IX

The next time the members of our little group came together, the

manufacturer began at once upon the banker:

“I should think that our friend the professor, here, would hardly like

that notion of yours, that business, as business, has nothing to do with

the education of a gentleman. If this is a business man’s country, and if

the professor has nothing in stock but the sort of education that business

has no use for, I should suppose that he would want to go into some other

line.”

The banker mutely referred the matter to the professor, who said, with

that cold grin of his which I hated:

“Perhaps we shall wait for business to purge and live cleanly. Then it

will have some use for the education of a gentleman.”

“I see,” said the banker, “that I have touched the quick in both of you,

when I hadn’t the least notion of doing so. But I shouldn’t really like to

prophesy which will adapt itself to the other--education or business. Let

us hope there will be mutual concessions. There are some pessimists who

say that business methods, especially on the large scale of the trusts and

combinations, have grown worse instead of better; but this may be merely

what is called a ‘transition state.’ Hamlet must be cruel to be kind; the

darkest hour comes before dawn--and so on. Perhaps when business gets

the whole affair of life into its hands, and runs the republic, as its

enemies now accuse it of doing, the process of purging and living cleanly

will begin. I have known lots of fellows who started in life rather

scampishly; but when they felt secure of themselves, and believed that

they could afford to be honest, they became so. There’s no reason why the

same thing shouldn’t happen on a large scale. We must never forget that we

are still a very novel experiment, though we have matured so rapidly in

some respects that we have come to regard ourselves as an accomplished

fact. We are really less so than we were forty years ago, with all the

tremendous changes since the war. Before that we could take certain

matters for granted. If a man got out of work, he turned his hand to

something else; if a man failed in business, he started in again from some

other direction; as a last resort, in both cases, he went West, pre-empted

a quarter-section of public land, and grew up with the country. Now the

country is grown up; the public land is gone; business is full on all

sides, and the hand that turned itself to something else has lost its

cunning. The struggle for life has changed from a free-fight to an

encounter of disciplined forces, and the free-fighters that are left get

ground to pieces between organized labor and organized capital. Decidedly,

we are in a transition state, and if the higher education tried to adapt

itself to business needs, there are chances that it might sacrifice itself

without helping business. After all, how much education does business

need? Were our great fortunes made by educated men, or men of university

training? I don’t know but these young fellows are right about that.”

“Yes, that may all be,” I put in. “But it seems to me that you give Mr.

Homos, somehow, a wrong impression of our economic life by your

generalizations. You are a Harvard man yourself.”

“Yes, and I am not a rich man. A million or two, more or less; but what is

that? I have suffered, at the start and all along, from the question as to

what a man with the education of a gentleman ought to do in such and such

a juncture. The fellows who have not that sort of education have not that

sort of question, and they go in and win.”

“So you admit, then,” said the professor, “that the higher education

elevates a business man’s standard of morals?”

“Undoubtedly. That is one of its chief drawbacks,” said the banker, with a

laugh.

“Well,” I said, with the deference due even to a man who had only a

million or two, more or less, “we must allow _you_ to say such things. But

if the case is so bad with the business men who have made the great

fortunes--the business men who have never had the disadvantage of a

university education--I wish you would explain to Mr. Homos why, in every

public exigency, we instinctively appeal to the business sense of the

community as if it were the fountain of wisdom, probity, and equity.

Suppose there were some question of vital interest--I won’t say financial,

but political or moral or social--on which it was necessary to rouse

public opinion, what would be the first thing to do? To call a meeting

over the signatures of the leading business men, because no other names

appeal with such force to the public. You might get up a call signed by

all the novelists, artists, ministers, lawyers, and doctors in the state,

and it would not have a tithe of the effect, with the people at large,

that a call signed by a few leading merchants, bank presidents, railroad

men, and trust officers would have. What is the reason? It seems strange

that I should be asking you to defend yourself against yourself.”

“Not at all, my dear fellow, not at all,” the banker replied, with his

caressing bonhomie. “Though I will confess, to begin with, that I do not

expect to answer your question to your entire satisfaction. I can only do

my best--on the instalment plan.”

He turned to the Altrurian, and then went on: “As I said the other night,

this is a business man’s country. We are a purely commercial people; money

is absolutely to the fore; and business, which is the means of getting the

most money, is the American ideal. If you like, you may call it the

American fetish; I don’t mind calling it so myself. The fact that business

is our ideal, or our fetish, will account for the popular faith in

business men, who form its priesthood, its hierarchy. I don’t know,

myself, any other reason for regarding business men as solider than

novelists or artists or ministers, not to mention lawyers and doctors.

They are supposed to have long heads; but it appears that ninety-five

times out of a hundred they haven’t. They are supposed to be very

reliable; but it is almost invariably a business man of some sort who gets

out to Canada while the state examiner is balancing his books, and it is

usually the longest headed business men who get plundered by him. No, it

is simply because business is our national ideal that the business man is

honored above all other men among us. In the aristocratic countries they

forward a public object under the patronage of the nobility and gentry; in

a plutocratic country they get the business men to indorse it. I suppose

that the average American citizen feels that they wouldn’t indorse a thing

unless it was safe; and the average American citizen likes to be safe--he

is cautious. As a matter of fact, business men are always taking risks,

and business is a game of chance, in a certain degree. Have I made myself

intelligible?”

“Entirely so,” said the Altrurian; and he seemed so thoroughly well

satisfied that he forbore asking any further question.

No one else spoke. The banker lighted a cigar, and resumed at the point

where he left off when I ventured to enter upon the defence of his class

with him. I must say that he had not convinced me at all. At that moment

I would rather have trusted him, in any serious matter of practical

concern, than all the novelists I ever heard of. But I thought I would

leave the word to him, without further attempt to reinstate him in his

self-esteem. In fact, he seemed to be getting along very well without it,

or else he was feeling that mysterious control from the Altrurian which I

had already suspected him of using. Voluntarily or involuntarily, the

banker proceeded with his contribution to the Altrurian’s stock of

knowledge concerning our civilization:

“I don’t believe, however, that the higher education is any more of a

failure, as a provision for a business career, than the lower education is

for the life of labor. I suppose that the hypercritical observer might say

that in a wholly commercial civilization like ours the business man really

needed nothing beyond the three R’s, and the working-man needed no R at

all. As a practical affair, there is a good deal to be said in favor of

that view. The higher education is part of the social ideal which we have

derived from the past, from Europe. It is part of the provision for the

life of leisure, the life of the aristocrat, which nobody of our

generation leads, except women. Our women really have some use for the

education of a gentleman, but our men have none. How will that do for a

generalization?” the banker asked of me.

“Oh,” I admitted, with a laugh, “it is a good deal like one of my own. I

have always been struck with that phase of our civilization.”

“Well, then,” the banker resumed, “take the lower education. That is part

of the civic ideal which, I suppose, I may say we evolved from the depths

of our inner consciousness of what an American citizen ought to be. It

includes instruction in all the R’s, and in several other letters of the

alphabet. It is given free by the state, and no one can deny that it is

thoroughly socialistic in conception and application.”

“Distinctly so,” said the professor. “Now that the text-books are

furnished by the state, we have only to go a step further and provide a

good, hot lunch for the children every day, as they do in Paris.”

“Well,” the banker returned, “I don’t know that I should have much to say

against that. It seems as reasonable as anything in the system of

education which we force upon the working classes. _They_ know perfectly

well, whether we do or not, that the three R’s will not make their

children better mechanics or laborers, and that, if the fight for a mere

living is to go on from generation to generation, they will have no

leisure to apply the little learning they get in the public schools for

their personal culture. In the mean time we deprive the parents of their

children’s labor, in order that they may be better citizens for their

schooling, as we imagine; I don’t know whether they are or not. We offer

them no sort of compensation for their time, and I think we ought to feel

obliged to them for not wanting wages for their children while we are

teaching them to be better citizens.”

“You know,” said the professor, “that has been suggested by some of their

leaders.”

“No, really? Well, that is too good!” The banker threw back his head and

roared, and we all laughed with him. When we had sobered down again, he

said: “I suppose that when a working-man makes all the use he can of his

lower education he becomes a business man, and then he doesn’t need the

higher. Professor, you seem to be left out in the cold by our system,

whichever way you take it.”

“Oh,” said the professor, “the law of supply and demand works both ways:

it creates the demand, if the supply comes first; and if we keep on giving

the sons of business men the education of a gentleman, we may yet make

them feel the need of it. We shall evolve a new sort of business man.”

“The sort that can’t make money, or wouldn’t exactly like to, on some

terms?” asked the banker. “Well, perhaps we shall work out our democratic

salvation in that way. When you have educated your new business man to the

point where he can’t consent to get rich at the obvious cost of others,

you’ve got him on the way back to work with his hands. He will sink into

the ranks of labor, and give the fellow with the lower education a chance.

I’ve no doubt he’ll take it. I don’t know but you’re right, professor.”

The lawyer had not spoken as yet. Now he said: “Then it is education,

after all, that is to bridge the chasm between the classes and the masses,

though it seems destined to go a long way around about it. There was a

time, I believe, when we expected religion to do that.”

“Well, it may still be doing it, for all I know,” said the banker. “What

do you say?” he asked, turning to the minister. “You ought to be able to

give us some statistics on the subject with that large congregation of

yours. You preach to more people than any other pulpit in your city.”

The banker named one of the principal cities in the East, and the minister

answered, with, modest pride: “I am not sure of that; but our society is

certainly a very large one.”

“Well, and how many of the lower classes are there in it--people who work

for their living with their hands?”

The minister stirred uneasily in his chair, and at last he said, with

evident unhappiness: “They--I suppose--they have their own churches. I

have never thought that such a separation of the classes was right; and I

have had some of the very best people--socially and financially--with me

in the wish that there might be more brotherliness between the rich and

poor among us. But as yet--”

He stopped; the banker pursued: “Do you mean there are _no_ working-people

in your congregation?”

“I cannot think of any,” returned the minister, so miserably that the

banker forbore to press the point.

The lawyer broke the awkward pause which followed: “I have heard it

asserted that there is no country in the world where the separation of the

classes is so absolute as in ours. In fact, I once heard a Russian

revolutionist, who had lived in exile all over Europe, say that he had

never seen anywhere such a want of kindness or sympathy between rich and

poor as he had observed in America. I doubted whether he was right. But he

believed that, if it ever came to the industrial revolution with us, the

fight would be more uncompromising than any such fight that the world had

ever seen. There was no respect from low to high, he said, and no

consideration from high to low, as there were in countries with traditions

and old associations.”

“Well,” said the banker, “there may be something in that. Certainly, so

far as the two forces have come into conflict here, there has been no

disposition, on either side, to ‘make war with the water of roses.’ It’s

astonishing, in fact, to see how ruthless the fellows who have just got up

are toward the fellows who are still down. And the best of us have been up

only a generation or two--and the fellows who are still down know it.”

“And what do you think would be the outcome of such a conflict?” I asked,

with my soul divided between fear of it and the perception of its

excellence as material. My fancy vividly sketched the outline of a story

which should forecast the struggle and its event, somewhat on the plan of

the Battle of Dorking.

“We should beat,” said the banker, breaking his cigar-ash off with his

little finger; and I instantly cast him, with his ironic calm, for the

part of a great patrician leader in my “Fall of the Republic.” Of course,

I disguised him somewhat, and travestied his worldly bonhomie with the

bluff sang-froid of the soldier; these things are easily done.

“What makes you think we should beat?” asked the manufacturer, with a

certain curiosity.

“Well, all the good jingo reasons: we have got the materials for beating.

Those fellows throw away their strength whenever they begin to fight, and

they’ve been so badly generalled, up to the present time, that they have

wanted to fight at the outset of every quarrel. They have been beaten in

every quarrel, but still they always want to begin by fighting. That is

all right. When they have learned enough to begin by _voting_, then we

shall have to look out. But if they keep on fighting, and always putting

themselves in the wrong and getting the worst of it, perhaps we can fix

the voting so we needn’t be any more afraid of that than we are of the

fighting. It’s astonishing how short-sighted they are. They, have no

conception of any cure for their grievances except more wages and fewer

hours.”

“But,” I asked, “do you really think they have any just grievances?”

“Of course not, as a business man,” said the banker. “If I were a

working-man, I should probably think differently. But we will suppose, for

the sake of argument, that their day is too long and their pay is too

short. How do they go about to better themselves? They strike. Well, a

strike is a fight, and in a fight, nowadays, it is always skill and money

that win. The working-men can’t stop till they have put themselves outside

of the public sympathy which the newspapers say is so potent in their

behalf; I never saw that it did them the least good. They begin by

boycotting, and breaking the heads of the men who want to work. They

destroy property, and they interfere with business--the two absolutely

sacred things in the American religion. Then we call out the militia and

shoot a few of them, and their leaders declare the strike off. It is

perfectly simple.”

“But will it be quite as simple,” I asked, reluctant in behalf of my

projected romance, to have the matter so soon disposed of--“will it be

quite so simple if their leaders ever persuade the working-men to leave

the militia, as they threaten to do, from time to time?”

“No, not quite so simple,” the banker admitted. “Still, the fight would be

comparatively simple. In the first place, I doubt--though I won’t be

certain about it--whether there are a great many working-men in the

militia now. I rather fancy it is made up, for the most part, of clerks

and small tradesmen and book-keepers, and such employés of business as

have time and money for it. I may be mistaken.”

No one seemed able to say whether he was mistaken or not; and, after

waiting a moment, he proceeded: “I feel pretty sure that it is so in the

city companies and regiments, at any rate, and that if every working-man

left them it would not seriously impair their effectiveness. But when the

working-men have left the militia, what have they done? They have

eliminated the only thing that disqualifies it for prompt and unsparing

use against strikers. As long as they are in it we might have our

misgivings, but if they were once out of it we should have none. And what

would they gain? They would not be allowed to arm and organize as an

inimical force. _That_ was settled once for all in Chicago, in the case of

the International Groups. A few squads of policemen would break them up.

Why,” the banker exclaimed, with his good-humored laugh, “how preposterous

they are when you come to look at it! They are in the majority, the

immense majority, if you count the farmers, and they prefer to behave as

if they were the hopeless minority. They say they want an eight-hour law,

and every now and then they strike and try to fight it. Why don’t they

_vote_ it? They could _make_ it the law in six months by such overwhelming

numbers that no one would dare to evade or defy it. They can make any law

they want, but they prefer to break such laws as we have. That ‘alienates

public sympathy,’ the newspapers say; but the spectacle of their stupidity

and helpless wilfulness is so lamentable that I could almost pity them. If

they chose, it would take only a few years to transform our government

into the likeness of anything they wanted. But they would rather not have

what they want, apparently, if they can only keep themselves from getting

it, and they have to work hard to do that!”

“I suppose,” I said, “that they are misled by the un-American principles

and methods of the Socialists among them.”

“Why, no,” returned the banker, “I shouldn’t say that. As far as I

understand it, the Socialists are the only fellows among them who propose

to vote their ideas into laws, and nothing can be more American than that.

I don’t believe the Socialists stir up the strikes--at least, among our

working-men; though the newspapers convict them of it, generally without

trying them. The Socialists seem to accept the strikes as the inevitable

outcome of the situation, and they make use of them as proofs of the

industrial discontent. But, luckily for the status, our labor leaders are

not Socialists, for your Socialist, whatever you may say against him, has

generally thought himself into a Socialist. He knows that until the

working-men stop fighting, and get down to voting--until they consent to

be the majority--there is no hope for them. I am not talking of

anarchists, mind you, but of Socialists, whose philosophy is more law, not

less, and who look forward to an order so just that it can’t be

disturbed.”

“And what,” the minister faintly said, “do you think will be the outcome

of it all?”

“We had that question the other night, didn’t we? Our legal friend here

seemed to feel that we might rub along indefinitely as we are doing, or

work out an Altruria of our own; or go back to the patriarchal stage and

own our working-men. He seemed not to have so much faith in the logic of

events as I have. I doubt if it is altogether a woman’s logic. _Parole

femmine, fatti maschi,_ and the logic of events isn’t altogether words;

it’s full of hard knocks, too. But I’m no prophet. I can’t forecast the

future; I prefer to take it as it comes. There’s a little tract of William

Morris’s, though--I forget just what he calls it--that is full of curious

and interesting speculation on this point. He thinks that, if we keep the

road we are now going, the last state of labor will be like its first, and

it will be owned.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that will ever happen in America,” I protested.

“Why not?” asked the banker. “Practically, it is owned already in a vastly

greater measure than we recognize. And where would the great harm be? The

new slavery would not be like the old. There needn’t be irresponsible

whipping and separation of families, and private buying and selling. The

proletariate would probably be owned by the state, as it was at one time

in Greece; or by large corporations, which would be much more in keeping

with the genius of our free institutions; and an enlightened public

opinion would cast safeguards about it in the form of law to guard it from

abuse. But it would be strictly policed, localized, and controlled. There

would probably be less suffering than there is now, when a man may be

cowed into submission to any terms through the suffering of his family;

when he may be starved out and turned out if he is unruly. You may be sure

that nothing of that kind would happen in the new slavery. We have not had

nineteen hundred years of Christianity for nothing.”

The banker paused, and, as the silence continued, he broke it with a

laugh, which was a prodigious relief to my feelings, and I suppose to the

feelings of all. I perceived that he had been joking, and I was confirmed

in this when he turned to the Altrurian and laid his hand upon his

shoulder. “You see,” he said, “I’m a kind of Altrurian myself. What is the

reason why we should not found a new Altruria here on the lines I’ve

drawn? Have you never had philosophers--well, call them philanthropists; I

don’t mind--of my way of thinking among you?”

“Oh yes,” said the Altrurian. “At one time, just before we emerged from

the competitive conditions, there was much serious question whether

capital should not own labor instead of labor owning capital. That was

many hundred years ago.”

“I am proud to find myself such an advanced thinker,” said the banker.

“And how came you to decide that labor should own capital?”

“We voted it,” answered the Altrurian.

“Well,” said the banker, “our fellows are still fighting it, and getting

beaten.”

I found him later in the evening talking with Mrs. Makely. “My dear sir,”

I said, “I liked your frankness with my Altrurian friend immensely; and it

may be well to put the worst foot foremost; but what is the advantage of

not leaving us a leg to stand upon?”

He was not in the least offended at my boldness, as I had feared he might

be, but he said, with that jolly laugh of his: “Capital! Well, perhaps I

have worked my candor a little too hard; I suppose there is such a thing.

But don’t you see that it leaves me in the best possible position to carry

the war into Altruria when we get him to open up about his native land?”

“Ah! If you can get him to do it.”

“Well, we were just talking about that. Mrs. Makely has a plan.”

“Yes,” said the lady, turning an empty chair near her own toward me. “Sit

down and listen.”

X

I sat down, and Mrs. Makely continued: “I have thought it all out, and I

want you to confess that in all practical matters a woman’s brain is

better than a man’s. Mr. Bullion, here, says it is, and I want you to say

so, too.”

“Yes,” the banker admitted, “when it comes down to business a woman is

worth any two of us.”

“And we have just been agreeing,” I coincided, “that the only gentlemen

among us are women. Mrs. Makely, I admit, without further dispute, that

the most unworldly woman is worldlier than the worldliest man; and that in

all practical matters we fade into dreamers and doctrinaires beside you.

Now, go on.”

But she did not mean to let me off so easily. She began to brag herself

up, as women do whenever you make them the slightest concession.

“Here, you men,” she said, “have been trying for a whole week to get

something out of Mr. Homos about his country, and you have left it to a

poor, weak woman, at last, to think how to manage it. I do believe that

you get so much interested in your own talk, when you are with him, that

you don’t let him get in a word, and that’s the reason you haven’t found

out anything about Altruria yet from him.”

In view of the manner in which she had cut in at Mrs. Camp’s, and stopped

Homos on the very verge of the only full and free confession he had ever

been near making about Altruria, I thought this was pretty cool; but, for

fear of worse, I said:

“You’re quite right, Mrs. Makely. I’m sorry to say that there has been a

shameful want of self-control among us, and that, if we learn anything at

all from him, it will be because you have taught us how.”

She could not resist this bit of taffy. She scarcely gave herself time to

gulp it before she said:

“Oh, it’s very well to say that now! But where would you have been if I

hadn’t set my wits to work? Now, listen! It just popped into my mind, like

an inspiration, when I was thinking of something altogether different. It

flashed upon me in an instant: a good object, and a public occasion.”

“Well?” I said, finding this explosion and electrical inspiration rather

enigmatical.

“Why, you know, the Union Chapel, over in the village, is in a languishing

condition, and the ladies have been talking all summer about doing

something for it, getting up something--a concert or theatricals or a

dance or something--and applying the proceeds to repainting and papering

the visible church; it needs it dreadfully. But, of course, those things

are not exactly religious, don’t you know; and a fair is so much trouble;

and _such_ a bore, when you get the articles ready, even; and everybody

feels swindled; and now people frown on raffles, so there is no use

thinking of them. What you want is something striking. We did think of a

parlor-reading, or perhaps ventriloquism; but the performers all charge so

much that there wouldn’t be anything left after paying expenses.”

She seemed to expect some sort of prompting at this point; so I said:

“Well?”

“Well,” she repeated, “that is just where your Mr. Homos comes in.”

“Oh! How does he come in there?”

“Why, get him to deliver a Talk on Altruria. As soon as he knows it’s for

a good object, he will be on fire to do it; and they must live so much in

common there that the public occasion will be just the thing that will

appeal to him.”

It did seem a good plan to me, and I said so. But Mrs. Makely was so much

in love with it that she was not satisfied with my modest recognition.

“Good? It’s magnificent! It’s the very thing! And I have thought it out,

down to the last detail--”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “Do you think there is sufficient general

interest in the subject, outside of the hotel, to get a full house for

him? I shouldn’t like to see him subjected to the mortification of empty

benches.”

“What in the world are you thinking of? Why, there isn’t a farm-house,

anywhere within ten miles, where they haven’t heard of Mr. Homos; and

there isn’t a servant under this roof, or in any of the boarding-houses,

who doesn’t know something about Altruria and want to know more. It seems

that your friend has been much oftener with the porters and the

stable-boys than he has been with us.”

I had only too great reason to fear so. In spite of my warnings and

entreaties, he had continued to behave toward every human being he met

exactly as if they were equals. He apparently could not conceive of that

social difference which difference of occupation creates among us. He

owned that he saw it, and from the talk of our little group he knew it

existed; but, when I expostulated with him upon some act in gross

violation of society usage, he only answered that he could not imagine

that what he saw and knew could actually be. It was quite impossible to

keep him from bowing with the greatest deference to our waitress; he shook

hands with the head-waiter every morning as well as with me; there was a

fearful story current in the house, that he had been seen running down one

of the corridors to relieve a chambermaid laden with two heavy water-pails

which she was carrying to the rooms to fill up the pitchers. This was

probably not true; but I myself saw him helping in the hotel hay-field one

afternoon, shirt-sleeved like any of the hired men. He said that it was

the best possible exercise, and that he was ashamed he could give no

better excuse for it than the fact that without something of the kind he

should suffer from indigestion. It was grotesque, and out of all keeping

with a man of his cultivation and breeding. He was a gentleman and a

scholar, there was no denying, and yet he did things in contravention of

good form at every opportunity, and nothing I could say had any effect

with him. I was perplexed beyond measure, the day after I had reproached

him for his labor in the hay-field, to find him in a group of table-girls,

who were listening while the head-waiter read aloud to them in the shade

of the house; there was a corner looking toward the stables which was

given up to them by tacit consent of the guests during a certain part of

the afternoon.

I feigned not to see him, but I could not forbear speaking to him about it

afterward. He took it in good part, but he said he had been rather

disappointed in the kind of literature they liked and the comments they

made on it; he had expected that with the education they had received, and

with their experience of the seriousness of life, they would prefer

something less trivial. He supposed, however, that a romantic love-story,

where a poor American girl marries an English lord, formed a refuge for

them from the real world which promised them so little and held them so

cheap. It was quite useless for one to try to make him realize his

behavior in consorting with servants as a kind of scandal.

The worst of it was that his behavior, as I could see, had already begun

to demoralize the objects of his misplaced politeness. At first the

servants stared and resented it, as if it were some tasteless joke; but in

an incredibly short time, when they saw that he meant his courtesy in good

faith, they took it as their due. I had always had a good understanding

with the head-waiter, and I thought I could safely smile with him at the

queer conduct of my friend toward himself and his fellow-servants.

To my astonishment he said: “I don’t see why he shouldn’t treat them as if

they were ladies and gentlemen. Doesn’t he treat you and your friends so?”

It was impossible to answer this, and I could only suffer in silence, and

hope the Altrurian would soon go. I had dreaded the moment when the

landlord should tell me that his room was wanted; now I almost desired it;

but he never did. On the contrary, the Altrurian was in high favor with

him. He said he liked to see a man make himself pleasant with everybody;

and that he did not believe he had ever had a guest in the house who was

so popular all round.

“Of course,” Mrs. Makely went on, “I don’t criticise him--with his

peculiar traditions. I presume I should be just so myself if I had been

brought up in Altruria, which, thank goodness, I wasn’t. But Mr. Homos is

a perfect dear, and all the women in the house are in love with him, from

the cook’s helpers, up and down. No, the only danger is that there won’t

be room in the hotel parlors for all the people that will want to hear

him, and we shall have to make the admission something that will be

prohibitive in most cases. We shall have to make it a dollar.”

“Well,” I said, “I think that will settle the question as far as the

farming population is concerned. It’s twice as much as they ever pay for a

reserved seat in the circus, and four times as much as a simple admission.

I’m afraid, Mrs. Makely, you’re going to be very few, though fit.”

“Well, I’ve thought it all over, and I’m going to put the tickets at one

dollar.”

“Very good. Have you caught your hare?”

“No, I haven’t yet. And I want you to help me catch him. What do you think

is the best way to go about it?”

The banker said he would leave us to the discussion of that question, but

Mrs. Makely could count upon him in everything if she could only get the

man to talk. At the end of our conference we decided to interview the

Altrurian together.

I shall always be ashamed of the way that woman wheedled the Altrurian,

when we found him the next morning, walking up and down the piazza, before

breakfast--that is, it was before our breakfast; when we asked him to go

in with us, he said he had just had his breakfast, and was waiting for

Reuben Camp, who had promised to take him up as he passed with a load of

hay for one of the hotels in the village.

“Ah, that reminds me, Mr. Homos,” the unscrupulous woman began on him at

once. “We want to interest you in a little movement we’re getting up for

the Union Chapel in the village. You know it’s the church where all the

different sects have their services; alternately. Of course, it’s rather

an original way of doing, but there is sense in it where the people are

too poor to go into debt for different churches, and--”

“It’s admirable!” said the Altrurian. “I have heard about it from the

Camps. It is an emblem of the unity which ought to prevail among

Christians of all professions. How can I help you, Mrs. Makely?”

“I knew you would approve of it!” she exulted. “Well, it’s simply this:

The poor little place has got so shabby that _I’m_ almost ashamed to be

seen going into it, for one; and want to raise money enough to give it a

new coat of paint outside and put on some kind of pretty paper, of an

ecclesiastical pattern, on the inside. I declare, those staring white

walls, with the cracks in the plastering zigzagging every _which_ way,

distract me so that I can’t put my mind on the sermon. Don’t you think

that paper, say of a Gothic design, would be a great improvement? I’m sure

it would; and it’s Mr. Twelvemough’s idea, too.”

I learned this fact now for the first time; but, with Mrs. Makely’s

warning eye upon me, I could not say so, and I made what sounded to me

like a Gothic murmur of acquiescence. It sufficed for Mrs. Makely’s

purpose, at any rate, and she went on, without giving the Altrurian a

chance to say what he thought the educational effect of wall-paper would

be:

“Well, the long and short of it is that we want you to make this money for

us, Mr. Homos.”

“I?” He started in a kind of horror. “My dear lady, I never made any money

in my life. I should think it _wrong_ to make money.”

“In Altruria, yes. We all know how it is in your delightful country, and I

assure you that no one could respect your conscientious scruples more than

I do. But you must remember that you are in America now. In America you

have to make money, or else--get left. And then you must consider the

object, and all the good you can do, indirectly, by a little Talk on

Altruria.”

He answered, blandly: “A little Talk on Altruria? How in the world should

I get money by that?”

She was only too eager to explain, and she did it with so much volubility

and at such great length that I, who am good for nothing till I have had

my cup of coffee in the morning, almost perished of an elucidation which

the Altrurian bore with the sweetest patience.

When she gave him a chance to answer, at last, he said: “I shall be very

happy to do what you wish, madam.”

“_Will_ you?” she screamed. “Oh, I’m so glad! You _have_ been so slippery

about Altruria, you know, that I expected nothing but a point-blank

refusal. Of course, I knew you would be kind about it. Oh, I can hardly

believe my senses! You can’t think what a dear you are.” I knew she had

got that word from some English people who had been in the hotel; and she

was working it rather wildly, but it was not my business to check her.

“Well, then, all you have got to do is to leave the whole thing to me, and

not bother about it a bit till I send and tell you we are ready to listen.

There comes Reuben, with his ox-team. Thank you so much, Mr. Homos. No one

need be ashamed to enter the house of God”--she said Gawd, in an access of

piety--“after we get that paint and paper on it; and we shall have them on

before two Sabbaths have passed over it.”

She wrung the Altrurian’s hand; I was only afraid she was going to kiss

him.

“There is but one stipulation I should like to make,” he began.

“Oh, a thousand,” she cut in.

“And that is, there shall be no exclusion from my lecture on account of

occupation or condition. That is a thing that I can in no wise

countenance, even in America; it is far more abhorrent to me even than

money-making, though they are each a part and parcel of the other.”

“I thought it was that,” she retorted, joyously. “And I can assure you,

Mr. Homos, there shall be nothing of that kind. Every one--I don’t care

who it is or what they do--shall hear you who buys a ticket. Now, will

that do?”

“Perfectly,” said the Altrurian, and he let her wring his hand again.

She pushed hers through my arm as we started for the dining-room, and

leaned over to whisper jubilantly: “That will fix it. He will see how much

his precious lower classes care for Altruria if they have to pay a dollar

apiece to hear about it. And I shall keep faith with him to the letter.”

I could not feel that she would keep it in the spirit; but I could only

groan inwardly and chuckle outwardly at the woman’s depravity.

It seemed to me, though I could not approve of it, a capital joke, and so

it seemed to all the members of the little group whom I had made

especially acquainted with the Altrurian. It is true that the minister was

somewhat troubled with the moral question, which did not leave me wholly

at peace; and the banker affected to find a question of taste involved,

which he said he must let me settle, however, as the man’s host; if I

could stand it, he could. No one said anything against the plan to Mrs.

Makely, and this energetic woman made us take two tickets apiece, as soon

as she got them printed, over in the village. She got little hand-bills

printed, and had them scattered about through the neighborhood, at all the

hotels, boarding-houses, and summer cottages, to give notice of the time

and place of the talk on Altruria. She fixed this for the following

Saturday afternoon, in our hotel parlor; she had it in the afternoon so as

not to interfere with the hop in the evening; she put tickets on sale at

the principal houses and at the village drug-store, and she made me go

about with her and help her sell them at some of the cottages in person.

I must say I found this extremely distasteful, especially where the people

were not very willing to buy, and she had to urge them. They all admitted

the excellence of the object, but they were not so sure about the means.

At several places the ladies asked who was this Mr. Homos, anyway; and how

did she know he was really from Altruria? He might be an impostor.

Then Mrs. Makely would put me forward, and I would be obliged to give such

account of him as I could, and to explain just how and why he came to be

my guest; with the cumulative effect of bringing back all the misgivings

which I had myself felt at the outset concerning him, and which I had

dismissed as too fantastic.

The tickets went off rather slowly, even in our own hotel; people thought

them too dear; and some, as soon as they knew the price, said frankly they

had heard enough about Altruria already, and were sick of the whole thing.

Mrs. Makely said this was quite what she had expected of those people;

that they were horrid and stingy and vulgar; and she should see what face

they would have to ask her to take tickets when _they_ were trying to get

up something. She began to be vexed with herself, she confessed, at the

joke she was playing on Mr. Homos, and I noticed that she put herself

rather defiantly _en evidence_ in his company whenever she could in the

presence of these reluctant ladies. She told me she had not the courage to

ask the clerk how many of the tickets he had sold out of those she had

left at the desk.

One morning, the third or fourth, as I was going in to breakfast with her,

the head-waiter stopped her as he opened the door, and asked modestly if

she could spare him a few tickets, for he thought he could sell some. To

my amazement the unprincipled creature said: “Why, certainly. How many?”

and instantly took a package out of her pocket, where she seemed always to

have them. He asked, Would twenty be more than she could spare? and she

answered: “Not at all. Here are twenty-five.” and bestowed the whole

package upon him.

That afternoon Reuben Camp came lounging up toward us, where I sat with

her on the corner of the piazza, and said that if she would like to let

him try his luck with some tickets for the Talk he would see what he could

do.

“You can have all you want, Reuben,” she said, “and I hope you’ll have

better luck than I have. I’m perfectly disgusted with people.”

She fished several packages out of her pocket this time, and he asked: “Do

you mean that I can have them all?”

“Every one, and a band of music into the bargain,” she answered,

recklessly. But she seemed a little daunted when he quietly took them.

“You know there are a hundred here?”

“Yes, I should like to see what I can do among the natives. Then there is

a construction train over at the junction, and I know a lot of the

fellows. I guess some of ‘em would like to come.”

“The tickets are a dollar each, you know,” she suggested.

“That’s all right,” said Camp. “Well, good-afternoon.”

Mrs. Makely turned to me with a kind of gasp as he shambled away. “I don’t

know about that.”

“About having the whole crew of a construction train at the Talk? I dare

say it won’t be pleasant to the ladies who have bought tickets.”

“_Oh_!” said Mrs. Makely, with astonishing contempt, “I don’t care what

_they_ think. But Reuben has got all my tickets, and suppose he keeps them

so long that I won’t have time to sell any, and then throws them back on

my hands? _I_ know!” she added, joyously. “I can go around now and tell

people that my tickets are all gone; and I’ll go instantly and have the

clerk hold all he has left at a premium.”

She came back looking rather blank.

“He hasn’t got a single one left. He says an old native came in this

morning and took every last one of them--he doesn’t remember just how

many. I believe they’re going to speculate on them; and if Reuben Camp

serves me a trick like that--Why,” she broke off, “I believe I’ll

speculate on them myself. I should like to know why I shouldn’t. Oh, I

should just _like_ to make some of those creatures pay double, or treble,

for the chances they’ve refused. Ah, Mrs. Bulkham,” she called out to a

lady who was coming down the veranda toward us, “you’ll be glad to know

I’ve got rid of all my tickets. _Such_ a relief!”

“You _have_?” Mrs. Bulkham retorted.

“Every one.”

“I thought,” said Mrs. Bulkham, “that you understood I wanted one for my

daughter and myself, if she came.”

“I certainly didn’t,” said Mrs. Makely, with a wink of concentrated

wickedness at me. “But, if you do, you will have to say so now, without

any ifs or ands about it; and if any of the tickets come back--I let

friends have a few on sale--I will give you two.”

“Well, I do,” said Mrs. Bulkham, after a moment.

“Very well; it will be five dollars for the two. I feel bound to get all I

can for the cause. Shall I put your name down?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bulkham, rather crossly; but Mrs. Makely inscribed her

name on her tablets with a radiant amiability, which suffered no eclipse

when, within the next fifteen minutes, a dozen other ladies hurried up and

bought in at the same rate.

I could not stand it, and I got up to go away, feeling extremely

_particeps criminis_. Mrs. Makely seemed to have a conscience as light as

air.

“If Reuben Camp or the head-waiter don’t bring back some of those tickets,

I don’t know what I shall do. I shall have to put chairs into the aisles

and charge five dollars apiece for as many people as I can crowd in there.

I never knew anything so perfectly providential.”

“I envy you the ability to see it in that light, Mrs. Makely,” I said,

faint at heart. “Suppose Camp crowds the place full of his trainmen, how

will the ladies that you’ve sold tickets to at five dollars apiece like

it?”

“Pooh! What do I care how they like it! Horrid things! And for repairs on

the house of Gawd, it’s the same as being in church, where everybody is

equal.”

The time passed. Mrs. Makely sold chances to all the ladies in the house;

on Friday night Reuben Camp brought her a hundred dollars; the head-waiter

had already paid in twenty-five. “I didn’t dare to ask them if they

speculated on them,” she confided to me. “Do you suppose they would have

the conscience?”

They had secured the large parlor of the hotel, where the young people

danced in the evening, and where entertainments were held, of the sort

usually given in summer hotels; we had already had a dramatic reading, a

time with the phonograph, an exhibition of necromancy, a concert by a

college glee club, and I do not know what else. The room would hold

perhaps two hundred people, if they were closely seated, and, by her own

showing, Mrs. Makely had sold above two hundred and fifty tickets and

chances. All Saturday forenoon she consoled herself with the belief that a

great many people at the other hotels and cottages had bought seats

merely to aid the cause, and would not really come; she estimated that at

least fifty would stay away; but, if Reuben Camp had sold his tickets

among the natives, we might expect every one of them to come and get his

money’s worth; she did not dare to ask the head-waiter how he had got rid

of his twenty-five tickets.

The hour set for the Talk to begin was three o’clock, so that people could

have their naps comfortably over, after the one o’clock dinner, and be

just in the right frame of mind for listening. But long before the

appointed time the people who dine at twelve, and never take an afternoon

nap, began to arrive, on foot, in farm-wagons, smart buggies, mud-crusted

carryalls, and all manner of ramshackle vehicles. They arrived as if

coming to a circus, old husbands and wives, young couples and their

children, pretty girls and their fellows, and hitched their horses to the

tails of their wagons, and began to make a picnic lunch in the shadow of

the grove lying between the hotel and the station. About two we heard the

snorting of a locomotive at a time when no train was due, and a

construction train came in view, with the men waving their handkerchiefs

from the windows, and apparently ready for all the fun there was to be in

the thing. Some of them had a small flag in each hand, the American Stars

and Stripes and the white flag of Altruria, in compliment to my guest, I

suppose. A good many of the farmers came over to the hotel to buy tickets,

which they said they expected to get after they came, and Mrs. Makely was

obliged to pacify them with all sorts of lying promises. From moment to

moment she was in consultation with the landlord, who decided to throw

open the dining-room, which connected with the parlor, so as to allow the

help and the neighbors to hear without incommoding the hotel guests. She

said that this took a great burden off her mind, and that now she should

feel perfectly easy, for now no one could complain about being mixed up

with the servants and the natives, and yet every one could hear perfectly.

She could not rest until she had sent for Homos and told him of this

admirable arrangement. I did not know whether to be glad or not when he

instantly told her that, if there was to be any such separation of his

auditors, in recognition of our class distinctions, he must refuse to

speak at all.

“Then what in the world are we to do?” she wailed out, and the tears came

into her eyes.

“Have you got the money for all your tickets?” he asked, with a sort of

disgust for the whole transaction in his tone.

“Yes, and more, too. I don’t believe there’s a soul, in the hotel or out

of it, that hasn’t paid at least a dollar to hear you; and that makes it

so very embarrassing. Oh, _dear_ Mr. Homos! You won’t be so implacably

high-principled as all that! Think that you are doing it for the house of

Gawd.”

The woman made me sick.

“Then no one,” said the Altrurian, “can feel aggrieved, or unfairly used,

if I say what I have to say in the open air, where all can listen equally,

without any manner of preference or distinction. We will go up to the edge

of the grove overlooking the tennis-court, and hold our meeting there, as

the Altrurian meetings are always held, with the sky for a roof, and with

no walls but the horizon.”

“The very thing!” cried Mrs. Makely. “Who would ever have thought you were

so practical, Mr. Homos? I don’t believe you’re an Altrurian, after all; I

believe you are an American in disguise.”

The Altrurian turned away, without making any response to this flattering

attribution of our nationality to him; but Mrs. Makely had not waited for

any. She had flown off, and I next saw her attacking the landlord, with

such apparent success that he slapped himself on the leg and vanished, and

immediately the porters and bell-boys and all the men-servants began

carrying out chairs to the tennis-court, which was already well set round

with benches. In a little while the whole space was covered, and settees

were placed well up the ground toward the grove.

By half-past two the guests of the hotel came out and took the best seats,

as by right, and the different tallyhoes and mountain wagons began to

arrive from the other hotels, with their silly hotel cries, and their gay

groups dismounted and dispersed themselves over the tennis-court until all

the chairs were taken. It was fine to see how the natives and the trainmen

and the hotel servants, with an instinctive perception of the proprieties,

yielded these places to their superiors, and, after the summer folks were

all seated, scattered themselves on the grass and the pine-needles about

the border of the grove. I should have liked to instance the fact to the

Altrurian, as a proof that this sort of subordination was a part of human

nature, and that a principle which pervaded our civilization, after the

democratic training of our whole national life, must be divinely

implanted. But there was no opportunity for me to speak with him after the

fact had accomplished itself, for by this time he had taken his place in

front of a little clump of low pines and was waiting for the assembly to

quiet itself before he began to speak. I do not think there could have

been less than five hundred present, and the scene had that accidental

picturesqueness which results from the grouping of all sorts of faces and

costumes. Many of our ladies had pretty hats and brilliant parasols, but I

must say that the soberer tone of some of the old farm-wives’ brown

calicoes and outdated bonnets contributed to enrich the coloring, and

there was a certain gayety in the sunny glisten of the men’s straw hats

everywhere that was very good.

The sky overhead was absolutely stainless, and the light of the cool

afternoon sun streamed upon the slopes of the solemn mountains to the

east. The tall pines in the background blackened themselves against the

horizon; nearer they showed more and more decidedly their bluish green,

and the yellow of the newly fallen needles painted their aisles deep into

the airy shadows.

A little wind stirred their tops, and for a moment, just before the

Altrurian began to speak, drew from them an organ-tone that melted

delicately away as his powerful voice rose.