The Altrurian looked at Mrs. Makely with an visibly heightened
by the air of she put on after this poser: “Do you
really think Christ meant that you _ought_ always to have the with
you?” he asked.
“Why, of course!” she answered, triumphantly. “How else are the sympathies
of the rich to be cultivated? The of some and the of
others, isn’t that what the great tie of brotherhood? If we
were all comfortable, or all alike, there not be anything
like charity, and Paul said, ‘The of these is charity.’ I believe
it’s ‘love’ in the new version, but it comes to the same thing.”
The Altrurian gave a of gasp, and then into a that
lasted until we came in of the Camp farm-house. It on the
crest of a road-side upland, and looked the valley, bathed
in Sabbath sunlight, and away to the of hills, so that it was
hard to say it was sun or that their distance.
Decidedly, the place was what the country people call sightly. The old
house, once painted a Brandon red, low to the ground, with its
lean-to in the rear, and its flat-arched wood-sheds and wagon-houses
stretching away at the of the barn, and the approach to it
with an roof. There were flowers in the along the
underpinning of the house, which close to the street, and on one
side of the door was a of Spanish willow; an old-fashioned June rose
climbed over it from the other. An dog got to his from
the and as our up; the poultry
picking about the path and among the way for us, and as
our to upon the we steps, and
Reuben Camp came the of the house in time to give Mrs. Makely
his hand and help her to the ground, which she did very lightly;
her mind had her in a of activity,
and at thirty-five she had the and self-command of a girl.
“Ah, Reuben,” she sighed, herself to call him by his first
name, with the which itself more definitely in the words
that followed, “how I you all this dear, old, place! I never
come here without of my grandfather’s farm in Massachusetts,
where I used to go every when I was a little girl. If I had a place
like this, I should it.”
“Well, Mrs. Makely,” said Camp, “you can have this place cheap, if
you want it. Or almost any other place in the neighborhood.”
“Don’t say such a thing!” she returned. “It makes one as if the
foundations of the great were way. I don’t know what that
means exactly, but I it’s to George’s hatchet
and going on the Declaration generally; and I don’t like to you
talk so.”
Camp to have his mood, and he answered, pleasantly:
“The Declaration is all right, as as it goes, but it don’t help us to
compete with the Western farm operations.”
“Why, you every one was free and equal, don’t you?” Mrs.
Makely asked.
“Oh yes, I that; but--”
“Then why do you object to free and equal competition?”
The laughed, and said, as he opened the door for us: “Walk
right into the parlor, please. Mother will be for you in a minute.”
He added: “I she’s on her best cap for you, Mr. Homos. It’s
a great event for her, your here. It is for all of us. We’re glad
to have you.”
“And I’m to be here,” said the Altrurian, as as the other. He
looked about the best room of a farm-house that had itself
to the tastes or needs of the city boarder, and was as repellent
in its and as in its as hair-cloth chairs and
dark-brown wall-paper of a pattern, with roses, make
it. The were tight, and our did not offer to open them.
A or two the into the hall, but no attempt
to the interior, where we sat in an that left the
high-hung family on the and uncertain. I a
mental note of it as a place where it would be very to have
a take place; and I was pleased to have Mrs. Makely drop
into a of murmur, as she said: “I your mother is as
well as this morning?” I that this was produced by
the of the room.
“Oh yes,” said Camp, and at that moment a door opened from the room across
the hall, and his sister to in some of the light from it to
us where we sat. She hands with Mrs. Makely, who me to
her, and then presented the Altrurian. She very to me, but
with a touch of severity, such as country people necessary for the
assertion of their self-respect with strangers. I it very pretty,
and saw that I work it into some picture of character; and
I was not at all sorry that she a in of the
Altrurian.
“Mother will be so to see you,” she said to him, and, “Won’t you come
right in?” she added to us all.
We her and ourselves in a large, low, sunny room on
the of the house, which had no once been the
living-room, but which was now up to the invalid; a door
opened into the behind, where the table was already for the
midday meal, with the plates in the country fashion, and some
netting over the to keep the away.
Mrs. Makely up to the with her energetic, patronizing
cheerfulness. “Ah, Mrs. Camp, I am to see you looking so well this
morning. I’ve been meaning to over for days past, but I
couldn’t a moment till this morning, and I you didn’t object to
Sunday visits.” She took the invalid’s hand in hers, and, with the air of
showing how little she any them, she over
and her, where Mrs. Camp sat against her pillows. She had a
large, of contour, and at the same
time the most look in the world. Mrs. Makely and babbled
on, and every one waited till she had done, and and said,
toward the Altrurian: “I have to my friend, Mr. Homos, with
me. He is from Altruria.” Then she to me and said: “Mr. Twelvemough
you know already through his books”; but, although she paid me
this it was perfectly to me that in the
esteem of this woman the was a far
more person than the author. Whether Mrs. Camp
read my of this in my or not I cannot say, but she
was that I should not a in her. She
held out her hand to me first, and said that I know how many
heavy hours I had helped to for her, and then she to the
Altrurian and took his hand. “Oh!” she said, with a long, deep-drawn sigh,
as if that were the moment of her life. “And are you from
Altruria? It too good to be true!” Her look and her earnest
tone gave the a quality that did not in them, but
Mrs. Makely took them on their surface.
“Yes, doesn’t it?” she to interpose, the Altrurian could
say anything. “That is just the way we all about it, Mrs. Camp. I
assure you, if it were not for the in the papers and the talk
about it everywhere, I couldn’t there _was_ any such place as
Altruria; and if it were not for Mr. Twelvemough here--who has to keep all
his for his novels, as a of routine--I
might him and Mr. Homos of--well, _working_ us, as my
husband calls it.”
The Altrurian politely, but vaguely, as if he had not caught
her meaning, and I answer for both: “I am sure, Mrs. Makely, if you
could my of mind about Mr. Homos, you would
never that I was in with him. I him as
incredible as you do. There are moments when he so entirely
subjective with me that I as if he were no more or tangible
than a conscience.”
“Exactly!” said Mrs. Makely, and she laughed out her in my
illustration.
The Altrurian must have that we were joking, though the Camps
all silent. “I it isn’t so as that,” he said,
“though I have noticed that I to affect you all with a of
misgiving. I don’t know just what it is; but, if I remove it, I
should be very to do so.”
Mrs. Makely very 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 that us awake; it into money
afterward. It isn’t so much that a whole continent, as big as Australia,
remained till such a very years, as it is the
condition of among you: this of all for one another,
and not each one for himself. My husband says that is moonshine;
such a thing was and can be; it is to nature,
and would take away and all for 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 silent,
gravely smiling, and Mrs. Makely added, with her most little
manner: “I you won’t hurt, personally or patriotically, by what
I’ve to you. I know my husband is Philistine, though he
_is_ such a good fellow, and I don’t, by any means, agree with him on all
those points; but I _would_ like to know what you think of them. The
trouble is, Mrs. Camp,” she said, to the invalid, “that Mr. Homos
is so about his own country, and I am so to
hear of it at hands, that I it 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 Altrurian point of view, there is a good
deal of error.
“Does it so to you,” he asked, himself to Mrs.
Camp, “that people should a on the idea of for
one another of each for himself?”
“No indeed!” she answered. “Poor people have always had to live that way,
or they not have at all.”
“That was what I your to say last night,” said the
Altrurian to me. He added, to the company generally: “I that even
in America there are more people than there are rich people?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” I said. “I there are more people
independently rich than there are people poor.”
“We will let that of it stand. If it is true, I do not see why
the Altrurian should be so very un-American. Then, as to
whether there is or was a practical altruism, a civic
expression of it, I think it cannot be that among the first
Christians, those who Christ, and might be supposed
to be directly by His life, there was an as
radical as that which we have into a national polity and a
working economy in Altruria.”
“Ah, but you know,” said Mrs. Makely, with the air of a point
not to be put aside, “they had to _that_. It was a failure. They
found that they couldn’t make it go at all among people, and
that, if Christianity was to advance, they would have to give up all that
crankish of of the letter. At any rate,” she on,
with the we all in an into close
quarters, “you must that there is a much play of
individuality here.”
Before the Altrurian reply, Camp said: “If you want to see
American individuality, the real, simon-pure article, you ought to go down
to one of our big and look at the mill-hands home in
droves after a day’s work, girls and old women, boys and men, all
fluffed over with cotton, and so that they can walk.
They come along with all the of a of sheep.”
“Some,” said Mrs. Makely, heroically, as if she were one of these, “must
be sacrificed. Of course, some are not so as others. A great
deal upon temperament.”
“A great more upon capital,” said Camp, with an offensive
laugh. “If you have 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 of individuality, Reub, and you haven’t
got a great of capital, either,” and the two people laughed
together.
Mrs. Makely was one of those to make a point
excludes the 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 or pins. In fact, you
have to be so in society. If you keep your own too
much, people avoid you. It’s very and the bore.”
“Then you don’t so desirable, after all,” said the
Altrurian.
“I perfectly it!” the lady, and she had not the
least where she was in the argument. “For my part, I’m happy
except when I’ve myself and the whole bother.”
Her somehow to close the incident, and we were all
silent a moment, which I in looking about the room, and taking in
with my the and of its furnishing.
There was the where the lay, and near the a table with a
pile of books and a kerosene-lamp on it, and I that she was a good
deal wakeful, and that she read by that lamp when she not sleep at
night. Then there were the hard chairs we sat on, and some home-made
hooked rugs, in and ovals, about the clean floor; there
was a small pushed against the wall; the had paper
shades, and I that I had not any on the of
the house. Over the of the a cavalryman’s sword, with its
belt--the that Mrs. Makely had spoken of. It me as a room
where a great many might have happened, and I said: “You can’t
think, Mrs. Camp, how I am to see the of your house. It seems
to me so typical.”
A pleased itself in her face, and she answered: “Yes,
it is a old-fashioned farmhouse. We have taken boarders, and so
we have it as it was much, and only such in
it as we needed or wanted for ourselves.”
“It’s a pity,” I on, up what I a lead,
“that we city people see so little of the life when we come into
the country. I have been here now for seasons, and this is the
first time I have been a farmer’s house.”
“Is it possible!” the Altrurian, with an air of astonishment;
and, when I the appeared so to him, I to be
rather proud of its singularity.
“Yes, I that most city people come and go, year after year, in the
country, and make any of 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 circle of our own over-intimacy with ourselves and our
ignorance of others.”
“And you that as a great misfortune?” asked the Altrurian.
“Why, it’s inevitable. There is nothing to us together, unless it’s
some happy accident, like the present. But we don’t have a traveler from
Altruria to every day, and so we have no to come into
people’s houses.”
“You would have been welcome in ours long ago, Mr. Twelvemough,” said Mrs.
Camp.
“But, me,” said the Altrurian, “what you say dreadful
to me. Why, it is as if you were not the same or of men!”
“Yes,” I answered. “It has sometimes to me as if our big hotel
there were a ship off some coast. The come
out with supplies, and on their with the ship’s steward, and
we sometimes see them over the side, but we 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 to Mrs. Camp. “And how do you look at it? How it
seem to you?”
“I don’t we have about it very much; but, now that Mr.
Twelvemough has spoken of it, I can see that it look that way. And it
seems very strange, doesn’t it, for we are all the same people, and have
the same language and religion and country--the country that my husband
fought for and, I I may say, died for; he was the same man
after the war. It appear as if we had some in common, and
might it out if we came together.”
“It’s a great advantage, the city people going into the country so much as
they do now,” said Mrs. Makely. “They five into the
State of New Hampshire, alone, every summer.”
She looked for the which this merited, and
young Camp said: “And it how the are, that they
can’t make ends meet, with all that money, but have to give up their
farms and go West, after all. I you think it comes from wanting
buggies and pianos.”
“Well, it comes from something,” said Mrs. Makely, with the
courage of her convictions.
She was not going to be put by that fellow, and
I was of it, though I must say I the thing she left to rankle
in his mind from our meeting had not been said in very good taste.
I thought, too, that she would not best in any of with
him, and I for the result. I said, to the strained
situation: “I wish there was some way of our each other better.
I’m sure there’s a great of good-will on sides.”
“No, there isn’t,” said Camp, “or at least I can answer for our that
there isn’t. You come into the country to as much for your money as
you can, and we to let you have as little as we can. That’s the whole
story, and if Mr. Homos anything different, he’s very much
mistaken.”
“I hadn’t any in to the matter, which is quite
new to me,” said the Altrurian, mildly. “But why is there no of
mutual you?”
“Because it’s like else with us; it’s a question of supply and
demand, and there is no room for any 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 on the natives, as they call us,
and we know it.”
“Now, Mr. Camp, I am sure that you cannot say _I_ look on the
natives,” said Mrs. Makely, with an air of argument.
The laughed. “Oh yes, you do,” he said, not unamiably, and he
added, “and you’ve got the right to. We’re not fit to 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 manners. You talk about that
most of, and you for they saw. I
know it’s the to differently, but I’m not going to pretend
differently.”
I what my friend the banker said about away cant, and I
asked myself if I were in the presence of some such free again. I
did not see how Camp it; but then I that he
had nothing to by it, for he did not to make anything
out of us; Mrs. Makely would not give up his sister as seamstress
if the girl to work so well and so as she said.
“Suppose,” he 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?”
“I should be perfectly delighted,” said Mrs. Makely, “and I should receive
them with the possible cordiality.”
“The same of that you would to the cottagers?”
“I that I should that I had more in common with the
cottagers. We should be in the same things, and we should
probably know the same people and have more to talk about--”
“You would 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 one another you had money.”
“Now, that is not so,” Mrs. Makely interrupted. “There are of rich
people one wouldn’t wish to know at all, and who can’t into
society--who are and vulgar. And then, when you come to money, I
don’t see but what country people are as to it as anybody.”
“Oh, gladder,” said the man.
“Well?” Mrs. Makely, as if this were a final of logic. The
young man did not reply, and Mrs. Makely continued: “Now I will to
your sister to say she has any in my manner
toward her from what I to all the ladies in the hotel.” The
young girl and to answer. “Why, Lizzie!” cried
Mrs. Makely, and her that she was hurt.
The appeared to me cruel, and I at Mrs. Camp with an
expectation that she would say something to it. But she did not.
Her large, only a in the
discussion.
“You know very well, Mrs. Makely,” said the girl, “you don’t me as
you do the ladies in the hotel.”
There was no in her voice or look, but only a of regret,
as if, but for this grievance, she have loved the woman from whom
she had had much kindness. The came into Mrs. Makely’s
eyes, and she toward Mrs. Camp. “And is this the way you _all_ feel
toward us?” 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 as you would like to
have them feel; but that is they do not think. When they think,
they as we do. But I don’t you. You can’t help yourselves any
more than we can. We’re all up together in that, at least.”
At this Mrs. Makely her a little, and
said, plaintively, as if herself for condolence: “Yes,
that is what that woman at the little there said: some have to
be rich, and some have to be poor; it takes all to make a world.”
“How would you like to be one of those that have to be poor?” asked young
Camp, with an grin.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Makely, with spirit; “but I am sure
that I should respect the of all, rich or poor.”
“I am sorry if we have yours, Mrs. Makely,” said Mrs. Camp, with
dignity. “You asked us questions, and we you us to
reply truthfully. We not answer you with things.”
“But sometimes you do,” said Mrs. Makely, and the in her eyes
again. “And you know how I am of you all!”
Mrs. Camp a 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, Mr. Homos.”
I at the Altrurian, and silent, and a sudden
misgiving my mind him. Was he a man, a human
entity, a like ourselves, or was he a of spiritual
solvent, sent for the moment to there was
in us, and us what the truth was our relations to one
another? It was a conception, but I it was one that I
might in some of purely design, and I was
professionally for it. I said, with a gayety: “Yes, we
all to have been to be much more than we like; and
if Mr. Homos is going to an account of his when he gets
home, he can’t us of hypocrisy, at any rate. And I always used to
think it was one of our virtues! What with Mr. Camp, here, and my friend
the banker at the hotel, I don’t think he’ll have much to complain
even of our reticence.”
“Well, he says of us,” Mrs. Makely, with a at
the over the bed, “he will have to say that, in 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 we all have the same country. America is one
thing for you, and it’s another thing for us. America means and
comfort and 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 ends meet.
It means for you; but what has a man got who doesn’t know
where his next is from? Once I was in a strike, when I was
working on the railroad, and I’ve men come and give up their liberty
for a to earn their family’s living. They they were right, and
that they ought to have up for their rights; but they had to lie
down and the hand that them. Yes, we are all Americans, but I
guess we haven’t all got the same country, Mrs. Makely. What of a
country has a man got?”
“A man?” she repeated. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, a of man I’ve in the towns, that the have all
got on their books as a man that isn’t to be work on any account;
that’s to be with and cold, and into the street,
for having them; and that’s to be to through his
helpless family for having them.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Camp,” I interposed, “but isn’t a man usually
a man who has himself in some labor trouble?”
“Yes,” the answered, without of the point I
had made.
“Ah!” I returned. “Then you can the for taking it
out of him in any way they can. That’s nature.”
“Good heavens!” the Altrurian out. “Is it possible that in America
it is nature to take away the of a man’s family he has
gone to your or on some question?”
“Well, Mr. Twelvemough to think so,” the man. “But
whether it’s nature or not, it’s a that they do it, and you can
guess how much a man must love the country where such a thing
can to him. What should you call such a thing as in
Altruria?”
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Makely pleaded, “do let us 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
impossible. There is no so with us that the would
take away the criminal’s of earning his living.”
“Oh, if he was a criminal,” said Camp, “he would be all right
_here_. The would give him a to earn his then.”
“But if he had no other of earning his living, and had no
offence against the laws--”
“Then the would let him take to the road--like that fellow.”
He the of the window where he sat, and we saw pausing
before the house, and at the doorstep, where the dog
lay, a and loathsome-looking tramp, a upon the sweet and
wholesome landscape, a to the day. His the
form which they did not hide; his shoes were with
dust; his came in a through his hat; his red,
sodden face, at once and timid, was with a fortnight’s beard.
He the like a visible stench, and the seemed
to away from our as if he were aware of his loathsomeness.
“Really,” said Mrs. Makely, “I those were now. It
is too to them at large. They are dangerous.” Young Camp left
the room, and we saw him going out toward the tramp.
“Ah, that’s right,” said the lady. “I Reuben is going to send
him about his business. Why, surely, he’s not going to the horrid
creature!” she added, as Camp, after a moment’s with the tramp,
turned with him and a of the house. “Now, Mrs.
Camp, I think that is a very example. It’s them.
Very likely he’ll go to sleep in your barn, and set it on fire with his
pipe. What do you do with in Altruria, Mr. Homos?”
The Altrurian not to have her. He said to Mrs. Camp: “Then I
understand from something your son let that he has not always been at
home with you here. Does he himself easily to the country after
the of town life? I have read that the in America are
draining the country of the people.”
“I don’t think he was sorry to come home,” said the mother, with a touch
of pride. “But there was no choice for him after his father died; he
was always a good boy, and he has not us 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 him to try his fortune
in the world, as all boys long to do. But he is peculiar, and he
seems to have got of the world. To be sure, I don’t suppose
he’s the of it. He to work in 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 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 such gloomy
impressions. I am sure that if he have life under brighter
auspices he would not have the ideas he has.”
“Very likely,” said the mother, dryly. “Our have a great deal
to do with our opinions. But I am not with my son’s
ideas. I Reuben got a good many of his ideas from his father: he’s
his father all over again. My husband was wrong, and he
went into the to against it. He used to say when the was
over that the were emancipated, but was not abolished
yet.”
“What in the world did he by that?” Mrs. Makely.
“Something you wouldn’t as we do. I to on the farm
after he went, and Reuben was large to help me much
and ought to be in school, and I I overdid. At any rate, that was
when I had my of paralysis. I was very strong, and I
presume my health was by my teaching so much, and
studying, I was married. But that doesn’t now, and hasn’t
for many a year. The place was clear of then, but I had to a
mortgage put on it. The savings-bank in the village took it, and
we’ve been paying the since. My husband died paying it, and
my son will pay it all my life, and then I the bank will
foreclose. The was an old of my husband’s, and he said
that as long as either of us the lie.”
“How 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 on many of the in the
neighborhood?”
“Nearly all,” said Mrs. Camp. “We to own them, but in they own
us.”
Mrs. Makely to say: “My husband thinks it’s the best way to have
your property. If you it close up, you have all your capital
free, and you can keep it over. That’s what you ought to do, Mrs.
Camp. But what was the that Captain Camp said was not abolished
yet?”
The looked at her a moment without replying, and just then the
door of the opened, and Young Camp came in and to gather
some food from the table on a plate.
“Why don’t you him to the table, Reub?” his sister called to him.
“Oh, he says he’d not come in, as long as we have company. He says
he isn’t for dinner; left his spike-tail in the city.”
The man laughed, and his sister with him.
