At this moment the lady who had me so from the top of the
coach while I waiting for the Altrurian to help the with the
baggage, just after the of the train, came up with her husband to
our little group and said to me: “I want to my husband to you.
He your books.” She on much longer to this effect, while the
other men and her husband to look as if it were all
true, and her to the Altrurian, who gravely. I knew
perfectly well that she was using her husband’s for my to
make me present my friend; but I did not mind that, and I him
to of them. She took of him at once and walking him
off the piazza, while her husband with me, and the members
of our late apart. I was not sorry to have it up
for the present; it to me that it had long enough, and
I a cigar with the husband, and we together in the
direction his wife had taken.
He began, in to in my person: “Yes, I
like to have a book where I can at it when we’re not going out to the
theatre, and I want to my mind after business. I don’t care
much what the book is; my wife reads to me till I off, and then she
finishes the book herself and tells me the of the story. You see,
business takes it out of you so! Well, I let my wife do most of the
reading, anyway. She much that’s going in that
line. We haven’t got any children, and it her mind. She’s up to
all 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, American of the money-making
type; I he was some of a broker, but I do not know what
his was. As we walked up and the piazza, a discreet
little from the where his wife had off to with her
capture, he said he he more time with her in the
summer--but he I what was. He was she could
have the rest, anyway; she needed it.
“By-the-way,” he asked, “who is this friend of yours? The are all
crazy about him, and it’s been an thing my wife and Miss
Groundsel which would him first. But I’ll 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; eccentric, too, I guess. Where is
Altruria, anyway?”
I told him, and he said: “Oh yes. Well, if we are going to restrict
immigration, I 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 me to say: “If I
understand the Altrurians, my dear fellow, nothing them to
emigrate to America. As as I can make out, they would it very
much as we should settling among the Eskimos.”
“Is that so?” asked my new acquaintance, with perfect good temper. “Why?”
“Really, I can’t say, and I don’t know that I’ve authority for my
statement.”
“They are than the English used to be,” he on. “I didn’t know
that there were any who looked at us in that light now. I
thought the settled all that.”
I sighed. “There are a good many that the didn’t settle so
definitely as we’ve been used to thinking, I’m afraid. But, for that
matter, I an Altrurian would the English as a little in
the of than ourselves even.”
“Is that so? Well, that’s good on the English, anyway,” said my
companion, and he laughed with an easy that I him.
“My dear!” his wife called to him from where she was with the
Altrurian, “I wish you would go for my shawl. I to the air a
little.”
“I’ll go if you’ll tell me where,” he said, and he to me, “Never
knows where her is one-quarter of the time.”
“Well, I think I left it in the office somewhere. You might ask at the
desk; or it’s in the by the dining-room door--or maybe up in
our room.”
“I so,” said her husband, with another at me, as if it were
the fun in the world, and he started off.
I and took a chair by the lady and the Altrurian, and she at
once: “Oh, I’m so you’ve come! I have been trying to Mr.
Homos about some of the little social among us that he finds
so hard to understand. He was just now,” the lady continued, “wanting to
know why all the out here were not 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 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 her in
the direction of the country girls and country who were
thronging the place that night in numbers. They were well
enough looking, and, as it was Saturday night, they were in their best. I
suppose their dress have been criticised; the were
clothed by the ready-made clothing-store, and the girls after their
own from the fashion papers; but their was good,
and their was irreproachable; they were very quiet--if anything,
too quiet. They took up a part of the that was them by
common usage, and sat the inside, not so much enviously, I
thought, as wistfully; and for the time it me as odd that
they should have no part in the gayety. I had often them there
before, but I had it they should be out. It had
always normal, but now, suddenly, for one moment, it
seemed abnormal. I it was the talk we had been having about the
working-men in which me to see the thing as the Altrurian
must have it; but I was, nevertheless, with him for having
asked such a question, after he had been so upon the
point. It was of him, or it was stupid. I my heart, and
answered: “You might have told him, for one thing, that they were not
dancing they had not paid the piper.”
“Then the money enters into your social pleasures?”
asked the Altrurian.
“Very much. Doesn’t it with you?”
He this question, as he all questions
concerning his country: “We have no money consideration, you know. But do
I that all your social are paid for by the
guests?”
“Oh no, not so as that, quite. There are a great many that the host
pays for. Even here, in a hotel, the the music and the room
free to the guests of the house.”
“And none are from the outside?”
“Oh yes, people are welcome from all the other and boarding-houses
and the private cottages. The men are welcome; there are
not men in the hotel to go round, you see.” In fact, we could
see that some of the girls were dancing with other girls;
half-grown boys were from the of tall ladies and
waltzing on tiptoe.
“Isn’t that droll?” asked the Altrurian.
“It’s grotesque!” I said, and I of it. “But what are you to
do? The men are hard at work in the cities, as many as can work
there, and the are out West, up with the country. There are
twenty girls for every man at all the in the
East.”
“But what would if these farmers--I they are
farmers--were 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 to you,” I
said.
The lady laughed. “I am not sure that I want him back.”
“Oh yes,” the Altrurian entreated, with of the humor.
“I know that I must be very trying with my questions; but do not abandon
me to the 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 if those farmers, or farm-hands, or whatever
they are, were asked in. The 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 ladies to with one another and with little
boys--”
“No, they to with men of their own station; they would
rather not at all than with people them. I don’t say
anything against these here; they are very and decent. But
they have not the same social as the ladies; they would
be out of place with them, and they would it.”
“Yes, I can see that they are not fit to with them,” said the
Altrurian, with a of that me, “and that as
long as your present they can be. You must excuse
the which the your political and your
economic in me. I always think of you
politically first, and you as a perfect democracy; then come these
other facts, in which I cannot that you differ from the
aristocratic of Europe in theory, or practice. It is very
puzzling. Am I right in that the of your economy is to
establish among you, and to the of
the which your policy proclaims?”
Mrs. Makely looked at me as if she were to with his
meaning, and, for of worse, I best to it. I said: “I
don’t that is by those distinctions. We are used
to them, and in them, which is a proof that they are
a very good thing.”
Mrs. Makely now came to my support. “The Americans are very high-spirited,
in every class, and I don’t one of those farm-boys would like
being asked in any than the ladies. You can’t how
proud some of them are.”
“So that they from being as inferiors?”
“Oh, I you they don’t themselves inferior! They consider
themselves as good as anybody. There are some very characters
among them. Now, there is a girl at the window, with
her profile by the light, I it an to speak to.
That’s her brother, there with her--that tall, man
with a Roman face; it’s such a common type here in the mountains. Their
father was a soldier, and he himself so in one of the last
battles that he was promoted. He was wounded, but he took a
pension; he just came to his farm and 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 ends
meet. The girl is a first-rate seamstress, and so cheap! I give her
a good of my work in the summer, and we are friends. She’s very
fond of reading; the mother is an invalid, but she reads while the
daughter sews, and you’ve no idea how many books they through. When
she comes for sewing, I like to talk with her about them; I always have
her down; it’s hard to that she isn’t a lady. I’m a good deal
criticised, I know, and I I do her a little; it puts notions
into such people’s heads, if you meet them in that way; they’re pretty
free and as it is. But when I’m with Lizzie I that
there is any us; I can’t help the child. You
must take Mr. Homos to see them, Mr. Twelvemough. They’ve got the father’s
sword up over the of the mother’s bed; it’s very touching. But
the little place is so bare!”
Mrs. Makely sighed, and there a little pause, which she with a
question she had the of having back.
“There is one thing I should like to ask you, too, Mr. Homos. Is it true
that in Altruria some of manual labor?”
“Why, certainly,” he answered, as if he had been an American.
“Ladies, too? Or you have none.”
I this offensive, but I not see that the Altrurian
had taken it ill. “Perhaps we had try to each other
clearly I answer that question. You have no titles of as
they have in England--”
“No, indeed! I we have those superstitions,” said Mrs.
Makely, with a that did my good. “It is a word
that we apply of all to the of a person.”
“But you said just now that you sometimes that your was
not a lady. Just what did you by that?”
Mrs. Makely hesitated. “I meant--I 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 qualities--with
ranks and classes?”
“Classes, yes; but, as you know, we have no ranks in America.” The
Altrurian took off his and an from his
forehead. He deeply. “It is all very difficult.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Makely assented, “I it is. All it so.
In fact, it is something that you have to live into the of; it
can’t be explained.”
“Well, then, my dear madam, will you tell me without question what
you by a lady, and let me live into the of it at my
leisure?”
“I will do my best,” said Mrs. Makely. “But it would be so much to
tell you _who_ was or who was not a lady. However, your is so
limited yet that I must try to do something in the and impersonal
for you. In the place, a lady must be above the in
every way. She need not be very rich, but she must have enough, so that
she need not be about making ends meet, when she ought to be
devoting herself to her social duties. The time is past with us when a
lady look after the dinner, and cook part of it herself, and
then in to her guests and do the amenities. She must have a
certain of house, so that her won’t and mean,
and she must have frocks, of course, and of them. She needn’t
be of the set; that isn’t at all necessary; but she can’t to
be out of the fashion. Of course, she must have a training. She
must have tastes; she must know about art and and
music, and all those of things, and, though it isn’t necessary to go
in for anything in particular, it won’t her to have a or two. The
nicest of 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 them of doing it. I’m happy to say, though, that mere
church doesn’t count so much as it used to. Charity
is a great 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 all the time; Europe’s in, and the old American
ideals are away. Things that people did ten years ago would be
impossible now, or at least ridiculous. You wouldn’t be vulgar,
quite, but you would be a number, and that’s
almost as bad. Really,” said Mrs. Makely, “I don’t I can tell you
what a lady is.”
We all laughed together at her confession. The Altrurian asked: “But
do I that one of her is that she shall have nothing
whatever to do?”
“Nothing to _do_!” Mrs. Makely. “A lady is from till
night. She always goes to perfectly out.”
“But with what?” asked the Altrurian.
“With making herself and her house attractive, with going to
lunches and and dinners and and theatres and art
exhibitions, and and receptions, and with a
thousand and one notes about them, and and declining, and giving
lunches and dinners, and making calls and them, and I don’t know
what all. It’s the most slavery!” Her voice rose into something
like a shriek; one 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 of work?”
“_Work_! Don’t you call all that work, and _useful_? I’m sure I the
cook in my at times; I the woman that my floors. Stop!
Don’t ask why I don’t go into my kitchen, or on my with the
mop. It isn’t possible. You can’t. Perhaps you if you were
very _grande dame_, but if you’re near the line of necessity, or
ever have been, you can’t. Besides, if we did do our own work,
as I your Altrurian ladies do, what would of the servant
class? We should be taking away their living, and that would be wicked.”
“It would be to take away the of a
fellow-creature,” the Altrurian admitted, “and I see the obstacle
in your way.”
“It’s a mountain,” said the lady, with in her voice, but a
returning amiability; his must have placated her.
“May I ask what the use of your life is?” he ventured, after a
moment.
“Use? Why should it have any? It kills time.”
“Then you are up to a without use, to kill
time, and you cannot from it without taking away the of
those on you?”
“Yes,” I put in, “and that is a that meets us at every turn. It
is something that Matthew Arnold with great in his paper on
that of a Tolstoy. He asked what would of the people who need
the work if we and waited on ourselves, as Tolstoy preached. The
question is unanswerable.”
“That is true; in your conditions, it is unanswerable,” said the
Altrurian.
“I think,” said Mrs. Makely, “that, under the circumstances, we do pretty
well.”
“Oh, I don’t to you. And if you that your
conditions are the best--”
“We them the best in the best of all possible worlds,” I said,
devoutly; and it me that, if we came to have a national
church, some such as that our conditions
ought to be in the of faith.
The Altrurian’s mind had not mine so far. “And your girls,”
he asked of Mrs. Makely--“how is their time occupied?”
“You after they come out in society?”
“I so.”
She to reflect. “I don’t know that it is very occupied.
Of course, they have their own amusements; they have their dances, and
little clubs, and their sewing-societies. I that an Altrurian
would their for the poor?” Mrs. Makely asked, rather
satirically.
“Yes,” he answered; and then he asked: “Isn’t it taking work away from
some seamstress, though? But I you it to the
thoughtlessness of youth.”
Mrs. Makely did not say, and he on: “What I it so hard to
understand is how you ladies can a life of exertion,
such as you have been to me. I don’t see how you keep well.”
“We _don’t_ keep well,” said Mrs. Makely, with the amusement. “I
don’t that when you above the classes, till you reach
the very rich, you would a perfectly well woman in America.”
“Isn’t that extreme?” I to ask.
“No,” said Mrs. Makely, “it’s moderate,” and she to
delight in having out such a case for her sex. You can’t stop a
woman of that when she started; I had left it alone.
“But,” said the Altrurian, “if you are by of humanity
from doing any of manual labor, which you must to those who
live by it, I you take some of exercise?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Makely, her gayly, “we to take
medicine.”
“You must approve of that,” I said to the Altrurian, “as you consider
exercise for its own or immoral. But, Mrs. Makely,” I
entreated, “you’re me away at a rate. I have just been
telling Mr. Homos that you ladies go in for so much now in your
summer that there is of your physically as well as
intellectually to us fellows. Don’t take that consolation
from me.”
“I won’t, altogether,” she said. “I couldn’t have the to, after the
pretty way you’ve put it. I don’t call it very athletic, around on
hotel piazzas all long, as nineteen-twentieths of us do. But I
don’t that there is a Remnant, as Matthew Arnold calls them, who do
go in for tennis and and and and climbing.” She
paused, and then she concluded, gleefully: “And you ought to see what
wrecks they home in the fall!”
The joke was on me; I not help laughing, though I rather
sheepish the Altrurian. Fortunately, he did not the inquiry;
his had been a from it.
“But your ladies,” he asked, “they have the for rest, they
use it. Do they town? I Mr. Twelvemough to say
so,” he added, with a at me.
“Yes, you may say it is the in the class that can afford
it,” said Mrs. Makely. She as if she a in his
question. “It wouldn’t be the least use for us to and through our
summers in the city our fathers and had to.
Besides, we are 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 that the Americans are 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 her across her
shoulders. “Whose is it you’re blasting?” he asked, jocosely.
“Where in the world did you it?” she asked, meaning the shawl.
“It was where you left it--on the sofa, in the parlor. I had to take
my life in my hand when I among all those in there. There
must have been as many as three on the floor. Poor girls! I pity
them, off at these places. The in town have a good better
time. They’ve got their clubs, and they’ve got the theatre, and when the
weather too much for them they can off to the for the
night. The places an hour’s are full of fellows. The
girls don’t have to 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 at me, and swiftly, in of his irony.
“Then the the ladies here 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, up with the country, except, of
course, the who have a fortune. They’re mostly off on
yachts.”
“But why do your men go West to 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 of the Altrurian.
“Sometimes,” said his wife, “I almost the name of money.”
“Well, so long as you don’t the thing, Peggy.”
“Oh, we must have it, I suppose,” she sighed. “They used to say about the
girls who into old just after the Rebellion that they had lost
their in the for the Union. I think as many their
chance now in the for the dollar.”
“Mars his thousands, but Mammon his of
thousands,” I suggested, lightly; we all like to the facts, so
long as we are not to do anything about them; then, we them.
“Yes, as 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 first.”
“Oh, I don’t you, you 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 to end.”
The Altrurian had been us with that air of mystification
which I had to in him. “Then, in your good you
postpone, and forego, the of life in the to be
rich?”
“Well, you see,” said Makely, “a don’t like to ask a girl to share
a home that isn’t as as the home she has left.”
“Sometimes,” his wife put in, sadly, “I think that it’s all a
mistake, and that we’d be to the of the man we
loved.”
“Well,” said Makely, with a laugh, “we wouldn’t like to it.”
I laughed with him, but his wife did not, and in the that ensued
there was nothing to prevent the Altrurian from in with another of
his questions: “How this of downward? Does it
include the classes, too?”
“Oh no!” we all answered together, and Mrs. Makely said: “With your
Altrurian ideas, I you would naturally a great deal
more with the classes, and think they had to all the
hardships in our system; but if you how the goes on
in the best society, and how we all have to for what we get, or
don’t get, you would be to our upper classes, too.”
“I am sure I should,” said the Altrurian.
Makely remarked: “I used to my father say that was on
the than it was on the blacks, and that he wanted it done away with
for the of the masters.”
Makely in conclusion, as if he were not satisfied
with his remark, and I a want of in it; but I
did not wish to say anything. His wife had no reluctance.
“Well, there’s no the two things, but the struggle
certainly doesn’t affect the as it us. They go on
marrying and in marriage in the old way. They have nothing to lose,
and so they can it.”
“Blessed am what don’t 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 nights, in the and and
cheap theatres. Their girls are not off for their health, anywhere, and
their are not off 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 with their wives
and children! I tell you, it’s to make a wish he was poor
himself.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Makely, “it’s how 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 make in all the
work to them, and from the which to be
the outcome of your life?”
“They have not the idea of it. They have no of what a
society woman goes through with. They think we do nothing. They us,
too, and sometimes they’re so and indifferent, if you try to
help them, or on terms with them, that I they us.”
“But that comes from ignorance?”
“Yes, though I don’t know that they are any more of us
than we are of them. It’s the other on sides.”
“Isn’t that a pity, rather?”
“Of 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 the
game is the candle. I should like to know how you manage in
Altruria.”
“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 little bit, monotonous?” Mrs.
Makely asked, with a smile. “But there is everything, of course, in being
used to it. To an spirit--like mine, for example--it seems
intolerable.”
“But why? When you were younger, you were married, you all at
home together--or, perhaps, you were an only child?”
“Oh, no indeed! There were ten of us.”
“Then you all alike, and equally?”
“Yes, but we were a family.”
“We do not of the as a family.”
“Now, me, Mr. Homos, that is all nonsense. You cannot have the
family without love, and it is to love other people.
That talk about the neighbor, and all that, is all well enough--” She
stopped herself, as if she who that talk, and then
went on: “Of course, I accept it as a of faith, and the of
it, nobody that; but what I is, that you must have frightful
quarrels all the time.” She to look as if this were where she really
meant to up, and he took her on the ground she had chosen.
“Yes, we have quarrels. Hadn’t you at home?”
“We like little cats and dogs, at times.”
Makely and I into a laugh at her frankness. The
Altrurian serious. “But, you alike, you each
other, and so you easily up your quarrels. It is as with
us, in our life as a family.”
This of a family to Mrs. Makely more and more;
she laughed and laughed again. “You must me,” she panted, at last,
“but I cannot it! No, it is too ludicrous. Just the of
an ordinary family by the population of a whole continent! Why,
you must be in a squabble. You can’t have any peace of your
lives. It’s worse, worse, than our way.”
“But, madam,” he began, “you are our family to be up of
people with all the of your civilization. As a
matter of fact--”
“No, no! _I know nature_, Mr. Homos!” She jumped up and
gave him her hand. “Good-night,” she said, sweetly, and as she off
on her husband’s arm she looked at us and in triumph.
The Altrurian upon me with interest. “And have you no
provision in your for making the understand
the and of the upper in their behalf? Do you
expect to do nothing to them together in kindness?”
“Well, not this evening,” I said, the end of my cigar away. “I’m
going to bed--aren’t you?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, good-night. Are you sure you can your room?”
“Oh yes. Good-night.”
