SISTER MARY WINKLE.
The very next morning just as she was washing her potatoes for dinner,
another visitor called upon Olive, a visitor of whose sex she was for a
moment or two in doubt. The visitor wore a large sunbonnet, a check
blouse, and a pair of Zouave trowsers fastened in at the ankle.
“How do you do, Olive Weston?” said this person, in a deep serious
voice. Olive, who had not seen her, started in surprise and dropped her
potato into the basin.
“I am Mary Winkle. That’s my house over yonder.”
“Oh, the Wrights’! Yes, to be sure. Come in and sit down,” said Olive
hospitably, although she felt considerable surprise at her visitor’s
appearance.
“You don’t wear the reformed dress yet, I see,” said Mary Winkle.
“No, I don’t,” acquiesced Olive.
“Shall you?”
“I don’t know. I have not thought about it. I suppose there is no
regulation about what one wears on the prairie. There is no fashion here
I suppose,” said Olive politely.
“No, only the fashion of common sense.”
“Do all the ladies dress that way, Miss Winkle?” inquired Olive.
“Only my daughter and myself.”
“I beg your pardon, I should have said Mrs. Winkle,” said Olive, in some
confusion.
“No, you shouldn’t,” replied her visitor. “I am not Mrs. Winkle.”
“I am afraid I am very stupid. Would you tell me then how I should
address you. I don’t understand.”
“Address me as Mary Winkle, and my husband as John Wright.”
Olive stared at her.
“Are you not Mrs. Wright then?”
“No, certainly not. I scorn the title. It is a symbol of subjection. I
did not lose my identity when I chose to marry. I am the same Mary
Winkle that I was before, and as such I desire to retain the name that I
always possessed. Why should I take a new name simply because I am
married?”
“It is usual,” stammered Olive. “I shouldn’t like not to be called Mrs.
Weston. It is so confusing, you see.”
“Mere custom and prejudice. Why should not your husband take your name,
instead of its always being the wife who is absorbed?”
“I don’t know, but I never heard of it before.”
“Ah, that is one of the first changes that must be made when women get
their rights,” observed Mary Winkle.
“But I don’t want the change one bit. I much prefer the old way.”
“I dare say. Slaves often feel no want of freedom.”
“I’m not a slave,” said Olive, flushing angrily. “You cannot be in the
least acquainted with my husband.”
“Oh, I know your husband very well, an excellent man in many respects,
but narrow in others; however, I referred to general slavery, to custom,
not to any individual slavery in your case.”
“I don’t think there is any good in destroying customs, unless there is
something better to be got in a new custom.”
“Ah yes, no doubt it seems so to you; but there is inestimable gain in
the mere protest against tyranny. Why, that’s what we are all here for,
to protest against everything and live a life of freedom.”
“And freedom may as well begin here and now, and in its name I will wear
long dresses and be called Mrs. Weston, because I prefer the older
customs,” said Olive with some archness.
“Yes, you may do as you like, but you will get heartily sick of those
skirts, I can tell you.”
Olive remembering sundry pretty dresses she had in her trunk, was
privately convinced she would not get sick of them.
“I haven’t seen Madame yet,” she said, “and I feel the greatest
curiosity about her. She must be a remarkable woman by all accounts.
Does she wear the same sort of dress as you do?”
“No, she doesn’t, and it’s a great pity, for her influence would be very
great with the other women. I suppose you’ll see her to-morrow evening.
You’ll come to the Academy, won’t you?”
“Yes, certainly, if Ezra is going. I should like to go ever so much and
see all my neighbours, but perhaps he will be too tired. He does work
dreadfully hard, it seems to me.”
“He ought to do a little brain-work. Wright says nothing rests one like
brain-work. He’s been doing a spell of that lately. He’s been writing an
essay on ‘The Ultimate Perfection of Being.’ He’ll most likely read some
of it to-morrow at the Academy.”
“I shouldn’t think essays would be much use in planting corn,” said
Olive rather tartly, remembering at what hour her husband had come from
the harrowing.
“Wright and I, we don’t believe in making a god of work. We have a much
higher ideal of life than that. We don’t want anything sordid in our
lives, Wright and I. We haven’t any sympathy with this restless striving
to get on. One of the great advantages of Perfection City is that we all
have time for the cultivation of our higher natures.”
“Just now,” said Olive, “my husband seems to have no thought in his mind
but the cultivation of that field over there. He is at work early and
late. No person could possibly work harder for himself or his individual
advantage than he does for the Community.”
“There’s just a case in point,” remarked Mary Winkle complacently. “I
always thought your husband very narrow in his views. He slaves away at
this corn planting as if that were the chief end and object of his
existence. It is all very well to work at times, but working in order to
store up food for the body is the lowest possible form that human
activity can take.”
“It is the most indispensable form,” remarked Olive.
“By no means,” replied Mary Winkle with precision. “That observation
would seem to indicate that you are more narrow even than your husband.
The body is merely the servant of the mind: the mind needs to be fed,
and it is the food for the mind which your husband appears so careless
about providing. Fortunately for Perfection City, Wright has taken
thought on that subject. Wright has a very high standard of what is
necessary for the mind.”
“It appears to me,” said Olive with a snap of her black eyes and an
ominous red spot on her cheeks, “that if we all lived up to your
standard, it might very well happen that by next winter our minds might
be uncomfortably full and our stomachs correspondingly empty. If Ezra
did not plough and get his land ready for planting as fast as mortal man
can, how is the land to be got ready? It doesn’t plough itself, does it,
even at Perfection City?”
“I see you will have to get rid of many prejudices,” observed Mary
Winkle. “Of course community-life only comes easy to people who are
adapted to it. Wright and I are adapted. We like it. We shall stay here.
We shall succeed therefore. You and Brother Ezra will have to go through
a season of training first. You both need it. I dare say you may hear
something that you will find useful to you to-morrow from Wright. I will
just mention to him where your particular blindness seems to lie. Wright
is a very profound thinker. He has given great thought to the subject of
the Ultimate Perfection of People. He can explain every step in the
training of a perfect communist, and show clearly just where everybody
has hitherto gone wrong in their attempts to realize their ideal, and
exactly what mistakes they have made. I am glad you have come in time to
hear his paper; it will be of lasting good to you. You will be able to
profit by it, because you are in great need of proper training. I dare
say you need it more even than Ezra. For, after all, he must have
learned something from us in the year he has been with us.”