GLENN NEGLEY 
 
 D UKE UNIVERSIT Y 
 
 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/travelerfromaltrOOhowe 
 
A TRAVELER 
 FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 Unmanrr 
 
 BY 
 W. D. H OWE L L S 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'THE COAST OF BOHEMIA" "THE QUALITY OF MERCY' 
 
 "A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES" ETC. 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 1908 
 
Copyright, 1894, by William Dean Howklls. 
 All rights reserved. 
 

 A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 I confess that with all my curiosity to meet an 
 Altrurian, I was in no hospitable mood toward 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 amid 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 
 kindness for him. I had not the least trouble in iden- 
 tifying him, for 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- 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 sunburned, or sea-burned, 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 like 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 
 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 asked. 
 
 " 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 
 
 4 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 jiorter toss it into the wagon ; some lighter 
 pieces he put in himself, and he did not stop 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 me 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 dare 
 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." 
 
 " ls T o ?" 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 : 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 V* 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 one of the first things we brag of to foreigners, 
 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 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 some time 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 embarrassed like your porter 
 by my helping him put my trunks into the car. May 
 I confess that the meanness of the station, its insuffi- 
 
 6 
 
A TRAVELER FKOM ALTRURIA 
 
 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." 
 
 " 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 han- 
 dle the heavy trunks that they manage. 
 
 The Altrurian was delighted with the hotel; and iu 
 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 whitewashed 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. 
 
 " 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 
 
 7 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 dining-room doors close at eight, and we must hurry 
 down." 
 
 " I'll he 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 traveler from Altruria ; and 
 in some cases I went further 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. 
 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," ho said ; " that is the 
 kind of thino; T expected to meet with in America." 
 
 " Yes," I responded, in my flattered national vanity, 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 travelers 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- 
 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 ar- 
 ranging the little bird-bath dishes before our plates. 
 Then at last he sat down, and the girl, flushed and 
 tremulous, left the room, as I could not help suspecting, 
 to have a good cry in the kitchen. She did not come 
 
A TRAVELER FEOM ALTKUKIA 
 
 back, and the bead-waiter, who was perhaps afraid to 
 send another in her place, looked after our few wants 
 himself. He 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 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 af- 
 fectation 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 vour 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 
 very much to be respected in her sphere, she is not 
 regarded with that high honor which some other women 
 command among us; but I did not find this very 
 easy, after what I had said of our esteem for labor; 
 and while I was thinking how I could hedge, my friend 
 went on. 
 
 " I liked England greatly, and I liked the Eng- 
 lish, but I could not like the theory of their civili- 
 zation or the aristocratic structure of their society. 
 It seemed to me iniquitous, for we believe that 
 inequality and iniquity are the same in the last an- 
 alysis." 
 
 At this I found myself able to say : " Yes, there is 
 
 10 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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- 
 der what I was going to say the means of enlightening 
 him without offence concerning the little mistake 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 volun- 
 tary." 
 
 " 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 ?" 
 
 11 
 
A TEAVELEE FKOM ALTRURIA 
 
 •' Well, no, I can't say it's quite like that. In fact, 
 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 sim- 
 plicity 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 
 could 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. We are all free now, black and white." 
 
 " But if they do not wish to serve, and are not held 
 in peculiar honor for serving — " 
 
 " I see that my word ' voluntary ' has misled you," 
 I put in. " It isn't the word exactly. The divisions 
 among us are rather a process of natural selection. 
 You will see, as you get better acquainted with the 
 workings of our institutions, that there are no arbi- 
 trary distinctions here, but the fitness of the w r ork 
 for the 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 teachers 
 or waiters." 
 
 " Yes, it might be stated in some such terms," I 
 assented, though I was not altogether easy in my 
 
 12 
 
A TRAVELER EROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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. We 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 8" 
 
 " Well, I can't say that, exactly. The fact is, a cer- 
 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 
 imreasonably. 
 
 " Really," I said, " I think I must leave you to 
 imagine." 
 
 " I am afraid I can't," he said, sadly. " Then, if 
 
 domestic service is degrading in your eyes, and people 
 2 13 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 are not willing servants among you, may I ask why 
 any are servants V* 
 
 " 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 with- 
 out?" 
 
 " 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 one's self 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 did 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 
 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 
 
 14 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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. It 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?" 
 
 " 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 !N"ew-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 one another'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 
 
 15 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTIIUEIA 
 
 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 
 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." 
 
 " Eut 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, we 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 dependant." 
 
 " 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 V 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 
 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 mean 
 
 that to rise carries with it an obligation to those be- 
 
 16 
 
A TKAVELEK FROM ALTEUEIA 
 
 low. ' 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. " Every one 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 
 certain 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 f" 
 
 " That would be rather a long story," I replied. 
 " 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 ac- 
 count." 
 
 " 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, 
 
 17 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 that 
 there is a good deal of curiosity about you, especially 
 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 3^011 regard such marriages as a 
 great honor, and that they are very gratifying to your 
 national pride." 
 
 " 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 we approve of aristocracy." 
 
 18 
 
A TKAVELEK FKOM ALTEUKIA 
 
 " 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 sweetest sum- 
 mer in the world, and I am always impatient to show 
 it to strangers. 
 
 We climbed the meadow wall and passed through 
 ;i 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 listened, 
 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. 
 
 Then I explained : " The woods used to come down 
 to the shore here, and we had their mystery and mu- 
 sic 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 horror. 
 It \v;is a squalid ruin, a graceless desolation, which not 
 even the pitying twilight could soften. The stumps 
 
 showed their hideous mutilation everywhere; the brush 
 
 20 
 
A TRAVELER FRO 31 ALTRURIA 
 
 bad been burned, and the fires had scorched and black- 
 ened 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, evasively. 
 " There has been a good deal of feeling about it. The 
 neighbors tried to buy him off before he began the de- 
 struction, for they knew the value of the woods as an 
 attraction to summer-boarders ; the city cottagers, of 
 course, wanted to save them, and together they offered 
 for the land pretty nearly as much 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 deficient in public spirit, but I 
 don't blame him, altogether." 
 
 " No," the Altrurian assented, somewhat to my sur- 
 prise, 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 1 
 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 
 
 •21 
 
A TKAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 nation instead of a tribe or a herd. There isn't one of 
 us, no matter bow much be censured this man's want 
 of public spirit, but would resent the slightest inter- 
 ference with his property rights. The woods were his ; 
 be 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 ?" 
 
 " 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. Can't 
 a man do what he pleases with his own in Altruria ?" 
 
 " No, he can only do right with his own." 
 
 " And if he tries to do wrong, or what the community 
 thinks is wrong ?" 
 
 " Then the community takes his own from him." 
 Before I could think 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 landscape ?" 
 
 " Why, bless my soul !" I exclaimed, " who else was 
 there ? You wouldn't have expected to take up a col- 
 lection among the summer-boarders ?" 
 
 " That wouldn't have been so unreasonable ; but I 
 didn't mean that. Was there no provision for such an 
 exigency in your laws ? Wasn't the state empowered 
 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 al- 
 ready 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- 
 
 22 
 
A TKAVELEE FKOil ALTKURIA 
 
 haunted thrush was still singing : " You know that in 
 America the law is careful not to meddle with a man's 
 private affairs, and we don't attempt to legislate per- 
 sonal virtue." 
 
 " But marriage," he said — " surely you have the in- 
 stitution of marriage ?" 
 
 I was really annoyed at this. I returned, sarcastical- 
 ly : " 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 defended by the state. 
 What has that to do with the question %" 
 
 " And you consider marriage," he pursued, " the 
 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 legislated 
 personal virtue in America ?" 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, 
 abhorrence of unnatural vice, good faith, and sobrietv. 
 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 animals." 
 
 " Yes, and I am happy to say that they are enforced 
 to such a degree that a man cannot kill a cat cruelly 
 without being punished for it." The Altrurian did not 
 follow up his advantage, and I resolved not to be out- 
 done in magnanimity. " Come, I will own that you 
 have the best of me on those points. I must say you've 
 
 23 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 intimate relations of life shall be 
 penetrated by legislation and the very hearthstone shall 
 be a tablet of laws." 
 
 " Isn't marriage a rather intimate relation of life !" 
 asked the Altrurian. " And I understood that 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 invasion 
 of the home, do you, or a violation of its immunities ? I 
 imagine," he went on, " that the difference 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 before 
 we are vain for ourselves, I was not proof against the 
 flattery it conveyed to me civically if not personally. 
 
 We were now drawing near the hotel, and I felt a 
 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 coast- 
 wise steamboats. The twilight had thickened to dusk, 
 and the edifice was brilliantly lighted with electrics, 
 story above story, which streamed into the gloom around 
 like the lights of saloon and state-room. 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 resem- 
 
 24 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 blance 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 com- 
 parison 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 themselves 
 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. Every one was 
 well-dressed and comfortable and at peace, and I felt 
 that our hotel was in some sort a microcosm of the re- 
 public. 
 
 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 weary 
 
 25 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTKURIA 
 
 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 perch- 
 ing 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 hu- 
 mor 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 verifying 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 suggested. 
 
 " Why, we're nothing if not practical, you know, and 
 as soon as we made that discovery we stopped 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 afternoon 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 ?" 
 
 26 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " Yes, sometimes in the beginning of June." 
 
 " What do they come for V 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 nothing 
 so killing as household care. Besides, the sex seems 
 to be born tired. To be sure, there are 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 wom- 
 en are likely to become as superior to the men physi- 
 cally 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 
 
 27 
 
A TBAVELEB FROM ALTRIKIA 
 
 of women in your public affairs must be of the greatest 
 advantag< 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 mo- 
 ment. 
 
 " They haven't ? Is it possible ? But didn't I un- 
 derstand you to imply just now that your women wort' 
 better educated than your men ?" 
 
 " Well, I suppose that, taking all sorts and conditions 
 among us, the women are as a rule better schooled, if 
 not better educated." 
 
 " Then, apart from the schooling, they are not more 
 cultivated ?" 
 
 " In a sense you might say they were. They certain- 
 ly 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 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 be- 
 cause 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 (laughters 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 
 
 28 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 journalists 
 with drawn scalping-knives would hardly deny that." 
 
 " And it stands to reason, doesn't it, that the habitual 
 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 Ameri- 
 can 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. 
 
 3 29 
 
A TEAVELEE FKOM ALTliURIA 
 
 " Excuse me," he began. 
 " A T o, 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 going 
 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 Avho 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 merchants, 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 microcosm of the Ameri- 
 can 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- 
 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 under- 
 stand that these gentlemen are here because they are 
 all overworked." 
 
 " Of course. You can have no conception of how 
 
 30 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 hard our business men and 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 somehow he had not really followed me 
 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-opera- 
 tives, your trainmen and quarry-hands. Or do they 
 prefer to go to resorts of their own ?" 
 
Ill 
 
 It was not easy to make sure of such innocence as 
 prompted this inquiry of my Altrurian friend. The 
 douht 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 suppose 
 that the friend who had introduced him to me would 
 be capable of seconding so poor a joke, and, besides, I 
 could not imagine why a walking delegate should wish 
 to address his clumsy satire to me particularly. 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 
 
 32 
 
A TEAVELEE FROM ALTEUEIA 
 
 activities. You know, I am a writer of romantic fiction, 
 and my time is so fully occupied in manipulating the 
 destinies of the good old-fashioned hero and heroine, 
 and trying always to make them end in a happy mar- 
 riage, 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 ; we have a theory that they are 
 politically sovereign, but 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 sympathy 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 in- 
 telligent and open-minded, and they were thoroughly 
 American. One was a banker ; another was a minister ; 
 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 
 
 33 
 
A T II AVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 what he used to manufacture : cotton or iron, or some- 
 thing like that. They all rose politely as I came up 
 with my Altrurian, and I fancied in them a sensation 
 of expectancy created by the rumor of his eccentric 
 behavior which must have spread through the hotel. 
 But they controlled this if they had it, and I could see, 
 as the 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 work- 
 ing of our institutions. He has been asking me some 
 rather hard questions about certain phases of our civili- 
 zation; 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- 
 scure to the author of ' Glove and Gauntlet ' and ' Airs 
 and Graces ' ?" 
 
 They all laughed again, not so civilly, I felt, and then 
 the banker asked my friend : " Is it long since you 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. 
 
 34 
 
A TEAVELEE FROM ALTETJEIA 
 
 " The tariff has killed our shipbuilding," said the 
 professor. No one took up this firebrand, and the pro- 
 fessor added : " Your name is Greek, isn't it, Mr. 
 Homos ?" 
 
 " Yes ; we are of one of the early Hellenic families," 
 said the Altrurian. 
 
 " And do you think," asked the lawyer, who, like 
 most lawyers, was a 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 are only 
 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 trav- 
 ersed by a thousand keels since Columbus sailed west- 
 ward." 
 
 " 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 
 
 35 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 our friend up iu the hope that the professor would like 
 nothing better than to train a battery of hard facts upon 
 a i lc fenceless 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 Altru- 
 rian which I had found so prickly. 
 
 This turned the laugh on the professor, and he pre- 
 tended to be as curious about Altruria as the rest, and 
 said he would rather hear of it. But the Altrurian 
 said: "I hojDe you 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 understand 
 at a distance. But I am in America to learn, not to 
 teach, and I hope you will have patience with my igno- 
 rance. 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 tour- 
 ist." 
 
 My friends laughed, 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 
 
 36 
 
A TRAVELER EROil ALTRURIA 
 
 understood so little that I could not rest without com- 
 ing to see for myself. Some of the apparent contra- 
 dictions 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 some- 
 thing of the state of things in Altruria, and, to be frank 
 witli you, I will say that it seems to me preposterous. 
 I should say it was impossible, if it were not an ac- 
 complished 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 you, but I respect 
 you." I thought this charming, myself; perhaps be- 
 cause 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 sat- 
 isfaction, 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, lie 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 Altrnrian 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 themselves ; and 
 
 37 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 I was asking him where your working-men -pent their 
 leisure." 
 
 lie went over the list of those he had specified, and 
 I hung my head in shame and pity; it really had such 
 an effect of mawkish sentimentality. But my friends 
 received it in the best possible way. They did not 
 laugh; they heard him out, and then they quietly de- 
 ferred 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 account 
 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 eu- 
 phemism. It seemed to minify the harm of the thing 
 so. It seemed to take all the hunger and cold and sick- 
 ness 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 any- 
 thing by. They are wasteful and improvident, almost 
 to a man ; and they learn nothing by experience, though 
 they know as well as we do that it is simply a question 
 of demand and supply, and that the day of overpro- 
 duction 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 
 
 38 
 
A TKAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 over hand, to keep the men at work; and then as soon 
 as the tide turned the men would strike for higher 
 wages. You have no idea of the ingratitude of those 
 people." He said this toward 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. I 
 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 laAvyer, from that 
 judicial mind which I always liked in him, " as far as 
 the strikes are concerned, but I don't understand that 
 the abolition of the unions would affect the impersonal 
 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 extreme- 
 ly to have my income stopped by it every now and then. 
 I'm probably not so wasteful as a working-man gen- 
 erally 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 become 
 of the good old American fact that there is always work 
 for those who are willing to work ? I notice that wher- 
 ever five thousand men strike in the forenoon, there are 
 five thousand men to take their places in the afternoon 
 
 — and not men who are turning their hands to some- 
 
 39 
 
A TEAVELER FEOM ALTKUEIA 
 
 thing- 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 
 of strikes," the professor made haste to interpose, as if 
 he had not quite liked to appear averse to the interests 
 of the workman ; no one likes to do that. " If there wire 
 anything at all to be hoped from them, it would be an- 
 other matter." 
 
 " Yes, but that isn't the point, quite," said the law- 
 yer. 
 
 " By-the-way, what is the point 2" 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 working-man among you." 
 
 " Do you mean his political status % It's that of 
 every other citizen." 
 
 " I don't mean that. I suppose that in America you 
 have learned, as we have in Altruria, that equal politi- 
 cal rights are only means to an end, and as an end have 
 no value or reality. I meant the economic status of the 
 working-man, and his social status." 
 
 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 sort of re- 
 sponse. But even he was silent ; and I had a vague 
 
 40 
 
A TRAVELEK FROM ALTEURIA 
 
 feeling that they were all somehow reluctant to formu- 
 late their knowledge, as if it were uncomfortable or 
 discreditable. The banker 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 
 working-man 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 telling 
 you the truth, though a great many of them think they 
 are. In fact, I suppose most Americans honestly be- 
 lieve because we have a republican form of government, 
 and manhood suffrage, and so on, that our economic 
 conditions are peculiar, and that our working-man has 
 a status higher and better than that of the working-man 
 anywhere else. But he has nothing 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 working-man'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 
 
 41 
 
A TBAVELEE FROM ALTRUEIA 
 
 work so much as others; for instance, domestic service, 
 or personal attendance of any kind." 
 
 The banker laughed again. " Oh, he drew the line 
 there, did he ? 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 doesn't 
 if he's got any sense. The rest of us feel that it's infra 
 dig., and hope nobody will find out that we ever worked 
 with our hands for a living. I'll go further," 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. We 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 recog- 
 nition ; 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 account of the 
 present. But there isn't a working-man, I venture to 
 say, in any city or town, or even large village, 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 cultivated people. I'm not say- 
 ing he is fit for it ; but I don't care how intelligent and 
 agreeable he might be — and some of them are astonish- 
 
 42 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 ingly 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 in- 
 visible 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 some- 
 how there is a protest in us somewhere against these ar- 
 bitrary distinctions — something that questions whether 
 they are altogether right. We know that they must be, 
 and always have been, and always will 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 question ; 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 working-man in Ameri- 
 can society than you are to meet a colored man. ISTow 
 you can judge," he ended, turning directly to the Altru- 
 rian, " how much we honor labor. And I hope I have 
 indirectly satisfied your curiosity as to the social status 
 of the working-man among us." 
 
 We were all silent. 
 
 Perhaps the others were occupied like myself in try- 
 ing to recall some instance of a working-man whom 
 they had met in society, and perhaps we said nothing 
 because we all failed. 
 
 The Altrurian spoke at last. 
 
 " You have been so very full and explicit that I feel 
 as if it were almost unseemly to press any further in- 
 
 43 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 < 1 1 1 i it ; but I should very much, like to know how your 
 working-men bear this social exclusion." 
 
 " I'm sure I can't say," returned the banker. " A 
 man does 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 working-man." 
 
 " 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 working-men 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 civili- 
 zation, 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 incom- 
 parable value ; it is more than a liberal education to 
 have been admitted to it, but it is as inaccessible to the 
 working - man 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 
 it has 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 communities, in the pioneer 
 days of the West and among the gold-hunters of Cali- 
 fornia. It was not dreamed 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 stiff- 
 
 44 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 necked aristocrats as any people of their day. We 
 have not a political aristocracy, that is all ; but there is 
 as absolute 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 ap- 
 parently 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 intelli- 
 gent, high-spirited, handsome young artisan, who wins 
 the millionaire's daughter, into your books ? I used 
 sometimes to find him there.' , 
 
 " You might still find him in the fiction of the weekly 
 story-papers ; but," I was obliged to own, " he would 
 not go down with my readers. Even in 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 working-men in his gilded halls." 
 
 The others rewarded my humor with a smile, but the 
 banker said : " Then I wonder you were not 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 unmistakable. The working-man 
 acquiesces as completely as anybody else. He does not 
 remain a working-man a moment longer that 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 Altrnria. <>f 
 course — who is proud of working at a trade, except 
 
 4 4.3 
 
A TRAVELER FEOM ALTRURIA 
 
 the shoemaker Tolstoy, and is a count, and he does 
 not make very good shoes." 
 
 \\Y all laughed again: those shoes of Count Tolstoy's 
 are always such an infallible joke. 
 
 The Altrurian, however, was cocked and primed with 
 another question ; he instantly exploded it : " But are 
 all the working-men 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 condi- 
 tions 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 working-men willing to remain so for 
 other working-men's sake, but I have never met any — 
 perhaps because the working-man never goes into so- 
 ciety." 
 
 The unfailing question of the Altrurian broke the si- 
 lence which ensued : " Are there many of your working- 
 men 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 manufact- 
 urer, 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 intelligent, 
 
 though I haven't often found them very agreeable, 
 
 46 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 
 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- 
 ing-man 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 working-man is improvi- 
 dent," returned the professor. 
 
 " There are the charities," the minister suggested. 
 
 " But his economical status," the Altrurian pursued, 
 
 47 
 
A TKAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " is in a state of perpetual uncertainty, and to save 
 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 re- 
 marked. 
 
 " And socially he is non-existent ?" 
 
 The Altrurian turned with this question to the bank- 
 er, who said : " He is certainly not in society." 
 
 " Then," said my guest, " if the working-man'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 harm- 
 less 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, indeed, 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 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 
 working-man's discontent ? It is very simple : the walk- 
 ing 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 rep- 
 robated for his evil agency by the editors, who do not 
 fail to read the working-men many solemn lessons and 
 fervently warn them against him, as soon as the strike 
 begins to go wrong — as it nearly always does. I un- 
 derstand from them that the walking delegate is an ir- 
 responsible 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 working-men and their families to 
 suffer the consequences, while he goes off somewhere 
 and rolls in the lap of luxury, careless of the misery 
 he has created. Between his debauches of vicious idle- 
 ness and his accesses of baleful activity he is employed 
 in poisoning the mind of the working-men against his 
 real interests and real friends. This is perfectly easy, 
 because the American working-man, 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 knowing them when he sees them. 
 
 There could be no doubt, I thought, in the mind of 
 
 any resonable person that the walking delegate was the 
 
 source of the discontent among our proletariate, and 
 
 I alleged him with a confidence which met the approval 
 
 49 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 no- 
 tion 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 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 fel- 
 lows know it and some of them don't, but the real dis- 
 content 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 seem- 
 ed as if the more I gave the more they asked. At last 
 I made up my mind to try to get at the real inwardness 
 of the matter, and I didn't wait for their committee 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 fel- 
 low, and when I got at him, man to man that way, I 
 found he had sense, and he had ideas — it's no use pre- 
 tending those fellows are fools; he had thought about 
 his side of the question, anyway. 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. i JSTow when 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 is it all going to end ?' 
 
 said he. ' Yes,' said I, l all. I'm sick of it. If there's 
 
 50 
 
A TEAVELEE FEOM ALTEUEIA 
 
 any way out I'd like to know it.' i Well,' said be, ' 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 asking: " And what 
 did you say ?" 
 
 " Well," returned the manufacturer, with cosey en- 
 joyment, " I asked him if the men would take the con- 
 cern and run it themselves." We laughed again; this 
 seemed even better than the other joke. " But he said, 
 ' Xo ' ; 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 put together; and he said 
 that if a man did his best he ought to be paid as much 
 as the best man. I asked 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 principle. We parted friends, but the next Satur- 
 day I locked them out and smashed their union. They 
 
 51 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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. 
 
 " And is it your opinion, from what you know of 
 the working-man generally, that they all have this twist 
 in their heads ?" the professor asked. 
 
 " They have, until they begin to rise. Then they 
 get rid of it mighty soon. Let a man save something — 
 enough to get a house of his own, and take a boarder 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 ques- 
 tions of justice — " 
 
 " Rather more with questions of law, I'm afraid," 
 the other returned, pleasantly, putting his feet together 
 before him and looking down at them in a way he had. 
 " But, still, I have a great interest in questions of 
 justice, and I confess that I find a certain wild equity 
 in this principle, Avhich 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- 
 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." 
 
 52 
 
A TEAVELEK FROM ALTRUKIA 
 
 He turned again to the minister : 
 
 " I suppose the ideal of the Christian state is the 
 family ?" 
 
 " I hope so," said the minister, with the gratitude 
 that I have seen 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 f all the stronger. But 
 the law has not recognized any such principle, in eco- 
 nomics 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 out- 
 law. How is it," the lawyer continued, turning to the 
 Altrurian, " in your country ? We can see no issue 
 here, if the first principle of organized 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 
 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 
 
 53 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 i" 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 
 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 manu- 
 facturer ; " 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 practise an altru- 
 ism of the highest order, but it is a tribal altruism ; 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 Apache. 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 
 
 yours do, that they were forced into existence by the 
 
 54 
 
A TRAVELER FEOM ALTRUKIA 
 
 necessities of the case ; that without union the working- 
 man was unable to meet the capitalist on anything like 
 equal terms, or to withstand his encroachments and op- 
 pressions. But to maintain themselves they had to ex- 
 tinguish industrial liberty among the working-men 
 themselves, and they had to practise 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 under- 
 sell him and freeze him out ; they don't break his head, 
 but they bankrupt him. The principle is the same." 
 
 " Don't interrupt Mr. Homos," the banker entreated. 
 " I am very curious 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 the 
 nation into two camps. The situation was not only im- 
 possible, 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 doc- 
 tor ; 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 thev have in 
 
 55 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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- 
 ple, 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 ques- 
 tion 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 
 scepticism Avhich persisted in our reception of his state- 
 ments, 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 spirits for the 
 higher pleasures which the education of their whole 
 youth has fitted them to enjoy. If you can understand 
 
 56" 
 
A TEAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 pov- 
 erty 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 — 
 
 " ' 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 un- 
 derstand, then, how extremely difficult it is for me to 
 imagine a condition of things like yours — although I 
 have it under my very eyes — where the money consid- 
 eration 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 
 
 57 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 work, he can't do his work. It's nonsense to pretend 
 otherwise. So the money consideration is the first con- 
 sideration. People here have to live by their work, and 
 to live they must have money. Of course, we all recog- 
 nize a difference in the qualities, as well as in the kinds, 
 of work. The work of the laborer may be roughly de- 
 fined as the necessity of his life ; the work of the busi- 
 ness man as the means, and the w r ork of the artist and 
 scientist as the end. We might refine upon these defini- 
 tions and make them closer, but they will serve for 
 illustration as they are. I don't think there can be any 
 question 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 con- 
 cerned. 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 train- 
 ing, 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 consideration, which is 
 
 the first consideration with us all : does it, or doesn't it 
 
 58 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 con- 
 ditions ?" 
 
 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 impersonal, 
 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 exhausting 
 than business. On one side, the artist is kept to the 
 level of the working-man, of the animal, of the creature 
 whose sole affair is to get something to eat and some- 
 where to sleep. This is through his 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 purpose. Between the two, I should 
 say that he got mixed, and that his work shows it." 
 
 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 con- 
 sideration, 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 
 
 59 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 consideration in- 
 fluence his choice of subject ?" 
 
 " Oddly enough, I don't believe it does, " I answered, 
 after a moment's reflection. " A man makes his choice 
 once for all when he embraces the aesthetic life, or, 
 rather, it is made for him ; no other life seems pos- 
 sible. 
 
 I know there is a general belief that an artist 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. " Tt 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." 
 
 GO 
 
A TRAVELER EROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " Are they absolutely freed to it in Altruria I" asked 
 the professor. " I understood you that everybody 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 working-men 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 pro- 
 fessor. 
 
 " Oh no, that's the last thing those fellows want to 
 think of." 
 
 " Perhaps," the Altrurian suggested, " they might 
 not 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 condition it is 
 hardly imaginable. Do you really have it in your 
 power to take away a man's opportunity to earn a liv- 
 ing?" 
 
 The manufacturer laughed uneasily. " It is in my 
 power to take away his 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 fellow-man, as you say, the law would punish you ; 
 but if, for some reason that you decided to be good, you 
 
 5 61 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURTA 
 
 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 idleness, 
 probably, till he got another job, by his union, which 
 would take the matter up." 
 
 " But I thought that our friend did not employ 
 union labor," returned the Altrurian. 
 
 I found all this very uncomfortable, and tried to 
 turn the talk back to a point that I felt curious about : 
 " But in Altruria, if the literary class is not exempt 
 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 occupa- 
 tions." 
 
 " 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 growing 
 frankness which nothing but the sweetness of his man- 
 ner 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." 
 
At this moment the lady who had hailed me so gay- 
 ly 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. lie adores your books." She went 
 on much longer to this effect, while the other men grin- 
 ned round and her husband tried to look as if it were 
 all true, and her eyes wandered 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 in- 
 troduced him to both of them. She took possession of 
 him at once and began walking him off down the piazza, 
 while her husband remained with me, and the members 
 of our late conference 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 herself and tells me 
 the rest of the story. You see, business takes it out of 
 you so! "Well, I let my wife do most of the reading, 
 
 63 
 
A TRAVELER PEOI ALTEURIA 
 
 anyway. She knows pretty much everything that's go- 
 ing in that line. We haven't got any children, and it 
 occupies her mind. She's lip 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 Ameri- 
 can of the money-making type; I believe he was some 
 sort of a broker, but I do not quite know what his busi- 
 ness was. As we walked up and down the piazza, keep- 
 ing 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 Ground- 
 sel 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 foreigner, I 
 believe ; pretty eccentric, too, I guess. Where is Altru- 
 ria, anyway ?" 
 
 I told him, and he said : u 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 Amer- 
 ica. As far as I can make out, they would regard it 
 very much as we should regard settling among the Es- 
 kimos." 
 
 " Is that so ?" asked my new acquaintance, with per- 
 fect good temper. " Why ?" 
 
 64 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTKUKIA 
 
 " Really, I can't say, and I don't know that I've ex- 
 plicit authority for my statement." 
 
 " They are worse than the English used to be," he 
 went on. " I didn'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 Eng- 
 lish, 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 rack by 
 the dining-room door — or maybe up in our room." 
 
 " I thought so," said her husband, with 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 na- 
 tives 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 
 
 (55 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 young girls after their own 
 devices from the fashion papers; but their general ef- 
 fect 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 
 working-men 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 instructed 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 be- 
 cause they had not paid the piper." 
 
 " Then the money consideration enters even into your 
 social pleasures ?" asked the Altrurian. 
 
 " Very much. Doesn't it with you ?" 
 
 He evaded this question, as he evaded all straight- 
 forward questions concerning his country : " We have 
 
 G6 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 no money consideration, you know. But do I under- 
 stand that all your social entertainments are paid for 
 by 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 ho- 
 tels 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 dan- 
 gling 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- 
 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 questions ; but do not abandon me to the 
 
 67 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 solitude of my own conjectures. They are dread- 
 ful!" 
 
 " Well, I won't/' said the lady, with another laugh. 
 " And I will try to tell } r ou what would happen if those 
 farmers, or farm - hands, or whatever they are, were 
 asked in. The mammas would be very indignant, and 
 the young ladies would be scared, and nobody would 
 know what to do, and the dance would stop." 
 
 " Then the young ladies prefer to dance with one 
 another and with little boys — " 
 
 " No, they prefer to dance with young men of their 
 own station; they would rather not dance at all than 
 dance with people beneath them. I don't say any- 
 thing against these natives here; they are very civil 
 and decent. But they have not the same social tradi- 
 tions as the young ladies ; they would be 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 common- 
 sense that surprised me, " and that as long as your pres- 
 ent 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 perceive 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 insuper- 
 able inequalities among you, and to forbid the hope of 
 the brotherhood which your policy proclaims V 
 
 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. T said : " I don't believe that 
 anybody is troubled by those distinctions. We are used 
 
 68 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 Ameri- 
 cans 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 in- 
 ferior ! They consider themselves as good as anybody. 
 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 soldier, and he distinguished him- 
 self so in one of the last battles that he was promoted. 
 He was badly wounded, but he never took a pension ; 
 he just came back to his farm and worked on till he 
 died. JSTow 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 seamstress, and so 
 cheap ! T give her a good deal of my work in the sum- 
 mer, 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, 
 T 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 T suppose I do spoil 
 her a little ; it puts notions into such people's heads, if 
 
 you meet them in that wav ; they're pretty free and in- 
 
 69 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 dependent as it is. Hut when I'm with Lizzie I for- 
 get that there is any difference between 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, 
 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 see 
 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 super- 
 stitions," 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 seamstress 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." 
 
 " Then it has something to do with social as w 7 ell as 
 moral qualities — with ranks and classes ?" 
 
 " Classes, yes ; but, as you know, we have no ranks 
 
 in America." The Altrurian took off his hat and 
 
 70 
 
A TRAVELER FEOM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 explained." 
 
 " Well, then, my dear madam, will you tell me with- 
 out 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 ab- 
 stract 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 harassed about making both ends 
 meet, when she ought to be devoting herself to her social 
 duties. The time is past with us when a lady could 
 look after the dinner, and perhaps cook part of it her- 
 self, 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 par- 
 ticular, 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, 
 
 71 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 though, that mere church association doesn't count so- 
 cially 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 ideals are 
 passing away. Things that people did ten years ago 
 would be impossible now, or at least ridiculous. You 
 wouldn't be considered vulgar, quite, but you would 
 certainly be considered a back number, and that's al- 
 most as bad. Really," said Mrs. Makely, " I don't be- 
 lieve I can tell you what a lady is." 
 
 We all laughed 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 at- 
 tractive, with going to lunches and teas and dinners 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 re- 
 ceiving 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 going at the 
 mere 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 rav kitchen at times ; I envy 
 
 72 " 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRTJRIA 
 
 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 gratide 
 dame, but if you're anywhere near the line of neces- 
 sity, or ever have been, you can't. Besides, if we did 
 do our own household work, as I understand your Altru- 
 rian ladies do, what would become of 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 forbearance 
 must have placated her. 
 
 " May I ask what the use of your society life is ?" 
 he ventured, after a moment. 
 
 " Use ? Why should it have any % It kills time." 
 
 " Then you are shut up to a hideous slavery without 
 use, except to kill time, and you cannot escape from 
 it without taking away the living of those dependent 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 question is unanswerable." 
 
 " That is true ; in your conditions, it is unanswer- 
 able," said the Altrurian. 
 
 " I think," said Mrs. Makely, " that, under the cir- 
 cumstances, we do pretty well." 
 
 " Oh, I don't presume to censure you. And if you 
 
 believe that your conditions are the best — " 
 
 73 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 affirma- 
 tion as that concerning our economical conditions ought 
 to be in the confession of faith. 
 
 The Altrurian's mind had not followed mine so far. 
 " And your young girls," he asked of Mrs. Makely — 
 " how is their time occupied ?" 
 
 " You mean after they come out in society ?" 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 She seemed to reflect. " I don't know that it is very 
 differently occupied. Of course, they have their own 
 amusements; they have their dances, 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 seamstress, though ? 
 But I suppose you excuse it to the thoughtlessness of 
 youth." 
 
 Mrs. Makely did not say, and he went on : " What I 
 find it so hard to understand is how you ladies can en- 
 dure 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 Amer- 
 ica." 
 
 " Isn't that rather extreme ?" I ventured to ask. 
 
 " ISTo," 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 
 
 74 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTEURIA 
 
 motives of humanity from doing any sort of manual 
 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 gayly, 
 " we prefer to take medicine." 
 
 " You must approve of that," I said to the Altrurian, 
 " as you consider exercise for its own sake insane or 
 immoral. But, Mrs. Makely," I entreated, " you're giv- 
 ing 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 outings 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 piazzas all 
 summer long, as nineteen-twentieths of us do. But I 
 don't deny that there is a Bemnant, as Matthew Arnold 
 calls them, who do go in for tennis and boating and 
 bathing and tramping and climbing." 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 curi- 
 osity had been given a slant aside from it. 
 
 " But your ladies," he asked, " they have the sum- 
 mer for rest, however they use it. Do they generally 
 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 pro- 
 ceeded as if she felt a tacit censure in his question. 
 
 " It wouldn't be the least use for us to stay and fry 
 
 75 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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." 
 
 " Ah, I have always heard that the Americans are 
 beautiful in their attitude toward 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 it 
 you're blasting ?" he asked, jocosely. 
 
 " Where in the world did you find it ?" she asked, 
 meaning the shawl. 
 
 " It was where you left it — on the sofa, in the side 
 parlor. I had to 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 anywhere 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 laugh- 
 ed at his wife, and winked at me, and smoked swiftly, 
 in emphasis of his irony. 
 
 " Then the young gentlemen whom the young ladies 
 here usually meet in society are all at work in the 
 cities ?" the Altrurian asked him, rather needlessly, 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." 
 
 76 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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; we 
 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 
 6 77 
 
A TBAVELEE FROM ALTKURIA 
 
 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 
 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 downward ?" 
 Does it include the working classes, too ?" 
 
 " Oh no !" we all answered together, and Mrs. Make- 
 ly 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 
 hardshijos 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 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 you, 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 
 
 78 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 and cheap theatres. Their girls are not off for their 
 health, anywhere, and their fellows are not off grow- 
 ing 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 children ! 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 suf- 
 fering from the nervous debility which seems to be the 
 outcome of your society life ?" 
 
 " 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 man- 
 age in Altruria." 
 
 " Why, we have solved the problem in the only way, 
 
 as you say, that it can be solved. We all live alike." 
 
 70 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " Isn't that a little, just a very trifling little bit, mo- 
 notonous ?" Mrs. Makely asked, with a smile. " But 
 there is everything, of course, in being used to it. To 
 an unregenerate spirit — like mine, for example — it 
 seems intolerable." 
 
 " But why ? When you were younger, before you 
 were married, you all lived at home together — or, per- 
 haps, you were an only child ?" 
 
 " Oh, no indeed ! There were ten of us." 
 
 " Then you all lived alike, and shared equally ?" 
 
 " Yes, but we were a family." 
 
 " We do not conceive of the human race except as a 
 family." 
 
 " Now, excuse me, Mr. Homos, that is all nonsense. 
 You cannot have 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 magnan- 
 imous frankness. The Altrurian remained serious. 
 " But, because you lived alike, you knew each other, 
 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. 
 
 80 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 antagonistic 
 interests of your civilization. As a matter of fact — " 
 
 " No, no ! I 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 inter- 
 est. " And have you no provision in your system for 
 finally making the lower classes understand the suf- 
 ferings and sacrifices of the upper classes in their be- 
 half ? Do you expect to do nothing to bring them to- 
 gether 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 in- 
 version of our own, and much could be forgiven him 
 for that reason, just as in Russia much could be for- 
 given 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 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 inclusion as the ideal, he 
 would with difficulty conceive of our ideal of social ex- 
 clusion ; but I think we had all been very patient with 
 him ; we should have made short work with an Ameri- 
 can 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 
 
 82 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 self-evident to him that when a commonwealth of sixty 
 million Americans based itself upon the great prin- 
 ciple of self-seeking, self-seeking was the best thing, and, 
 whatever hardship it seemed to work, it must carry with 
 it unseen blessings in tenfold measure. If a few hun- 
 dred thousand favored Americans enjoyed the privi- 
 lege of socially contemning all the rest, it was as clear- 
 ly right and just that they should do so as that four 
 thousand American millionaires should 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 in- 
 timate with the designs of Providence, and it seemed a 
 kind of impiety to doubt its perfection. I excused the 
 misgivings which I could not help seeing in the Altru- 
 rian 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 ef- 
 fort; 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 re- 
 sponsible 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 Xorthern Abolitionist and 
 permitted 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 
 escape it if I could. I confess that I would have will- 
 ingly disowned him, as I had already disavowed his 
 opinions, but there was no way of doing it short of 
 
 83 
 
A TRAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 telling him to go away, and I was not ready to do that. 
 Something in the man, I do not know what, mysterious- 
 ly appealed to me. He was not contemptibly 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 ef- 
 fects I dreaded. 
 
 I fell asleep planning an excursion farther 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 !" toward it from the 
 bedclothes 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, 
 I dare say. But you oughtn't to have taken the trouble 
 to bring my shoes in." 
 
 " I wasn't altogether disinterested in it," he returned. 
 " 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 
 
 84 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 my room, and I found the porter there, with his wrist 
 bound up. He said he had strained it in handling a 
 lady's Saratoga — he said 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 needed less skill 
 than I supposed, and after I had done a few pairs he 
 said I could v black boots as well as he." 
 
 " Did anybody see you ?" I gasped, and I felt a cold 
 perspiration break out on me. 
 
 " No, we had the whole midnight hour to ourselves. 
 The porter's work with the baggage was all over, and 
 there was nothing to interrupt the delightful chat we 
 fell into. He 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 land- 
 lords 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 in- 
 wardly a little when he thanked me with that con- 
 founded sincerity of his 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 peculiar training leads 
 you to think. You have been deceived by a superficial 
 likeness; but, really, I do not understand how you 
 
 could have read all you have done about us and not 
 
 85 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 realize before coming here that America and Altru- 
 ria are absolutely distinct and diverse in their actuat- 
 ing principles. They are both republics, I know; but 
 America is a republic where every man is for him- 
 self, 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 embarrassing to you in your stay among us, and," 
 I was forced to add, " to all your friends. Now, I cer- 
 tainly 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 apologetic tone with 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 
 wrong — " 
 
 " 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 one another very much as we do at 
 
 8G 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 home, and that it is only the rich folks among you who 
 are independent. I really don't think yon 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 under- 
 stood 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 boot-blacking for money, because in 
 that case I should be 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 boots, or else he would not have 
 got the place of porter, but that all the rest of the help 
 would consider it a disgrace, and would not help him 
 for love or money. So it seemed quite safe to 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 will- 
 ing 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 gentleman is 
 
 not willing to black his own boots. It is offensive to 
 
 his feelings, to his self-respect ; it is something he will 
 
 not do if he can get anybody else to do it for him." 
 
 87 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 something 
 altogether different by the word gentleman in Altru- 
 ria. 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 moun- 
 tains ?" 
 
 " I should be delighted," said the Altrurian, so grate- 
 fully 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." 
 
 He 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 beauty of 
 the mountains in the morning light : " Don't be sur- 
 prised 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 sulphonal 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, I 
 could. I'm sorry to say poor Mr. Makely can't, ap- 
 parently. Pie's making up for his share of my vigils, 
 
 88 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 
 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 man- 
 age him between us." 
 
 We 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 any- 
 thing 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 wait- 
 resses, 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, " be- 
 
 89" 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 cause I couldn't make anything of the sermon, with my 
 head in the state it is, and I'm going to compromise 
 on a good action. I want to carry some books and pa- 
 pers 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 light- 
 ness. 
 
 " 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 Puri- 
 tan Sabbath," said Mrs. Makely, with an abrupt de- 
 flection 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 ir- 
 reverent; but, if she were, she was forestalled by the 
 Altrurian asking: "Would it be very indiscreet, mad- 
 
 90 
 
A TRAVELER EROM ALTRURIA 
 
 am, if I were to ask you some time to introduce me to 
 that family P 
 
 " 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 morn- 
 ing, 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, 
 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 blackboard, with 
 one of the best teams of our hotel, and one of the most 
 taciturn drivers. Mrs. Makely had the Altrurian 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 features. He noticed 
 
 91 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 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 na- 
 tives 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 natives, 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 home- 
 stead, and I tried to make the Altrurian understand 
 how farming in New England had yielded to the com- 
 petition 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 vastness of the scale." Perhaps I swelled 
 a little with 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 putting 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, 
 
 92 
 
A TEAVELEK FKOM ALTRUEIA 
 
 " 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 will. He 
 pulled them up, and looked round at her. 
 
 " Isn't that Keuben 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 farm-house, and peering into a win- 
 dow 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 fel- 
 low, with neither liking nor disliking in his tone. 
 
 7 93 
 
A TEAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 ?" 
 
 " ISTo, 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 yourself 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," he said. " Mrs. Makely, were you going to our 
 place ?" 
 
 " Why, yes." 
 
 " So do, then. Mother would give almost anything 
 to see Mr. Homos. We've heard of Altruria, over our 
 way," he added to our friend. " Mother's been 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 ex- 
 plain to me first something about your deserted farms 
 
 here % It's quite a new thing to me." 
 
 94 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " It isn't a new thing to ns," said the young fellow, 
 with a short laugh. " And there isn't much to explain 
 about it. You'll see them all through New England. 
 When a man finds lie can't get his funeral 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 V 
 
 " Well, they didn't use to have Western prices to 
 fight with; and then the land wasn't worn out 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 V 
 
 " 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 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 toward him, and speaking in a cosey and coax- 
 ing tone, as if he must not really keep the truth from 
 an old friend like her, " isn't it a good deal because 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 prop- 
 erly." 
 
 "He'd better not let me hear him saying that," said 
 
 95 
 
A TKAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 summer, when he 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 having. 
 
 All the good land is in the hands of railroads and farm 
 
 syndicates and speculators ; and if you want 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 dugout on the plains — till 
 
 your mortgage matures." The young man took his 
 
 96 
 
A TRAVELER FROil ALTRURIA 
 
 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 : " Xow, it is all perfect non- 
 sense 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 popula- 
 tion should be in such a hopeless condition. 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." 
 
 " 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 lie gets him in his grip. 
 That's human nature, you know." 
 
 " Is it ?" asked the Altrurian. 
 
 It seemed to me that he had asked something like 
 that before when I alleged human nature in defence 
 of some piece of every-dav selfishness. But I thought 
 best not to notice it, and T went on: "The land is so 
 
 97 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 rich out there that a farm will often pay for itself 
 with a single crop." 
 
 " Is it possible?" cried the Altrurian. " Then I sup- 
 pose it seldom really happens that a mortgage is fore- 
 closed, in the way our young friend insinuated V 
 
 " Well, I can't say that exactly " ; and, having ad- 
 mitted so much, I did not feel bound to impart a fact 
 that popped perversely into my mind. I was once talk- 
 ing 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 mortgages, and he 
 answered me that if the mortgage was to the value of 
 a fourth of the land, the former 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 hysterical 
 laughter as the driver pulled up short and a group of 
 barefooted children broke in front of his horses and 
 scuttled out of the dust into the road-side bushes 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 gleam- 
 ing eyes and teeth through the underbrush in quiet en- 
 joyment of the lady's alarm. 
 
 " Don't you know that you might have got killed ?" 
 
 98 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 oughtn'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 
 in his mouth. " Oh, good gracious !" I called out in 
 my light, humorous way. " Do you suppose he's going 
 to spend it for candy ?" The little people 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 gayety met with fresh applause. " Where do 
 you live ?" I asked, with some vague purpose of show- 
 ing 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 border 
 
 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 
 
 99 
 
A TEAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 people meant to winter there, however, for the sod was 
 banked np against the wooden underpinning; 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 from the thresh- 
 old, 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 ns. 
 
 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 sister's. She lives just 
 below here." Her children had grouped themselves 
 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 
 to-day." 
 
 " You don't speak like an American," Mrs. Makely 
 suggested. 
 
 " No, we're English. Our husbands work in the 
 quarry. That's my little palace." The woman nodded 
 her head toward the cottage. 
 
 " 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- 
 
 100 
 
A TRAVELER EROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 V* 
 
 " 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 
 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 anything, 
 Mr. Twelvemough. I was afraid your sympathies had 
 been wrought upon." 
 
 " Oh, not at all," I answered. " I saw the mischief 
 I had done with the children." 
 
 The Altrurian, who has 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 
 eager to air my political economy. " The very greatest 
 harm. It would have pauperized her. You have no 
 
 101 
 
A TRAVELER EROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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." 
 
 " I don't believe," said Mrs. Makely, " that an Ameri- 
 can 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 he asked, with a faint 
 sigh : " Then, in your conditions, a kindly impulse to 
 aid one who needs your help is something to be guarded 
 against as possibly pernicious ?" 
 
 " Exactly," I said. " And now you see what difficul- 
 ties beset us in dealing with the problem of poverty. 
 We cannot let people suffer, for that would be cruel; 
 and we cannot relieve their need without pauperizing 
 them." 
 
 " I see," he answered. " It is a terrible quan- 
 dary." 
 
 " 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 people 
 who are richer than others ?" 
 
 " No. We should regard that as the worst inciv- 
 ism." 
 
 " What is incivism ?" 
 
 I interpreted, " Bad citizenship." 
 
 102 
 
A TKAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 "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 amaze- 
 ment visibly heightened by the air of complacency 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 brother- 
 hood ? 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 
 into a silence that lasted until we came in sight of the 
 Camp farm-house. 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 of the barn, and covering the approach to it 
 with an unbroken roof. There were flowers in the beds 
 along the underpinning of the house, which stood close 
 to the street, and on one side of the door was a clump of 
 
 104 
 
A TRAVELER EROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 we heard hasty 
 steps, and Reuben Camp came round the corner of the 
 house in time to give Mrs. Makely his hand and help 
 her spring to the ground, which she did very lightly; 
 her remarkable mind had kept her body in a sort of 
 sympathetic activity, and at thirty-five she had the 
 gracile ease and self-command of a girl. 
 
 " Ah, Reuben," she sighed, permitting herself to call 
 him by his first name, with the emotion which expressed 
 itself more definitely in the words that followed, " how 
 I envy you all this clear, old, homelike 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." 
 
 " Why, you believe every one was born free and 
 
 equal, don't you ?" Mrs. Makely asked. 
 
 105 
 
A TRAVELED FEOM ALTRURIA 
 
 " Oh yes, I believe that ; but—" 
 
 " Then why do you object to free and equal com- 
 petition V 
 
 The young fellow laughed, and said, as he opened 
 the door for us : " Walk right into the parlor, please. 
 Mother will be ready for you in a minute." He added : 
 " I guess she's putting on her best cap for you, Mr. 
 Homos. It's a great event for her, your coining 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 the 
 tastes or needs of the city boarder, and was as stiffly 
 repellent in its upholstery and as severe in its decora- 
 tion as hair-cloth chairs and dark-brown wall-paper of 
 a trellis pattern, with drab roses, could make it. The 
 windows Avere shut tight, and our host did not offer 
 to open them. A fly or two crossed the doorway 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 uncertain. 
 I made a mental note of it as a place where it would 
 be very characteristic 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 per- 
 ceived that this murmur was produced 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 light from it to us where 
 we sat. She shook hands with Mrs. Makely, who in- 
 troduced 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 necessary for the 
 
 10G 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 assertion of their self-respect with strangers. 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 Altru- 
 rian. 
 
 " Mother will be so glad to see you," she said to him, 
 and, " Won't you come right in V she added to us all. 
 
 We followed her and found ourselves in a large, 
 low, sunny room on the southeast corner of the house, 
 which had no doubt once been the living-room, but 
 which was now given up to the bedridden invalid ; a 
 door opened into the kitchen behind, where the tabic 
 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 flies 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 morning, 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 ventured 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 delightful books " ; but, although 
 she paid me this perfunctory compliment it was perfect- 
 ly apparent to me that in the esteem of this disingenuous 
 
 107 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 woman the distinguished stranger was a far more im- 
 portant person than the distinguished author. Whether 
 j\Irs. 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 hold 
 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, be- 
 fore 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 was 
 any such place as Altruria ; and if it 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. 
 
 108 
 
A TRAVELER FEOM ALTEUKIA 
 
 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 mis- 
 giving. 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 
 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- 
 covered 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 hus- 
 band 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 ex- 
 ertion 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 remained si- 
 lent, 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 re- 
 peated to you. I know my husband is awfully Philis- 
 tine, 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 in- 
 valid, " that Mr. Homos is so dreadfully reticent 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." 
 
 " There is no offence," the Altrurian answered for 
 
 himself, " in what Mr. Makely says, though, from the 
 s 109 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 Altrurian point of view, there is a good deal of er- 
 ror. 
 
 " Does it seem so strange to you," be asked, address- 
 ing 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. He added, to 
 the company generally : " I suppose that even in Amer- 
 ica 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 followed 
 Christ, and might be supposed to be directly influenced 
 by His life, there was an altruism practised as radical 
 as that which we have organized into a national polity 
 and a working economy in Altruria." 
 
 " Ah, but you know," said Mrs. Makely, with the air 
 of advancing a point not to be 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 peo- 
 ple, and that, if Christianity was to advance, they would 
 have to give up all that crankish kind of idolatry of the 
 mere letter. At any rate," she went on, with the satis- 
 faction we all feel in getting an opponent into close 
 
 110 
 
A TRAVELER FKOM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 
 big factory towns and look at the mill-hands coming 
 home in droves after a day's work, young girls and old 
 women, boys and men, all fluffed over with cotton, and 
 so dead tired that they can hardly walk. They come 
 shambling along with all the individuality of a flock 
 of sheep." 
 
 " Some," said Mrs. Makely, heroically, as if she were 
 one of these, " 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 before, 
 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, " we haven't got any 
 individuality 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 evidently 
 
 ill 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 she had not the least notion where she was in the argu- 
 ment. " 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 incident, 
 and we were all silent a moment, w 7 hich I employed 
 in looking about the room, and taking in with my 
 literary sense the simplicity and even bareness of its 
 furnishing. There was the bed where the invalid lay, 
 and near the head a table with 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. ]\Iakely had spoken 
 of. It struck me as a room where a great many things 
 might have happened, 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." 
 
 A pleased intelligence showed itself in her face, and 
 she answered : " Yes, it is a real old-fashioned farm- 
 house. 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 w r e 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 ap- 
 
 112 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 peared 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 igno- 
 rance of others." 
 
 " And you regard that as a great misfortune ?" asked 
 the Altrurian. 
 
 " Why, it's inevitable. There is nothing to bring us 
 together, unless it's some happy accident, like the pres- 
 ent. But we don't have a traveler from Altruria to ex- 
 ploit every day, and so we have no business to come into 
 people's houses." 
 
 " You would have been welcome in ours long ago, 
 Mr. Twelvemough," said Mrs. Camp. 
 
 " But, excuse me," said the Altrurian, " what you 
 say really seems 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 V 
 
 " I don't believe we have thought about it very much ; 
 but, now that Mr. Twelvemough has spoken of it, I can 
 
 see that it does look that wav. And it seems very 
 
 113 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 suppose I 
 may say, died for ; he was never the same man after the 
 war. It does appear as if we had some interests in 
 common, and might find it out if we ever came to- 
 gether." 
 
 " 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 suppose 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 I must 
 say I thought the thing she left to rankle in his mind 
 from our former meeting had not been said in very good 
 taste. I thought, too, that she would not fare best in 
 any encounter of vats 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 dif- 
 ferent, he's very much mistaken." 
 
 114 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 ques- 
 tion 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 I 
 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 differently, but I'm 
 not going to pretend differently." 
 
 I recalled what my friend the banker said about 
 throwing 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 reflected 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?" 
 
 115 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " I should be perfectly delighted," said Mrs. Make- 
 ly, " and I should receive them with the greatest pos- 
 sible cordiality." 
 
 " The same kind of cordiality that you would show to 
 the cottagers ?" 
 
 " I suppose that I should feel that I had more in com- 
 mon with the cottagers. We should be interested in the 
 same things, and we 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 toward them 
 as you would toward our natives ? You wouldn't. You 
 would all be rich people together, and you would under- 
 stand one another 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. 
 
 " 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 dif- 
 ference 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, Liz- 
 zie !" 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, 
 
 116 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 prob- 
 ably had much kindness. The tears came into ]\Irs. 
 Makely's eyes, and she turned toward Mrs. Camp. 
 " And is this the way you all feel toward us V she 
 asked. 
 
 " Why shouldn't we ?" asked the invalid, in her turn. 
 " But, no, it isn't the way all the country people feel. 
 Many of them feel as you would 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 feelings 
 of all, rich or poor." 
 
 "I am sorry if we have hurt yours, Mrs. Makely," 
 said Mrs. Camp, with dignity. " You asked us certain 
 questions, and we thought you wished us to reply truth- 
 fully. We could not answer you with smooth things." 
 
 " But sometimes you do," said Mrs. Makely, and the 
 
 117 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 si- 
 lent,, and a sudden misgiving crossed my mind concern- 
 ing him. Was 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 one another ? 
 It was a fantastic conception, but I thought it was one 
 that I might employ in some sort of purely romantic 
 design, and I was professionally grateful for it. I said, 
 with a humorous gayety : " 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 hy- 
 pocrisy, 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, I don't think 
 he'll have much reason to complain even of our reti- 
 cence." 
 
 " 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 divisions 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 
 
 118 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 means ease 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 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 blacklisted man got ?" 
 
 " A blacklisted man V 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, ]\Ir. Camp," I interposed, " but isn't 
 a blacklisted 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 gone 
 
 119 
 
A TRAVELER EROM ALTRURIA 
 
 counter to your interest or pleasure on some economical 
 question 8" 
 
 " Well, Mr. Twelvemough seems to think so," sneer- 
 ed 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 blacklisted man must love the country where 
 such a thing can happen to him. What should you call 
 such a thing as blacklisting in Altruria ?" 
 
 " 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 heinous 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 offence against the laws — " 
 
 " Then the state would let him take to the road — like 
 that fellow." 
 
 He pulled aside the shade of the window where he 
 sat, and we saw pausing before the house, and glancing 
 doubtfully at the doorstep, 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 
 
 120 
 
A TKAVELEE FROM ALTKUKIA 
 
 visible stench, and the wretched carrion seemed to 
 shrink away from our gaze as if he were aware of his 
 loathsomeness. 
 
 " Keally," 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 horrid creature !" she 
 added, as Camp, after a moment's parley with the 
 tramp, turned with him and disappeared round a cor- 
 ner of the house. " Now, Mrs. Camp, I think that 
 is really a very bad example. It's encouraging them. 
 Very likely he'll go to sleep in your barn, and set it on 
 fire with 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 
 
 121 
 
A TKAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 the mills down at Ponkwasset, but he was ' 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 ?" demanded 
 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 
 ought to be in school, and I suppose I overdid. At 
 any rate, that was when I had my first shock of paraly- 
 sis. 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 mat- 
 ter 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 
 
 122 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 was an old playmate of my husband'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 mort- 
 gage 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 Cap- 
 tain 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 dinner ; 
 left his spike-tail in the city." 
 
 The young man laughed, and his sister with him. 
 
VIII 
 
 Young Camp carried out the plate of victuals to the 
 tramp, and Mrs. 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 board- 
 ers at the hotel always work to earn their breakfast ?" 
 
 " 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 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 after- 
 ward. We both worked all day long like slaves, and 
 many a moonlight night we were up till morning, al- 
 most, 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, 
 
 124 
 
A TKAVELEK FEOM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 always think that a per- 
 son 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, " if 
 you give a tramp his breakfast without making him 
 work for it, you must see that it is encouraging idle- 
 ness. 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 country 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 
 apparently nothing else to advance, and I said, lightly : 
 "But that is just the kind of tramps that Mir. Homos 
 would most disapprove of. He says that in Altruria 
 9 125 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRUR1A 
 
 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 lie 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 manu- 
 al labor of each is sufficient to keep the body in health, 
 as well as to earn a living. After the three hours' 
 Avork, 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 tempera- 
 ment of each demands. But what I was saying 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 without taking away the 
 work of some one who needed it 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 Camp 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 talk- 
 ing 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. lie smiled 
 and said : " I shall be very glad, I'm sure. But I do 
 
 126 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 hav- 
 ing the same feeling toward all," he explained to M re. 
 Makcly, " as you have toward your next-door neigh- 
 bor—" 
 
 " My next-door neighbor !" she cried. " But I don't 
 know the people next door! We live in a large apart- 
 ment 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 mention it. 
 The servants all know each other; they meet in the 
 back elevator, and get acquainted. I don't encourage 
 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?" 
 
 " Xo, 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." 
 
 "Well," 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." 
 
 " I was down in New York once, and I went through 
 some of the streets and houses where the poor people 
 
 127 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 one an- 
 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 one an- 
 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 one another of tener ?" he 
 asked Camp. 
 
 " Yes. Folks rust out living alone. It's human nat- 
 ure 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. 
 
 " 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, but she was a woman 
 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. Camp was saying about the blacklisted men, and 
 their all turning into tramps — " 
 
 "But I didn't say that, Mrs. Makely," the young 
 
 fellow protested, in astonishment. 
 
 128 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " Well, it stands to reason that if the tramps have 
 all been blacklisted men — " 
 
 " But I didn't say that, either." 
 
 " No matter ! What I am trying to get at is this : 
 if a workman has made himself a nuisance to the em- 
 ployers, haven't they a right to punish him in any way 
 they can ?" 
 
 " I believe there's no law yet against blacklisting," 
 said Camp. 
 
 " Very well, then, I don't see what they've got to 
 complain of. 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 af- 
 fairs 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 irresistible, 
 " I think the workmen had better leave things to the 
 employers, and then they won't get blacklisted. It's 
 as broad as it's long." 
 
 I confess that, although I agreed with Mrs. Make- 
 ly in regard to what the workmen had better do, 
 her position had been arrived at by such extraor- 
 dinary reasoning that I blushed for her ; at the same 
 time, I wanted to laugh. She continued, triumphant- 
 ly : " You see, the employers have ever so much more 
 at stake." 
 
 " Then men have everything at stake — the work of 
 their hands," said the young fellow. 
 
 "Oh, but surely," said M!rs. Makely, "you wouldn't 
 set that against capital ? You wouldn't compare the 
 two ?" 
 
 129 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " Y'es, 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. 
 
 " Now, that is too preposterous !" 
 
 " Why is it preposterous ?" he demanded, with a 
 quivering nostril. 
 
 " Why, simply because it is" said the lady, but she 
 did not say why, and although I thought so, too, I was 
 glad she did not attempt to do it, for her conclusions 
 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 be- 
 side 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 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 smuggling in one of Mr. 
 Twelvemough'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 perceptibly 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 
 
 130 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 ivarped 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 unsparing 
 country bluntness — don't you think it's perfectly de- 
 lightful ? 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 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 grow- 
 ing 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 differently," 
 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, because at home he was, 
 at present, engaged in farm-work himself, and he was 
 curious to contrast the American and Altrurian meth- 
 ods. We began to talk of the farming interest again, 
 later in the day, when the members of our little group 
 came together, and T 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 and the banker and the manufacturer. 
 
 131 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 Tt was the banker who began to comment on what I 
 said, and he seemed to be in the frank hnmor 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 my- 
 self with their resources." 
 
 The professor smiled, in asking the Altrurian: " Did 
 your agricultural friends tell you anything of the lit- 
 tle 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, you can buy votes among our 
 virtuous yeomen 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, never- 
 theless, and pretty notorious." 
 
 " Good heavens !" cried the Altrurian. " And what 
 defence have they 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 imagine 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 certain- 
 ly exists, and I suppose it is a growing evil in the 
 
 country. I fancy it arises, somewhat, from a want of 
 
 132 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRUEIA 
 
 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 without 
 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 that I 
 think the buyer is worse than the seller — incompara- 
 bly 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 average 
 somewhere." 
 
 " Talking of business," said the professor, turning 
 to the manufacturer, who had been quietly smoking, 
 " why don't some of you capitalists take 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 
 
 133 
 
A TRAVELER FKOM ALTRURIA 
 
 would rather not invest." He was silent a moment, 
 and then he went on, as if the notion were beginning to 
 win upon him : " It may come to something like that, 
 though. If it does, the natural course, I should think, 
 would be through the railroads. It would be 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 bad scheme. The 
 waste in the present method is enormous, and there is 
 no reason why the roads should not own the farms, as 
 they are 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 to introduce a bit of 
 machinery in the mill, every now and then, that threw 
 out a dozen or a hundred people ; but we couldn't stop 
 for that." 
 
 " And you never knew what became of them ?" 
 
 " Sometimes. Generally not. We took it for grant- 
 ed that they would light on their feet somehow." 
 
 " And the state — the whole people — the government 
 — did nothing for them ?" 
 
 " If it became a question of the poor-house, yes." 
 
 " Or the jail," the lawyer suggested. 
 
 " Speaking of the poor-house," said the professor, 
 
 134 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 quar- 
 ter 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 capitalists. 
 What does he propose to do about it ?" 
 
 " He seems to think the state ought to find work for 
 them." 
 
 " Oh, paternalism ! Well, I guess the state won't." 
 
 " That was his opinion, too." 
 
 " It seems a hard fate," said the minister, " that the 
 only provision 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 sentimental 
 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 
 
 witli some of the young fellows in the hotel. You know 
 
 most of them are graduates, and they are taking a sort 
 
 135 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 of supernumerary vacation this summer before they 
 plunge into the battle of life in the autumn. They were 
 talking of some other fellows, classmates of theirs, who 
 were not so lucky, but had been obliged to begin the 
 fight at once. It seems that our fellows here are all 
 going in for some sort of profession: 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 fel- 
 lows 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 con- 
 trast between their fate and his, and were making re- 
 marks about business that were, to say the least, unbusi- 
 nesslike. A few years ago we should have made a 
 summary disposition of the matter, and I believe some 
 of the newspapers 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 manufact- 
 urer, 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 
 
 136 
 
A TRAVELEE FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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-making pur- 
 poses." 
 
 " 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 better not gone to 
 college at all. They said he would be none the better 
 for it, and would always be miserable 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 busi- 
 ness is concerned, they were right. It is no use to pre- 
 tend 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 incompatibility 
 if he is honest. I know that when we get together at a 
 commercial or financial dinner we talk as if great mer- 
 chants 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 business as business, the ' education 
 
 of a gentleman ' has nothing to do. That education is 
 
 137 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 alwavs putting the old Ciceronian question : whether the 
 fellow arriving at a starving city with a cargo of grain 
 is bound to tell the people before he squeezes them that 
 there arc half a dozen other fellows with grain just be- 
 low the horizon. As a gentleman he would have to tell 
 them, because he could not take advantage of their ne- 
 cessities; but, as a business man, he would think it bad 
 business to tell them, or no business at all. The prin- 
 ciple goes all through ; I say, business is business ; and 
 I am not going to pretend that business will ever be any- 
 thing else. In our business battles we don't take off 
 our hats to the other side and say, i Gentlemen of the 
 French Guard, have the goodness to fire.' That may 
 be war, but it is not business. We seize all the advan- 
 tages we can ; very few of us would actually 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 ?" He turned smilingly to the min- 
 ister. 
 
 " T wish — I wish," said the minister, gently, " it 
 could be otherwise." 
 
 " Well, I wish so, too," returned the banker. " But 
 it isn't. Am I right or am I wrong ?" 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. 
 
 138 
 
A TRAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 would not have 
 been business." 
 
 Wo all laughed except the minister and the x\ltru- 
 rian; the manufacturer said: " Twenty-five years hence, 
 the fellow who is going into business may pity the fel- 
 lows who are pitying him for his hard fate now." 
 
 " Very possibly, but not necessarily," said the banker. 
 " Of course, the business man is on top, as far as money 
 goes ; he is the fellow who makes the big fortunes ; the 
 millionaire lawyers and doctors and ministers are ex- 
 ceptional. But his risks are tremendous. 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 look- 
 ing at the material chances, I don't blame those young 
 fellows for not wanting to go into business. And when 
 you come to other considerations ! We used to cut the 
 knot of the difficulty pretty sharply; we said a college 
 education was wrong, or the hot and hot American 
 spread-eaglers did. Business is the national ideal, and 
 
 139 
 
A TRAVELER FKOI ALTRURIA 
 
 the successful business man is the American type. It 
 is a business man's country." 
 
 " 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 bet- 
 ter 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 vou for the privilege of doing so. Isn't that 
 true ?" 
 
 The banker turned to the manufacturer with this 
 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." 
 
 140 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " Why ? I am very curious to know why our system 
 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 result has 
 an ugly aspect; but, nevertheless, in spite of all, the 
 country is enormously prosperous. The pursuit of hap- 
 piness, which is one of the inalienable 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 excitement 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 
 ever 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 Altrurian out and prac- 
 tise upon his patriotism. It was a great relief to find 
 that he had been joking in so much that seemed a dead 
 
 io 141 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 give-away of our economical position. " In Altruria," 
 he asked, " who is your ideal great man ? I don't mean 
 personally, hut abstractly." 
 
 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 hap- 
 piness to the greatest number — some artist 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 manufact- 
 urer 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 has changed twice. Before the 
 war, and during all the time from the Revolution on- 
 ward, it was undoubtedly the great politician, the pub- 
 licist, the statesman. As Ave grew older and began 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 popu- 
 larly considered a type of greatness. When the war 
 came, it brought the soldier to the front, and there was 
 a period of ten or fifteen years when he dominated the 
 national imagination. That period passed, and the 
 great era of material prosperity set in. The big fort- 
 unes 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 verv pleasant to think so, even for people 
 
 142 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 aver- 
 age assembly of Americans the greatest millionaire 
 would take the eyes of all from the greatest states- 
 man, 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 coun- 
 try." 
 
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 education of a 
 gentleman. If this is a business man's country, and if 
 the professor has nothing in stock but the sort of educa- 
 tion 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 : 
 
 " Perhaps we shall 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 business. 
 Let us hope there will be mutual concessions. There 
 are some pessimists who say that business methods, es- 
 pecially on the large scale of the trusts and combina- 
 tions, 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 be- 
 fore dawn — and so on. Perhaps when business gets 
 the whole affair of life into its hands, and runs the re- 
 
 144 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 public, as its enemies now accuse it of doing, the process 
 of purging and living cleanly will begin. I have known 
 lots of fellows 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 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 tre- 
 mendous 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 country 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-fight to an encounter of disciplined forces, 
 and the free-fighters that are left get ground to pieces 
 between organized labor and organized capital. De- 
 cidedly, we are in a transition state, and if the higher 
 education tried to adapt itself to business needs, there 
 are chances that it might sacrifice 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." 
 
 " Yes, that may all be," I put in. " But it seems to 
 me that you give Mr. Homos, somehow, a wrong im- 
 pression of our economic life by your generalizations. 
 You are a Harvard man yourself." 
 
 145 
 
A TRAVELER EROil ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 in such 
 and such a juncture. The fellows who have not that 
 sort of education have not that sort of question, 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 ?" 
 
 " Undoubtedly. That is one of its chief drawbacks," 
 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, " w 7 e 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 disadvan- 
 tage of a university education — I wish you would ex- 
 plain to Mr. Homos why, in every public exigency, we 
 instinctively appeal to the business sense of the com- 
 munity as if it were the fountain of wisdom, probity, 
 and equity. Suppose there were some question of vital 
 interest — I won't say financial, but political or moral 
 or social — on which it was necessary to rouse public 
 opinion, what would be the first thing to do ? To 
 call a meeting over the signatures of the leading busi- 
 ness 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 yourself." 
 
 146 
 
A TKAVELEK FEOM ALTKURIA 
 
 " Not at all, my dear fellow, not at all," the banker 
 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 instalment plan." 
 
 He turned to the Altrurian, and then went on: 
 " As I said the other night, this is a business man's 
 country. We are a purely commercial people; money 
 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 busi- 
 ness 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 longest headed business men who 
 get plundered by him. ~No, it is simply because busi- 
 ness is our national ideal that the business man is 
 honored above all other men among us. In the aristo- 
 cratic countries they forward a public object under the 
 patronage of the nobility and gentry; in a plutocratic 
 country they get the business men to indorse it. I sup- 
 pose that the average American citizen feels that they 
 wouldn't indorse a thing unless it was safe; and the 
 average American citizen likes to be safe — he is cau- 
 tious. As a matter of fact, business men are always 
 taking risks, and business is a game of chance, in a cer- 
 tain degree. Have I made myself intelligible ?" 
 
 147 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 '" Entirely so," said the Altrurian ; and he seemed 
 so thoroughly well satisfied that he forbore asking any 
 further question. 
 
 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 defence of his class with him. I must 
 say that he had not convinced me at all. At that mo- 
 ment 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 getting along very 
 well without it, or else he was feeling that mysterious 
 control from the Altrurian which I had already sus- 
 pected him of using. Voluntarily or involuntarily, the 
 banker proceeded with his contribution to the Altru- 
 rian's stock of knowledge concerning our civiliza- 
 tion : 
 
 " I don't believe, however, that the higher education 
 is any more of a failure, as a provision for a 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 busi- 
 ness man really needed nothing beyond the three R's, 
 and the working-man needed no E 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 provision 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 
 
 148 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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. That is part of the civic ideal which, I sup- 
 pose, 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 free by the 
 state, and no one can deny that it is thoroughly so- 
 cialistic 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 further 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 rea- 
 sonable as anything in the system of education which 
 we force upon the working classes. They know per- 
 fectly well, whether we do or not, that the three R's 
 will not make their children better mechanics or labor- 
 ers, 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 mean time we de- 
 prive the parents of their children'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 citizens." 
 
 " You know," said the professor, " that has been sug- 
 gested by some of their leaders." 
 
 " No, really ? Well, that is too good !" The banker 
 threw back his head and roared, and we all laughed 
 
 149 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 with liim. When we had sohered 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, which- 
 ever 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 ex- 
 actly like to, on some terms ?" asked the banker. " Well, 
 perhaps we shall work out our democratic salvation 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 the lower educa- 
 tion 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. Kow 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 pul- 
 pit in your city." 
 
 The banker named one of the principal cities in the 
 
 150 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 — I suppose 
 — they have their own churches. I have never thought 
 that such a separation of the classes was right; and I 
 have had some of the very best 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 2" 
 
 " 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 followed : 
 " I have heard it asserted that there is no country in 
 the world where the separation of the classes is so ab- 
 solute 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 uncompro- 
 mising than any such fight that the world had ever seen. 
 There was no respect from low to high, he said, and no 
 consideration from high to low, as there were in coun- 
 tries with traditions and old associations." 
 
 " 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 
 
 151 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 toward 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 patri- 
 cian 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. 
 
 "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 generalled, up to the present time, that they 
 have wanted to fight at the outset of every quarrel. 
 They have been beaten in every quarrel, but still they 
 always want to begin by fighting. That is all right. 
 When they have learned enough, to begin by voting, 
 then w r e 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 can fix the 
 voting so we needn't be any more afraid of that than 
 we are of the fighting. It's astonishing how short- 
 sighted they are. They have no conception of any 
 
 152 
 
A TRAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 hanker. 
 " If I were a working-man, I should probably think 
 differently. But we will suppose, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, that their day is too long and their pay is too 
 short. How do they go about to better themselves ? 
 They strike. Well, a strike is a fight, and in a fight, 
 nowadays, it is always skill and money that win. The 
 working-men 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 begin 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, reluc- 
 tant 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 working - men to 
 leave the militia, as they threaten to do, from time to 
 time I" 
 
 " ~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 working-men 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 employes of business as have time and money 
 for it. I may be mistaken." 
 
 153 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 jSTo 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 effective- 
 ness. But when the working-men have left the militia, 
 what have they done ? They have eliminated 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 
 Ave 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 pre- 
 posterous they are when you come to look at it ! They 
 are in the majority, the immense majority, if you count 
 the farmers, and 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 numbers 
 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 government into the likeness of 
 anything they wanted. But they would rather not have 
 what they want, apparently, if they can only keep them- 
 selves from getting it, and they have to work hard to do 
 that!" 
 
 " I suppose," I said, " that tEey are misled by the 
 
 154 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 working-men ; though the newspapers 
 convict them of it, generally without trying 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 discontent. But, luckily for the 
 status, our labor leaders are not Socialists, for your So- 
 cialist, whatever you may say against him, has gen- 
 erally thought himself into a Socialist. He knows that 
 until the working-men stop fighting, and get down to 
 voting — until they consent to be the majority — there 
 is no hope for them. I am not talking of anarchists, 
 mind you, but of Socialists, 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 ? 
 Our legal friend here seemed to feel that we might rub 
 along indefinitely as we are doing, or work out an Altru- 
 ria of our own ; or go back to the patriarchal stage and 
 own our working-men. He 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 femmine, 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 William Morris's, though — I 
 forget just what he calls it — that is full of curious 
 
 155 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 proletariate 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 genius of our free institu- 
 tions ; 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 probably be less suffering 
 than there is now, when a man may be cowed into sub- 
 mission to any terms through the suffering of his fam- 
 ily; 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 slavery. We have not had 
 nineteen hundred years of Christianity for nothing." 
 
 The banker paused, and, as the silence continued, he 
 broke it with a laugh, which was a prodigious relief to 
 my feelings, and I suppose to the feelings of all. I per- 
 ceived that he had been joking, and I was confirmed 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 yon never had philosophers — well, call them 
 philanthropists ; I don't mind — of my way of thinking 
 among you ?" 
 
 156 
 
A TKAVELEK FROM ALTRUEIA 
 
 " Oh yes," said the Altrurian. " At one time, just 
 before we emerged from the competitive conditions, 
 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 think- 
 er," 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 fight- 
 ing it, and getting beaten." 
 
 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 V 
 
 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. Make- 
 ly has a plan." 
 
 " Yes," said the lady, turning an empty chair near 
 her own toward me. " Sit down and listen." 
 
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 worldlier than the world- 
 liest man ; and that in all practical matters we fade 
 into dreamers and doctrinaires beside vou. !Now, go 
 on." 
 
 But she did not mean to let me off so easily. She 
 began to brag herself 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 TTomos on the very verge 
 of the only full and free confession he had ever been 
 
 158 
 
A TKAVELER FEOM ALTRUEIA 
 
 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-control 
 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 ! It just popped into my mind, like an in- 
 spiration, when I was thinking of something altogether 
 different. It flashed upon me in an instant : a good ob- 
 ject, and a public occasion." 
 
 " Well ?" I said, finding this explosion and electrical 
 inspiration rather enigmatical. 
 
 " Why, you know, the Union Chapel, over in the vil- 
 lage, 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 re- 
 painting 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 articles ready, even ; 
 and everybody feels swindled ; and now people frown 
 on raffles, so there is no use thinking of them. What 
 you want is something striking. We did think of a 
 parlor-reading, or perhaps ventriloquism ; but the per- 
 formers all charge so much that there wouldn't be any- 
 thing left after paying expenses." 
 
 She seemed to expert some sort of prompting at this 
 point ; so I said : " Well ?" 
 
 " Well," she repeated, " that is just where your Mr. 
 Homos comes in." 
 
 159 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 u 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, outside of the 
 hotel, to get a full house for him ? I shouldn't like 
 to see him subjected to the mortification of empty 
 benches." 
 
 " What in the world are you thinking of % Why, 
 there isn't a farm-house, anywhere within ten miles, 
 where they haven't heard of Mr. Homos ; 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." 
 
 I had only too great reason to fear so. In spite of 
 my warnings and entreaties, he had continued to behave 
 toward every human being he met exactly as if they 
 were equals. He apparently could not conceive of that 
 social difference which difference of occupation creates 
 among ns. He owned that he saw it, and from the talk 
 of our little group he knew it existed ; but, when I ex- 
 postulated with him upon some act in gross violation of 
 society usage, he only answered that he could not im- 
 agine that what he saw and knew could actually be. It 
 was quite impossible to keep him from bowing with the 
 
 1G0 
 
A TEAVELEE FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 running down one of the corridors to 
 relieve a chambermaid laden with two heavy water- 
 pails which she was carrying to the rooms to fill up 
 the pitchers. This was probably not true ; but I my- 
 self saw him helping in the hotel hay-field one after- 
 noon, shirt-sleeved like any of the hired men. He 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 indigestion. It was grotesque, and out of all keep- 
 ing with a man of his cultivation and breeding. He was 
 a gentleman 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 tow- 
 ard the stables which was given up to them by tacit 
 consent of the guests during a certain part of the after- 
 noon. 
 
 I feigned not to see him, but I could not forbear 
 speaking to him about it afterward. He took it in good 
 part, but he said he had been rather disappointed 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 experience of the 
 seriousness of life, they would prefer something less 
 trivial. He supposed, however, that a romantic love- 
 story, where a poor American girl marries an English 
 lord, formed a refuge for them from the real world 
 
 161 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 which promised them so little and held them so cheap. 
 It was quite useless for one to try to make him realize 
 his behavior in consorting with servants 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 mis- 
 placed politeness. At first the servants stared and re- 
 sented 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 fel- 
 low-servants. To my astonishment lie 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 almost 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 everybody; and that 
 he did not believe he had ever had a guest in the house 
 who was so popular all round. 
 
 " Of course," Mrs. Makely 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. JSTo, the only danger is that there won't 
 be room in the hotel parlors for all the people that will 
 
 want to hear him, and we shall have to make the ad- 
 
 102 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 mission 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 ad- 
 mission. I'm afraid, Mrs. Makely, you're going to be 
 very few, though fit." 
 
 " Well, I've thought it all over, and I'm going to put 
 the tickets at 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 
 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 in- 
 terview 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 break- 
 fast — 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," 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 — " 
 
 103 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " It's admirable !" said the Altmrian. " I have 
 heard about it from the Camps. It is an emblem of 
 the unity which ought to prevail among ( 'lnistians 
 of all professions. How can I help you, Mrs. Make- 
 ly?" 
 
 " I knew you would approve of it 1" she exulted. 
 " Well, it's simply this : The poor little place has got 
 so shabby that I'm 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 mur- 
 mur of acquiescence. It sufficed for Mrs. Makely's 
 purpose, at any rate, and she went on, without giving 
 the Altrurian a chance to say what he thought the edu- 
 cational 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." 
 
 " 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, 
 
 1G4 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 and all the good you can do, indirectly, by a little 
 Talk on Alturia." 
 
 He answered, blandly : " A little Talk on Altruria ? 
 How in the world should I get money by that 3" 
 
 She was only too eager to explain, and she did it 
 with so inuch 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 pa- 
 tience. 
 
 When she gave him a chance to answer, at last, he 
 said : " I shall be very happj- 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 nothing 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 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. Xo 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 before 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 stipulation I should like to make," 
 
 he began. 
 
 " Oh, a thousand," she cut in. 
 
 165 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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. 
 " 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 jubilant- 
 ly : " That will fix it. He will see how much his pre- 
 cious 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 acquainted 
 with the Altrurian. It is true that the minister was 
 somewhat troubled with the moral question, 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 said anything against 
 the plan to Mrs. Makely, and this energetic woman 
 made us take two tickets apiece, as soon as she got them 
 printed, over in the village. She got little hand-bills 
 printed, and had them scattered about through the 
 
 1G6 
 
A TKAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 follow- 
 ing 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 person. 
 
 I must say I found this extremely distasteful, es- 
 pecially 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 impostor. 
 
 Then Mrs. Makely would put me forward, and I 
 would be obliged to give such account of him as I 
 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 dismissed 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 playing on Mr. 
 
 Homos, and I noticed that she put herself rather de- 
 
 1G7 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 fiantly 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 in 
 to breakfast with her, the head-waiter stopped her as 
 he opened the door, and asked modestly if she could 
 spare him a few tickets, for he 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 al- 
 ways 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 tow- 
 ard 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 vou mean that I can have 
 them all ?" 
 
 " Every one, and a band of music into the bargain," 
 she answered, recklessly. But she seemed a little daunt- 
 ed when he quietly took them. " You know there are a 
 hundred here ?" 
 
 " Yes, I should like to see what I can do among the 
 
 natives. Then there 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." 
 
 168 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " The tickets are a dollar each, you know," she sug- 
 gested. 
 
 " That's all right/' said Camp. " Well, good-after- 
 noon." 
 
 Mrs. Makely turned to ine with a kind of gasp as he 
 shambled away. " I don't know about that." 
 
 u 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- 
 tempt, " 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 are 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 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 myself. I should 
 like to know why 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 V 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." 
 
 169 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 hack — 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 he five dollars for the two. I feel 
 hound to get all I can for the cause. Shall I put your 
 name down?" 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Bulkham, rather crossly ; hut 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 aisles and charge 
 five dollars apiece for as many people as I can crowd 
 in there. I never knew anything so perfectly provi- 
 dential." 
 
 " I envy you the ability to see it in that light, Mrs. 
 Makely," I said, faint at heart. " Suppose Camp 
 crowds the place full of his trainmen, 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 
 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 
 
 170 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 if they speculated on them/' she confided to me. " Do 
 you suppose they would have the conscience ?" 
 
 They had secured the large parlor of the hotel, where 
 the young people danced in the evening, and where en- 
 tertainments were held, of the sort usually given in sum- 
 mer hotels; we had already had a dramatic 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 peo- 
 ple at the other hotels and cottages had bought scats 
 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. 
 
 The hour set for the Talk to begin was three o'clock, 
 so that people could have their naps comfortably over, 
 after the one-o'clock dinner, and be just in the right 
 frame of mind for listening. But long before the ap- 
 pointed 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 fel- 
 lows, 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 train was due, and a construction train 
 
 171 
 
A TKAVELEK EKOM ALTKUKIA 
 
 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 Altruria, 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 was obliged to 
 pacify them with all sorts of lying promises. From 
 moment to moment she was in consultation 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 ho- 
 tel 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 instantly told 
 her that, if there was to be any such separation 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 transaction 
 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 
 dollar to hear you ; and that makes it so very embarrass- 
 ing. Oh, dear Mr. Homos! You won't be so im- 
 placably high-principled as all that! Think that you 
 
 are doing it for the house of Gawd." 
 
 172 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 The woman made me sick. 
 
 " Then no one," said the Altrurian, " can feel ag- 
 grieved, or unfairly used, if I say what I have to say 
 in the open air, where all can listen equally, without 
 any manner of preference or distinction. We will go 
 up to the edge of the grove overlooking the tennis- 
 court, and hold our meeting there, as the Altrurian 
 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 Altrurign turned away, without making any re- 
 sponse to this flattering attribution of our nationality 
 to him ; but Mrs. Makely had not waited for any. She 
 had flown off, and I next saw her attacking the land- 
 lord, with such apparent success that he slapped him- 
 self on the leg and vanished, and immediately the 
 porters and bell-boys and all the men-servants began 
 carrying out chairs to the tennis-court, which was al- 
 ready 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 tally- 
 hoes 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 Avere all seated, scattered them- 
 selves on the grass and the pine-needles about the border 
 
 " 173 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 of the grove. I should have liked to instance the fact 
 to the Altrurian, as a proof that this sort of subordina- 
 tion 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 im- 
 planted. 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 was waiting for the assembly 
 to quiet itself before he began to speak. I do not think 
 there could have been less than five hundred present, 
 and the scene had that accidental picturesqueness which 
 results from the grouping of all sorts of faces and cos- 
 tumes. 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 outdated 
 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. 
 
 The sky overhead was absolutely stainless, and the 
 light of the cool afternoon sun streamed upon the 
 slopes of the solemn mountains to the east. The tall 
 pines in the background blackened themselves against 
 the horizon ; nearer they showed more and more de- 
 cidedly 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. 
 
XI 
 
 " I could not give you a clear account of the pres- 
 ent 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 with- 
 out dying and seeming to make an end. It must be 
 sown in corruption before it can be raised in incor- 
 ruption. 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 
 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 good-will among us in its likeness. That 
 commonwealth perished, jnst as its prototype perished, 
 or seemed to perish ; and long ages of civic and economic 
 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, 
 
 "l75 
 
A TEAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 which the weak rendered homage to the strong, and 
 served them in the field and in the camp, and the strong 
 in turn gave the weak protection against the other 
 strong. It was a juggle in which the weak did not see 
 that their safety was, 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 became 
 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 misrule, 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 was 
 burst with the vision of a future in which all men were 
 the law, and not one man, or any less number of men 
 than all. 
 
 " The poor dumb beast of humanity rose, and the 
 throne tumbled, and the sceptre was broken, and the 
 crown rolled away into that darkness of the past. We 
 thought that heaven had descended to us, and that lib- 
 erty, equality, and fraternity were ours. We could not 
 
 176 
 
A TRAVELER PROM ALTRURIA 
 
 see what should again alienate lis from one another, or 
 how one brother could again oppress another. 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 prophesied 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 before. Invention followed invention ; 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 multi- 
 plied 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 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 
 
 177 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 the toiling myriads consider what would become of 
 them if it took away their means of wearing themselves 
 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 hundred, 
 of a thousand per cent., and to satisfy its need, to pro- 
 duce 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 ma- 
 chinery 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 practised, it declared itself the 
 only means of civilization 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 drain- 
 ed of its life and force, to feed the centres of commerce 
 
 and industry. The whole land was bound together with 
 
 178 
 
A TEAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 a network of iron roads that linked the factories and 
 founderies to the fields and mines, and blasted the land- 
 scape 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 wher- 
 ever 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 con- 
 sciousness. The iron roads united ; the warring in- 
 dustries made peace, each kind under a single leader- 
 ship. Monopoly, not competition, was seen to be the 
 beneficent means of distributing the favors and bless- 
 ings 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 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, witli a blind and mad succession, 
 a time of famine, when money could not buy the super- 
 abundance 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 
 
 179 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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, fol- 
 lowed by long periods of exhaustion and recupera- 
 tion. 
 
 There was no law in our economy, but as the Accumu- 
 lation had never cared 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 legis- 
 latures 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 de- 
 cisions 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 vulgar 
 throats. 
 
 " Isn't it a perfect shame ?" Mrs. Makely demanded. 
 
 " I think some of you gentlemen ought to say some- 
 
 180 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 thing. What will Mr. Homos think of our civilization 
 if we let such interruptions go unrebuked ?" 
 
 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 coun- 
 try 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 his- 
 tory, 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 construction 
 gang called out; but the farmer stood his ground, and 
 I could hear him through the laughing and shouting 
 keep saying something, from time to time, about not 
 wanting to pay no dolla' for no talk about co'perations 
 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 
 toward 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 any one believe that I have not been giving 
 
 181 
 
A TEAVELEE FEOM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 intelligently. 
 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 finally reached. 
 I will not trouble you with details ; in fact, I have been 
 afraid that I had already treated of our affairs too ab- 
 stractly; but, since your own experience furnishes you 
 the means of seizing my meaning, I will go on as be- 
 fore. 
 
 " You will understand me when I explain that the 
 Accumulation had not erected itself into the sovereign- 
 ty with us unopposed. The working-men who suffered 
 most from its oppression had early begun to band them- 
 selves against it, with the instinct of self-preservation, 
 first trade by trade and art by art, and then in con- 
 gresses and federations of the trades and arts, until 
 finally they enrolled themselves in one vast union, which 
 included all the working-men whom their necessity or 
 their interest did not leave on the side of the Accumu- 
 lation. This beneficent and generous 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 monopolies to one vast monopoly, till 
 the stronger had devoured the weaker among its mem- 
 bers, 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 that we had suffered all realty to be taken 
 from us. The Accumulation owned the land as well as 
 
 the mines under it and the shops over it ; the Accumula- 
 
 182 
 
A TKAVELEK FKOM ALTRURIA 
 
 tion owned the seas and the ships that sailed the seas, 
 and the fish that swam in their depths ; it owned trans- 
 portation and distribution, and the wares and products 
 that were to be carried to and fro; and, by a logic ir- 
 resistible and inexorable, the Accumulation was, 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 ourselves 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 of- 
 ficials, but I use their analogues for the sake of clear- 
 ness, 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." 
 
 " ~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 denounced, 
 through the press which it controlled, the proletarian 
 leaders who taught that it was the enemy of the pro- 
 letariate, and who stirred up strikes and tumults of all 
 sorts, for higher wages and fewer hours. But the 
 friend of the proletariate, whenever occasion served, 
 treated the proletariate like a deadly enemy. In sea- 
 sons of overproduction, as it was called, it locked the 
 workmen out or laid them off, and left their families 
 
 183 
 
A TEAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 should, God grant that you 
 may find your way out as simply as we did at last, when 
 freedom had perished in everything but 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- 
 letariate, 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 proletariate 
 ceased to counsel strikes, or any form of resistance to 
 the Accumulation that could be tormented into the like- 
 ness of insurrection against the government, and began 
 to urge them to attack it in the political way, the deluge 
 that swept the Accumulation out of existence came 
 trickling and creeping over the land. It appeared first 
 in the country, a spring from the ground ; then it gath- 
 ered head in the villages ; then it swelled to a torrent in 
 the cities. I cannot stay to trace its course; but sud- 
 denly, 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 with the telegraphs that the rebellion against the 
 Accumulation began, and the government was forced, 
 by the overwhelming majority which the proletariate 
 sent to our parliament, to assume a function which the 
 
 184 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 admin- 
 istration, but which showed itself immaculately pure 
 compared with the Accumulation. The common owner- 
 ship of mines necessarily followed, with an allotment of 
 lands to any one who wished to live by tilling the land ; 
 but not a foot of the land was remitted to private hands 
 for the purposes of selfish pleasure or the exclusion of 
 any other from the landscape. As all business had been 
 gathered into the grasp of the x\ccumulation, 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. 
 
 " 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 proletariate, 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 by 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 com- 
 monwealth 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 
 
 185 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 con- 
 sciousness with that of a disembodied spirit released 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 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 publicly expressed his 
 gratitude to God that the Accumulation had passed 
 away forever. You will realize the importance of 
 such an expression in recalling the declarations some 
 of your slave-holders have made since the Civil War, 
 that they would not have slavery restored for any earth- 
 ly 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- 
 ization with which your experience has filled them. 
 For a time the shell of the old Accumulation remained 
 for our social habitation, and we dwelt in the old com- 
 petitive and monopolistic forms after the life had gone 
 
 186 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 under- 
 stand. The proletariate, in the competitive and monopo- 
 listic time, used to make a kind of shoes for the pro- 
 letariate, or the women of the proletariate, 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 people called them, because they 
 were bought fresh for every Sunday — " 
 
 " Sat'd'y-night shoes," screamed the old farmer. " I 
 know 'em. My gals buy 'em. Half-dolla' a pai', and 
 not wo'th the money." 
 
 " Well," said the Altrurian, " they were a cheat and 
 a lie in every way, and under the new system it was not 
 possible, when public attention was called to the fact, 
 to continue the falsehood they embodied. As soon as 
 the Saturday-night shoes 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 
 
 187 
 
A TKAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 shoemaking was at once 
 enormously reduced." 
 
 " Yes," said the professor, " 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 fraudulent wares. These shoemakers — 
 lasters, button-holers, 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 re- 
 fine and beautify; we had climates to change and sea- 
 sons to modify, a whole system of meteorology to re- 
 adjust, and the public works gave employment to the 
 multitudes emancipated from the soul-destroying ser- 
 vice 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 cur- 
 rent 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 
 
 188 
 
A TEAVELEE FEOM ALTEUEIA 
 
 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 Mediterranean 
 countries. 
 
 " It was not only the makers of fraudulent things 
 who were released to these useful and wholesome labors, 
 but those who had spent themselves in contriving ugly 
 and stupid and foolish things were set free to the public 
 employment. 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. 
 13 
 
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 be- 
 came, by the operation of a natural law, a beautiful 
 thing. 
 
 Once we had not time enough to make things beau- 
 tiful, 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 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 primal 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 al- 
 ways if he only had the time. Well, now we had the 
 time, the Evolution 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 
 
 190 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 overreach another, 
 or make haste to undersell his rival, or seize some ad- 
 vantage of him, or plot some profit to his loss. ISTine- 
 tenths of the railroads, which in the old times had 
 ruinously competed, and then, in the hands of the Ac- 
 cumulation, had been united to impoverish and op- 
 press the people, fell into disuse. The commonwealth 
 operated the few lines that were necessary for the col- 
 lection of materials and the distribution of manufact- 
 ures, 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 w r as fash- 
 ioned, from the materials of the charnel, and that had 
 no life in or from the good of the community, soon 
 tumbled into decay. The administration 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 burn them. In this way 
 their sites were at once purified and obliterated. 
 
 191 
 
A TKAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " We had, of course, a great many large cities under 
 the old egoistic conditions, which increased and fattened 
 upon the country, and fed their cancerous 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 thou- 
 sand or more. We were very proud of them, and 
 vaunted them as a proof of our unparalleled pros- 
 perity, though really they never were anything but con- 
 geries of millionaires and the wretched creatures who 
 served them and supplied them. Of course, there was 
 everywhere the appearance 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 mill- 
 ionaries. 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 com- 
 petitive and monopolistic centres of population 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 are 
 still so pestilential, after the lapse of centuries, that 
 travelers are publicly guarded against them. Raven- 
 
 192 
 
A TRAVELER FKOM ALTRURIA 
 
 ing 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 maintained by the commonwealth 
 in the form of its prosperity, and is studied by anti- 
 quarians 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, trap- 
 ped and retrapped to keep the poison gases down; you 
 see the sewers that rolled their loathsome tides under 
 the streets, amid a tangle of gas-pipes, steam-pipes, wa- 
 ter-pipes, telegraph-wires, electric lighting-wires, elec- 
 tric motor-wires, and grip-cables — all without a plan, 
 but makeshifts, 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 low- 
 est. 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 outshine another. 
 But as the capitals are the centres 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 human type which is likest 
 the divine, and we try to conform our whole industrial 
 life to the artistic temperament. Even in the labors of 
 
 193 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 the field and shop, which are obligatory upon all, we 
 study the inspiration 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, theatres, gal- 
 leries, museums, cathedrals, laboratories and conserva- 
 tories, 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 
 surprised 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 elec- 
 tricity, 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 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 fortnight, 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 application, a vote of the 
 local agents may release him from the obligatories in- 
 definitely. 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. 
 
 194 
 
A TKAVELEE FROM ALTEURIA 
 
 " 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 dis- 
 tinguish men by their callings ; we do not speak of the 
 poet This or the shoemaker That, for the poet may very 
 likely be a shoemaker in the obligatories, and the shoe- 
 maker a poet in the voluntaries. 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 re- 
 lations 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 competitive 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 people of each 
 region meet one another on Evolution day, in the re- 
 gionic capital; once in four years they all visit the 
 
 national capital. There is no danger of the decay of 
 
 195 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 patriotism among us; our country is our mother, and 
 we love her as it is impossible to love the step-mother 
 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 ques- 
 tions as well as I can. We have, of course," the Altru- 
 rian proceeded, after a 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, 
 and 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 that we are 
 more so than you are. Certainly, however, we are self- 
 sufficing in a degree unknown to most European coun- 
 tries; 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 liv- 
 ing abroad incognito. I hope that I may say without 
 offence that they find it a sorrowful exile, and that the 
 reports of the egoistic world, with its wars, its bank- 
 ruptcies, its civic commotions, and its social unhap- 
 piness, do not make us discontented with our own con- 
 dition. Before the Evolution we had completed the 
 
 round of your inventions and discoveries, impelled by 
 
 196 
 
A TRAVELER FKOM ALTRURIA 
 
 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; 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 consid- 
 ered, 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 vanity. 
 Nothing is worn that is not simple and honest in text- 
 ure ; 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 wasteful and fool- 
 ish. The community builds the dwellings of the com- 
 munity, and these, too, are of a classic simplicity, 
 though always beautiful and fit in form ; the splendors 
 of the arts are lavished upon the public edifices, which 
 we all enjoy in common." 
 
 " Isn't this the greatest rehash of ' Utopia,' ' New At- 
 lantis,' and ' City of the Sun ' that you ever imagined ?" 
 the professor whispered across me to the banker. " The 
 man is a fraud, and a very bungling fraud at that." 
 
 " Well, you must expose him, when he gets through," 
 the banker whispered back. 
 
 197 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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, im- 
 patiently. " We didn't come here to listen to your ques- 
 tions." 
 
 The professor contemptuously ignored him. " I sup- 
 pose you occasionally receive emissaries from, as well 
 as send them to, the world outside?" 
 
 " 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, 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, America 
 prophesies another Altruria. I know that to some of 
 
 you all that I have told of my country will seem a 
 
 198 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 abhorrence the monstrous injustice of the 
 fact that men were hanged for small thefts in Eng- 
 land; and in the preliminary conversation between its 
 characters he denounced the killing of men for any 
 sort of thefts. ISTow 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 Utopian 
 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 
 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 
 
 199 
 
A TRAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 offences 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 hand-work 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 ma- 
 chines that were once the workmen's enemies and mas- 
 ters 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 insanity 
 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 everything. The privacy 
 of the family is sacredly guarded in essentials, but the 
 social instinct is so highly developed 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. We 
 have no social meetings which are not free to all ; and 
 we encourage joking and the friendly give and take of 
 witty encounters." 
 
 200 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 " 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 that 
 does not inconvenience or injure others, to let every 
 one live the life he likes best. If a man prefers to 
 dwell apart, and have his meals in private for himself 
 alone or for his family, it is freely permitted; only 
 he must not expect to be served as in public, where 
 service is one of the voluntaries ; private service is not 
 permitted; those wishing to live alone must wait upon 
 themselves, cook their own food, and care for their own 
 tables. Very few, however, wish to withdraw from the 
 public life, for most of the discussions and debates take 
 place at our mid-day 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 any one, 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 i it was human nature ' to shirk and malinger and 
 
 loaf, but we have found that it is no such thing. We 
 
 have found that it is human nature to work cheerfully, 
 
 willingly, eagerly, at the tasks which all share for the 
 
 201 
 
A TRAVELER FKOM ALTKUEIA 
 
 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 imagina- 
 tion, 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 no wise possible for the in- 
 dividual 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 any 
 one to lie in wait to betray another or seize an advan- 
 tage. 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 called 
 out, jollily: " 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. 
 
 202 
 
A TKAVELEK FKOM ALTRUEIA 
 
 " 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 V 
 
 The professor gave me an applausive nod as I sat 
 down. " I envy you the chance of that little dig," he 
 whispered. 
 
 The Altrurian was thoughtful a moment, and then 
 he answered : " ]STo, 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 
 altruistic dominion of the egoistic empire, and, except 
 as they were tainted by social or worldly ambitions, 
 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 burlesque ; but 
 they gave it robustly, and from that time on, Mrs. 
 Makely led the applause, and they roared in after her. 
 
 It is impossible to follow closely the course of the 
 Altrurian's 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 about 
 war in Altruria, and he said : " The very name of our 
 country implies the absence of war. At the time of the 
 
 203 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 offensive 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 monopolistic epoch just ended. 
 Negotiations began in the face of the imposing demon- 
 stration we made, and we were never afterward molest- 
 ed by our neighbors, who finally yielded to the specta- 
 cle of our civilization and united their political and so- 
 cial fate with ours. At present, our whole continent is 
 Altrurian. For a long time we kept up a system of 
 coast defences, but it is also a long time since we aban- 
 doned these ; for it is a maxim with us that where every 
 citizen's life is a pledge of the public safety, that coun- 
 try 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 to 
 make our life as He made it His. We have several 
 forms of ritual, but no form of creed, and our religious 
 differences may be said to be aesthetic and tempera- 
 mental rather than theological and essential. We have 
 no denominations, for we fear in this, as in other mat- 
 ters, 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 
 
 204 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 compassion, 
 tenderer sympathy, warmer humanity, heavenlier char- 
 ity than that shown in the family where all are eco- 
 nomically 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 those nobler 
 sorrows which God has appointed to men, and which 
 are so different from the squalid accidents that they 
 have made for themselves. Sickness and death call out 
 the most angelic ministries of love ; and those who 
 wish to give themselves to others may do so without 
 hinderance from those cares, and even those duties, rest- 
 ing upon men where each must look out first for him- 
 self and for his own. Oh, believe 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 hard- 
 ly 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 our 
 statutes and customs, the fear of death, as it once 
 weighed upon us, has been lifted from our souls. Tho 
 14 205 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 mystery of it has so far been taken away that we per- 
 ceive it as something just and natural. Now that all 
 unkindness 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 bless- 
 ing 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 upon 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 
 theirs 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 ive lived so, we should feel so, too ? That I should 
 know my little girl was living ?" 
 
 " 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, tremu- 
 lously : " And have — have you had any direct communi- 
 cation with the other world ? Has any disembodied 
 spirit returned to testify of the life beyond the 
 grave ?" 
 
 The professor nodded significantly across Mrs. Make- 
 ly 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 — " 
 
 206 
 
A TKAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 She stopped and gave her attention to the Altrurian, 
 who was replying to the manufacturer's question. 
 
 " We do not need any such testimony. Our life here 
 makes us sure of the life there. At any rate, no ex- 
 ternation 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 had 
 asked : " And if I lived so, should I feel so %" 
 
 Again the Altrurian answered : " Why not V 
 
 The poor woman quavered : " Oh, I do believe it ! I 
 just know it must be true !" 
 
 The manufacturer shook his head 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 every day, 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 pleas- 
 ing 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 sort 
 of circulating medium must be used, that life could not 
 be transacted without it. But life began to go on per- 
 fectly well, when each dwelt in the place assigned 
 
 207 
 
A TKAVELEE FROM ALTEURIA 
 
 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 in- 
 crease 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 buy- 
 ing 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 noth- 
 ing. The thief could only steal from the community; 
 but if he stole, what was he to do with 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 themselves 
 alive. The vices vanished with the crimes, and the 
 diseases almost as largely disappeared. People were no 
 longer sickened by sloth and surfeit, or deformed and 
 depleted by overwork and famine. They were whole- 
 somely housed in healthful places, and they were clad 
 fitly for their labor and fitly for their leisure; the 
 
 208 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 an army, an awful army of 
 anguish and despair. ]STow 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. 
 
 " We 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 vulgar acci- 
 dents 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, ex- 
 presses, railroads, mines, and all large industries oper- 
 ated 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 neces- 
 sarily vanished; all economic chance vanished. The 
 founders of the commonwealth understood perfectly 
 that business was the sterile activity of the function in- 
 terposed between the demand and the supply; that it 
 
 209 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 was nothing structural; and they intended its extinc- 
 tion, and expected it from the moment that money wa3 
 abolished." 
 
 " This is all pretty tiresome," said the professor to 
 our immediate party. " I don't see why we oblige our- 
 selves to listen to that fellow's stuff. As if a civilized 
 state could exist for a day without money or business." 
 
 He went on to give his opinion of the Altrurian's 
 pretended description, in a tone so audible that it at- 
 tracted the notice of the nearest group of railroad hands, 
 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 sugges- 
 tion. 
 
 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 spirit. 
 We make our pleasures civic and public as far as pos- 
 sible, and the ideal is inclusive and not exclusive. 
 There are, of course, festivities which all cannot share, 
 but our distribution into small communities favors the 
 possibility of all doing so. Our daily life, however, is 
 so largely social that we seldom meet by special invita- 
 tion or engagement. When we do, it is with the per- 
 fect 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 receptions and balls and dinners 
 of a semi-barbaric people striving for social prominence 
 by shutting a certain number in and a certain num- 
 ber out, and overdressing, overfeeding, and overdrink- 
 ing. 
 
 210 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 Anything premeditated 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 peo- 
 ple come and go without ceremony. No one is more 
 host than guest; all are hosts and guests. People con- 
 sort much according to their tastes — literary, musical, 
 artistic, scientific, or mechanical — hut these tastes are 
 made approaches, not harriers ; 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, unless he has 
 dedicated himself, in some special way, to the general 
 good. Our ideal is not rights, hut duties." 
 
 " Mazzini 1" whispered the professor. 
 
 " The greatest distinction which any one 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 per- 
 fect; but we are sure that our civic ideals are perfect. 
 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 ambition; to have 
 disused money and eliminated chance ; to have realized 
 the brotherhood of the race, and to have outlived the 
 fear of death." 
 
 The Altrurian suddenly stopped with these words and 
 sat down. He had spoken a long time, and with a ful- 
 ness which my report gives little notion of; but, though 
 
 211 
 
A TRAVELEK FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 motion- 
 less 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 out-spread 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, Reub !" 
 
 Camp continued : " But our friend here will shake 
 the hand of any man, woman, or child that wants to 
 speak to him ; and you needn't wipe it on 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 mother's house, 
 and we shall be glad to have you 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. 
 
 " With all those imaginary commonwealths to draw 
 upon, from Plato, through More, Bacon, and Campa- 
 nula, down to Bellamv and Morris, he has constructed 
 
 212 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 the shakiest effigy ever made of old clothes stuffed with 
 straw/' said the professor. 
 
 The manufacturer was silent. The hanker said : " I 
 don't know. He grappled pretty holdly with your in- 
 sinuations. That frank declaration that Altruria was 
 all these pretty soap-bubble worlds solidified was rather 
 fine." 
 
 " It was splendid !" cried Mrs. Makely. The lawyer 
 and the minister came toward us from where they had 
 been sitting together. She called out to them : " Why 
 in the world didn't one of your 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 located 
 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 amus- 
 ing, and you must have got a lot of money by him. 
 It was an oversight not to make him a formal acknowl- 
 edgment 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. 
 
 "Well, then, don't you think," said Mrs. Makely, 
 
 who had a leathery insensibility to everything but the 
 
 213 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 purpose possessing her, " that we ought at least to go 
 and say something to him personally 3" 
 
 " 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 you," returned Homos, with that con- 
 founded 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. 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 both of hers ; she dropped her fan, parasol, 
 gloves, handkerchief, and vinaigrette in the grass to do 
 so. " Oh, Mr. Homos," she fluted, and the tears came 
 into her eyes, " it was beautiful, beautiful, every word 
 of it ! I sat in a perfect trance from beginning 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 I can ever thank you enough." 
 
 " Yes, indeed," the professor hastened to say, before 
 
 214 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 the Altrurian could answer, and he beamed malignant- 
 ly 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 con- 
 ditions so different, I sometimes had to ask myself, as 
 I went on, if my whole life had 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, courteous- 
 ly. " But it was most interesting." 
 
 " The kingdom of God upon earth," said the min- 
 ister — " 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 Altrurian. 
 
 " Yes, but conditioned as men are here — " 
 
 " But if they were conditioned as men are there ?" 
 
 " Now, I can't let you two good people get into a 
 theological dispute," Mrs. Makely pushed in. " Here 
 is Mr. Twelvemough dying to shake hands with Mr. 
 Homos and compliment his distinguished guest." 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Homos knows what I must have thought 
 
 of his talk without my telling him," I began, skilfully. 
 
 " But I am sorry that I am to lose my distinguished 
 
 guest so soon." 
 
 215 
 
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 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 coun- 
 try 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 winter. 
 We parted friends; I even offered him some intro- 
 ductions; 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 incurable, and I 
 was glad that I was not to be responsible any longer 
 for whatever strange thing he might do next. I think 
 he remained very popular with the classes he most af- 
 fected; 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 neighbor- 
 hood, devout in the faith that there was such a com- 
 monwealth as Altruria, and that he was really an Altru- 
 rian. As for the more cultivated people who had met 
 him, they continued of two minds upon both points. 
 
 THE END