A Traveler from Altruria: Romance Part 15

"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 coa.r.s.e 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. h.o.m.os?"

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 Ponkwa.s.set, 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 emanc.i.p.ated, 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. h.o.m.os 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."

I thought my exaggeration might provoke him to denial, but he seemed not to have found it unjust. "Why, you know," he said to Mrs. Camp, "in Altruria every one works with his hands, so that the hard work shall not all fall to any one cla.s.s; 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 const.i.tutes 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. But what I was saying to Mr.

Twelvemough--perhaps I did not make myself clear--was that we should regard the sterile putting forth of strength in exercise, if others were each day worn out with hard manual labor, as insane or immoral. But I can account for it differently with you, because I understand that in your conditions a person of leisure could not do any manual labor without taking away the work of some one who needed it to live by; and could not even relieve an overworked laborer, and give him the money for the work, without teaching him habits of idleness. In Altruria we can all keep ourselves well by doing each his share of hard work, and we can help those who are exhausted, when such a thing happens, without injuring them materially or morally."

Young Camp entered at this moment, and the Altrurian hesitated. "Oh, do go on!" Mrs. Makely entreated. She added to Camp: "We've got him to talking about Altruria at last, and we wouldn't have him stopped for worlds."

The Altrurian looked around at all our faces, and no doubt read our eager curiosity in them. He smiled and said: "I shall be very glad, I'm sure.

But I do not think you will find anything so remarkable in our civilization, if you will conceive of it as the outgrowth of the neighborly instinct. In fact, neighborliness is the essence of Altrurianism. If you will imagine having the same feeling toward all," he explained to Mrs. Makely, "as you have toward your next-door neighbor--"

"My next-door neighbor!" she cried. "But I don't _know_ the people next door! We live in a large apartment house, some forty families, and I a.s.sure you I do not know a soul among them."

He looked at her with a puzzled air, and she continued: "Sometimes it _does_ seem rather hard. One day the people on the same landing with us lost one of their children, and I should never have been a whit the wiser if my cook hadn't happened to mention it. The servants all know each other; they meet in the back elevator, and get acquainted. I don't encourage it. You can't tell what kind of families they belong to."

"But surely," the Altrurian persisted, "you have friends in the city whom you think of as your neighbors?"

"No, I can't say that I have," said Mrs. Makely. "I have my visiting-list, but I shouldn't think of anybody on _that_ as a neighbor."

The Altrurian looked so blank and baffled that I could hardly help laughing. "Then I should not know how to explain Altruria to you, I'm afraid."