 CHAPTER V. At this moment the lady who had hailed me so gaily from the top of the coach while I stood waiting for the Alturian 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 went to introduce my husband to you, he adores your books. She went on much longer to this effect, while the other men grinned round and her husband tried to look as if it were all true, and her eyes wandered to the Alturian, who listened gravely. I knew perfectly well that she was using her husband's zeal for my fiction to make me present my friend, but I did not mind that, and I introduced him to both of them. She took possession of him at once and began walking him off down the piazza while her husband 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 complement 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 anyway. She knows pretty much everything that's going in that line. We haven't got any children, and it occupies her mind. She's up to all sorts of things. She's artistic, and she's musical, and she's dramatic, and she's literary. Well, I like to have her. Women are funny, anyway. He was a good-looking, good-natured, average American of the money making type. I believe he was some sort of a broker, but I do not quite know what his business was. As we walked up and down the piazza, keeping a discreet little distance from the corner where his wife had run off to with her capture, he said he wished he could get more time with her in the summer, but he supposed I knew what business was. He was glad she could have the rest, anyway. She needed it. By the way, he asked, who is this friend of yours? The women are all crazy about him, and it's been an even thing between my wife and his ground soul 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 Alturia, anyway? I told him, and he said, Oh, yes. Well, if we are going to restrict immigration, I suppose we shan't see many more Alturians, and we better make the most of this one, eh? I do not know why this innocent pleasantry piqued me to say. If I understand the Alturians, my dear fellow, nothing could induce them to emigrate to America. As far as I can make out, they would regard it very much as we should regard selling among the Eskimos. Is that so?" asked my new acquaintance, with perfect good temper. Why? Really, I can't say, and I don't know that I've explicit authority for my statement. They are worse than the English used to be, he went on. I didn't know that there were any foreigners 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 Alturian would regard the English as a little lower in the scale of savagery than ourselves even. Is that so? Well, that's pretty good in the English, anyway, said my companion, but he laughed with an easy satisfaction that I envied him. "'My dear,' his wife called to him from where she was sitting with the Alturian, I wish you would go for my shawl. I begin to feel the air a little. "'I'll go if you tell me where,' he said, and confide it 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. But 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 amably off. I went and took a chair by the lady and the Alturian, and she began at once. "'Oh, I'm so glad you've come. I have been trying to enlighten Mr. Homoes about some of the little social peculiarities among us that he finds so hard to understand. He was just now,' the lady continued, "'wanting to know why all the natives out here were not invited to go in and join our young people in the dance, and I've been trying to tell him that we consider it a great favour to let them come and take up so much of the piazza and look in at the windows.' She gave a little laugh of superiority, and twitched her pretty head in the direction of the young country girls and country fellows who were thronging the place that night in rather unusual numbers. They were well enough looking, and as it was Saturday night they were in their best. I suppose their dress could have been criticised. The young fellows were clothed by the ready-made clothing store, and the young girls after their own devices from the fashion papers. But their general effect was good, and their behaviour 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 gaiety. I had often seen them there before, but I had never thought it strange that 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 Ultrurian 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 because they had not paid the piper. Then the money consideration enters even into your social pleasures, asked the Ultrurian. Very much, doesn't it with you? He evaded this question, as he evaded all straightforward questions concerning his country. We have no money considerations, you know, but do I understand 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 hotels and boarding houses and the private cottages. The young men are especially welcome. There are not enough young men in the hotel to go round, you see. In fact, we could see that some of the pretty girls within were dancing with other girls. Half-grown boys were dangling from the wastes of tall young ladies and waltzing on tiptoe. Isn't that rather droll, asked the Ultrurian. 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 there, and the rest are out west, growing up with the country. 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. Makley, 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 Ultrurian entreated, with unwanted perception of the humor. I know that I must be very trying with my questions, but do not abandon me to the solitude of my own conjectures. They are dreadful. Well, I won't, said the lady, with another laugh. And I will try to tell you what would happen if those farmers, farmhands, or whatever they are, were asked in. The mamas 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 preferred to dance with one another and with little boys? No, they preferred 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 anything against these natives here. They are very civil and decent. But they have not the same social traditions 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 Ultrurian, with a gleam of common sense that surprised me. And that as long as your present conditions endure, they never can be. You must excuse the confusion which the difference between your political ideals and your economic ideas 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 insuperable inequalities among you and to forbid the hope of the brotherhood which your policy proclaims? Mrs. Makley looked at me as if she were helpless to grapple with his meaning, and for fear of worse, I thought best to evade it. I said, I don't believe that anybody is troubled by those distinctions. We are used to them, and everybody acquiesces in them, which is a proof that they are a very good thing. Mrs. Makley now came to my support. The Americans are very high-spirited in every class, and I don't believe one of those nice farm boys would like being asked in any better than the young ladies. You can't imagine how proud some of them are. So that they suffer from being excluded as inferiors? Oh, I assure you they don't feel themselves inferior. 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, which I feel it an honour 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 himself 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. Now the son has the farm, and he and his sister live there with their mother. The daughter takes in sewing, and in that way they manage to make both ends meet. The girl is a really a first-rate seamstress, and so cheap. I give her a good deal of my work in the summer, and we are quite friends. She's very fond of reading. The mother is an invalid, but she reads aloud while the daughter sews, and you've no idea how many books they get through. When she comes for sewing, I like to talk with her about them. I always have her sit down. It's hard to realise that she isn't a lady. I'm a good deal criticised, I know, and I suppose I do spoil her a little. It puts notions into such people's heads if you meet them in that way. They're pretty free and independent as it is. But when I'm with Lizzie, I forget that there is any difference between us. I can't help loving the child. You must take Mr. Homoes to see them, Mr. Twelve-Mow. 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. Makley 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. Homoes. Is it true that everybody in Alturia does some kind of manual labour? 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 Alturian had taken a deal. Perhaps we had better try to understand each other clearly before I answer that question. You have no titles of nobility as they have in England? No, indeed. I hope we have outgrown those superstitions, said Mrs. Makley, with the Republican fervour 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. Makley 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 well as moral qualities, with ranks and classes? Classes, yes, but as you know we have no ranks in America. The Alturian took off his hat and rubbed an imaginable perspiration from his forehead. He sighed deeply. It is all very difficult. Yes, Mrs. Makley 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 without further question what you understand by a lady and let me live into the notion of it at my leisure? I will do my best," said Mrs. Makley. But it would be so much easier to tell you who was or who was not a lady. However, your acquaintance is so limited yet that I must try to do something in the abstract and impersonal for you. In the first place, a lady must be above the sordid anxieties in every way. She need not be very rich, but she must have enough so that she need not be harassed about making both ends meet when she ought to be devoting herself to her social duties. The time has passed with us when a lady could look after the dinner and perhaps cook part of it herself and then rush in to receive her guests and do the amenities. She must have a certain kind of house so that her entourage won't seem cramped and mean, and she must have nice frocks, of course, and plenty of them. She needn't be of the smart set, that isn't at all necessary, but she can't afford to be out of the fashion. Of course, she must have a certain training. She must have cultivated tastes. She must know about art and literature and music and all those kind of things, and though it isn't necessary to go in for anything in particular, it won't hurt her to have a fad or two. The nicest kind of fad is charity, and people go in for that a great deal. I think sometimes they use it to work up with, and there are some who use religion in the same way. I think it's horrid, but it's perfectly safe. You can't accuse them of doing it. I'm happy to say, though, that mere church association doesn't count socially so much as it used to. Charity is a great deal more insidious. But you see how hard it is to define a lady. So much has to be left to the nerves in all these things. And then it's changing all the time. Europe's coming in and the old American 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 almost as bad. Really, said Mrs. Mekli, I don't believe I can tell you what a lady is. We all laughed together at her frank confession. The alturian asked, But do I understand that one of her conditions is that she shall have nothing whatever to do? Nothing to do, cried Mrs. Mekli. A lady is busy from morning till night. She always goes to bed perfectly worn out. But with what, asked the alturian. With making herself agreeable and her house attractive, with going to lunches, and teas, and dinners, and concerts, and theaters, and art exhibitions, and charity meetings and receptions, and with writing a thousand and one notes about them, and accepting and declining, and giving lunches and dinners, and making calls and receiving them, and I don't know what all. It's the most hideous slavery. Your 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 my kitchen at times. I envy the woman who scrubs my floors. Stop! Don't ask me why I don't go into my kitchen or get down on my knees with them up. It isn't possible. You simply can't. Perhaps you could if you were a very grand dom, but if you're anywhere near the line of necessity, or ever have been, you can't. Besides, if we did do our own household work, as I understand your alturian 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 alturian 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 depended 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 unanswerable," said the alturian. I think, said Mrs. Makley, that under the circumstances we do you pretty well. Oh, I don't presume to censor you, and if you believe that your conditions are the best. We believe them the best in the best of all possible worlds," I said devoutly. And it struck me that, if ever we came to have a national church, some such affirmation as that concerning our economical conditions ought to be in the confession of faith. The alturians' mind had not followed mine so far. And your young girls, he asked of Mrs. Makley, 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 alturian would applaud their sewing for the poor, Mrs. Makley 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. Makley did not say, and he went on. What I find so hard to understand is how you ladies can endure 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. Makley, with the greatest amusement. I don't suppose that when you get above the working classes, till you reach the very rich, you would find a perfectly well woman in America. Isn't that rather extreme? I venture to ask. No, said Mrs. Makley, it's shamefully moderate. 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 alturian, if you are forbidden by 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. Makley, shaking her head gaily, we prefer to take medicine. You must approve of that, I said to the alturian, as you consider exercise for its own sake insane or immoral. But Mrs. Makley, I entreated, you're giving me away at a tremendous rate. I have just been telling Mr. Homoes that you ladies go in for athletics so much now when you're 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 in hotel piazzas all summer long, as nineteen-twentieths of us do. But I don't deny that there is a remnant, as Matthew Arnold calls them, who do go in for tennis and boating and bathing and tramping and 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 altruarian. Fortunately, he did not pursue the inquiry. His curiosity had been given a slant aside from it. But your ladies, he asked, they have the summer for rest, however they use it. Do they generally leave town? I understood Mr. Twelvemount 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. Makley. She proceeded as if she felt a tacit censure in his question. It wouldn't be the least used for us to stay and fry through our summers in the city, simply because our fathers and brothers had to. Besides, we are worn out at the end of the season, and they want us to come away as much as we want to come. Ah, I have always heard that the Americans are beautiful in their attitude toward women. They are perfect deers," said Mrs. Makley, and here comes one of the best of them. At that moment her husband came up and laid her shawl across her shoulders. Who's character is it you're blasting? He asked you coastly. 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 parter. 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 their 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 laughed at his wife and winked at me, and smoked swiftly in emphasis of his irony. Then the young gentleman whom the young deities here usually meet in society are all at work in the cities. The alturian 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. 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 alturian. Always, 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 grow 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. Makley. 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 Alturian 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 for a go, the happiness of life in the struggle to be rich? Well, you see, said Makley, 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 it's all a mistake, and that we be willing to share the privations of the man we loved. Well, said Makley 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 Alturian 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. Makley said, With your Alturian ideas, I suppose you would naturally sympathize a great deal more with the lower classes, and think they had to endure all the hardships in our system. But if you could realize how the struggle goes on in the best society and how we all have to fight for what we get or don't get, you would be disposed to pity our upper classes, too. I am sure I should, said the Alturian. Makley 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. Makley 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. Bless-a-dem-dem, but don't expect nothing. Oh, I tell you, it's a working man's country, said Makley through his cigar smoke. You ought to see them in town, these summer nights, in the parks and squares and cheap theaters. Their girls are not off for their health anywhere, and their fellows are not off growing up with the country. Their day's work is over, and they're going in for a good time. And then walk through the streets where they live and see them out on the stoops with their wives and children. I tell you, it's enough to make a fellow wish he was poor himself. Yes, said Mrs. Makley, 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 Alturian, that they are aware of the sacrifices which the ladies of the upper classes make in leaving all the work to them and suffering from the nervous stability 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 manage an Alturia. Why, we have solved the problem in the only way, as you say, that it can be solved. We all live alike. Isn't that a little, just a very trifling little bit, monotonous? Mrs. Makley 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 perhaps you were an only child? Oh, no, indeed, there were ten of us. Then you all lived alike and shared equally? Yes, but we were a family. We do not conceive of the human race except as a family. Now, excuse me, Mr. Homos, that is all nonsense. You cannot have 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 began that talk and then went on. Of course, I accepted 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 had quarrels, hadn't you at home? We fought like little cats and dogs at times. Makley and I burst into a laugh at her magnanimous frankness. The alturian 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. Makley more and more. She laughed and laughed again. You must excuse me, she panted at last, but I cannot imagine it. No, it is too ludicrous. Just fancy the jars of an ordinary family multiplied by the population of a whole continent. Why, you must be in a perpetual squabble. You can't have any peace of your lives. It's worse, far worse than our way. But madam, he began, you are supposing our family to be made up of people with all the antagonistic interests of your civilization. As a matter of fact, no, no, I know human nature, Mr. Homoes. 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 alturian turned upon me with unabated interest. And have you no provision in your system for finally making the lower classes understand the sufferings and sacrifices of the upper classes on their behalf? Do you expect to do nothing to bring them together in mutual kindness? Well, not this evening, I said, throwing the end of my cigar away. I'm going to bed, aren't you? Not yet. Well, good night. Are you sure you can find your room? Oh, yes. Good night. End of chapter 5. Chapter 6 of A Traveller from Alturia This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Matthew D. Robinson. A Traveller from Alturia by William Dean Howells. Chapter 6. I left my guest abruptly with a feeling of vexation not very easily definable. His repetition of questions about questions which society has so often answered, and always in the same way, was not so bad in him as it would have been in a person of our civilization. He represented a wholly different state of things, the inversion of our own, and much could be forgiven him for that reason. Just as in Russia much could be forgiven to an American if he formulated his curiosity concerning imperialism from a purely republican experience, I knew that in Alturia, for instance, the possession of great gifts of any kind of superiority involved the sense of obligation to others, and the wish to identify oneself with the great mass of men, rather than the ambition to distinguish oneself from them, and that the Alturians 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 exclusion. But I think we had all been very patient with him. We should have made short work with an American who had approached us with the same inquiries. Even from a foreigner the citizen of a republic founded on the notion elsewhere exploded ever since Cain, that one is his brother's keeper, the things he asked seemed inoffensive only because they were perial, but they certainly were perial. I felt that it ought to have been self-evident to him that when a commonwealth of sixty million Americans based itself upon the great principle of self-seeking, self-seeking was the best thing, and whatever hardship it seemed to work it must carry with it unseen blessings and tenfold measure. If a few hundred thousand favored Americans enjoyed the privilege of socially condemning all the rest, it was as clearly 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 anyone intimate 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 altruary into his alien traditions, and I was aware that my friends had done so too. But if I could judge for myself, he must have left them all sensible of their effort, and this was not pleasant. I could not blink the fact that although I had openly disagreed with him on every point of ethics and economics, I was still responsible for him as a guest. It was as if an English gentleman had introduced a blatant American Democrat into Tory society, or rather as if a Southerner of the Olden Time had harbored a Northern abolitionist and permitted him to inquire into the workings of slavery among his neighbours. 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 confessed that I would have willingly disowned him as I had already disavowed his opinions, but there was no way of doing it short of telling him to go away, and I was not ready to do that. Something in the man I do not know what mysteriously appealed to me. He was not contemptibly curial without being lovably childlike, and I could only make up my mind to be more and more frank with him and to try and shield him, as well as myself, from the effects I dreaded. I fell asleep planning an excursion 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 bed-clothes without looking that way. Good morning! Came back in the rich gentle voice of the Alturian. 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 all together disinterested in it. He returned. I wish you to compliment me on them. Don't you think they are pretty well done for an amitua? He came toward my bed and turned them about in his hands so that they would catch the light and smile 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 peace of mind that had not been taken to my room, and I found the porter there with his wrist bound up. He said he had stranded in handling a Lady 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 the pair, and then he let me go on with the men's boots. He said he could varnish the ladies without hurting his wrists. It needed less skill than I supposed, and after I had done a few pairs he said I could 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 should deprecate. He says that the servants hated as much as the guests. They have to take the tips now because the landlords figure on them in the wages, and they cannot live without them. He is a fine manly fellow, and Mr. Homas, 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 heard if I speak very plainly about a matter in which I have your goods solely at heart. This was not quite true, and I winced inwardly a little when he thanked me with that confounded 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 realized before coming here that America and Altruia are absolutely distinct and diverse in their actuating principles. They are both republics, I know, but America is a republic where every man is for himself, and you cannot help others as you do at home. It is dangerous. It is ridiculous. You must keep this fact in mind, or you will fall into errors that will be very embarrassing to you and your stay among us, and, I was forced to add, to all your friends. Now I certainly hoped after what I had said to you and what my friends had explained of our civilization, that you would not have done a thing of this kind. I will see the porter as soon as I am up, and ask him not to mention the matter to anyone, 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 would think that, said the Altruian, 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 everyone is for himself. I am so glad to hear it, said the Altruian. Then at least I have not gone radically astray, and I do not think you need take the trouble to explain the Altruian ideas to the porter. I have done that already, and they seem 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 home, and that it is only the rich folks among you who are independent. I really don't think you need speak to him at all, unless you wish, and I was very careful to guard my offer of help at the point where I understood from you and your friends that it might do harm. I asked him if there was not someone 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 anything else to you? How anything else? 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 Altruarian with absolute simplicity. He must have perceived the despair I fell into at this answer, for he asked, Why should I have minded doing for others what I should have been willing to do for myself? There are a great many things we are willing to do for ourselves that we are not willing to do for others. But even on that principle, which I think false and illogical, you could not be justified. A 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. Then in America, said the Altruarian, 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. When we understand something altogether different by the word gentleman in Altruria, I see now how I have committed a mistake. I should 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 today farther up into the mountains? I should be delighted, said the Altruarian, so gratefully that I was ashamed to think why I was proposing the pleasure to him. Well, then, I shall be ready to start as soon as we have had breakfast. I will join you downstairs 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. Makley when I went down, and she began, with a parenthetical tribute to the beauty of the mountains in the morning light, Don't be surprised to see me up at this unnatural hour. I don't know whether it was the excitement of our talk last night or what it was, but my solvenol 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. Makley can't, apparently. He's making up for his share of my vigils, and I'm going to breakfast without him. Do you know I've done a very bold thing? I've got the head-waiter to give you places at our table. I know you'll hate it, Mr. Twelfth-Mowl, because you naturally want to keep Mr. Hormose 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. Makley from thinking 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. Twelfth-Mowl, 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 manage him between us. We so far failed, however, that the altruarian shook hands with the head-waiter when he pressed open the wire-netting door to let us into the dining-room, and made a bow to our waitress of the sort one makes to a lady. But we thought it best to ignore these little errors of his and reserve our moral strength for anything more spectacular. Fortunately, we got through our breakfast with nothing worse than his jumping up and stooping to hand the waitress a spoon she let fall. But this could easily pass for some attention to Mrs. Makley at a little distance. There were not many people down to breakfast yet, but I could see that there was a good deal of subdued sensation among the waitresses, standing with folded arms behind their tables, and that the head-waiter's handsome face was red with anxiety. Mrs. Makley asked if we were going to church. She said she was driving that way and would be glad to drop us. I'm not going myself, she explained, because I couldn't make anything of the sermon 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 papers over to Mrs. Camp. Don't you think that will be quite as acceptable, Mr. Homoes? I should venture to hope it, he said, with a tolerant seriousness not altogether out of keeping with her lightness. Who is Mrs. Camp? I asked, not caring to commit myself on the question. Lizzie's mother! You know I told you about them last night. I think she must have got through the books I lent her, and I know Lizzie didn't like to ask me for more, because she saw me talking with you and didn't want to interrupt us. What 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. Homoes. I'm sure I don't know, madam. I haven't seen them yet. You know this is the first Sunday I've been in America. Well I'm sorry to say you won't see the old Puritan Sabbath, said Mrs. Makley, with an abrupt deflection from the question of the Sunday papers. Though you ought to, up in these hills. The only thing left of it is rye and Indian bread, and these baked beans and fish balls. But they are very good. Yes, I dare say they are not the worst of it. She was a woman who tended to levity, and I was a little afraid she might be going to say something irreverent. But if she were, she was forestalled by the old Puritan asking, Would it be very indiscreet, madam, if I were to ask you some time to introduce me to that family? The camps? She returned. Not at all. I should be perfectly delighted. The thought seemed to strike her, and she asked, Why not go with me this morning, unless you are inflexibly bent on going to church, you and Mr. Twelfthmal? The Altruarian 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. Capmite, Mrs. Makley 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 went still little. For everyone 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. Makley having left word with the clerk where we were gone so that her husband need not be alarmed when he got up. We were striking into the hills on a two-seated buckboard, with one of the best teams of our hotel and one of the most taciturn drivers. Mrs. Makley 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. We noticed the cattle in the fields and the horses we met on the road and the taste and comfort of the buildings, the variety of the crops, and the 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. Makley in answering them. They explained that the finest teams we met were from the different hotels or boarding houses, or at least from the farms where the people took city people to board, and that certain shabby equipages belonged to the natives who lived solely by cultivating the soil. There was not very much of the soil cultivated, for the chief crop was hay, with here and there a patch of potatoes or beans and a few acres and 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 border had found shelter that they were modern and pleasant. Now and then we came to a deserted homestead, and I tried to make the Altruarian understand how farming in New England had yielded to the competition of the immense agricultural operations of the West. You know, I said, that agriculture is really an operation out there, as much as coal mining is in Pennsylvania or finance and 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. Makley listened almost as eagerly as the Altruarian, for as a cultivated American woman she was necessarily quite ignorant of her own country, geographically, politically, and historically. The only people left in the hill country of New England, I concluded, are those who are too old or too lazy to get away. Any young man of energy would be ashamed to stay, unless he wanted to keep a boarding house or live on the city vacationists in summer. If he doesn't, he goes west and takes up some of the new land, and comes back in middle life and buys a deserted farm to spend his summers on. Dear me, said the Altruarian, 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 paying of exiles sometimes. Oh, I fancy there isn't much sentiment involved, I answered lightly. Whoa! said Mrs. Makley, 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 Ruben 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 Ruben, she called to the young man, who was prowling about the door-yard of a sad-colored old farm-house and peering into a window here and there. Come here a moment, won't you please? He lifted his head and looked round, and when he had located the appeal made to him he came down the walk to the gate and leaned over it, waiting for further instructions. I saw that it was the young man whom we had noticed with the girl Mrs. Makley called Lizzie on the hotel piazza the night before. Do you know whether I should find Lizzie at home this morning? Yes, she's there with mother, said the young fellow, with neither liking nor disliking in his tone. Oh, I'm so glad, said the lady. I didn't know, but she might be a church. What in the world has happened here? Is there anything unusual going on inside? No, I was just looking to see if it was all right. The folks wanted I should come round. Why, where are they? Oh, they're gone. Gone? Yes, gone west. They've left the old place because they couldn't make a living here any longer. Why, this is quite a case in point, I said. Now, Mr. Homoes, 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. Makley. Won't you introduce us? Oh, yes. Mr. Camp, this is Mr. Twelfth Mal, the author. You know his books, of course. And Mr. Homoes, 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. Makley, were you going to our place? Why, yes. So do then. Mother would give almost anything to see Mr. Homoes. 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 explain to me first something about your deserted farms here? It's quite a new thing to me. It isn't a new thing to us, said the young fellow with a short laugh. And there isn't much to explain about it. You'll see them all through New England. When a man finds he 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? While they didn't used 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 assess up to the last notch in the city? Why what in the world makes your taxes so heavy? Schools and roads. We've got to have schools, and you city folks want good roads when you come 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. Cab, said Mrs. Makley, leaning over toward him and speaking in a cozy and coaxing 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 properly. He better not let me hear him saying that, said the young fellow while a hot flush passed over his face. He added bitterly. If he wants to see how easy it is to make a living up here, he can take this place and try it for a year or two. He can get it cheap. But I guess he wouldn't want it the year round. He'd only wanted 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 was such fools as not to know whether they were well off? It was their home. They were born and lived and died here. Where is the family burying ground over there? Neither Mrs. Makley nor myself was ready with a reply, and we left the word with the altruarian, who suggested, Still, I suppose they would be more prosperous in the West on the new land they take up. The young fellow leaned his arms on the wheel by which he stood. What 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 percent interest and live in a dugout on the plains till your mortgage matures. The young man took his arms from the wheel and moved a few steps backward as he added, I'll see you over at the house later. The driver touched his horses and we started briskly off again, but I confess I had quite enough of his pessimism, and as we drove away I leaned back toward the altruarian and said, Now it is all perfect nonsense to pretend that things are at that pass with us. There are more millionaires in America probably than there are in all the other civilized countries of the globe, and it is not possible that the farming population should be in such a hopeless 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 altruarian. 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. What is it true that they have to pay such rates of interest as our young friend mentioned? Well, I said, seeing the thing in the humorous light which softens for us Americans so many of the hardships of others, I suppose that man likes to squeeze his brother-man when he gets him in his grip. That's human nature, you know. Is it? Ask the altruarian. It seemed to me that he had asked something like that before when I alleged human nature in defense of some piece of everyday selfishness. But I thought best not to notice it, and I went on. The land is so rich out there that a farm will often pay for itself with a single crop. Is it possible? cried the altruarian. Then I suppose it seldom really happens that the mortgage is foreclosed in the way our young friend insinuated. Well, I can't say that exactly. And having admitted so much I did not feel bound to impart a fact that popped perversely into my mind. I was once talking with a Western moneylender, 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 farmer might pay it off. But if it were to a half or a third even, he never paid it, but slaved on and died in his debts. You may be sure, however, I concluded, that our young friend takes a jaundiced view of the situation. Now, really? said Mrs. Macley. I must insist upon dropping this everlasting talk about money. I think it is perfectly disgusting, and I believe it was Mr. Macley's account of his speculations that kept me awake last night. My brain got running on figures till the dark seemed to be all sewn with dollar marks, like the stars in the Milky Way. I—ah! What in the world is it? Oh, you dreadful little things! Mrs. Macley 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 roadside bushes like a cubby of quails. There seemed to be a dozen of them, nearly all the same in size, but there turned out to be only five or six, or at least no more showed their gleaming eyes and teeth through the underbrush and quiet enjoyment of the lady's alarm. Don't you know that you might have got killed? She demanded, with that severity good women feel for people who have just escaped with their lives. How lovely the dirty little deers 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? She ignored the first question. Once 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 gaiety met with fresh applause. Where do you live, I asked, with some vague purpose of showing the altruary and 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 clabbereds. 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 curtain-less windows were set in the unpainted frames, but the front door seemed not to be hung yet. The people meant to winter there, however, for the sod was banked up against the wooden underpinning. A stovepipe 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 threshold, which still wanted a doorstep, and came slowly out to us. The children ran to her with their coppers and then followed her back to us. Mrs. Makley 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 horse's feet, said Mrs. Makley, 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 today. You don't speak like an American, Mrs. Makley 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. Makley, 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. Makley indicated 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. Makley. You're not living about here, ma'am. Oh, no, we're staying at the hotel. At the hotel? It must be very dear there. Yes, it is expensive, said Mrs. Makley, 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. Makley's pretty costume. Some are poor and some are rich. That's the way the world has to be made of, isn't it? Yes, said Mrs. Makley, very dryly, and the talk languished from this point so that the driver felt warranted in starting up his horses. Then 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. Twelve-Mow. 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 Altruarian, 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. Would 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. Makley to answer. I was so eager to air my political economy. The very greatest harm, it would have popularized her. You have no idea how quickly they give way to the poison of that sort of thing. As soon as they get any sort of help they expect more. They count upon it, and they begin to live upon it. The sight of those coppers which I gave her children, more out of joke than charity, demoralized the woman. She took us for rich people and wanted us to build her a house. You have to guard against every approach to a thing of that sort. I don't believe, said Mrs. Makley, that an American would have hinted as she did. No, an American would not have done that, I'm thankful to say. They take fees, but they don't ask charity yet. We went on to exult in the noble independence of the American character in all classes at some length. We talked at the altruarian, 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 difficulties 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 quandary. I wish, said Mrs. Makley, 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 incivism. What is incivism? I interpreted, bad citizenship. Well then, if you will excuse me, Mr. Homoes, 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 you have always with you? End of chapter 6