A Traveler from Altruria: Romance

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"Ah, but you know," said Mrs. Makely, with the air of advancing a point
not to be put aside, "they had to drop _that_. It was a dead failure. They
found that they couldn't make it go at all among cultivated people, and
that, if Christianity was to advance, they would have to give up all that
crankish kind of idolatry of the mere letter. At any rate," she went on,
with the satisfaction we all feel in getting an opponent into close
quarters, "you must confess that there is a much greater play of
individuality here."

Before the Altrurian could reply, young Camp said: "If you want to see
American individuality, the real, simon-pure article, you ought to go down
to one of our big factory towns and look at the mill-hands coming home in
droves after a day's work, young girls and old women, boys and men, all
fluffed over with cotton, and so dead tired that they can hardly walk.
They come shambling along with all the individuality of a flock of sheep."

"Some," said Mrs. Makely, heroically, as if she were one of these, "must
be sacrificed. Of course, some are not so individual as others. A great
deal depends upon temperament."

"A great deal more depends upon capital," said Camp, with an offensive
laugh. "If you have capital in America, you can have individuality; if you
haven't, you can't."

His sister, who had not taken part in the talk before, said, demurely: "It
seems to me you've got a good deal of individuality, Reub, and you haven't
got a great deal of capital, either," and the two young people laughed
together.

Mrs. Makely was one of those fatuous women whose eagerness to make a point
excludes the consideration even of their own advantage. "I'm sure," she
said, as if speaking for the upper classes, "we haven't got any
individuality at all. We are as like as so many peas or pins. In fact, you
have to be so in society. If you keep asserting your own individuality too
much, people avoid you. It's very vulgar and the greatest bore."

"Then you don't find individuality so desirable, after all," said the
Altrurian.

"I perfectly detest it!" cried the lady, and evidently she had not the
least notion where she was in the argument. "For my part, I'm never happy
except when I've forgotten myself and the whole individual bother."

Her declaration seemed somehow to close the incident, and we were all
silent a moment, which I employed in looking about the room, and taking in
with my literary sense the simplicity and even bareness of its furnishing.
There was the bed where the invalid lay, and near the head a table with a
pile of books and a kerosene-lamp on it, and I decided that she was a good
deal wakeful, and that she read by that lamp when she could not sleep at
night. Then there were the hard chairs we sat on, and some home-made
hooked rugs, in rounds and ovals, scattered about the clean floor; there
was a small melodeon pushed against the wall; the windows had paper
shades, and I recalled that I had not seen any blinds on the outside of
the house. Over the head of the bed hung a cavalryman's sword, with its
belt--the sword that Mrs. Makely had spoken of. It struck me as a room
where a great many things might have happened, and I said: "You can't
think, Mrs. Camp, how glad I am to see the inside of your house. It seems
to me so typical."

A pleased intelligence showed itself in her face, and she answered: "Yes,
it is a real old-fashioned farmhouse. We have never taken boarders, and so
we have kept it as it was built pretty much, and only made such changes in
it as we needed or wanted for ourselves."

"It's a pity," I went on, following up what I thought a fortunate lead,
"that we city people see so little of the farming life when we come into
the country. I have been here now for several seasons, and this is the
first time I have been inside a farmer's house."

"Is it possible!" cried the Altrurian, with an air of utter astonishment;
and, when I found the fact appeared so singular to him, I began to be
rather proud of its singularity.

"Yes, I suppose that most city people come and go, year after year, in the
country, and never make any sort of acquaintance with the people who live
there the year round. We keep to ourselves in the hotels, or, if we go out
at all, it is to make a call upon some city cottager, and so we do not get
out of the vicious circle of our own over-intimacy with ourselves and our
ignorance of others."

"And you regard that as a great misfortune?" asked the Altrurian.

"Why, it's inevitable. There is nothing to bring us together, unless it's
some happy accident, like the present. But we don't have a traveler from
Altruria to exploit every day, and so we have no business to come into
people's houses."

"You would have been welcome in ours long ago, Mr. Twelvemough," said Mrs.
Camp.

"But, excuse me," said the Altrurian, "what you say really seems dreadful
to me. Why, it is as if you were not the same race or kind of men!"

"Yes," I answered. "It has sometimes seemed to me as if our big hotel
there were a ship anchored off some strange coast. The inhabitants come
out with supplies, and carry on their barter with the ship's steward, and
we sometimes see them over the side, but we never speak to them or have
anything to do with them. We sail away at the close of the season, and
that is the end of it till next summer."

The Altrurian turned to Mrs. Camp. "And how do you look at it? How does it
seem to you?"

"I don't believe we have thought about it very much; but, now that Mr.
Twelvemough has spoken of it, I can see that it does look that 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 suppose I may say, died for; he was never the same man
after the war. It does appear as if we had some interests in common, and
might find it out if we ever came together."

"It's a great advantage, the city people going into the country so much as
they do now," said Mrs. Makely. "They bring five million dollars into the
State of New Hampshire, alone, every summer."

She looked round for the general approval which this fact merited, and
young Camp said: "And it shows how worthless the natives are, that they
can't make both ends meet, with all that money, but have to give up their
farms and go West, after all. I suppose you think it comes from wanting
buggies and pianos."

"Well, it certainly comes from something," said Mrs. Makely, with the
courage of her convictions.

She was evidently not going to be put down by that sour young fellow, and
I was glad of it, though I must say I thought the thing she left to rankle
in his mind from our former meeting had not been said in very good taste.
I thought, too, that she would not fare best in any encounter of wits with
him, and I rather trembled for the result. I said, to relieve the strained
situation: "I wish there was some way of our knowing each other better.
I'm sure there's a great deal of good-will on both sides."

"No, there isn't," said Camp, "or at least I can answer for our side that
there isn't. You come into the country to get as much for your money as
you can, and we mean to let you have as little as we can. That's the whole
story, and if Mr. Homos believes anything different, he's very much
mistaken."

"I hadn't formed any conclusion in regard to the matter, which is quite
new to me," said the Altrurian, mildly. "But why is there no basis of
mutual kindness between you?"

"Because it's like everything else with us; it's a question of supply and
demand, and there is no room for any mutual kindness in a question of that
kind. Even if there were, there is another thing that would kill it. The
summer folks, as we call them, look down on the natives, as they call us,
and we know it."

"Now, Mr. Camp, I am sure that you cannot say _I_ look down on the
natives," said Mrs. Makely, with an air of argument.

The young fellow laughed. "Oh yes, you do," he said, not unamiably, and he
added, "and you've got the right to. We're not fit to associate with you,
and you know it, and we know it. You've got more money, and you've got
nicer clothes, and you've got prettier manners. You talk about things that
most natives never heard of, and you care for things they never saw. I
know it's the custom to pretend differently, but I'm not going to pretend
differently."

I recalled what my friend the banker said about throwing away cant, and I
asked myself if I were in the presence of some such free spirit again. I
did not see how young Camp could afford it; but then I reflected that he
had really nothing to lose by it, for he did not expect to make anything
out of us; Mrs. Makely would probably not give up his sister as seamstress
if the girl continued to work so well and so cheaply as she said.

"Suppose," he went on, "that some old native took you at your word, and
came to call upon you at the hotel, with his wife, just as one of the city
cottagers would do if he wanted to make your acquaintance?"

"I should be perfectly delighted," said Mrs. Makely, "and I should receive
them with the greatest possible cordiality."

"The same kind of cordiality that you would show to the cottagers?"

"I suppose that I should feel that I had more in common with the
cottagers. We should be interested in the same things, and we should
probably know the same people and have more to talk about--"

"You would both belong to the same class, and that tells the whole story.
If you were out West, and the owner of one of those big twenty-thousand-
acre farms called on you with his wife, would you act toward them as you
would toward our natives? You wouldn't. You would all be rich people
together, and you would understand one another because you had money."

"Now, that is not so," Mrs. Makely interrupted. "There are plenty of rich
people one wouldn't wish to know at all, and who really can't get into
society--who are ignorant and vulgar. And then, when you come to money, I
don't see but what country people are as glad to get it as anybody."

"Oh, gladder," said the young man.

"Well?" demanded Mrs. Makely, as if this were a final stroke of logic. The
young man did not reply, and Mrs. Makely continued: "Now I will appeal to
your sister to say whether she has ever seen any difference in my manner
toward her from what I show to all the young ladies in the hotel." The
young girl flushed and seemed reluctant to answer. "Why, Lizzie!" cried
Mrs. Makely, and her tone showed that she was really hurt.

The scene appeared to me rather cruel, and I glanced at Mrs. Camp with an
expectation that she would say something to relieve it. But she did not.
Her large, benevolent face expressed only a quiet interest in the
discussion.

"You know very well, Mrs. Makely," said the girl, "you don't regard me as
you do the young ladies in the hotel."

There was no resentment in her voice or look, but only a sort of regret,
as if, but for this grievance, she could have loved the woman from whom
she had probably had much kindness. The tears came into Mrs. Makely's
eyes, and she turned 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 feel as you would like to
have them feel; but that is because they do not think. When they think,
they feel as we do. But I don't blame you. You can't help yourselves any
more than we can. We're all bound up together in that, at least."

At this apparent relenting Mrs. Makely tricked her beams a little, and
said, plaintively, as if offering herself for further condolence: "Yes,
that is what that woman at the little shanty back there said: some have to
be rich, and some have to be poor; it takes all kinds to make a world."

"How would you like to be one of those that have to be poor?" asked young
Camp, with an evil grin.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Makely, with unexpected spirit; "but I am sure
that I should respect the feelings of all, rich or poor."

"I am sorry if we have hurt yours, Mrs. Makely," said Mrs. Camp, with
dignity. "You asked us certain questions, and we thought you wished us to
reply truthfully. We could not answer you with smooth things."

"But sometimes you do," said Mrs. Makely, and the tears stood in her eyes
again. "And you know how fond I am of you all!"

Mrs. Camp wore a bewildered look. "Perhaps we have said more than we
ought. But I couldn't help it, and I don't see how the children could,
when you asked them here, before Mr. Homos."

I glanced at the Altrurian, sitting attentive and silent, and a sudden
misgiving crossed my mind concerning him. Was he really a man, a human
entity, a personality like ourselves, or was he merely a sort of spiritual
solvent, sent for the moment to precipitate whatever sincerity there was
in us, and show us what the truth was concerning our relations to one
another? It was a fantastic conception, but I thought it was one that I
might employ in some sort of purely romantic design, and I was
professionally grateful for it. I said, with a humorous gayety: "Yes, we
all seem to have been compelled to be much more honest than we like; and
if Mr. Homos is going to write an account of his travels when he gets
home, he can't accuse us of 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 reason to complain
even of our reticence."

"Well, whatever he says of us," sighed Mrs. Makely, with a pious glance at
the sword over the bed, "he will have to say that, in spite of our
divisions and classes, we are all Americans, and, if we haven't the same
opinions and ideas on minor matters, we all have the same country."

"I don't know about that," came from Reuben Camp, with shocking
promptness. "I don't believe we all have the same country. America is one
thing for you, and it's quite another thing for us. America means ease and
comfort and amusement for you, year in and year out, and if it means work,
it's work that you _wish_ to do. For us, America means work that we _have_
to do, and hard work all the time if we're going to make both ends meet.
It means liberty for you; but what liberty has a man got who doesn't know
where his next meal is coming from? Once I was in a strike, when I was
working on the railroad, and I've seen men come and give up their liberty
for a chance to earn their family's living. They knew they were right, and
that they ought to have stood up for their rights; but they had to lie
down and lick the hand that fed them. Yes, we are all Americans, but I
guess we haven't all got the same country, Mrs. Makely. What sort of a
country has a blacklisted man got?"

"A blacklisted man?" she repeated. "I don't know what you mean."

"Well, a kind of man I've seen in the mill towns, that the bosses have all
got on their books as a man that isn't to be given work on any account;
that's to be punished with hunger and cold, and turned into the street,
for having offended them; and that's to be made to suffer through his
helpless family for having offended them."

"Excuse me, Mr. Camp," I interposed, "but isn't a blacklisted man usually
a man who has made himself prominent in some labor trouble?"

"Yes," the young fellow answered, without seeming sensible of the point I
had made.

"Ah!" I returned. "Then you can hardly blame the employers for taking it
out of him in any way they can. That's human nature."

"Good heavens!" the Altrurian cried out. "Is it possible that in America
it is human nature to take away the bread of a man's family because he has
gone counter to your interest or pleasure on some economical question?"

"Well, Mr. Twelvemough seems to think so," sneered the young man. "But
whether it's human nature or not, it's a fact that they do it, and you can
guess how much a blacklisted man must love the country where such a thing
can happen to him. What should you call such a thing as blacklisting in
Altruria?"

"Oh yes," Mrs. Makely pleaded, "do let us get him to talking about
Altruria on any terms. I think all this about the labor question is so
tiresome; don't you, Mrs. Camp?"

Mrs. Camp did not answer; but the Altrurian said, in reply to her son: "We
should have no name for such a thing, for with us such a thing would be
impossible. There is no crime so heinous with us that the punishment would
take away the criminal's chance of earning his living."

"Oh, if he was a criminal," said young Camp, "he would be all right
_here_. The state would give him a chance to earn his living then."

"But if he had no other chance of earning his living, and had committed no
offence against the laws--"

"Then the state would let him take to the road--like that fellow."

He pulled aside the shade of the window where he sat, and we saw pausing
before the house, and glancing doubtfully at the doorstep, where the dog
lay, a vile and loathsome-looking tramp, a blot upon the sweet and
wholesome landscape, a scandal to the sacred day. His rags burlesqued the
form which they did not wholly hide; his broken shoes were covered with
dust; his coarse hair came in a plume through his tattered hat; his red,
sodden face, at once fierce and timid, was rusty with a fortnight's beard.
He offended the eye like a visible stench, and the wretched carrion seemed
to shrink away from our gaze as if he were aware of his loathsomeness.

"Really," said Mrs. Makely, "I thought those fellows were arrested now. It
is too bad to leave them at large. They are dangerous." Young Camp left
the room, and we saw him going out toward the tramp.

"Ah, that's quite right," said the lady. "I hope Reuben is going to send
him about his business. Why, surely, he's not going to feed the horrid
creature!" she added, as Camp, after a moment's parley with the tramp,
turned with him and disappeared round a corner of the house. "Now, Mrs.
Camp, I think that is really a very bad example. It's encouraging them.
Very likely he'll go to sleep in your barn, and set it on fire with his
pipe. What do you do with tramps in Altruria, Mr. Homos?"

The Altrurian seemed not to have heard her. He said to Mrs. Camp: "Then I
understand from something your son let fall that he has not always been at
home with you here. Does he reconcile himself easily to the country after
the excitement of town life? I have read that the cities in America are
draining the country of the young people."

"I don't think he was sorry to come home," said the mother, with a touch
of fond pride. "But there was no choice for him after his father died; he
was always a good boy, and he has not made us feel that we were keeping
him away from anything better. When his father was alive we let him go,
because then we were not so dependent, and I wished him to try his fortune
in the world, as all boys long to do. But he is rather peculiar, and he
seems to have got quite enough of the world. To be sure, I don't suppose
he's seen the brightest side of it. He first went to work in the mills
down at Ponkwasset, but he was 'laid off' there when the hard times came
and there was so much overproduction, and he took a job of railroading,
and was braking on a freight-train when his father left us."

Mrs. Makely said, smiling: "No, I don't think that was the brightest
outlook in the world. No wonder he has brought back such gloomy
impressions. I am sure that if he could have seen life under brighter
auspices he would not have the ideas he has."

"Very likely," said the mother, dryly. "Our experiences have a great deal
to do with forming our opinions. But I am not dissatisfied with my son's
ideas. I suppose Reuben got a good many of his ideas from his father: he's
his father all over again. My husband thought slavery was wrong, and he
went into the war to fight against it. He used to say when the war was
over that the negroes were emancipated, but slavery was not abolished
yet."

"What in the world did he mean by that?" demanded Mrs. Makely.

"Something you wouldn't understand as we do. I tried to carry on the farm
after he first went, and before Reuben was large enough to help me much
and ought to be in school, and I suppose I overdid. At any rate, that was
when I had my first shock of paralysis. I never was very strong, and I
presume my health was weakened by my teaching school so much, and
studying, before I was married. But that doesn't matter now, and hasn't
for many a year. The place was clear of debt then, but I had to get a
mortgage put on it. The savings-bank down in the village took it, and
we've been paying the interest ever since. My husband died paying it, and
my son will pay it all my life, and then I suppose the bank will
foreclose. The treasurer was an old playmate of my husband's, and he said
that as long as either of us lived the mortgage could lie."

"How splendid of him!" said Mrs. Makely. "I should think you had been very
fortunate."

"I said that you would not see it as we do," said the invalid, patiently.

The Altrurian asked: "Are there mortgages on many of the farms in the
neighborhood?"

"Nearly all," said Mrs. Camp. "We seem to own them, but in fact they own
us."

Mrs. Makely hastened to say: "My husband thinks it's the best way to have
your property. If you mortgage it close up, you have all your capital
free, and you can keep turning it over. That's what you ought to do, Mrs.
Camp. But what was the slavery that Captain Camp said was not abolished
yet?"

The invalid looked at her a moment without replying, and just then the
door of the kitchen opened, and Young Camp came in and began to gather
some food from the table on a plate.

"Why don't you bring him to the table, Reub?" his sister called to him.

"Oh, he says he'd rather not come in, as long as we have company. He says
he isn't dressed for dinner; left his spike-tail in the city."

The young man laughed, and his sister with him.

VIII

Young Camp carried out the plate of victuals to the tramp, and Mrs. Makely
said to his mother: "I suppose you would make the tramp do some sort of
work to earn his breakfast on week-days?"

"Not always," Mrs. Camp replied. "Do the boarders at the hotel always work
to earn their breakfast?"

"No, certainly not," said Mrs. Makely, with the sharpness of offence. "But
they always pay for it."

"I don't think that paying for a thing is earning it. Perhaps some one
else earned the money that pays for it. But I believe there is too much
work in the world. If I were to live my life over again, I should not work
half so hard. My husband and I took this place when we were young married
people, and began working to pay for it. We wanted to feel that it was
ours, that we owned it, and that our children should own it afterward. We
both worked all day long like slaves, and many a moonlight night we were
up till morning, almost, gathering the stones from our fields and burying
them in deep graves that we had dug for them. But we buried our youth and
strength and health in those graves, too, and what for? I don't own the
farm that we worked so hard to pay for, and my children won't. That is
what it has all come to. We were rightly punished for our greed, I
suppose. Perhaps no one has a right to own any portion of the earth.
Sometimes I think so, but my husband and I earned this farm, and now the
savings-bank owns it. That seems strange, doesn't it? I suppose you'll say
that the bank paid for it. Well, perhaps so; but the bank didn't earn it.
When I think of that I don't always think that a person who pays for his
breakfast has the best right to a breakfast."

I could see the sophistry of all this, but I had not the heart to point it
out; I felt the pathos of it, too. Mrs. Makely seemed not to see the one
nor to feel the other very distinctly. "Yes, but surely," she said, "if
you give a tramp his breakfast without making him work for it, you must
see that it is encouraging idleness. And idleness is very corrupting--the
sight of it."

"You mean to the country people? Well, they have to stand a good deal of
that. The summer folks that spend four or five months of the year here
don't seem to do anything from morning till night."

"Ah, but you must recollect that they are _resting_! You have no idea how
hard they all work in town during the winter," Mrs. Makely urged, with an
air of argument.

"Perhaps the tramps are resting, too. At any rate, I don't think the sight
of idleness in rags, and begging at back doors, is very corrupting to the
country people; I never heard of a single tramp who had started from the
country; they all come from the cities. It's the other kind of idleness
that tempts our young people. The only tramps that my son says he ever
envies are the well-dressed, strong young fellows from town that go
tramping through the mountains for exercise every summer."

The ladies both paused. They seemed to have got to the end of their
tether; at least, Mrs. Makely had apparently nothing else to advance, and
I said, lightly: "But that is just the kind of tramps that Mr. Homos would
most disapprove of. He says that in Altruria they would consider exercise
for exercise' sake a wicked waste of force and little short of lunacy."

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