A Traveler from Altruria: Romance
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W. D. Howells >> A Traveler from Altruria: Romance
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"Of course it's a pity, but what can you do? You can't know what people
are like unless you live like them, and then the question is whether the
game is worth the candle. I should like to know how you manage in
Altruria."
"Why, we have 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.
Makely asked, with a smile. "But there is everything, of course, in being
used to it. To an unregenerate spirit--like mine, for example--it seems
intolerable."
"But why? When you were younger, before you were married, you all lived at
home together--or, 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 accept it as a matter of faith, and the spirit of
it, nobody denies that; but what I mean is, that you must have frightful
quarrels all the time." She tried to look as if this were where she really
meant to bring up, and he took her on the ground she had chosen.
"Yes, we have quarrels. Hadn't you at home?"
"We fought like little cats and dogs, at times."
Makely and I burst into a laugh at her magnanimous frankness. The
Altrurian remained serious. "But, because you lived alike, you knew each
other, and so you easily made up your quarrels. It is quite as simple with
us, in our life as a human family."
This notion of a human family seemed to amuse Mrs. Makely more and more;
she laughed and laughed again. "You must excuse me," she panted, at last,
"but I cannot imagine it! No, it is too ludicrous. Just fancy the jars of
an ordinary family multiplied by the population of a whole continent! Why,
you must be in a perpetual squabble. You can't have any peace of your
lives. It's worse, far worse, than our way."
"But, madam," he began, "you are supposing our family to be made up of
people with all the antagonistic interests of your civilization. As a
matter of fact--"
"No, no! _I know human nature_, Mr. Homos!" She suddenly jumped up and
gave him her hand. "Good-night," she said, sweetly, and as she drifted off
on her husband's arm she looked back at us and nodded in gay triumph.
The Altrurian turned upon me with unabated interest. "And have you no
provision in your system for finally making the lower classes understand
the sufferings and sacrifices of the upper classes in their behalf? Do you
expect to do nothing to bring them together in mutual kindness?"
"Well, not this evening," I said, throwing the end of my cigar away. "I'm
going to bed--aren't you?"
"Not yet."
"Well, good-night. Are you sure you can find your room?"
"Oh yes. Good-night."
VI
I left my guest abruptly, with a feeling of vexation not very easily
definable. His repetition of questions about questions which society has
so often answered, and always in the same way, was not so bad in him as it
would have been in a person of our civilization; he represented a wholly
different state of things, the inversion of our own, and much could be
forgiven him for that reason, just as in Russia much could be forgiven to
an American if he formulated his curiosity concerning imperialism from a
purely republican experience. I knew that in Altruria, for instance, the
possession of great gifts, of any kind of superiority, involved the sense
of obligation to others, and the wish to identify one's self with the
great mass of men, rather than the ambition to distinguish one's self from
them; and that the Altrurians honored their gifted men in the measure they
did this. A man reared in such a civilization must naturally find it
difficult to get our point of view; with social inclusion as the ideal, he
would with difficulty conceive of our ideal of social exclusion; but I
think we had all been very patient with him; we should have made short
work with an American who had approached us with the same inquiries.
Even from a foreigner, the citizen of a republic founded on the notion,
elsewhere exploded ever since Cain, that one is his brother's keeper,
the things he asked seemed inoffensive only because they were puerile;
but they certainly were puerile. I felt that it ought to have been
self-evident to him that when a commonwealth of sixty million Americans
based itself upon the great principle of self-seeking, self-seeking was
the best thing, and, whatever hardship it seemed to work, it must carry
with it unseen blessings in tenfold measure. If a few hundred thousand
favored Americans enjoyed the privilege of socially contemning all the
rest, it was as clearly right and just that they should do so as that four
thousand American millionaires should be richer than all the other
Americans put together. Such a status, growing out of our political
equality and our material prosperity, must evince a divine purpose to any
one intimate with the designs of Providence, and it seemed a kind of
impiety to doubt its perfection. I excused the misgivings which I could
not help seeing in the Altrurian to his alien traditions, and I was aware
that my friends had done so, too. But, if I could judge from myself, he
must have left them all sensible of their effort; and this was not
pleasant. I could not blink the fact that although I had openly disagreed
with him on every point of ethics and economics, I was still responsible
for him as a guest. It was as if an English gentleman had introduced a
blatant American Democrat into Tory society; or, rather, as if a
Southerner of the olden time had harbored a Northern Abolitionist and
permitted him to inquire into the workings of slavery among his neighbors.
People would tolerate him as my guest for a time, but there must be an end
of their patience with the tacit enmity of his sentiments and the explicit
vulgarity of his ideals, and when the end came I must be attainted with
him.
I did not like the notion of this, and I meant to escape it if I could. I
confess that I would have 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
puerile without being lovably childlike, and I could only make up my mind
to be more and more frank with him and to try and shield him, as well as
myself, from the effects I dreaded.
I fell asleep planning an excursion farther into the mountains, which
should take up the rest of the week that I expected him to stay with me,
and would keep him from following up his studies of American life where
they would be so injurious to both of us as they must in our hotel. A
knock at my door roused me, and I sent a drowsy "Come in!" toward it from
the bedclothes without looking that way.
"Good-morning!" came back in the rich, gentle voice of the Altrurian. I
lifted my head with a jerk from the pillow, and saw him standing against
the closed door, with my shoes in his hand. "Oh, I am sorry I waked you. I
thought--"
"Not at all, not at all," I said. "It's quite time, I dare say. But you
oughtn't to have taken the trouble to bring my shoes in."
"I wasn't altogether disinterested in it," he returned. "I wished you to
compliment me on them. Don't you think they are pretty well done, for an
amateur?" He came toward my bed, and turned them about in his hands, so
that they would catch the light, and smiled down upon me.
"I don't understand," I began.
"Why," he said, "I blacked them, you know."
"You blacked them?"
"Yes," he returned, easily. "I thought I would go into the baggage-room,
after we parted last night, to look for a piece of mine that had not been
taken to my room, and I found the porter there, with his wrist bound up.
He said he had strained it in handling a lady's Saratoga--he said a
Saratoga was a large trunk--and I begged him to let me relieve him at the
boots he was blacking. He refused at first, but I insisted upon trying my
hand at a pair, and then he let me go on with the men's boots; he said he
could varnish the ladies' without hurting his wrist. It needed less skill
than I supposed, and after I had done a few pairs he said I could black
boots as well as he."
"Did anybody see you?" I gasped, and I felt a cold perspiration break out
on me.
"No, we had the whole midnight hour to ourselves. The porter's work with
the baggage was all over, and there was nothing to interrupt the
delightful chat we fell into. He is a very intelligent man, and he told me
all about that custom of feeing which you deprecate. He says that the
servants hate it as much as the guests; they have to take the tips now
because the landlords figure on them in the wages, and they cannot live
without them. He is a fine, manly fellow, and--"
"Mr. Homos," I broke in, with the strength I found in his assurance that
no one had seen him helping the porter black boots, "I want to speak very
seriously with you, and I hope you will not be hurt if I speak very
plainly about a matter in which I have your good solely at heart." This
was not quite true, and I winced inwardly a little when 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 realize before coming here that America and
Altruria are absolutely distinct and diverse in their actuating
principles. They are both republics, I know; but America is a republic
where every man is for himself, and you cannot help others as you do at
home; it is dangerous--it is ridiculous. You must keep this fact in mind,
or you will fall into errors that will be very embarrassing to you in your
stay among us, and," I was forced to add, "to all your friends. Now, I
certainly hoped, after what I had said to you and what my friends had
explained of our civilization, that you would not have done a thing of
this kind. I will see the porter, as soon as I am up, and ask him not to
mention the matter to any one, but, I confess, I don't like to take an
apologetic tone with him; your conditions are so alien to ours that they
will seem incredible to him, and he will think I am stuffing him."
"I don't believe he will think that," said the Altrurian, "and I hope you
won't find the case so bad as it seems to you. I am extremely sorry to
have done wrong--"
"Oh, the thing wasn't wrong in itself. It was only wrong under the
circumstances. Abstractly, it is quite right to help a fellow-being who
needs help; no one denies that, even in a country where every one is for
himself."
"I am so glad to hear it," said the Altrurian. "Then, at least, I have not
gone radically astray; and I do not think you need take the trouble to
explain the Altrurian ideas to the porter. I have done that already, and
they seemed quite conceivable to him; he said that poor folks had to act
upon them, even here, more or less, and that if they did not act upon them
there would be no chance for them at all. He says they have to help one
another very much as we do at home, and that it is only the rich folks
among you who are independent. I really don't think you need speak to him
at all, unless you wish; and I was very careful to guard my offer of help
at the point where I understood from you and your friends that it might do
harm. I asked him if there was not some one who would help him out with
his 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?" asked the Altrurian, in his turn.
"Didn't it occur to you that if none of his fellow-servants were willing
to help him black boots, and if he did it only because he was obliged to,
it was hardly the sort of work for you?"
"Why, no," said the Altrurian, with absolute 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 Altrurian, "it is not offensive to the
feelings of a gentleman to let another do for him what he would not do for
himself?"
"Certainly not."
"Ah," he returned, "then we understand something altogether different by
the word gentleman in Altruria. I see, now, how I have committed a
mistake. I shall be more careful hereafter."
I thought I had better leave the subject, and, "By-the-way," I said, "how
would you like to take a little tramp with me to-day farther up into the
mountains?"
"I should be delighted," said the Altrurian, so gratefully that I was
ashamed to think why I was proposing the pleasure to him.
"Well, then, I shall be ready to start as soon as we have had breakfast. I
will join you down-stairs in half an hour."
He left me at this hint, though really I was half afraid he might stay and
offer to lend me a hand at my toilet, in the expression of his national
character. I found him with Mrs. Makely, when I went down, and she began,
with a parenthetical tribute to the beauty of the mountains in the morning
light: "Don't be 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 sulphonal wouldn't act, though I took fifteen grains, and I was up
with the lark, or should have been, if there had been any lark outside of
literature to be up with. However, this air is so glorious that I don't
mind losing a night's sleep now and then. I believe that with a little
practice one could get along without any sleep at all here; at least, _I_
could. I'm sorry to say poor Mr. Makely _can't_, apparently. He's making
up for his share of my vigils, and I'm going to breakfast without him. Do
you know, I've done a very bold thing: I've got the head-waiter to give
you places at our table; I know you'll hate it, Mr. Twelvemough, because
you naturally want to keep Mr. Homos to yourself, and I don't blame you at
all; but I'm simply not going to _let_ you, and that's all there is about
it."
The pleasure I felt at this announcement was not unmixed, but I tried to
keep Mrs. Makely from 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. Twelvemough, and I'm going to help you keep him from doing
anything ridiculous, if I can. I _like_ him, and I think it's a perfect
shame to have people laughing at him. I know we can manage him between
us."
We so far failed, however, that the Altrurian shook hands with the
head-waiter when he pressed open the wire-netting door to let us into the
dining-room, and made a bow to our waitress of the sort one makes to a
lady. But we thought it best to ignore these little errors of his and
reserve our moral strength for anything more spectacular. Fortunately we
got through our breakfast with nothing worse than his jumping up and
stooping to hand the waitress a spoon she let fall; but this could easily
pass for some attention to Mrs. Makely at a little distance. There were
not many people down to breakfast yet; but I could see that there was a
good deal of subdued sensation among the waitresses, standing with folded
arms behind their tables, and that the head-waiter's handsome face was red
with anxiety.
Mrs. Makely asked if we were going to church. She said she was driving
that way, and would be glad to drop us. "I'm not going myself," she
explained, "because I couldn't make anything of the sermon, 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. Homos?"
"I should venture to hope it," he said, with a tolerant seriousness not
altogether out of keeping with her lightness.
"Who is Mrs. Camp?" I asked, not caring to commit myself on the question.
"Lizzie's mother. You know I told you about them last night. I think she
must have got through the books I lent her, and I know Lizzie didn't like
to ask me for more, because she saw me talking with you, and didn't want
to interrupt us. Such a nice girl! I think the Sunday papers must have
come, and I'll take them over, too; Mrs. Camp is always so glad to get
them, and she is so delightful when she gets going about public events.
But perhaps you don't approve of Sunday papers, Mr. Homos."
"I'm sure I don't know, madam. I haven't seen them yet. You know this is
the first Sunday I've been in America."
"Well, I'm sorry to say you won't see the old Puritan Sabbath," said Mrs.
Makely, with an abrupt deflection from the question of the Sunday papers.
"Though you ought to, up in these hills. The only thing left of it is
rye-and-Indian bread, and these baked beans and fish-balls."
"But they are very good?"
"Yes, I dare say they are not the worst of it."
She was a woman who tended to levity, and I was a little afraid she might
be going to say something irreverent; but, if she were, she was
forestalled by the Altrurian asking: "Would it be very indiscreet, madam,
if I were to ask you some time to introduce me to that family?"
"The Camps?" she returned. "Not at all. I should be perfectly delighted."
The thought seemed to strike her, and she asked: "Why not go with me this
morning, unless you are inflexibly bent on going to church, you and Mr.
Twelvemough?"
The Altrurian glanced at me, and I said I should be only too glad, if I
could carry some books, so that I could compromise on a good action, too.
"Take one of your own," she instantly suggested.
"Do you think they wouldn't be too severe upon it?" I asked.
"Well, Mrs. Camp might," Mrs. Makely consented, with a smile. "She goes
in for rather serious fiction; but I think Lizzie would enjoy a good,
old-fashioned love-story, where everybody got married, as they do in your
charming books."
I winced a little, for every one likes to be regarded seriously, and I did
not enjoy being remanded to the young-girl public; but I put a bold face
on it, and said: "My good action shall be done in behalf of Miss Lizzie."
Half an hour later, Mrs. Makely having left word with the clerk where we
were gone, so that her 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. Makely had
the Altrurian get into the back seat with her, and, after some attempts to
make talk with the driver, I leaned over and joined in their talk. The
Altrurian was greatly interested, not so much in the landscape--though he
owned its beauty when we cried out over it from point to point--but in the
human incidents and features. He noticed the cattle in the fields, and the
horses we met on the road, and the taste and comfort of the buildings, the
variety of the crops, and the promise of the harvest. I was glad of the
respite his questions gave me from the study of the intimate character of
our civilization, for they were directed now at these more material facts,
and I willingly joined Mrs. Makely in answering them. We explained that
the finest teams we met were from the different hotels or boarding-houses,
or at least from the farms where the people took city people to board; and
that certain shabby equipages belonged to the natives who lived solely by
cultivating the soil. There was not very much of the soil cultivated, for
the chief crop was hay, with here and there a patch of potatoes or beans,
and a few acres in sweet-corn. The houses of the natives, when they were
for their use only, were no better than their turnouts; it was where the
city boarder had found shelter that they were modern and pleasant. Now and
then we came to a deserted homestead, and I tried to make the Altrurian
understand how farming in New England had yielded to the competition of
the immense agricultural operations of the West. "You know," I said, "that
agriculture is really an operation out there, as much as coal-mining is in
Pennsylvania, or finance in Wall Street; you have no idea of the vastness
of the scale." Perhaps I swelled a little with pride in my celebration of
the national prosperity, as it flowed from our Western farms of five and
ten and twenty thousand acres; I could not very well help putting on the
pedal in these passages. Mrs. Makely listened almost, as eagerly, as the
Altrurian, for, as a cultivated American woman, she was necessarily
quite ignorant of her own country, geographically, politically, and
historically. "The only people left in the hill country of New England," I
concluded, "are those who are too old or too lazy to get away. Any young
man of energy would be ashamed to stay, unless he wanted to keep a
boarding-house or live on the city vacationists in summer. If he doesn't,
he goes West and takes up some of the new land, and comes back in
middle-life and buys a deserted farm to spend his summers on."
"Dear me!" said the Altrurian. "Is it so simple as that? Then we can
hardly wonder at their owners leaving these worn-out farms; though I
suppose it must be with the pang of exile, sometimes."
"Oh, I fancy there isn't much sentiment involved," I answered, lightly.
"Whoa!" said Mrs. Makely, speaking to the horses before she spoke to the
driver, as some women will. He pulled them up, and looked round at her.
"Isn't that Reuben Camp, _now_, over there by that house?" she asked, as
if we had been talking of him; that is another way some women have.
"Yes, ma'am," said the driver.
"Oh, well, then!" and "Reuben!" she called to the young man, who was
prowling about the door-yard of a sad-colored old 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. Makely called Lizzie on the hotel piazza the
night before.
"Do you know whether I should find Lizzie at home this morning?"
"Yes, she's there with mother," said the young fellow, with neither liking
nor disliking in his tone.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" said the lady. "I didn't know but she might be at
church. What in the world has happened here? Is there anything unusual
going on inside?"
"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. Homos, here is a
chance to inform yourself at first hand about a very interesting fact of
our civilization"; and I added, in a low voice, to Mrs. Makely: "Won't you
introduce us?"
"Oh yes. Mr. Camp, this is Mr. Twelvemough, the author--you know his
books, of course; and Mr. Homos, a gentleman from Altruria."
The young fellow opened the gate he leaned on and came out to us. He took
no notice of me, but he seized the Altrurian's hand and wrung it. "I've
heard of _you_" he said. "Mrs. Makely, were you going to our place?"
"Why, yes."
"So do, then. Mother would give almost anything to see Mr. Homos. We've
heard of Altruria, over our way," he added to our friend. "Mother's been
reading up all she can about it. She'll want to talk with you, and she
won't give the rest of us much of a chance, I guess."
"Oh, I shall be glad to see her," said the Altrurian, "and to tell her
everything I can. But won't you 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."
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