 
 the disuse of the swift trains which had traversed the 
 continent, night and day, that one man might over- 
 reach another, or make haste to undersell his rival, or 
 seize some advantage of him, or plot some profit to 
 
280 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 his loss. Nine-tenths of the railroads, which in the 
 old times had ruinously competed, and then in the 
 hands of the Accumulation had been united to impov- 
 erish and oppress the people, fell into disuse. The 
 commonwealth operated the few lines that were 
 necessary for the collection of materials and the dis- 
 tribution of manufactures, and for pleasure travel 
 and the affairs of state : but the roads that had been 
 built to invest capital, or parallel other roads, or 'make 
 work,' as it was called, or to develop resources, or 
 boom localities, were suffered to fall into ruin ; the 
 rails were stripped from the landscape, which they 
 had bound as with shackles, and the road-beds became 
 highways for the use of kindly neighborhoods, or 
 nature recovered them wholly and hid the memory of 
 their former abuse in grass and flowers and wild vines. 
 The ugly towns that they had forced into being, as 
 Frankenstein was fashioned, from the materials of the 
 charnel, and that had no life in or from the good of 
 the community, soon tumbled into decay. The ad- 
 ministration used parts of them in the construction of 
 the villages in which the Altrurians now mostly live ; 
 but generally these towns were built of materials so 
 fraudulent, in form so vile, that it was judged best to 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 281 
 
 burn them. In this way their sites were at once 
 purified and obliterated. 
 
 " We had, of course, a great many large cities 
 under the old egoistic conditions, which increased 
 and fattened upon the country, and fed their cancer- 
 ous life with fresh infusions of its blood. We had 
 several cities of half a million, and one of more than a 
 million ; we had a score of them with a population of 
 a hundred thousand or more. We were very proud 
 of them, and vaunted them as a proof of our un- 
 paralleled prosperity, though really they never were 
 anything but congeries of millionaires and the 
 wretched creatures who served them and supplied 
 them. Of course, there was everywhere the appear- 
 ance of enterprise and activity, but it meant final loss 
 for the great mass of the business men, large and 
 small, and final gain for the millionaires. These, and 
 their parasites dwelt together, the rich starving the 
 poor and the poor plundering and mis-governing the 
 rich ; and it was the intolerable suffering in the cities 
 that chiefly hastened the fall of the old Accumulation, 
 and the rise of the Commonwealth. 
 
 "Almost from the moment of the Evolution the 
 competitive and monopolistic centers of population 
 
282 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 began to decline. In the clear light of the new order it 
 was seen that they were not fit dwelling-places for men, 
 either in the complicated and luxurious palaces where 
 the rich fenced themselves from their kind, or in the 
 vast tenements, towering height upon height, ten and 
 twelve stories up, where the swarming poor festered 
 in vice and sickness and famine. If I were to tell 
 you of the fashion of those cities of our egoistic 
 epoch, how the construction was one error from the 
 first, and every correction of an error bred a new 
 defect, I should make you laugh, I should make you 
 weep. We let them fall to ruin as quickly as they 
 would, and their sites arc still so pestilential, after the 
 lapse of centuries, that travellers are publicly guarded 
 against them. Ravening beasts and poisonous reptiles 
 lurk in those abodes of the riches and the poverty 
 that are no longer known to our life. A part of one 
 of the less malarial of the old cities, however, is main- 
 tained by the commonwealth in the form of its 
 prosperity, and is studied by antiquarians for the 
 instruction, and by moralists for the admonition it 
 affords. A section of a street is exposed, and you see 
 the foundations of the houses; you see the filthy drains 
 that belched into the common sewers, trapped and re- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 283 
 
 trapped to keep the poison gases down ; you see the 
 sewers that rolled their loathsome tides under the 
 streets, amidst a tangle of gas pipes, steam pipes, 
 water pipes, telegraph wires, electric lighting wires, 
 electric motor wires and grip-cables ; all without a plan,' 
 but make-shifts, expedients, devices, to repair and 
 evade the fundamental mistake of having any such 
 cities at all. 
 
 " There are now no cities in Altruria, in your mean- 
 ing, but there are capitals, one for each of the Regions 
 of our country, and one for the whole commonwealth. 
 These capitals are for the transaction of public affairs, 
 in which every citizen of Altruria is schooled, and 
 they are the residences of the administrative officials, 
 who are alternated every year, from the highest to the 
 lowest. A public employment with us is of no 
 greater honor or profit than any other, for with our 
 absolute economic equality, there can be no ambition, 
 and there is no opportunity for one citizen to out- 
 shine another. But as the capitals are the centers of 
 all the arts, which we consider the chief of our public 
 affairs, they are oftenest frequented by poets, actors, 
 painters, sculptors, musicians and architects. We 
 regard all artists, who are in a sort creators, as the 
 
28-i A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 human type which is likest the divine, and we try to 
 conform our whole industrial life to the artistic tem- 
 perament. Even in the labors of the field and shop, 
 which are obligatory upon all, we study the inspira- 
 tions of this temperament, and in the voluntary 
 pursuits we allow it full control. Each, in these, 
 follows his fancy as to what he shall do, and when he 
 shall do it, or whether he shall do anything at all. In 
 the capitals are the universities, theaters, galleries, mu- 
 seums, cathedrals, laboratories and conservatories, and 
 the appliances of every art and science, as well as the 
 administration buildings ; and beauty as well as use is 
 studied in every edifice. Our capitals are as clean 
 and quiet and healthful as the country, and these 
 advantages are secured simply by the elimination of 
 the horse, an animal which we should be as much sur- 
 prised to find in the streets of a town as the plesio- 
 saurus or the pterodactyl. All transportation in the 
 capitals, whether for pleasure or business, is by 
 electricity, and swift electrical expresses connect the 
 capital of each region with the villages which radiate 
 from it to the cardinal points. These expresses run at 
 the rate of a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and 
 they enable the artist, the scientist, the literary man, of 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 285 
 
 the remotest hamlet, to visit the capital (when he is 
 not actually resident there in some public use) every 
 day, after the hours of the obligatory industries ; or if 
 he likes, he may remain there a whole week or fort- 
 night, giving six hours a day instead of three to the 
 obligatories, until the time is made up. In case of 
 very evident merit, or for the purpose of allowing him 
 to complete some work requiring continuous applica- 
 tion, a vote of the local agents may release him from 
 the obligatories indefinitely. Generally, however, our 
 artists prefer not to ask this, but avail themselves of 
 the stated means we have of allowing them to work at 
 the obligatories, and get the needed exercise and 
 variety of occupation, in the immediate vicinity of the 
 capital. 
 
 " We do not think it well to connect the hamlets on 
 the different lines of radiation from the capital, 
 except by the good country roads which traverse each 
 region in every direction. The villages are mainly 
 inhabited by those who prefer a rural life ; they are 
 farming villages; but in Altruria it can hardly be said 
 that one man is more a farmer than another. We do 
 not like to distinguish men by their callings ; we do 
 not speak of the poet This or the shoemaker That, for 
 
286 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 the poet may very likely be a shoemaker in the 
 obligatories, and the shoemaker a poet in the volun- 
 taries. If it can be said that one occupation is 
 honored above another with us, it is that which we 
 all share, and that is the cultivation of the earth. We 
 believe that this, when not followed slavishly, or for 
 gain, brings man into the closest relations to the deity, 
 through a grateful sense of the divine bounty, and 
 that it not only awakens a natural piety in him, but 
 that it endears to the worker that piece of soil which 
 he tills, and so strengthens his love of home. The 
 home is the very heart of the Altrurian system, and 
 we do not think it well that people should be away 
 from their homes very long or very often. In the com- 
 petitive and monopolistic times men spent half their 
 days in racing back and forth across our continent ; 
 families were scattered by the chase for fortune, and 
 there was a perpetual paying and repaying of visits. 
 One-half the income of those railroads which we let 
 fall into disuse came from the ceaseless unrest. Now 
 a man is born and lives and dies among his own kin- 
 dred, and the sweet sense of neighborhood, of brother- 
 hood, which blessed the golden age of the first 
 Christian republic is ours again. Every year the 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 287 
 
 people of each Region meet one another on Evolution 
 day, in the Regionic capital ; once in four years they 
 all visit the national capital. There is no danger of 
 the decay of patriotism among us ; our country is our 
 mother, and we love her as it is impossible to love the 
 stepmother that a competitive or monopolistic nation 
 must be to its citizens. 
 
 " I can only touch upon this feature and that of our 
 system, as I chance to think of it. If any of you are 
 curious about others, I shall be glad to answer 
 questions as well as I can. We have, of course," the 
 Altrurian proceeded, after little indefinite pause, to let 
 any speak who liked, " no money in your sense. 
 As the whole people control affairs, no man works for 
 another, aud no man pays another. Every one does 
 his share of labor, and receives his share of food, 
 clothing and shelter, which is neither more nor less 
 than another's. If you can imagine the justice and 
 impartiality of a well-ordered family, you can conceive 
 of the social and economic life of Altruria. We are, 
 properly speaking, a family rather than a nation 
 like yours. 
 
 " Of course, we are somewhat favored by our 
 
 insular, or continental position ; but I do not know 
 19 
 
288 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA, 
 
 that we are more so than you are. Certainly, how 
 ever, we are self-sufficing in a degree unknown to 
 most European countries ; and we have within our 
 borders the materials of every comfort and the 
 resources of every need. We have no commerce with 
 the egoistic world, as we call that outside, and I 
 believe that I am the first Altrurian to visit foreign 
 countries avowedly in my national character, though 
 we have always had emissaries living abroad incog- 
 nito. I hope that I may say without offense that 
 they find it a sorrowful exile, and that the reports of 
 the egoistic world, with its wars, its bankruptcies, its 
 civic commotions and its social unhappiness, do not 
 make us discontented with our own condition. 
 Before the Evolution we had completed the round of 
 your inventions and discoveries, impelled by the force 
 that drives you on ; and we have since disused most 
 of them as idle and unfit. But we profit, now and 
 then, by the advances you make in science, for we 
 are passionately devoted to the study of the natural 
 laws, open or occult, under which all men have their 
 being. Occasionally an emissary returns with a sum 
 of money, and explains to the students of the national 
 university the processes by which it is lost and won ; 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 289 
 
 and at a certain time there was a movement for its 
 introduction among us, not for its use as you know 
 it, but for a species of counters in games of chance. 
 It was considered, however, to contain an element of 
 danger, and the scheme was discouraged. 
 
 " Nothing amuses and puzzles our people more than 
 the accounts our emissaries give of the changes of 
 fashion in the outside world, and of the ruin of soul 
 and body which the love of dress often works. Our 
 own dress, for men and for women, is studied in one 
 ideal of use and beauty, from the antique ; caprice and 
 vagary in it would be thought an effect of vulgar van- 
 ity. Nothing is worn that is not simple and honest 
 in texture ; we do not know whether a thing is cheap 
 or dear, except as it is easy or hard to come by, and 
 that which is hard to come by is forbidden as waste- 
 ful and foolish. The community builds the dwellings 
 of the community, and these, too, are of a classic sim- 
 plicity, though always beautiful and fit in form ; the 
 splendors of the arts are lavished upon the public 
 edifices, which we all enjoy in common. 
 
 " Isn't this the greatest rehash of Utopia, New 
 Atlantis, and City of the Sun, that you ever im- 
 agined ? " the professor whispered across me to the 
 
290 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 banker. " The man is a fraud, and a very bungling 
 fraud at that." 
 
 "Well, you must expose him, when he gets 
 through, 1 ' the banker whispered back. 
 
 But the professor could not wait. He got upon his 
 feet, and called out ; " May I ask the gentleman from 
 Altruria a question ? " 
 
 " Certainly," the Altrurian blandly assented. 
 
 " Make it short ! " Reuben Camp's voice broke in, 
 impatiently. " We didn't come here to listen to your 
 questions." 
 
 The professor contemptously ignored him. " I 
 suppose you occasionally receive emissaries from, as 
 well as send them to the world outside ? " 
 
 u Yes, now and then castaways land on our coasts, 
 and ships out of their reckonings put in at our ports, 
 for water or provision." 
 
 " And how are they pleased with your system ? " 
 
 " Why, I cannot better answer than by saying that 
 they mostly refuse to leave us." 
 
 " Ah, just as Bacon reports ! " cried the professor. 
 
 "You mean in the New Atlantis?" returned the 
 Altrurian. " Yes ; it is astonishing how well Bacon 
 in that book, and Sir Thomas More in his Utopia, 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 291 
 
 have divined certain phases of our civilization and 
 polity." 
 
 " I think he rather has you, professor," the banker 
 whispered, with a laugh. 
 
 " But all those inspired visionaries," the Altrurian 
 continued, while the professor sat grimly silent, watch- 
 ing for another chance, "who have borne testimony 
 of us in their dreams, conceived of states perfect with- 
 out the discipline of a previous competitive condition. 
 What I thought, however, might specially interest you 
 Americans in Altruria is the fact that our economy 
 was evolved from one so like that in which you actu- 
 ally have your being. I had even hoped you might 
 feel that, in all these points of resemblance, American 
 prophesies another Altruria. I know that to some of 
 you all that I have told of my country will seem a 
 baseless fabric, with no more foundation, in fact, than 
 More's fairy tale of another land where men dealt 
 kindly and justly by one another, and dwelt, a whole 
 nation, in the unity and equality of a family. But 
 why should not a part of that fable have come true in 
 our polity, as another part of it has come true in 
 yours ? When Sir Thomas More wrote that book, he 
 noted with abhorence the monstrous injustice of the 
 
292 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 fact that men were hanged for small thefts in Eng- 
 land ; and in the preliminary conversation hetween its 
 characters he denounced the killing of men for any 
 sort of thefts. Now you no longer put men to death 
 for theft ; you look back upon that cruel code of your 
 mother England with an abhorrence as great as his 
 own. We, for our part, who have realized the Uto- 
 pian dream of brotherly equality, look back with the 
 same abhorrence upon a state where some were rich and 
 some poor, some taught and some untaught, some high 
 and some low, and the hardest toil often failed to 
 supply a sufficiency of the food which luxury wasted 
 in its riots. That state seems as atrocious to us as 
 the state which hanged a man for stealing a loaf of 
 bread seems to you. 
 
 " But we do not regret the experience of competition 
 and monopoly. They taught us some things in the 
 operation of the industries. The labor-saving inven- 
 tions which the Accumulation perverted to money- 
 making, we have restored to the use intended by their 
 inventors and the Creator of their inventors. After 
 serving the advantage of socializing the industries 
 which the Accumulation effected for its own purposes, 
 we continued the work in large mills and shops, in the 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 293 
 
 interest of the workers, whom we wished to guard 
 against the evil effects of solitude. But our mills and 
 shops are beautiful as well as useful. They look like 
 temples, and they are temples, dedicated to that sym- 
 pathy between the divine and human which expresses 
 itself in honest and exquisite workmanship. They rise 
 amid leafy boscages beside the streams, which form 
 their only power : for we have disused steam altogether, 
 with all the offenses to the eye and ear which its use 
 brought into the world. Our life is so simple and our 
 needs are so few that the handwork of the primitive 
 toilers could easily supply our wants ; but machinery 
 works so much more thoroughly and beautifully, that 
 we have in great measure retained it. Only, the 
 machines that were once the workman's enemies and 
 masters are now their friends and servants ; and if any 
 man chooses to work alone with his own hands, the 
 state will buy what he makes at the same price that 
 it sells the wares made collectively. This secures 
 every right of individuality. 
 
 " The farm work, as well as the mill work and the 
 shop work, is done by companies of workers ; and 
 there is nothing of that loneliness in our woods and 
 fields which, I understand, is the cause of so much in- 
 
294 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 sanity among you. It is not good for man to be 
 alone, was the first thought of his Creator when he 
 considered him, and we act upon this truth in every- 
 thing. The privacy of the family is sacredly guarded 
 in essentials, but the social instinct is so highly devel- 
 oped with us that we like to eat together in large 
 refectories, and we meet constantly to argue and 
 dispute on questions of aesthetics and metaphysics. 
 We do not, perhaps, read so many books as you do, 
 for most of our reading, when not for special research, 
 but for culture and entertainment, is done by public 
 readers, to large groups of listeners. AVe have no 
 social meetings which are not free to all; and we 
 encourage joking and the friendly give and take of 
 witty encounters." 
 
 " A little hint from Sparta,'' suggested the professor. 
 
 The banker leaned over to whisper to me, "From 
 what I have seen of your friend when offered a piece 
 of American humor, I should fancy the Altrurian arti- 
 cle was altogether different. Upon the whole I would 
 rather not be present at one of their witty encounters, 
 if I were obliged to stay it out." 
 
 The Altrurian had paused to drink a glass of water, 
 and now he went on. " But we try, in everything 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 295 
 
 that does not inconvenience or injure others, to let 
 everyone live the life he likes best. If a man prefers 
 to dwell apart and have his meals in private for him- 
 self alone, or for his family, it is freely permitted ; 
 only, he must not expect to be served as in public, 
 where service is one of the voluntaries ; private service 
 is not permitted ; those wishing to live alone must wait 
 upon themselves, cook their own food and care for 
 their own tables. Very few, however, wish to with- 
 draw from the public life, for most of the discussions 
 and debates take place at our midday meal, which falls 
 at the end of the obligatory labors, and is prolonged 
 indefinitely, or as long as people like to chat and joke, 
 or listen to the reading of some pleasant book. 
 
 " In Altruria there is no hurry, for no one wishes to 
 outstrip another, or in any wise surpass him. We are 
 all assured of enough, and are forbidden any and every 
 sort of superfluity. If anyone, after the obligatories, 
 wishes to be entirely idle, he may be so, but I cannot 
 now think of a single person without some voluntary 
 occupation ; doubtless there are such persons, but I do 
 not know them. It used to be said, in the old times, 
 that ' it was human nature ' to shirk, and malinger and 
 loaf, but we have found that it is no such thing. We 
 
296 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 have found that it is human nature to work cheerfully, 
 willingly, eagerly, at the tasks which all share for the 
 supply of the common necessities. In like manner we 
 have found out that it is not human nature to hoard 
 and grudge, but that when the fear, and even the im- 
 agination, of want is taken away, it is human nature 
 to give and to help generously. We used to say, ' A 
 man will lie, or a man will cheat in his own interest ; 
 that is human nature,' but that is no longer human 
 nature with us, perhaps because no man has any 
 interest to serve ; he has only the interests of others 
 to serve, while others serve his. It is in nowise pos- 
 sible for the individual to separate his good from the 
 common good ; he is prosperous and happy only as all 
 the rest are so ; and therefore it is not human nature 
 with us for anyone to lie in wait to betray another 
 or seize an advantage. That would be ungentlemanly, 
 and in Altruria every man is a gentleman, and every 
 woman a lady. If you will excuse me here, for being 
 so frank, I would like to say something by way of 
 illustration, which may be offensive if you take it 
 personally." 
 
 He looked at our little group, as if he were address- 
 ing himself more especially to us, and the banker 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 297 
 
 called out jollity : " Go on ! I guess we can stand it," 
 and " Go ahead ! " came from all sides, from all kinds 
 of listeners. 
 
 " It is merely this : that as we look back at the old 
 competitive conditions we do not see how any man 
 could be a gentleman in them, since a gentleman must 
 think first of others, and these conditions compelled 
 every man to think first of himself." 
 
 There was a silence broken by some conscious and 
 hardy laughter, while we each swallowed this pill as 
 we could. 
 
 " What are competitive conditions ? " Mrs. Makely 
 demanded of me. 
 
 "Well, ours are competitive conditions," I said. 
 
 " Very well, then," she returned, " I don't think 
 Mr. Homos is much of a gentleman to say such a 
 thing to an American audience. Or, wait a moment ! 
 Ask him if the same rule applies to women ! " 
 
 I rose, strengthened by the resentment I felt, and 
 said, " Do I understand that in your former competi- 
 tive conditions it was also impossible for a woman to 
 be a lady ? " 
 
 The professor gave me an applausive nod as I sat 
 down. « I envy you the chance of that little dio- " 
 he whispered. 
 
298 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 The Altrurian was thoughtful a moment, and then 
 he answered : " No, I should not say it was. From 
 what we know historically of those conditions in our 
 country, it appears that the great mass of women were 
 not directly affected by them. They constituted an 
 altruristic dominion of the egoistic empire and 
 except as they were tainted by social or worldly am- 
 bitions, it was possible for every woman to be a lady, 
 even in competitive conditions. Her instincts were 
 unselfish, and her first thoughts were nearly always 
 of others." 
 
 Mrs. Makely jumped to her feet, and clapped vio- 
 lently with her fan on the palm of her left hand. 
 " Three cheers for Mr. Homos ! " she shrieked, and 
 all the women took up the cry, supported by all the 
 natives and the construction gang. I fancied these 
 fellows gave their support largely in a spirit of bur- 
 lesque ; but they gave it robustly, and from that time 
 on, Mrs. Makely led the applause, and they roared in 
 after her. 
 
 It is impossible to follow closely the course of the 
 Altrurian's account of his country, which grew more 
 and more incredible as he went on, and implied every 
 insulting criticism of ours. Some one asked him 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 299 
 
 about war in Altruria, and he said, " The very name 
 of our country implies the absence of war. At the 
 time of the Evolution our country bore to the rest of 
 our continent the same relative proportion that your 
 country bears to your continent. The egoistic nations 
 to the north and the south of us entered into an offen- 
 sive and defensive alliance to put down the new 
 altruistic commonwealth, and declared war against us. 
 Their forces were met at the frontier by our entire 
 population in arms, and full of the martial spirit bred of 
 the constant hostilities of the competitive and monop- 
 listic epoch just ended. Negotiations began in the 
 face of the imposing demonstration we made, and we 
 were never afterward molested by our neighbors, who 
 finally yielded to the spectacle of our civilization and 
 united their political and social fate with ours. At 
 present, our whole continent is Altrurian. For a long 
 time we kept up a system of coast defenses, but it is 
 also a long time since we abandoned these ; for it is a 
 maxim with us that where every citizen's life is a 
 pledge of the public safety, that country can never be 
 in danger of foreign enemies. 
 
 " In this, as in all other things, we believe ourselves 
 the true followers of Christ, whose doctrine we seek 
 
300 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 to make our life, as He made it His. We have sev- 
 eral forms of ritual, but no form of creed, and our 
 religious differences may be said to be aesthetic and 
 temperamental rather than theological and essential. 
 We have no denominations, for we fear in this as in 
 other matters to give names to things lest we should 
 cling to the names instead of the things. We love 
 the realities, and for this reason we look at the life of 
 a man rather than his profession for proof that he is 
 a religious man. 
 
 " I have been several times asked, during my so- 
 journ among you, what are the sources of compassion, 
 of sympathy, of humanity, of charity with us, if we 
 have not only no want, or fear of want, but not even 
 any economic inequality. I suppose this is because 
 you are so constantly struck by the misery arising 
 from economic inequality, and want, or the fear of 
 want, among yourselves, that you instinctively look in 
 that direction. But have you ever seen sweeter com- 
 passion, tenderer sympathy, warmer humanity, heav- 
 enlier charity, than that shown in the family, where 
 all are economically equal, and no one can want while 
 any other has to give ? Altruria, I say again, is a 
 family, and as we are mortal, we are still subject to 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 301 
 
 those nobler sorrows which God has appointed to 
 men, and which are so different from the squalid 
 accidents that they have made for themselves. Sick- 
 ness and death call out the most angelic ministeries of 
 love ; and those who wish to give themselves to others 
 may do so without hindrance from those cares, and 
 even those duties, resting upon men where each must 
 look out first for himself and for his own. Oh, be- 
 lieve me, believe me, you can know nothing of the 
 divine rapture of self-sacrifice while you must dread 
 the sacrifice of another in it ! You are not free, as 
 we are, to do everything for others, for it is your duty 
 to do rather for those of your own household ! 
 
 " There is something," he continued, " which I 
 hardly know how to speak of," and here we all began 
 to prick our ears. I prepared myself as well as I 
 could for another affront, though I shuddered when 
 the banker hardily called out : " Don't hesitate to say 
 anything you wish, Mr. Homos. I, for one, should 
 like to hear you express yourself fully." 
 
 It was always the unexpected, certainly, that hap- 
 pened from the Altrurian. " It is merely this," he 
 said. " Having come to live rightly upon earth, as 
 we believe, or having at least ceased to deny God in 
 
302 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 our statutes and customs, the fear of death, as it once 
 weighed upon us, has been lifted from our souls. 
 The mystery of it has so far been taken away that we 
 perceive it as something just and natural. Now that 
 all unkindncss has been banished from among us, we 
 can conceive of no such cruelty as death once seemed. 
 If we do not know yet the full meaning of death, we 
 know that the Creator of it and of us meant mercy 
 and blessing by it. "When one dies, we grieve, but 
 not as those without hope. We do not say that the 
 dead have gone to a better place, and then selfishly 
 bewail them ; for we have the kingdom of heaven up- 
 on earth, already, and we know that wherever they go 
 they will be homesick for Altruria, and when we think 
 of the years that may pass before we meet them again, 
 our hearts ache, as they must. But the presence of the 
 risen Christ in our daily lives is our assurance that no 
 one ceases to be, and that we shall see our dead again. 
 I cannot explain this to you ; I can only affirm it." 
 
 The Altrurian spoke very solemnly, and a reverent 
 hush fell upon the assembly. It was broken by the 
 voice of a woman wailing out : " Oh, do you suppose, 
 if we lived so, we should feel so, too ? That I should 
 know my little girl w T as living ? " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 303 
 
 " Why not ? " asked the Altrurian. 
 
 To my vast astonishment, the manufacturer, who 
 sat the farthest from me in the same line with Mrs. 
 Makely, the professor and the banker, rose and asked 
 tremulously : " And have — have you had any direct 
 communication with the other world ? Has any dis- 
 embodied spirit returned to testify of the life beyond 
 the grave ? " 
 
 The professor nodded significantly across Mrs. 
 Makely to me, and then frowned and shook his head. 
 I asked her if she knew what he meant. " Why, 
 didn't you know that spiritualism was that poor man's 
 foible ? He lost his son in a railroad accident, and 
 ever since" — 
 
 She stopped and gave her attention to the Altru- 
 rian, who was replying to the manufacturer's ques- 
 tion. 
 
 " We do not need any such testimony. Our life 
 
 here makes us sure of the life there. At any rate, no 
 
 extcrnation of the supernatural, no objective miracle, 
 
 has been wrought in our behalf. We have had faith 
 
 to do what we prayed for, and the prescience of 
 
 which I speak has been added unto us." 
 
 The manufacturer asked, as the bereaved mother 
 20 
 
304 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 had asked : " And if I lived so, should 1 feel so ? " 
 Again the Altrurian answered : " Why not ? " 
 The poor woman quavered : " Oh, do believe it ! 
 I just knoiu it must be true ! " 
 
 The manufacturer shook his liead sorrowfully, and 
 sat down, and remained there, looking at the ground. 
 " I am aware," the Altrurian went on, " that what 
 I have said as to our realizing the kingdom of heaven 
 on the earth must seem boastful and arrogant. That 
 is what you pray for everyday, but you do not believe 
 it possible for God's will to be done on earth as it is 
 done in heaven ; that is, you do not if you are like 
 the competitive and monopolistic people we once 
 were. We once regarded that petition as a formula 
 vaguely pleasing to the Deity, but we no more 
 expected His kingdom to come than we expected 
 Him to give us each day our daily bread ; we knew 
 that if we wanted something to eat we should have 
 to hustle for it, and get there first ; I use the slang of 
 that far-off time, which, I confess, had a vulgar 
 vigor. 
 
 " But now everything is changed, and the change 
 has taken place chiefly from one cause, namely, the 
 disuse of money. At first, it was thought that some 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 305 
 
 sort of circulating medium must be used, that life 
 could not be transacted without it, But life began 
 to go on perfectly well, when each dwelt in the place 
 assigned him, which was no better and no worse than 
 any other ; and when, after he had given his three 
 hours a day to the obligatory labors, he had a right 
 to his share of food, light, heat, and raiment ; the 
 voluntary labors, to which he gave much time or 
 little, brought him no increase of those necessaries, 
 but only credit and affection. We had always heard 
 it said that the love of money was the root of all evil, 
 but we had taken this for a saying, merely; now we 
 realized it as an active, vital truth. As soon as 
 money was abolished, the power to purchase was 
 gone, and even if there had been any means of buying 
 beyond the daily needs, with overwork, the commu- 
 nity had no power to sell to the individual. No man 
 owned anything, but every man had the right to any- 
 thing that he could use ; when he could not use it, 
 his right lapsed. 
 
 "With the expropriation of the individual, the 
 whole vast catalogue of crimes against property shrank 
 to nothing. The thief could only steal from the 
 community; but if he stole, what was he to do with 
 
306 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 his booty ? It was still possible for a depredator to 
 destroy, but few men's hate is so comprehensive as to 
 include all other men, and when the individual could 
 no longer hurt some other individual in his property, 
 destruction ceased. 
 
 "All the many murders done from love of money, 
 or of what money could buy, were at an end. Where 
 there was no want, men no longer bartered their souls, 
 or women their bodies, for the means to keep them- 
 selves alive. The vices vanished with the crimes, and 
 the diseases almost as largely disappeared. People 
 were no longer sickened by sloth and surfeit, or de- 
 formed and depicted by overwork and famine. They 
 were wholesomely housed in healthful places, and 
 they were clad fitly for their labor and fitly for their 
 leisure ; the caprices of vanity were not suffered to 
 attaint the beauty of the national dress. 
 
 " With the stress of superfluous social and business 
 duties, and the perpetual fear of want which all 
 classes felt, more or less ; with the tumult of the 
 cities and the solitude of the country, insanity had 
 increased among us till the whole land was dotted 
 with asylums, and the mad were numbered by 
 hundreds of thousands. In every region they were 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 307 
 
 an army, an awful army of anguish and dispair. Now 
 they have decreased to a number so small, and are of 
 a type so mild, that we can hardly count insanity 
 among our causes of unhappiness. 
 
 " AVc have totally eliminated chance from our eco- 
 nomic life. There is still a chance that a man will be 
 tall or short, in Altruria, that he will be strong or 
 weak, well or ill, gay or grave, happy or unhappy in 
 love, but none that he will be rich or poor, busy or 
 idle, live splendidly or meanly. These stupid and vul- 
 gar accidents of human contrivance cannot befall us ; 
 but I shall not be able to tell you just how or why, 
 or to detail the process of eliminating chance. I may 
 say, however, that it began with the nationalization 
 of telegraphs, expresses, railroads, mines and all large 
 industries operated by stock companies. This at 
 once struck a fatal blow at the speculation in values, 
 real and unreal, and at the stock exchange, or bourse ; 
 we had our own name for that gambler's paradise, or 
 gambler's hell, whose baleful influence penetrated 
 every branch of business. 
 
 " There were still business fluctuations, as long as 
 we had business, but they were on a smaller and 
 smaller scale, and with the final lapse of business they 
 
308 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRl'RIA. 
 
 necessarily vanished; all economic chance vanished. 
 The founders of the common-wealth understood per- 
 fectly that business was the sterile activity of the 
 function interposed between the demand and the 
 supply ; that it was nothing structural ; and they in- 
 tended its extinction, and expected it from the moment 
 that money was abolished." 
 
 " This is all pretty tiresome," said the professor, to 
 our immediate party. " I don't sec why we oblige 
 ourselves to listen to that fellow's stuff. As if a civ- 
 ilized state could exist for a day without money or 
 business." 
 
 He went on to give his opinion of the Altrurian's 
 pretended description, in a tone so audible that it 
 attracted the notice of the nearest group of railroad 
 bands, who were listening closely to Homos, and one 
 of them sang out to the professor : " Can't you wait 
 and let the first man finish ? " and another yelled : 
 " Put him out ! " and then they all laughed with a 
 humorous perception of the impossibility of literally 
 executing the suggestion. 
 
 By the time all was quiet again I heard the Altru- 
 rian saying : " As to our social life, I cannot describe 
 it in detail, but I can give you some notion of its 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 309 
 
 spirit. We make our pleasures civic and public as 
 far as possible, and the ideal is inclusive, and not ex- 
 clusive. There are, of course, festivities which all 
 cannot share, but our distribution into small comma 
 nities favors the possibility of all doing so. Our daily 
 life, however, is so largely social that we seldom meet 
 by special invitation or engagement. When we do, it 
 is with the perfect understanding that the assemblage 
 confers no social distinction, but is for a momentary 
 convenience. In fact, these occasions are rather 
 avoided, recalling as they do the vapid and tedious 
 entertainments of the competitive epoch, the recep- 
 tions and balls and dinners of a semi-barbaric people 
 striving for social prominence by shutting a certain 
 number in and a certain number out, and overdressing, 
 overfeeding and overdrinking. Anything premedi- 
 tated in the way of a pleasure we think stupid and 
 mistaken ; we like to meet suddenly, or on the spur 
 of the moment, out of doors, if possible, and arrange 
 a picnic, or a dance, or a play ; and let people come 
 and go without ceremony. No one is more host than 
 guest ; all are hosts and guests. People consort much 
 according to their tastes—literary, musical, artistic, 
 scientific, or mechanical— but these tastes are made 
 
310 A TRAVELER PROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 approaches, not barriers ; and we find out that we 
 have many more tastes in common than was formerly 
 supposed. 
 
 " But, after all, our life is serious, and no one 
 among us is quite happy, in the general esteem, un- 
 less he has dedicated himself, in some special way, to 
 the general good. Our ideal is not rights, but duties." 
 
 " Mazzini ! " whispered the professor. 
 
 " The greatest distinction which anyone can enjoy 
 with us is to have found out some new and signal way 
 of serving the community ; and then it is not good 
 form for him to seek recognition. The doing any 
 fine thing is the purest pleasure it can give ; applause 
 flatters, but it hurts, too, and our benefactors, as we 
 call them, have learned to shun it. 
 
 " We are still far from thinking our civilization 
 perfect ; but we are sure that our civic ideals are per- 
 fect. What we have already accomplished is to have 
 given a whole continent perpetual peace ; to have 
 founded an economy in which there is no possibility 
 of want ; to have killed out political and social am- 
 bition ; to have disused money and eliminated chance; 
 to have realized the brotherhood of the race, and to 
 have outlived the fear of death." 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 311 
 
 The Altrurian suddenly stopped with these words, 
 and sat down. He had spoken a long time, and with 
 a fullness which my report gives little notion of ; hut, 
 though most of his cultivated listeners were weary, 
 and a good many ladies had left their seats and gone 
 back to the hotel, not one of the natives, or the work- 
 people of any sort, had stirred ; now they remained a 
 moment motionless and silent, before they rose from 
 all parts of the field, and shouted : " Go on ! Don't 
 stop! Tell us all about it!" 
 
 I saw Reuben Camp climb the shoulders of a big 
 fellow near where the Altrurian had stood ; he waved 
 the crowd to silence with outspread arms. " He isn't 
 going to say anything more ; he's tired. But if any 
 man don't think he's got his dollar's worth, let him 
 walk up to the door and the ticket-agent will refund 
 him his money." 
 
 The crowd laughed, and some one shouted : " Good 
 for you, Keub ! " 
 
 Camp continued : " But our friend here will shake 
 the hand of any man, woman or child, that wants to 
 speak to him ; and you needn't wipe it on the grass, 
 first, either. He's a man ! And I want to say that 
 he's going to spend the next week with us, at my 
 
312 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 mother's house, and we shall be glad to have yon 
 call." 
 
 The crowd, the rustic and ruder part of it, cheered 
 and cheered till the mountain echoes answered ; then 
 a railroader called for three times three, with a tiger, 
 and got it. The guests of the hotel broke away and 
 went toward the house, over the long shadows of the 
 meadow. The lower classes pressed forward, on 
 Camp's invitation. 
 
 " Well, did you ever hear a more disgusting rigma 
 role ? " asked Mrs. Makely, as our little group halted 
 indecisively about her. 
 
 l> With all those imaginary commonwealths to draw 
 upon, from Plato, through More, Bacon, and Campa- 
 nella, down to Bellamy and Morris, he has constructed 
 the shakiest effigy ever made of old clothes stuffed 
 with straw," said the professor. 
 
 The manufacturer was silent. The banker said : 
 " I don't know. He grappled pretty boldly with your 
 insinuations. That frank declaration that Altruria 
 was all these pretty soap-bubble worlds solidified, was 
 rather tine." 
 
 " It was splendid ! " cried Mrs. Makely. The law- 
 yer and the minister came towards us from where they 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 313 
 
 had been sitting together. She called out to them : 
 " Why in the world didn't one of you gentlemen get 
 up and propose a vote of thanks ? " 
 
 " The difficulty with me is," continued the banker, 
 " that he has rendered Altruria incredible. I have no 
 doubt that he is an Altrurian, but I doubt very much 
 if he comes from anywhere in particular, and I find 
 this quite a blow, for we had got Altruria nicely lo- 
 cated on the map, and were beginning to get accounts 
 of it in the newspapers." 
 
 " Yes, that is just exactly the way I feel about it," 
 sighed Mrs. Makely. " But still, don't you think 
 there ought to have been a vote of thanks, Mr. 
 Bullion?" 
 
 " Why, certainly. The fellow was immensely 
 amusing, and you must have got a lot of money by 
 him. It was an oversight not to make him a formal 
 acknowledgment of some kind. If we offered him 
 money, he would have to leave it all behind him here 
 when he went home to Altruria." 
 
 " Just as we do when we go to heaven ;" I suggested; 
 the banker did not answer, and I instantly felt that in 
 the presence of the minister my remark was out of 
 taste. 
 
314 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 " "Well, then, don't you think," said Mrs. Makely, 
 who had a leathery insensibility to everything but the 
 purpose possessing her, " that we ought at least to go 
 and say something to him personally?" 
 
 " Yes, I think we ought," said the banker, and we 
 all walked up to where the Altrurian stood, still 
 thickly surrounded by the lower classes, who were 
 shaking hands with him, and getting in a word with 
 him now and then. 
 
 One of the construction gang said, carelessly : " No 
 all-rail route to Altruria, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No," answered Homos, " it's a far sea voyage." 
 
 " Well, I shouldn't mind working my passage, if 
 you think they'd let me stay after I got there." 
 
 " Ah, you mustn't go to Altruria ! You must let 
 Altruria come to yo«," returned Homos, with that 
 confounded smile of his that always won my heart. 
 
 " Yes," shouted Reuben Camp, whose thin face 
 was red with excitement, " that's the word ! Have 
 Altruria right here, and right now ! " 
 
 The old farmer, who had several times spoken, 
 cackled out : " I didn't know, one while, when you 
 was talk'n' about not havin' no money, but what some 
 on us had had Altrury here for quite a spell, already. 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 315 
 
 I don't pass more'n fifty dolla's through my hands, 
 most years." 
 
 A laugh went up, and then, at sight of Mrs. Makely 
 heading our little party, the people round Homos 
 civilly made way for us. She rushed upon him, and 
 seized his hand in hoth of hers ; she dropped her fan, 
 parasol, gloves, handkerchief and vinaigrette in the 
 grass to do so. " Oh, Mr. Homos ! " she fluted, and 
 the tears came into her eyes, " it was beautiful, 
 beautiful, every word of it ! I sat in a perfect trance 
 from beginning to end, and I felt that it was all as 
 true as it was beautiful. People all around me were 
 breathless with interest, and I don't know how 1 
 can ever thank you enough." 
 
 " Yes, indeed," the professor hastened to say, 
 before the Altrurian could answer, and he beamed 
 malignantly upon him through his spectacles while he 
 spoke, " it was like some strange romance." 
 
 " I don't know that I should go so far as that," 
 said the banker, in his turn, " but it certainly seemed 
 too good to be true." 
 
 " Yes," the Altrurian responded simply, but a little 
 sadly, " now that I am away from it all, and in 
 conditions so different, I sometimes had to ask 
 
316 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRTJRIA. 
 
 myself, as I went on, if my whole life Lad not 
 hitherto been a dream, and Altruria were not some 
 blessed vision of the night." 
 
 " Then you know how to account for a feeling 
 which I must acknowledge, too ? " the lawyer asked 
 courteously. " But it was most interesting." 
 
 " The kingdom of God upon earth," said the 
 minister, "it ought not to be incredible; but that, 
 more than anything else you told us of, gave me 
 pause." 
 
 "You, of all men?" returned the Altrurian, gently. 
 
 " Yes," said the minister, with a certain dejection, 
 " when I remember what I have seen of men, when I 
 reflect what human nature is, how can I believe that 
 the kingdom of God will ever come upon the earth \ " 
 
 " But in heaven, where He reigns, who is it does 
 His will ? The spirits of men ? " pursued the Altru- 
 rian. 
 
 " Yes, but conditioned as men are here " — 
 
 " But if they were conditioned as men are there ? " 
 
 " Now, I can't let you two good people get into a 
 theological dispute," Mrs. Makely pushed in. " Here 
 is Mr. Twelvemough dying to shake hands with Mr. 
 Homos and compliment his distinguished guest ! " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 317 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Homos knows what I must have thought 
 of his talk without my telling him," I began, skill- 
 fully. " But I am sorry that I am to lose my 
 distinguished guest so soon ! " 
 
 Reuben Camp broke out : " That was my blunder, 
 Mr. Twelvemough. Mr. Homos and I had talked it 
 over, conditionally, and I was not to speak of it till 
 he had told you ; but it slipped out in the excitement 
 of the moment." 
 
 " Oh, it's all right," I said, and I shook hands 
 cordially with both of them. " It will be the greatest 
 possible advantage for Mr. Homos to see certain 
 phases of American life at close range, and he 
 couldn't possibly see them under better auspices than 
 yours, Camp." 
 
 " Yes, I'm going to drive him through the hill 
 country, after haying, and then I'm going to take him 
 down and show him one of our big factory towns." 
 
 I believe this was done, but finally the Altrurian 
 went on to New York, where he was to pass the win- 
 ter. AYe parted friends ; I even offered him some in- 
 troductions ; but his acquaintance had become more 
 and more difficult, and I was not sorry to part with 
 him. That taste of his for low company was incur- 
 
318 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 
 
 able, and I was glad that I was not to be responsible any 
 longer for whatever strange thino: he might do next. 
 I think he remained very popular with the classes he 
 most affected ; a throng of natives, construction hands 
 and table-girls saw him off on his train ; and he left 
 large numbers of such admirers in our house and 
 neighborhood, devout in the faith that there was such 
 a commonwealth as Altruria, and that he was really 
 an Altrurian. As for the more cultivated people who 
 had met him, they continued of two minds upon both 
 points. 
 
 THE END. 
 
I