VIII

We have since been at other weddings and at christenings and at funerals.

The ceremonies are always held in the temples, and are always in the same

serious spirit. As the Altrurians are steadfast believers in immortality,

there is a kind of solemn elevation in the funeral ceremonies which I

cannot give you a real notion of. It is helped, I think, by the custom of

not performing the ceremony over the dead; a brief rite is reserved for

the cemetery, where it is wished that the kindred shall not be present,

lest they think always of the material body and not of the spiritual body

which shall be raised in incorruption. Religious service is held in the

temples every day at the end of the Obligatories, and whenever we are

near a village or in any of the capitals we always go. It is very simple.

After a hymn, to which the people sometimes march round the interior of

the temple, each lays on the altar an offering from the fields or woods

where they have been working, if it is nothing but a head of grain or a

wild flower or a leaf. Then any one is at liberty to speak, but any one

else may go out without offence. There is no ritual; sometimes they read

a chapter from the New Testament, preferably a part of the story of

Christ or a passage from His discourses. The idea of coming to the temple

at the end of the day's labor is to consecrate that day's work, and they

do not call anything work that is not work with the hands. When I

explained, or tried to explain, that among us a great many people worked

with their brains, to amuse others or to get handwork out of them, they

were unable to follow me. I asked if they did not consider composing

music or poetry or plays, or painting pictures work, and they said, No,

that was pleasure, and must be indulged only during the Voluntaries; it

was never to be honored like work with the hands, for it would not

equalize the burden of that, but might put an undue share of it on

others. They said that lives devoted to such pursuits must be very

unwholesome, and they brought me to book about the lives of most artists,

literary men, and financiers in the capitalistic world to prove what they

said. They held that people must work with their hands willingly, in the

artistic spirit, but they could only do that when they knew that others

differently gifted were working in like manner with their hands.

I couldn't begin to tell you all our queer experiences. As I have kept

saying, I am a great curiosity everywhere, and I could flatter myself

that people were more eager to see me than to hear Aristides. Sometimes I

couldn't help thinking that they expected to find me an awful warning, a

dreadful example of whatever a woman ought not to be, and a woman from

capitalistic conditions must be logically. But sometimes they were very

intelligent, even the simplest villagers, as we should call them, though

there is such an equality of education and opportunity here that no

simplicity of life has the effect of dulling people as it has with us.

One thing was quite American: they always wanted to know how I liked

Altruria, and when I told them, as I sincerely could, that I adored it,

they were quite affecting in their pleasure. They generally asked if I

would like to go back to America, and when I said No, they were delighted

beyond anything. They said I must become a citizen and vote and take part

in the government, for that was every woman's duty as well as right; it

was wrong to leave the whole responsibility to the men. They asked if

American women took no interest in the government, and when I told them

there was a very small number who wished to influence politics socially,

as the Englishwomen did, but without voting or taking any responsibility,

they were shocked. In one of the Regionic capitals they wanted me to

speak after Aristides, but I had nothing prepared; at the next I did get

off a little speech in English, which he translated after me. Later he

put it into Altrurian, and I memorized it, and made myself immensely

popular by parroting it.

The pronunciation of Altrurian is not difficult, for it is spelled

phonetically, and the sounds are very simple. Where they were once

difficult they have been simplified, for here the simplification of life

extends to everything; and the grammar has been reduced in its structure

till it is as elemental as English grammar or Norwegian. The language is

Greek in origin, but the intricate inflections and the declensions have

been thrown away, and it has kept only the simplest forms. You must get

Mr. Twelvemough to explain this to you, Dolly, for it would take me too

long, and I have so much else to tell you. A good many of the women have

taken up English, but they learn it as a dead language, and they give it

a comical effect by trying to pronounce it as it is spelled.

I suppose you are anxious, if these letters which are piling up and

piling up should ever reach you, or even start to do so, to know

something about the Altrurian cities, and what they are like. Well, in

the first place, you must cast all images of American cities out of your

mind, or any European cities, except, perhaps, the prettiest and

stateliest parts of Paris, where there is a regular sky-line, and the

public buildings and monuments are approached through shaded avenues.

There are no private houses here, in our sense--that is, houses which

people have built with their own money on their own land, and made as

ugly outside and as molestive to their neighbors and the passers-by as

they chose. As the buildings belong to the whole people, the first

requirement is that they shall be beautiful inside and out. There are a

few grand edifices looking like Greek temples, which are used for the

government offices, and these are, of course, the most dignified, but the

dwellings are quite as attractive and comfortable. They are built round

courts, with gardens and flowers in the courts, and wide grassy spaces

round them. They are rather tall, but never so tall as our great hotels

or apartment-houses, and the floors are brought to one level by

elevators, which are used only in the capitals; and, generally speaking,

I should say the villages were pleasanter than the cities. In fact, the

village is the Altrurian ideal, and there is an effort everywhere to

reduce the size of the towns and increase the number of the villages.

The outlying farms have been gathered into these, and now there is not

one of those lonely places in the country, like those where our farmers

toil alone outdoors and their wives alone indoors, and both go mad

so often in the solitude. The villages are almost in sight of each other,

and the people go to their fields in company, while the women carry on

their house-keeping co-operatively, with a large kitchen which they

use in common; they have their meals apart or together, as they like. If

any one is sick or disabled the neighbors come in and help do her work,

as they used with us in the early times, and as they still do in country

places. Village life here is preferred, just as country life is in

England, and one thing that will amuse you, with your American ideas, and

your pride in the overgrowth of our cities: the Altrurian papers solemnly

announce from time to time that the population of such or such a capital

has been reduced so many hundreds or thousands since the last census.

That means that the villages in the neighborhood have been increased in

number and population.

Meanwhile, I must say the capitals are delightful: clean, airy, quiet,

with the most beautiful architecture, mostly classic and mostly marble,

with rivers running through them and round them, and every real

convenience, but not a clutter of artificial conveniences, as with us. In

the streets there are noiseless trolleys (where they have not been

replaced by public automobiles) which the long distances of the ample

ground-plan make rather necessary, and the rivers are shot over with

swift motor-boats; for the short distances you always expect to walk, or

if you don't expect it, you walk anyway. The car-lines and boat-lines are

public, and they are free, for the Altrurians think that the community

owes transportation to every one who lives beyond easy reach of the

points which their work calls them to.

Of course the great government stores are in the capitals, and

practically there are no stores in the villages, except for what you

might call emergency supplies. But you must not imagine, Dolly, that

shopping, here, is like shopping at home--or in America, as I am learning

to say, for Altruria is home now. That is, you don't fill your purse with

bank-notes, or have things charged. You get everything you want, within

reason, and certainly everything you need, for nothing. You have only to

provide yourself with a card, something like that you have to show at the

Army and Navy Stores in London, when you first go to buy there, which

certifies that you belong to this or that working-phalanx, and that you

have not failed in the Obligatories for such and such a length of time.

If you are not entitled to this card, you had better not go shopping, for

there is no possible equivalent for it which will enable you to carry

anything away or have it sent to your house. At first I could not help

feeling rather indignant when I was asked to show my work-card in the

stores; I had usually forgotten to bring it, or sometimes I had brought

my husband's card, which would not do at all, unless I could say that I

had been ill or disabled, for a woman is expected to work quite the same

as a man. Of course her housework counts, and as we are on a sort of

public mission, they count our hours of travel as working-hours,

especially as Aristides has made it a point of good citizenship for us to

stop every now and then and join in the Obligatories when the villagers

were getting in the farm crops or quarrying stone or putting up a house.

I am never much use in quarrying or building, but I come in strong in the

hay-fields or the apple orchards or the orange groves.

The shopping here is not so enslaving as it is with us--I mean, with

you--because the fashions do not change, and you get things only when you

need them, not when you want them, or when other people think you do. The

costume was fixed long ago, when the Altrurian era began, by a commission

of artists, and it would be considered very bad form as well as bad

morals to try changing it in the least. People are allowed to choose

their own colors, but if one goes very wrong, or so far wrong as to

offend the public taste, she is gently admonished by the local art

commission. If she insists, they let her have her own way, but she seldom

wants it when she knows that people think her a fright. Of course the

costume is modified somewhat for the age and shape of the wearer, but

this is not so often as you might think. There are no very lean or very

stout people, though there are old and young, just as there are with us.

But the Altrurians keep young very much longer than capitalistic peoples

do, and the life of work keeps down their weight. You know I used to

incline a little to over-plumpness, I really believe because I overate at

times simply to keep from thinking of the poor who had to undereat, but

that is quite past now; I have lost at least twenty-five pounds from

working out-doors and travelling so much and living very, very simply.