Altruria

“ If you will excuse my saying it, we should think it monstrous in Altruria for any man to have another’s means of life in his power; and in our condition it is hardly imaginable. Do you really have it in your power to take away a man’s opportunity to earn a living?”
The manufacturer laughed uneasily. “It is in my power to take away his life; but I don’t habitually shoot my fellow-men, and I never dismissed a man yet without good reason.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the Altrurian. ”

“ The lawyer said: “That seems to dispose of the question of the working-man in society. But how about your minds? When do you cultivate your minds? When do the ladies of Altruria cultivate their minds, if they have to do their own work, as I suppose they do? Or is it only the men who work, if they happen to be the husbands and fathers of the upper classes?”
The Altrurian seemed to be sensible of the kindly scepticism which persisted in our reception of his statements, after all we had read of Altruria. ”

“ Camp, "in Altruria every one works with his hands, so that the hard work shall not all fall to any one class; and this manual labor of each is sufficient to keep the body in health, as well as to earn a living. After the three hours' work, which constitutes a day's work with us, is done, the young people have all sorts of games and sports, and they carry them as late into life as the temperament of each demands. ”

“ How is it with you in Altruria?" I demanded, hoping to get out of a certain discomfort I felt, in that way. "Do your risen men generally devote themselves to the good of the community after they get to the top?" ”

“ It's too dumn like what we have been through ourselves, as fur as heard from."
A shout of laughter went up from most of the crowd, but the Altrurian did not seem to see any fun in it.
"Well," he resumed, "I will tell you, as well as I can, what Altruria is like, but, in the first place, you will have to cast out of your minds all images of civilization with which your experience has filled them. For a time, the shell of the old Accumulation remained for our social habitation, and we dwelt in the old competitive and monopolistic forms after the life had gone out of them. ”

“ Altruria, I say again, is a family, and as we are mortal, we are still subject to those nobler sorrows which God has appointed to men, and which are so different from the squalid accidents that they have made for themselves. Sickness and death call out the most angelic ministeries of love; and those who wish to give themselves to others may do so without hindrance from those cares, and even those duties, resting upon men where each must look out first for himself and for his own. ”

“ Howell's Altruria, seen Through the Eye of the Needle, we feel that we can take a step toward that paradise by discarding the strait-laced tailored torture the present-day costume prescribes, for the corsetless grace of the Altrurian garment; but our enthusiasm is short-lived, as we realize that we are in modern America and must make as inconspicuously gracious an appearance as possible without violating the conventions. ”

“ There is still a chance that a man will be tall or short in Altruria, that he will be strong or weak, well or ill, gay or grave, happy or unhappy in love, but none that he will be rich or poor, busy or idle, live splendidly or meanly. ”

“ You can't know what people are like unless you live like them, and then the question is whether the game is worth the candle. I should like to know how you manage in Altruria."
"Why, we have solved the problem in the only way, as you say, that it can be solved. We all live alike." ”

“ I fancy they commonly regard artists of all kinds as a sort of harmless eccentrics, and that literary people they look upon as something droll, as weak and soft, as not quite right. I believed that this particular group, indeed, was rather abler to conceive of me as a rational person than most others, but I knew that if even they had expected me to be as reasonable as themselves they would not have been greatly disappointed if I were not; and it seemed to me that I had put myself wrong with them in imparting to the Altrurian that romantic impression that we hold labor in honor here. ”

“ He was a man no longer young, but in what we call the heyday of life, when our own people are so absorbed in making provision for the future that they may be said not to live in the present at all. This Altrurian’s whole countenance, and especially his quiet, gentle eyes, expressed a vast contemporaneity, with bounds of leisure removed to the end of time ”

“ There's nothing so capricious as the logic of events. It's like a woman's reasoning—you can't tell what it's aimed at, or where it's going to fetch up; all that you can do is to keep out of the way if possible. We may come to some such condition of things as they have in Altruria, where the faith of the whole nation is pledged to secure every citizen in the pursuit of happiness ”

“ XI.
"I could not give you a clear account of the present state of things in my country," the Altrurian began, "without first telling you something of our conditions before the time of our Evolution. It seems to be the law of all life, that nothing can come to fruition without dying and seeming to make an end. ”

“ For a moment I did not know but I had fallen victim to a walking delegate on his vacation, who was employing his summer leisure in going about the country in the guise of a traveler from Altruria, and foisting himself upon people who would have had nothing to do with him in his real character. But in another moment I perceived that this was impossible. I could not suppose that the friend who had introduced him to me would be capable of seconding so poor a joke, and, besides, I could not imagine why a walking delegate should wish to address his clumsy satire to me particularly. ”

“ I found all this very uncomfortable, and tried to turn the talk back to a point that I felt curious about. "But in Altruria, if the literary class is not exempt from the rule of manual labor where do they find time and strength to write?"
"Why, you must realize that our manual labor is never engrossing or exhausting. It is no more than is necessary to keep the body in health. ”

“ We have no commerce with the egoistic world, as we call that outside, and I believe that I am the first Altrurian to visit foreign countries avowedly in my national character, though we have always had emissaries living abroad incognito. I hope that I may say without offence that they find it a sorrowful exile, and that the reports of the egoistic world, with its wars, its bankruptcies, its civic commotions, and its social unhappiness, do not make us discontented with our own condition. ”

“ XII.
"And so," the Altrurian continued, "when the labor of the community was emancipated from the bondage of the false to the free service of the true, it was also, by an inevitable implication, dedicated to beauty and rescued from the old slavery to the ugly, the stupid and the trivial. The thing that was honest and useful became, by the operation of a natural law, a beautiful thing. Once we had not time enough to make things beautiful, we were so overworked in making false and hideous things to sell ”

“ He went on to give his opinion of the Altrurian's pretended description, in a tone so audible that it attracted the notice of the nearest group of railroad bands, who were listening closely to Homos, and one of them sang out to the professor: "Can't you wait and let the first man finish?" ”

“ You have so much humor. I wish you could give me some notion of it.”
“Well, it is rather damaging to any joke to explain it,” I replied, “and your only hope of getting at ours is to live into it. One feature of it is the confusion of foreigners at the sight of our men’s willingness to subordinate themselves to our women.”
“Oh, I don’t find that very bewildering,” said the Altrurian. “It seems to me a generous and manly trait of the American character. I’m proud to say that it is one of the points at which your civilization and our own touch. ”

“ Life here is so subjective (if you don't know what that is, you poor dear, you must get Mr. Twelvemough to explain) that there is usually nothing like news in it, and I always feel that the difference between Altruria and America is so immense that it is altogether beyond me to describe it. But now we have had some occurrences recently, quite in the American sense, and these have furnished me with an incentive as well as opportunity to send you a letter. ”

“ It is at best the record of desultory and imperfect glimpses of a civilization fundamentally alien to her own, such as would attract an enthusiastic nature, but would leave it finally in a sort of misgiving as to the reality of the things seen and heard. Some such misgiving attended the inquiries of those who met the Altrurian during his sojourn with us, but it is a pity that a more absolute conclusion should not have been the effect of this lively lady's knowledge of the ideal country of her adoption. ”

“ I added, "You know we are a sort of fatalists here in America. We are great believers in the doctrine that it will all come out right in the end."
"Ah, I don't wonder at that," said the Altrurian, "if the process of natural selection works so perfectly among you as you say. But I am afraid I don't understand this matter of your domestic service yet. I believe you said that all honest work is honored in America. ”

“ Besides, they dread the influence which a number of people, invested with the charm of strangeness, may have with the young men and especially the young girls of the neighborhood. The hardest thing the Altrurians have to grapple with is feminine curiosity, and the play of this about the strangers is what they seek the most anxiously to control. ”

“ That I should be in a condition of abject fear about myself appeared natural enough to him, no doubt.
"Fräulein Althea!" I exclaimed, as she did not reply at once.
"He has pledged his word, Herr Bastable."
"His word! what is that worth?"
"You needn't let yourself be scared out of your wits, at any rate," he said with another sneer. He was enjoying his triumph intensely, and the sight of my fear was the best part of it, apparently. "If the Baron and Althea are pardoned, who's going to hurt you? You'll be all right," he declared contemptuously. ”

“ Tonight Vida will be without the protection of the chain. I have instructed Althea as to her part, and I shall myself watch the old witch.
. . . All last night Mammy Jinny worked her spells. They were successful this time. Althea has told me what happened.
Althea saw the cat steal from Vida's bed to the window, and return with a stolen bracelet in its mouth. It dropped the article into Vida's laundry-bag. Then, as Althea expressed it, the cat sprang into Vida's bed, and—there lay Vida, peacefully sleeping! No wonder Althea couldn't close her eyes the rest of the night. ”

“ But they so glowed and sparkled that they could be caught only in fragments and snatches; imperfect as they are, we trust they convey an idea of what was impressed upon the mind of Althea when the Jesuit closed—"in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."
Althea was stricken—not blind as was the persecutor of the Christians—but with a steady lightning-flash of light that was intensely distressing. It discovered to her her heart full of sin and shame. It betrayed the slippery sands upon which her feet were treading. ”

“ I know nothing of these people and their doctrines.'
'You see their doings,' said Althea indignantly; 'that should be enough. Mr. Truelocke, Lucia and I were bred up true Churchwomen, and so I will continue to my dying day. I love not all these sects that spring up like weeds in the ruined places of the Church; I am for those who are building up her walls again, and making them stronger.'
'And is this your mind too, Mistress Lucia?' says Harry. ”

“ Not a thought for Althea. Everything for herself. "Listen, please, and then do what I tell you. I want to tell her that her father is lying ill in a farm-house, and that she must go at once to see to him and bring him back to the city. As she has been taken away, you must go and care for him;" and I told her where and how to find the Baron.
But she burst into vehement protests. "Why should I go? It is Althea's matter. He is not my father. He has never done anything for me. Why then should I run this risk? ”

“ Ulric, after a moment’s reflection, replied: “Revenge is sweet, but sweeter still the love which attaches me to the unkind Lucretia. Deeply as I feel the wrongs she has done me, I cannot hate her. I will fly far from her, forgiving her the misery she has occasioned me, and bearing her image in my heart till I die.”
“Every country has its different notions,” said the Signora; “an Italian would never forgive such indignity as that you have endured. ”

“ Andrugio, the venerable and heroic victim of his craft and cruelty, is a figure not less living and actual than stately and impressive: the changes of mood from meditation to passion, from resignation to revolt, from tenderness to resolution, which mark the development of the character with the process of the action, though painted rather broadly than subtly and with more of vigour than of care, show just such power of hand and sincerity of instinct as we fail to find in the hot and glaring colours of his rival's monotonous ruffianism. ”

“ It seems that she called regularly every Tuesday, so I made it a point to linger near the academy on a Tuesday morning, and was rewarded by seeing the old woman appear bright and early for her young mistress' laundry.
She is a queer character. Far from being the decrepit old creature I had been led to expect by Althea's description, she is a tall, handsome mulatto woman with flashing eyes that hold a strange magnetism in their direct, unblinking gaze. Her face is deeply lined with wrinkles that to my opinion have been etched by the character of her thoughts rather than by the hand of time. ”

“ I am absolutely confident, Althea."
"I cannot smile yet, Paul, nor be confident either. I could almost wish----"
I gathered her in my arms. "You must never harbour that thought again, dearest. Never if you love me."
"You would at least be safe; and the thought of your danger chills me with dread every minute you are away."
"But the mere fact that I have been in the hands of the police within the last hour and am here now at your side may tell you there is no such danger as you fear. You do but frighten yourself with shadows. ”