text:
% Moving the Mountain
% Charlotte Perkins Gilman
% 1911

---
pagetitle: Moving the Mountain
title:
- type: main
  text: Moving the Mountain
identifier:
- scheme: URN
  text: uuid:85312B37-6430-4913-8EE2-A71963CBC2C0
date: 1911
rights: Public Domain
cover-image: cover.png
cover-credit: |
  [Liza Daly](https://lizadaly.com)
cover-source: |
  [Berneralpen vom Pilatus aus., Photochrom Zürich](https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/my/collections/141--mattie-boom/colormania/objecten#/RP-F-F01156-DJ,13) (1890)
epub-file: moving-the-mountain.epub
description: |
  _Moving the Mountain_ is a feminist utopian novel written by [Charlotte Perkins Gilman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman),
  a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. It was published serially in Perkins Gilman's periodical [The Forerunner](http://www.charlotteperkinsgilman.com/2008/05/forerunner-11-forerunner-advertisement.html) and then in book form.
---

# Preface

One of the most distinctive features of the human mind is to forecast
better things.

> “We look before and after<br/>
> and pine for what is not.”

This natural tendency to hope, desire, foresee and then, if possible,
obtain, has been largely diverted from human usefulness since our goal
was placed after death, in Heaven. With all our hope in “Another World,”
we have largely lost hope of this one.

Some minds, still keen in the perception of better human possibilities,
have tried to write out their vision and give it to the world. From
Plato’s ideal Republic to Wells’ Day of the Comet we have had many
Utopias set before us, best known of which are that of Sir Thomas More
and the great modern instance, “Looking Backward.”

All these have one or two distinctive features—an element of extreme
remoteness, or the introduction of some mysterious out-side force.
“Moving the Mountain” is a short distance Utopia, a baby Utopia, a
little one that can grow. It involves no other change than a change of
mind, the mere awakening of people, especially the women, to existing
possibilities. It indicates what people might do, real people, now
living, in thirty years—if they would.

One man, truly aroused and redirecting his energies, can change his
whole life in thirty years.

So can the world.

# Chapter 1.

ON a gray, cold, soggy Tibetan plateau stood glaring at one another two
white people—a man and a woman.

With the first, a group of peasants; with the second, the guides and
carriers of a well-equipped exploring party.

The man wore the dress of a peasant, but around him was a leather
belt—old, worn, battered—but a recognizable belt of no Asiatic
pattern, and showing a heavy buckle made in twisted initials.

The woman’s eye had caught the sunlight on this buckle before she saw
that the heavily bearded face under the hood was white. She pressed
forward to look at it.

“Where did you get that belt?” she cried, turning for the interpreter to
urge her question.

The man had caught her voice, her words.

He threw back his hood and looked at her, with a strange blank look, as
of one listening to something far away.

“John!” she cried. “John! My Brother!” He lifted a groping hand to his
head, made a confused noise that ended in almost a shout of “Nellie!”
reeled and fell backward.

### . . . . .

When one loses his mind, as it were, for thirty years, and finds it
again; when one wakes up; comes to life; recognizes oneself an American
citizen twenty-five years old

No. This is what I find it so hard to realize. I am not twenty-five; I
am fifty-five.

### . . . . .

Well, as I was saying, when one comes to life again like this, and has
to renew acquaintance with one’s own mind, in a sudden swarming rush of
hurrying memories—that is a good deal of pressure for a brain so long
unused.

But when on top of that, one is pushed headlong into a world
immeasurably different from the world one has left at twenty-five—a
topsy-turvy world, wherein all one’s most cherished ideals are found to
be reversed, rearranged, or utterly gone; where strange new facts are
accompanied by strange new thoughts and strange new feelings—the
pressure becomes terrific,

Nellie has suggested that I write it down, and I think for once she is
right. I disagree with her on so many points that I am glad to recognize
the wisdom of this idea. It will certainly be a useful process in my
re-education; and relieve the mental tension.

So, to begin with my first life, being now in my third

### . . . . .

I am the only son of a Methodist minister of South Carolina. My mother
was a Yankee. She died after my sister Ellen was born, when I was seven
years old. My father educated me well. I was sent to a small Southern
college, and showed such a talent for philology that I specialized in
ancient languages, and, after some teaching and the taking of various
degrees, I had a wonderful opportunity to join an expedition into India
and Tibet. I was eager for a sight of those venerable races, those hoary
scriptures, those time-honored customs. We were traveling through the
Himalayas—and the last thing I remember was a night camp, and a
six-months-old newspaper from home. We had rejoicingly obtained it from
a party we met in the pass.

It was read and re-read by all of us—even the advertisements—even
the editorials, and in one of these I learned that Mrs. Eddy had been
dead some time and that another religion had burst forth and was
sweeping the country, madly taken up by the women. That was my last news
item. I suppose it was this reading, and the discussions we had, that
made me walk in my sleep that night. That is the only explanation I can
give. I know I lay down just as I was—and that\‘s all I know, until
Nellie found me.

The party reported me lost. They searched for days, made what inquiry
they could. No faintest clue was ever found. Himalayan precipices are
very tall, and very sudden. My sister Nellie was traveling in Tibet and
found me, with a party of peasants. She gathered what she could from
them, through interpreters. It seems that I fell among those
people—literally; bruised, stunned, broken, but not dead. Some
merciful—or shall I say unmerciful?---trees had softened the fall and
let me down easy, comparatively speaking. They were good
people---Buddhists. They mended my bones and cared for me, and it
appears made me quite a chief man, in course of time, in their tiny
village. But their little valley was so remote and unknown, so out of
touch with any and everything, that no tale of this dumb white man ever
reached Western ears. I was dumb until I learned their language, was
\“as a child of a day,\" they said—knew absolutely nothing. They
taught me what they knew. I suppose I turned a prayer mill; I suppose I
was married---Nellie didn\‘t ask that, and they never mentioned such a
detail. Furthermore, they gave so dim an account of where the place was
that we don’t know now; should have to locate that night’s encampment,
and then look for a precipice and go down it with ropes.

As I have no longer any interest in those venerable races and
time-honored customs, I think we will not do this.

Well, she found me, and something happened. She says I knew
her—shouted “Nellie!” and fell down—fell on a stone, too, and hit my
head so hard they thought I was dead this time “for sure.” But when I
“came to” I came all the way, back to where I was thirty years ago; and
as for those thirty years---I do not remember one day of them.

Nor do I wish to. I have those filthy Tibetan clothes, sterilized and
packed away, but I never want to look at them.

I am back in the real world, back where I was at twenty-five. But now I
am fifty-five ---

### . . . . .

Now, about Nellie. I must go slowly and get this thing straightened out
for good and all.

My little sister! I was always fond of her, and she adored me. She
looked up to me, naturally; believed everything I told her; minded me
like a little dog—when she was a child. And as she grew into
girl-hood, I had a strong restraining influence upon her. She wanted to
be educated—to go to college—but father wouldn’t hear of it, of
course, and I backed him up. If there is anything on earth I always
hated and despised, it is a strong-minded woman! That is—it was. I
certainly cannot hate and despise my sister Nellie.

Now it appears that soon after my departure from this life father died,
very suddenly. Nellie inherited the farm—and the farm turned out to be
a mine, and the mine turned out to be worth a good deal of money.

So that poor child, having no natural guardian or protector, just set to
work for herself—went to college to her heart’s content, to a foreign
university, too. She studied medicine, practiced a while, then was
offered a chair in a college and took it; then---I hate to write
it—but she is now president of a college—a coeducational college!

“Don’t you mean ‘dean?’” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “There is a dean of the girl’s building—but I am the
president.”

My little sister!

### . . . . .

The worst of it is that my little sister is now forty-eight, and I--- to
all intents and purposes—am twenty-five! She is twenty-three years
older than I am. She has had thirty years of world-life which I have
missed entirely, and this thirty years, I begin to gather, has covered
more changes than an ordinary century or two.

It is lucky about that mine.

“At least I shall not have to worry about money,” I said to her when she
told me about our increased fortune.

She gave one of those queer little smiles, as if she had something up
her sleeve, and said:

“No; you won’t have to worry in the about money.”

Having all that medical skill of hers in the background, she took
excellent care of me up there on those dreary plains and hills, brought
me back to the coast by easy stages, and home on one of those new
steamers—but I mustn’t stop to describe the details of each new thing
I notice!

I have sense enough myself, even if I’m not a doctor, to use my mind
gradually, not to swallow too fast, as it were.

Nellie is a little inclined to manage me. I don’t know as I blame her. I
do feel like a child, sometimes. It is so humiliating not to know little
common things such as everybody else knows. Air ships I expected, of
course; they had started before I left. They are common enough, all
sizes. But water is still the cheaper route—as well as slower.

Nellie said she didn’t want me to get home too quick; she wanted time to
explain things. So we spent long, quiet hours in our steamer chairs,
talking things over.

It’s no use asking about the family; there is only a flock of young
cousins and “once removed” now; the aunts and uncles are mostly gone.
Uncle Jake is left. Nellie grins wickedly when she mentions him.

“If things get too hard on you, John, you can go down to Uncle Jake’s
and rest up. He and Aunt Dorcas haven’t moved an inch. They fairly
barricade their minds against a new idea—and he ploughs and she cooks
up on that little mountain farm just as they always did. People go to
see them "

“Why shouldn’t they?” I asked. And she smiled that queer little smile
again.

“I mean they go to see them as if they were the Pyramids.”

“I see,” said I. “I might as well prepare for some preposterous
nightmare of a world, like—what was that book of Wells’, ‘The Sleeper
Awakened?’ "

“Oh, yes; I remember that book,” she answered, “and a lot of others.
People were already guessing about things as they might be, weren’t
they? But what never struck any of them was that the people themselves
could change.”

“No,” I agreed. “You can’t alter human nature.”

Nellie laughed—laughed out loud. Then she squeezed my hand and patted
it.

“You Dear!” she said. “You precious old Long--Lost Brother! When you get
too utterly upset I’ll wear my hair down, put on a short dress and let
you boss me awhile—to keep your spirits up. That was just the phrase,
wasn’t it?---‘You can’t alter human nature!’ " And she laughed again.

There is something queer about Nellie—very queer. It is not only that
she is different from my little sister—that’s natural; but she is
different from any woman of forty-eight I ever saw—from any woman of
any age I ever saw.

In the first place, she doesn’t look old—not at all. Women of forty,
in our region, were old women, and Nellie’s near fifty! Then she
isn’t—what shall I call it—dependent; not the least in the world. As
soon as I became really conscious, and strong enough to be of any use,
and began to offer her those little services and attentions due to a
woman, I noticed this difference.

She is brisk, firm, assured—not unpleasantly so; I don’t mean a thing
of that sort; but somehow like—almost like a man! No, I certainly
don’t mean that. She is not in the least mannish, nor in the least
self-assertive; but she takes things so easily—as if she owned them.

I suppose it will be some time before my head is absolutely clear and
strong as it used to be. I tire rather easily. Nellie is very reassuring
about it. She says it will take about a year to re-establish connections
and renew mental processes. She advises me to read and talk only a
little every day, to sleep all I can, and not to worry.

“You’ll be all right soon, my dear,” she says, “and plenty of life
before you. You seem to have led a very healthy out-door life. You’re
really well and strong—and as good-looking as ever.”

At least she hasn’t forgotten that woman’s chief duty is to please.

“And the world is a much better place to be in than it was,” she assured
me. “Things will surprise you, of course—things I have gotten used to
and shall forget to tell you about. But the changes are all good ones,
and you’ll soon get—acclimated. You’re young yet.”

That’s where Nellie slips up. She cannot help having me in mind as the
brave young brother she knew. She forgets that I am an old man now.
Finally I told her that.

“No, John Robertson,” she she, “that’s where you are utterly wrong. Of
course, you don’t know what we’re doing about age—how differently we
feel. As a matter of physiology we find that about one hundred and fifty
ought to be our natural limit; and that with proper conditions we can
easily get to be a hundred now. Ever so many do.”

“I don’t want to be a hundred,” I protested. “I saw a man of
ninety-eight once, and never want to be one.”

“It’s not like that now,” she said. “I mean we live to be a hundred and
enjoy life still---‘keep our faculties,’ as they used to put it. Why,
the ship’s doctor here is eighty-seven.”

This surprised me a good deal. I had talked a little with this man, and
had thought him about sixty.

“Then a man of a hundred, according to your story, would look
like—like------"

“Like Grandpa Ely,” she offered.

I remembered my mother’s father—a tall, straight, hale old man of
seventy-five. He had a clear eye, a firm step, a rosy color in his face.
Well, that wasn’t so bad a prospect.

“I consent to be a hundred—on those terms,” I told her.

### . . . . .

She talked to me a good bit, in small daily doses, of the more general
changes in the world, showed me new maps, even let me read a little in
the current magazines.

“I suppose you have a million of these now,” I said. “There were
thousands when I left!”

“No,” she answered. “There are fewer, I believe; but much better.”

I turned over the one in my hand. It was pleasantly light and thin, it
opened easily, the paper and presswork were of the best, the price was
twenty-five cents.

“Is this a cheap one—at a higher price? or have the best ones come
down?”

“It’s a cheap one,” she told me, “if you mean by that a popular one, and
it’s cheap enough. They have all of a million subscribers.”

“And what’s the difference, beyond the paper and print?” I asked.

“The pictures are good.”

I looked it through again.

“Yes, very good, much improved. But I don’t see anything
phenomenal—unless it is the absence of advertisements.”

Nellie took it out of my hand and ran it over.

“Just read some of that,” she said. “Read this story—and this
article—and that.”

So I sat reading in the sunny silence, the gulls wheeling and dipping
just as they used to, and the wide purple ocean just as changeable—and
changeless—as ever.

One of the articles was on an extension of municipal service, and
involved so much comment on preceding steps that I found it most
enlightening. The other was a recent suggestion in educational
psychology, and this too carried a retrospect of recent progress which
gave me food for thought. The story was a clever one. I found it really
amusing, and only on a second reading did I find what it was that gave
the queer flavor to it. It was a story about women—two women who were
in business partnership, with their adventures, singly and together.

I looked through it carefully. They were not even girls, they were not
handsome, they were not in process of being married—in fact, it was
not once mentioned whether they were married or not, ever had been or
ever wanted to be. Yet I had found it amusing!

I laid the magazine on my rug-bound knees and meditated. A queer sick
feeling came over me—mental, not physical. I looked through the
magazine again. It was not what I should have called “a woman’s
magazine,” yet the editor was a woman, most of the contributors were
women, and in all the subject matter I began to detect allusions and
references of tremendous import.

Presently Nellie came to see how I was getting on. I saw her
approaching, a firm, brisk figure, well and becomingly dressed, with a
tailored trimness and convenience, far indeed from the slim, graceful,
yielding girl I had once been so proud to protect and teach.

“How soon do we get in, Lady Manager?” I asked her.

“Day after tomorrow,” she answered back promptly—not a word about
going to see, or asking anyone!

“Well, ma’am, I want you to sit down here and tell me things—right
now. What am I to expect? Are there no men left in America?”

She laughed gaily.

“No men! Why, bless you, there are as many men as there are women, and a
few more, I believe. Not such an over-plus as there used to be, but some
to spare still. We had a million and a half extra in your day, you
know.”

“I’m glad to learn we’re allowed to live!” said I. “Now tell me the
worst—are the men all doing the housework?”

“You call that ‘the worst,’ do you?” inquired Nellie, cocking her head
to one side and looking at me affectionately, and yet quizzically.
“Well, I guess it was—pretty near ‘the worst!’ No dear, men are doing
just as many kinds of business as they ever were.”

I heaved a sigh of relief and chucked my magazine under the chair.

“I’d begun to think there weren’t any men left. And they still wear
trousers, don’t they?”

She laughed outright.

“Oh, yes. They wear just as many trousers as they did before.”

“And what do the women wear,” I demanded suspiciously.

“Whatever kind of clothing their work demands,” she answered.

“Their work? What kind of work do they do?”

“All kinds—anything they like.”

I groaned and shut my eyes. I could see the world as I left it, with
only a small proportion of malcontents and a large majority of contented
and happy homes; and then I saw this awful place I was coming to, with
strange, masculine women and subdued men.

“How does it happen that there aren’t any on this ship?” I inquired.

“Any what?” asked Nellie.

“Any of these---New Women?”

“Why, there are. They’re all new, except Mrs. Talbot. She’s older than I
am, and rather reactionary.”

This Mrs. Talbot was a stiff, pious, narrow-minded old lady, and I had
liked her the least of any on board.

“Do you mean to tell me that pretty Mrs. Exeter is—one of this new
kind?”

“Mrs. Exeter owns—and manages—a large store, if that is what you
mean.”

“And those pretty Borden girls?”

“They do house decorating—have been abroad on business.”

“And Mrs. Green—and Miss Sandwich?”

“One of them is a hat designer, one a teacher. This is toward the end of
vacation, and they’re all coming home, you see.”

“And Miss Elwell?”

Miss Elwell was quite the prettiest woman on board, and seemed to have
plenty of attention—just like the girls I remembered.

“Miss Elwell is a civil engineer,” said my sister.

“It’s horrid,” I said. “It’s perfectly horrid! And aren’t there any
women left?”

“There’s Aunt Dorcas,” said Nellie, mischievously, “and Cousin Drusilla.
You remember Drusilla?”

# Chapter 2.

THE day after tomorrow! I was to see it the day after tomorrow—this
strange, new, abhorrent world!

The more I considered what bits of information I had gleaned already,
the more I disliked what lay before me. In the first blazing light of
returned memory and knowledge, the first joy of meeting my sister, the
hope of seeing home again, I had not distinguished very sharply between
what was new to my bewildered condition and what was new indeed—new to
the world as well as to me. But now a queer feeling of disproportion and
unreality began to haunt me.

As my head cleared, and such knowledge as I was now gathering began to
help towards some sense of perspective and relation, even my immediate
surroundings began to assume a sinister importance.

Any change, to any person, is something of a shock, though sometimes a
beneficial one. Changes too sudden, and too great, are hard to bear, for
any one. But who can understand the peculiar horror of my unparalleled
experience?

Slowly the thing took shape in my mind.

There was the first, irrevocable loss—my life!

Thirty years—the thirty years in which a man may really live—these
were gone from me forever.

I was coming back; strong to be sure; well enough in health; even, I
hoped, with my old mental vigor—but not to the same world.

Even the convict who survives thirty years imprisonment, may return at
length to the same kind of world he had left so long.

But I! It was as if I had slept, and, in my sleep, they had stolen my
world.

I threw off the thought, and started in to action.

Here was a small world—the big steamer beneath me. I had already
learned much about her. In the first place, she was not a

“steamer,” but a thing for which I had no name; her power was electric,

“Oh, well,” I thought, as I examined her machinery, “this I might have
expected. Thirty years of such advances as we were making in 1910 were
sure to develop electric motors of all sorts.”

The engineer was a pleasant, gentlemanly fellow, more than willing to
talk about his profession and its marvellous advances. The ship was well
manned, certainly; though the work required was far less than it used to
be, the crew were about as numerous. I had made some acquaintances among
the ship’s officers—even among the men, who were astonishingly civil
and well-mannered—but I had not at first noticed the many points of
novelty in their attitude or in my surroundings.

Now I paced the deck and considered the facts I had observed—the
perfect ventilation of the vessel, the absence of the smell of cooking
and of bilge water, the dainty convenience and appropriate beauty of all
the fittings and furnishings, the smooth speed and steadiness of her,

The quarters of the crew I found as remarkable as anything else about
the vessel; indeed the forecastle and steerage differed more from what I
remembered than from any other part. Every person on board had a clean
and comfortable lodging, though there were grades of distinction in size
and decoration. But any gentleman could have lived in that “foks’le”
without discomfort. Indeed, I soon found that many gentlemen did. I
discovered, quite by accident, that one of the crew was a Harvard man.
He was not at all loath to talk of it, either—was evidently no black
sheep of any sort.

Why had he chosen this work?

Oh, he wanted the experience—it widened life, knowing different
trades.

Why was he not an officer then?

He didn’t care to work at it long enough—this was only experience
work, you see.

I did not see, nor ask, but I inferred, and it gave me again that
feeling as if the ground underfoot had wiggled slightly.

Was that old dream of Bellamy’s stalking abroad? Were young men
portioned out to menial service, willy-nilly?

It was evidently not a universal custom, for some of the sailors were
much older men, and long used to the business. I got hold of one who
seemed more like the deckhands of old days, though cleaner and more
cheerful; a man who was all of sixty.

Yes he had followed the sea from boyhood. Yes, he liked it, always had
liked it, liked it better now than when he was young.

He had seen many changes? I listened carefully, though I asked the
question lightly enough.

Changes! He guessed he had. Terbacca was better for one thing---I was
relieved to see that men still smoked, and then the jar came again as I
remembered that save for this man, and one elderly officer, I had not
seen anyone smoking on the vessel.

“How do you account for it?” I asked the old Yankee. “For tobacco’s
being better?”

He grinned cheerfully.

“Less run on it, I guess,” said he. “Young fellers don’t seem to smoke
no more, and I ain’t seen nobody chewing for—well, for ten years
back,”

“Is it cheaper as well as better?”

“No, sir, it ain’t. It’s perishing high. But then, wages is high, too,”
he grudgingly admitted.

“Better tobacco and better wages—anything else improved?”

“Yes, sir-ee! Grub’s better, by square miles—and ‘commodations—an’
close. Make better stuff now.”

“Well! well!” said I as genially as I knew how. “That’s very different
from my young days. Then everybody older than I always complained about
all manner of things, and told how much better—and cheaper—things
were when they were young.”

“Yes, ’twas so,” he admitted meditatively. “But ‘tain’t so now. Shoes is
better, most things is better, I guess. Seems like water runnin’ up
hill, don’t it, sir?”

It did. I didn’t like it. I got away from the old man, and walked by
myself—like Kipling’s cat.

“Of course, of course!” I said to myself impatiently, “I may as well
expect to find everything as much improved from what it was in my time
as in, say, sixty years before.

That sort of progress goes faster and faster. Things change, but
people---"

And here is where I got this creepy sense of unreality.

At first everything was so strange to me, and my sister was so kind and
thoughtful, so exquisitely considerate of my feelings and condition,
that I had failed to notice this remarkable circumstance—so were the
other people. It was like being in a—well, in a house-party of very
nice persons. Kind, cheerful, polite—here I suddenly realized that I
had not seen a grouchy face, heard an unkind remark, felt, as one does
feel through silk and broadcloth, the sense of discontent and
disapproval.

There was one, the somewhat hard-faced old lady, Mrs. Talbot, of whom I
had hopes. I sought her, and laid myself out to please her by those
little attentions which are so grateful to an elderly woman from a young
man.

Her accepting these as a commonplace, her somewhat too specific
inquiries about my health, suddenly reminded me that I was not a young
man.

She talked on while I made again that effort at readjustment which was
so hideously hard. Gone in a night—all my young manhood—gone
untasted!

“Do you find it difficult to concentrate your attention?” she was
saying, a steely eye fixed upon my face.

“I beg your pardon, madam. I fear I do. You were saying---"

“I was saying that you will find many changes when you get back.”

“I find them already, Mrs. Talbot. They rather loom up. It is sudden,
you see.”

“Yes, you’ve been away a long time, I understand. In the far East?”

Mrs. Talbot was the first person who had asked me a question. Evidently
hers were the manners of an older generation, and for once I had to
admit that the younger generation had improved.

But I recalled the old defensive armor against the old assaults.

“Quite a while,” I answered cheerfully, “Quite a while. Now what should
you think would impress me most—in the way of change?” it

“The women,” she answered promptly.

I smiled my gallantest, and replied, bowing:

“I find them still charming.”

Her set face broke into a pleased smile.

“You do my heart good!” she cried. “I haven’t heard a compliment in
fifteen years.”

“Good Heavens, madam! what are our men thinking of?”

“It’s not the men’s fault; it’s the women’s. They won’t have it.”

“Are there many of these—new women?”

“There’s nothing else—except a few old ones like me.”

I hastened to assure her that a woman like her would never be called
old—and she looked as pleased as a girl.

Presently I excused myself and left her, with relief. It was annoying
beyond measure to have the only specimen of the kind of woman I used to
like turn out to be personally the kind I never liked.

On the opposite deck, I found Miss Elwell—and for once alone. A
retiring back, wearing an aggrieved expression showed that it had not
been for long.

“May I join you, Miss Elwell?”

I might. I did. We paced up and down, silent for a bit.

She was a joy to the eye, a lovely, straight, young thing, with a fresh,
pure color and eyes of dancing brightness. I spoke of this and that
aboard ship—the sea, the weather; and she was so gaily friendly, so
sweet and modest, yet wholly frank, that I grew quite happy in her
company.

My sister must have been mistaken about her being a civil engineer. She
might be a college girl—but nothing worse. And she was so pretty!

I devoted myself to Miss Elwell ‘till she took herself off, probably to
join her—her—it occurred to me that I had seen no one with Miss
Elwell.

“Nellie” said I, “for heaven’s sake give me the straight of all this.
I’m going distracted with the confusion. What has happened to the world?
Tell me all, I can bear it—as the extinct novels used to say. But I
cannot bear this terrible suspense! Don’t you have novels any more?”

“Novels? Oh, yes, plenty; better than ever were written. You’ll find it
splendidly worth while to read quite a few of them while you’re getting
oriented . . . Well, you want a kind of running, historic sketch?”

“Yes. Give me the outlines—just the heads, as it were. You see, my
dear, it is not easy to get readjusted even to the old things, and there
are so many new ones "

We were in our steamer chairs, most people dozing after their midday
meal. She reached over and took my hand in hers, and held it tight. It
was marvelously comforting, this one live visible link between what was
forever past and this uncertain future. But for her, even those old, old
days might have flickered and seemed doubtful---I should have felt like
one swimming under water and not knowing, which way was up. She gave me
solid ground underfoot at any rate. Whatever her place might be in this
New World, she had talked to me only of the old one.

In these long, quiet, restful days, she had revived in my mind the
pleasant memories of our childhood together; our little Southern home;
our patient, restrained Northern mother and the fine education she gave
her school-less little ones; our high-minded—and, alas,
narrow-minded—father, handsome, courteous, inflexible. Under Nellie’s
gentle leading, my long unused memory-cells had revived like rain-washed
leaves, and my past life had, at last, grown clear and steady.

My college life; my old chum, Granger, who had visited us once; our
neighbors and relations; little gold-haired Cousin Drusilla, whom I, in
ten years proud seniority, had teased as a baby, played with and
tyrannized over as a confiding child, and kissed good-bye—a slim,
startled little figure—when I left for Asia.

Nellie had always spoken of things as I remembered them, and avoided
adroitly, or quietly refused to discuss, their new aspects.

I think she was right—at first.

“Out with it!” said I. “Come---Have we adopted Socialism?” I braced
myself for the answer.

“Socialism? Oh—why, yes. I think we did. But that was twenty years
ago.”

“And it didn’t last? You’ve proved the impracticable folly of it?
You\‘ve discarded it?”

I sat up straight, very eager.

“Why, no---" said Nellie. “It’s very hard to put these new things into
old words---We’ve got beyond it.”

“Beyond Socialism! Not—not---Anarchy?”

“Oh, bless you, no; no indeed! We understand better what socialism
meant, that’s all. We have more, much more, than it ever asked; but we
don’t call it that.”

I did not understand.

“It’s like this,” she said. “Suppose you had left a friend in the throes
of a long, tempestuous’ courtship, full of ardor, of keen joy, and
keener anticipation. Then, returning, you say to your friend, ‘Do you
still have courtship?’ And he says, ‘Why no, I’m married.’ It’s not that
he has discarded it, proved it’s impracticable folly. He had to have
it—he liked it—but he’s got beyond it.”

“Go on and elucidate,” I said. “I don’t quite follow your parable.”

She considered a bit.

“Well, here’s a more direct parallel. Back in the 18th century, the
world was wild about Democracy---Democracy was going to do all things
for all men. Then, with prodigious struggles, they acquired some
Democracy—set it going. It was a good thing. But it took time. It
grew. It had difficulties. In the next century, there was less talk
about all the heavenly results of Democracy, and more definite efforts
to make it work.”

This was clearer.

“You mean,” I followed her slowly.

“That what was called socialism was attained—and you’ve been improving
upon it?”

“Exactly, Brother, ‘you are on’---as we used to say. But even that’s not
the main step.”

“No? What else?”

“Only a New Religion.”

I showed my disappointment. Nellie watched my face silently. She
laughed. She even kissed me.

“John” said she, “I could make vast sums by exhibiting you to
psychologists! as An Extinct Species of Mind. You’d draw better than a
Woolly Mammoth.”

I smiled wryly; and she squeezed my hand. “Might as well make a joke of
it, Old Man—you’ve got to get used to it, and ‘the sooner the
quicker!’ "

“All right---Go ahead with your New Religion.”

She sat back in her chair with an expression of amused retrospection.

“I had forgotten,” she said, “I had really forgotten. We didn’t use to
think much of religion, did we?”

“Father did,” said I.

“No, not even Father and his kind—they only used it as a—what was
the old joke? a patent fire escape! Nobody appreciated Religion!”

“They spent much time and money on it,” I suggested.

“That’s not appreciation!”

“Well, come on with the story. Did you have another Incarnation of any
body?”

“You might call it that,” Nellie allowed, her voice growing quietly
earnest, “We certainly had somebody with an unmistakable Power.”

This did not interest me at all. I hated to see Nellie looking so
sweetly solemn over her “New Religion,” In the not unnatural reaction of
a minister’s son, rigidly reared, I had had small use for religion of
any sort. As a scholar I had studied them all, and felt as little
reverence for the ancient ones as for the shifty mushroom crop of new
sects and schools of thought with which the country teemed in my time.

“Now, look here, John,” said she at length, “I’ve been watching you
pretty closely and I think you’re equal to a considerable mental
effort---In one way, it may be easier for you, just because you’ve not
seen a bit of it—anyhow, you’ve got to face it. Our world has changed
in these thirty years, more than the change between what it used to be
and what people used to imagine about Heaven. Here is the first thing
you’ve got to do—mentally. You must understand, clearly, in your human
consciousness, that the objection and distaste you feel is only in your
personal consciousness. Everything is better; there is far more comfort,
pleasure, peace of mind; a richer swifter growth, a higher happier life
in every way; and yet, you won’t like it because your---" she seemed to
hesitate for a word, now and then; as one trying to translate,
“reactions are all tuned to earlier con ditions. If you can understand
this and see over your own personal—attitudes it will not be long
before a real convincing sense of joy, of life, will follow the
intellectual perception that things are better.”

“Hold on,” I said, “Let me chew on that a little.”

“As if,” I presently suggested, “as if I’d left a home that was poor and
dirty and crowded, with a pair of quarrelsome inefficient
parents—drunken and abusive, maybe, and a lot of horrid, wrangling,
selfish, little brothers and sisters—and woke up one fine morning in a
great clean beautiful house—richly furnished—full of a lot of
angels—who were total strangers?”

“Exactly!” she cried. “Hurrah for you, Johnnie, you couldn’t have
defined it better.”

“I don’t like it,” said I. “I’d rather have my old home and my own
family than all the princely palaces and amiable angels you could dream
of in a hundred years.”

“Mother had an old story-book by a New England author,” Nellie quietly
remarked, “where somebody said, ‘You can’t always have your “druthers”
'---she used to quote it to me when I was little and complained that
things were not as I wanted them. John, dear, please remember that the
new people in the new world find it ‘like home’ and love it far better
than we used to. It’ll be queer to you, but it’s a pleasant commonplace
to them. We have found out at last that it is natural to be happy.”

She was silent and I was silent; till I asked her “What’s the name of
your new religion?”

“It hasn’t any,” she answered.

“Hasn’t any? What do they call it? the Believers, I mean?”

“They call it ‘Living’ and ‘Life’---that’s all.”

“Hm! and what’s their specialty?”

Nellie gave a funny little laugh, part sad, part tender, part amused.

“I had no idea it would be so hard to tell you things,” she said.
“You’ll have to just see for yourself, I guess.”

“Do go on, Nellie. I’ll be good. You were going to tell me, in a
nutshell, what had happened—please do.”

“The thing that has happened,” said she, slowly, “is just this. The
world has come alive. We are doing in a pleasant, practical way, all the
things which we could have done, at any time before—only we never
thought so. The real change is this: we have changed our minds. This
happened very soon after you left. Ah! that was a time! To think that
you should have missed it!” She gave my hand another sympathetic squeeze
and went on. “After that it was only a question of time, of how soon we
could do things. And we’ve been doing them ever since, faster and
faster.”

This seemed rather flat and disappointing.

“I don’t see that you make out anything wonderful—so far. A new
Religion which seems to consist only in behaving better; and a gradual
improvement of social conditions—all that was going on when I left.”

Nellie regarded me with a considering eye.

“I see how you interpret it,” she said, “behaving better in our early
days was a small personal affair; either a pathetically inadequate
failure to do what one could not, or a pharisaic, self-righteous success
in doing what one could. All personal—personal!”

“Good behavior has to be a personal affair, hasn’t it?” I mildly
protested.

“Not by any means!” said Nellie with decision. “That was precisely what
kept us so small and bad, so miserably confined and discouraged. Like a
lot of well-meaning soldiers imagining that their evolutions were ‘a
personal affair’---or an orchestra plaintively protesting that if each
man played a correct tune of his own choosing, the result would be
perfect! Dear! dear! No, Sir” she continued with some fierceness,
“that’s just where we changed our minds! Humanity has come alive, I tell
you and we have reason to be proud of our race!”

She held her head high, there was a glad triumphant look in her
eyes—not in the least religious. Said she: “You’ll see results. That
will make it clearer to you than anything I can say. But if I may remark
that we have no longer the fear of death—much less of damnation, and
no such thing as ‘sin’; that the only kind of prison left is called a
quarantine—that punishment is unknown but preventive means are of a
drastic and sweeping nature such as we never dared think of
before—that there is no such thing in the civilized world as
poverty—no labor problem—no color problem—no sex problem—almost
no disease—very little accident—practically no fires—that the
world is rapidly being reforested—the soil improved; the output
growing in quantity and quality; that no one needs to work over two
hours a day and most people work four—that we have no graft—no
adulteration of goods—no malpractice—no crime.”

“Nellie,” said I, “you are a woman and my sister. I’m very sorry, but I
don’t believe it.”

“I thought you wouldn’t,” said she. Women always will have the last
word.

# Chapter 3

THE blue shore line of one’s own land always brings a thrill of the
heart; to me, buried exile as I had been, the heart-leap was choking.

Ours was a slow steamer, and we did not stop at Montauk where the mail
and the swiftest travelers landed, nor in Jamaica Harbor with the
immigrants.

As we swept along the sunny, level spaces of the South shore, Nellie
told me how Long Island was now the “Reception Room” of our country,
instead of poor, brutal little Ellis Island.

“The shores are still mostly summer places,” she said. “One of the most
convincing of our early lines of advance was started on the South shore;
and there are plenty of Country Clubs, Home Parks and things like that;
but the bulk of the island toward the western end is an experiment
station in applied sociology.

I was watching the bright shore hungrily. With a glass I could see many
large buildings, not too closely set.

“I should think it would spoil the place for homes,” I said.

Nellie had a way of listening to my remarks, kindly and pleasantly, but
as if I were somehow a long way off and she was trying to grasp what I
said.

“In a way it did—at first;" she explained presently, “but even then it
meant just as many homes for other people, and now it means so much
more!”

She hesitated a moment and then plunged in resolutely.

“You’re in for a steady course of instructive remarks from now on.
Everybody will be explaining things and bragging about them. We haven’t
outgrown some of the smaller vices, you see. As to this ‘Immigration
Problem’---we woke up to this fact among others, that the ‘reintegration
of peoples’ as Ward called it, was a sociological process not possible
to stop, but quite possible to assist and to guide to great advantage.
And here in America we recognized our own special place---‘the melting
pot’ you know?”

Yes, I remembered the phrase, I never liked it. Our family were pure
English stock, and rightly proud of their descent.

“I begin to see, my dear sister, that while receiving the torrent of
instructive remarks you foretell, the way of wisdom for me is
steadfastly to withhold my own opinions.”

Nellie laughed appreciatively.

“You always had a long head, John. Well, whether you like it or not, our
people saw their place and power at last and rose to it. We refuse no
one. We have discovered as many ways of utilizing human waste as we used
to have for the waste products of coal tar.”

“You don’t mean to say idiots and criminals?” I protested.

“Idiots, hopeless ones, we don’t keep any more,” she answered gently.
“They are very rare now. The grade of average humanity is steadily
rising; and we have the proud satisfaction of knowing we have helped it
rise. We organized a permanent ‘reception committee’ for the whole
country, one station here and one in California. Anybody could
come—but they had to submit to our handling when they did come.”

“We used to have physical examination, didn’t we?”

“A rudimentary one. What we have now is Compulsory Socialization.”

I stared at her.

“Yes, I know! You are thinking of that geological kind of evolution
people used to talk about, and ‘you can’t alter human nature.’ In the
first place, we can. In the second place, we do. In the third place,
there isn’t so much alteration needed as we used to think. Human nature
is a pretty good thing. No immigrant is turned loose on the community
till he or she is up to a certain standard, and the children we
educate.”

“We always did, didn’t we?”

“Always did? Why brother, we didn’t know what the word meant in your
time.”

“I shall be glad to follow that up,” I assured her. “Education was
improving even in the old days, I remember. I shall be glad to see the
schools.”

“Some of them you won’t know when you do see them,” said Nellie. “On
Long Island we have agricultural and industrial stations like—like---I
think we had something like it in some of our Western colleges, which it
was the fashion to look down upon. We have a graded series of dwellings
where the use of modern conveniences is taught to all newcomers.”

“Suppose they won’t learn? They used to prefer to live like hogs, as I
remember.”

Again Nellie looked at me as if I were speaking to her from a distance.

“We used to say so—and I suppose we used to think so—some of us. But
we know better now. These people are not compelled to come to our
country, but if they come they know what they have to do—and they do
it. You may have noticed that we have no ‘steerage’.”

I had noticed it.

“They have decent surroundings from the first step. They have to be
antiseptically clean, they and all their belongings, before entering the
ship.”

“But what an awful expense!” I ventured.

“Suppose you keep cattle, John, and knew how to fatten and improve them;
and suppose your ranch was surrounded by strays—mavericks—anxious to
come in. Would you call it ‘an expense’ to add to your herd?”

“You can’t sell people.”

“No, but you can profit by their labor.”

“That sounds like the same old game. I should think your Socialism would
have put an end to that.”

“Socialism did not alter the fact that wealth comes by labor,” she
replied. “All these people work. We provide the opportunity for them, we
train them to higher efficiency, especially the children. The very best
and wisest of us are proud to serve there—as women used to be proud
when they were invited ‘to help receive’ some personage. We receive
Humanity—and introduce it to America. What they produce is used to
cover the expense of their training, and also to lay up a surplus for
themselves.”

“They must produce more than they used to,” observed I drily.

“They do,” said Nellie.

“You might as well finish this thing up,” I said. “Then when people talk
to me about immigration, I can look intelligent and say, ‘I know about
that.’ And really, I’m interested. How do you begin with ‘em?”

“When they come into Jamaica Harbor they see a great crescent of white
piers, each with its gate. We’ll go and see it some day—splendid
arches with figures on them, like the ones they used to put up for
Triumphs. There’s the German Gate and the Spanish Gate, the English
Gate, the Italian Gate—and so on. There is welcome in their own
language—and instruction in ours. There is physical examination—the
most searching and thorough—microscopic—chemical. They have to come
up to a certain standard before they are graduated, you see.”

“Graduated?”

“Yes. We have a standard of citizenship now—an idea of what people
ought to be and how to make them so. Dear me! To think that you don’t
know about that---"

“I shouldn’t think they’d stand for it—all this examination and so
on.”

“No country on earth offers so much happiness to its people. Nowhere
else—yet—is there as good opportunity to be helped up, to have real
scientific care, real loving study and assistance! Everybody likes to be
made the most of! Everybody—nearly—has the feeling that they might
be something better if they had a chancel We give them the chance.”

“Then I should think you’d have all creation on your hands at once.”

“And depopulate the other nations? They had something to say about that!
You see this worked all sorts of ways. In the first place, when we got
all the worst and lowest people, that left an average of better ones at
home—people who could learn more quickly. When we proved what good
stuff human nature was, rightly treated, they all took heart of grace
and began to improve their own. Then, as our superior attractions
steadily drew off ‘the lower classes,’ that raised the value of those
who remained. They were better paid, better thought of at home. As more
and more people came to us, the other nations got rather alarmed, and
began to establish counter attractions—to keep their folks at home.
Also, many other nations had some better things than we did, you
remember. And finally most people love their own country better than any
other, no matter how good. No, the balance of population is not
seriously altered.”

“Still, with such an influx of low-grade people you must have a
Malthusian torrent of increasing population on your hands.”

Again that odd listening look, her head a little on one side.

“I have to keep remembering,” she said. “Have to recall what people
wrote and said and thought in the past generation. The idea was that
people had to increase like rabbits, and would eat up the food supply,
so wars and pestilences and all manner of cruel conditions were
necessary to ‘keep down the population.’ Wasn’t that it?”

“You are twenty years out, my dear!” I rejoiced to assure her. “We had
largely passed that, and were beginning to worry about the decreasing
birth rate—among the more intelligent. It was only the lowest grade
that kept on ‘like rabbits’ as you say. But it’s that sort you seem to
have been filling in with. I should think it would have materially
lowered the average. Or have you, in this new ‘forcing system’ made
decent people out of scrubs?”

“That’s exactly what we’ve done; we’ve improved the people and lowered
the birth-rate at one stroke!”

“They were beginning to talk eugenics when I left.”

“This is not eugenics—we have made great advances in that, of course;
but the chief factor in this change is a common biological
law---‘individuation is in inverse proportion to reproduction,’ you
know. We individualize the women—develop their personal power, their
human characteristics—and they don’t have so many children.”

“I don’t see how that helps unless you have eliminated the brutality of
men.”

“My dear brother, the brutality of men lowered the birthrate—it didn’t
raise it! One of those undifferentiated peasant women would have a baby
every year if she was married to a saint—and she couldn’t have more in
polyandry—unless it were twins I No, the birthrate was for women to
settle—and they have.”

“Out of fashion to have children at all?”

“No, John, you needn’t sneer. We have better children than ever were
born on earth before, and they grade higher every year. But we are
approaching a balanced population.”

I didn’t like the subject, and turned to the clear skyline of the
distant city. It towered as of old, but seemed not so close-packed. Not
one black cloud—and very few white ones!

“You’ve ended the smoke nuisance, I’m glad to see. Has steam gone, too?”

“We use electricity altogether in all the cities now,” she said. “It
occurred to us that to pipe a leaking death into every bedroom; to
thread the city with poison, fire and explosion, was foolish.”

“Defective wiring used to cause both death and conflagration, didn’t
it?”

“It did,” she admitted; “but it is not ‘defective’ any more.”

“Is the coal all gone?”

“No, but we burn it at the mines—by a process which does not waste
ninety per cent of the energy—and transmit the power.”

“For all New York?”

“Oh, no. New York has enough water power, you see. The tide mills are
enough for this whole region.”

“They solved the tide-mill problem, did they?”

“Yes. There are innumerable mechanical advances, of course. You’ll enjoy
them.”

We were near enough now to see the city clearly.

“What a splendid water front!” I cried. “Why, this is glorious.”

It surely was. The wide shores swung away, glittering in the pure
sunlight. Staten Island lay behind us, a vision of terraced loveliness;
the Jersey shore shone clear, no foul pall of oil smoke overhanging; the
Brooklyn banks were banks of palaces, and Manhattan itself towered
royally before us, all bordered with broad granite piers.

“‘Marginal mile after mile of smooth-running granite embankment’” quoted
Nellie. “‘Broad steps of marble descending for the people to enter the
water. White-pillared piers------"

“Look at the water!” I cried, suddenly. “It’s clear!”

“Of course it’s clear,” she agreed laughingly. “This is a civilized
country, I tell you.”

I looked and looked. It was blue and bright in the distance; it was a
clear, soft green beneath us. I saw a fish leap "

“So far I’m with you, anyhow,” said I. “That certainly is a big
step—and looks like a miracle. New York harbor clean! . . . How about
customs?” I asked as we drew in.

“Gone—clean forgotten—with a lot of other foolishness. The air ships
settled that. We couldn’t plant custom houses in the air, you
see—along ten thousand miles of coast and border.”

I was watching the shore. There were plenty of people about, but
strangely gay of aspect and bright-colored in raiment. I could see
amusement piers—numbers of them—some evidently used as gymnasia, in
some there was dancing. Motor cars of all descriptions ran swiftly and
quietly about. Air ships, large and small, floated off, to the north and
west mostly. The water was freckled with pleasure boats. I heard
singing—and music.

“Some new holiday?” I ventured.

“Not at all,” said my sister. “It is afternoon.”

She watched me, quizzically.

“It is afternoon,” she repeated. “Let that sink in!”

It sank in, slowly.

“Do you mean that no one works in the afternoon?”

“No one—except those who don’t work in the morning. Some kinds of work
can’t stop, of course; but most kinds can. I told you before—no one
has to work more than two hours a day; most people work four. Why?” She
saw my unbelieving stare. “Because we like to. Also because we are
ambitious,” she went on. “I told you of the gain we’ve made in ‘the
civilized world.’ Not all of it is civilized. We are still
missionarying. And while there is need of help anywhere on earth, most
of us work overtime. Also it lays up public capital—we are planning
some vast undertakings—and gives a wider margin for vacations.”

I was thinking in a hazy way of a world that was not tired, not driven,
no nose on any grindstone; of a people who only had to work two
hours—and worked four! Yet there was every evidence of increased
wealth.

Suddenly Nellie gave a joyous little cry.

“Why, there’s Owen!” she waved her veil. “And there’s Jerrold and
Hallier. She fairly danced with pleasure.

I could see a big grayish man madly waving his hat down there—and two
young folks hopping up and down and flourishing handkerchiefs, among
many similarly excited.

“Oh, how good of him!” she cried. “I never dreamed they’d be here!”

“Nellie,” said I sternly. “You never told me you were married!”

“Why should I?” she asked innocently. “You never asked me.”

I had not. I had seen that she signed her name “Ellen Robertson,” and I
knew she was president of a college—how could I imagine her married.
Married she evidently was, and even her long-lost brother was forgotten
for a moment as the big man engulfed her in his gray overcoat, and the
tall son and daughter added their arms to the group.

But it was only a moment, and the big brotherly grasp of my new
relation’s hand, the cordial nephewly grip, and affectionate niecely
kiss gave me a new and unexpected sense of the joys of homecoming.

These were people, real people, as warm and kind and cheery as people
ever were; and they greeted me with evident good will. It was “Uncle
John” in no time, and Hallie in especial seized upon me as her own.

“I know mother’s got you all broken in by this time,” she said. “And
that you are prepared for all manner of amazing disclosures. But Mother
never told us how handsome you are, Uncle John!”

“In vain is the net spread in sight of any bird,” murmured young Jerrold
mischievously.

“Don’t listen to him, Uncle! I am perfectly sincere,” she protested,
leaning over to hug her mother again, and turning back to me with a
confiding smile.

“Why should I doubt such evident good judgment?” said I. And she slipped
her hand in mine and squeezed it. Nellie sat there, looking as proud and
happy and matronly and motherly as anybody could, and a great weight
rolled off my heart. Some things were left of my old world anyway.

We talked gaily and excitedly on our way of immediate plans, rolling
smoothly along broad, open streets. A temporary conclusion was to stop
at Hallie’s apartment for the time being; and I was conscious of a
distinct sense of loss to think of my new-found niece being already
married.

“How still it is!” I presently observed. “Is that because it is
afternoon, too?”

“Oh, no,” they assured me. “We aren’t as noisy as we used to be.”

“These children don’t know anything about what we used to have to put up
with,” said Owen. “They never were in New York while it was screaming.
You see, there are no horses; all surface vehicles are rubber-tired; the
minor delivery is pneumatic, and the freight all goes underneath—on
those silent monorails.”

The great city spread about us, clean as a floor, quiet as a country
town by comparison with what I remembered; yet full of the stir and
murmur of moving crowds. Everyone we passed or met looked happy and
prosperous, and even my inexperienced eye caught a difference in
costuming.

“There’s no masquerade on, is there?” I asked.

“Oh, no—we all wear what we please, that’s all. Don’t you like it?”
Nellie asked.

Generally there appeared the trim short skirt I had noticed as so
appropriate on ship-board; here and there a sort of Florentine gown,
long, richly damasked; sometimes a Greekish flow of drapery; the men
mostly knickerbockered. I couldn’t deny that it was pleasant to the eye,
but it worried me a little none the less.

“There’s no hurry, John,” said Nellie, always unobtrusively watching me.
“Some things you’ll just have to get used to.”

“Before I wholly accept this sudden new brother,” I presently suggested,
“I’d like to know his name.”

“Montrose---Owen Montrose, at your service,” he said, bowing his fine
head. “Ateo-i Jerrold Montrose—and Hallie Robertson!”

“Dear, dear!” I protested. “So it’s come to that, has it?”

“It’s come to that—and we still love each other!” Nellie cheerfully
agreed. “But it isn’t final. There’s a strong movement on foot to drop
hereditary names altogether.”

I groaned. “In the name of common humanity, don’t tell me anything worse
than you have now!”

Hallie’s apartment was in a big building, far uptown, overlooking the
Hudson

“I have to live in town nine months of the year, you see, Uncle, on
account of my work,” she explained rather apologetically.

“Hallie’s an official—and awfully proud of it,” her brother whispered
very loudly.

“Jerrold’s only a musician—and pretends to be proud of it!” she
retorted. Whereat he forcibly held and kissed her.

I could see no very strong difference between this brother and sister
and others I had known—except that they were perhaps unusually
affectionate.

It was a big, handsome place. The front windows faced the great river,
the rear ones opened on a most unexpected scene of loveliness. A big
sheltered garden, every wall-space surrounding it a joy to the
eye—rich masses of climbing vines, a few trees, a quiet fountain,
beautiful stone seats and winding walks, flowers in profusion, and birds
singing.

“We used to have only the song of the tomcat in my time. Have you taught
the cat to lie down with the canary—or killed him?”

“There are no animals kept in cities any more—except the birds—and
they come and

“Mostly sparrows, I suppose?”

“Nb; the sparrow went with the horse,” Owen replied. “And the mouse, the
fly and the croton bug went with the kitchen.”

I turned with a gesture of despair.

“No homes left? "

“I didn’t say ‘home’---I said ‘kitchen.’

Brace up, old man! We still eat—and better food than you ever dreamed
of in your hungriest youth.”

“That’s a long story,” Nellie here suggested. “We mustn’t crowd him.
Let’s get washed and rested a bit, and have some of that food you’re
boasting of.”

They gave me a room with a river window, and I looked out at the broad
current, changed only in its lovely clearness, and at the changeless
Palisades.

Changeless? I started, and seized the traveling glass still on the
strap.

The high cliffs reached away to the northward, still wooded, though
sprinkled with buildings; but the more broken section opposite the city
was a picture of startling beauty.

The water front was green-parked, white-piered, rimmed with palaces, and
the broken slopes terraced and garlanded in rich foliage. White cottages
and larger buildings climbed and nestled along the sunny slopes as on
the cliffs at Capri. It was a place one would go far to see.

I dropped my eyes to the nearer shore.

Again the park, the boulevard, the gracious outlines of fine
architecture.

It was beautiful—undeniably beautiful—but a strange world to me. I
felt like one at a play. A plain, ordinary American landscape ought not
to look like a theatre curtain!

# Chapter 4.

THEY called me to supper. “Most of us have our heartiest meal in the
middle of the day,” my sister said.

“The average man, Victim of Copious Instruction,” added my
brother-in-law, “does his work in the morning; the two hours that he has
to, or the four that he usually puts in. Eight to twelve, or nine to
one—that is the working day for everybody. Then home, rest, a bath
maybe, and then—allow me to help you to some of our Improvements!”

I was hungry, and this simple meal looked and smelled most appetizing.
There was in particular a large shining covered dish, which, being
opened, gave forth so savory a steam as fairly to make my mouth water. A
crisp and toothsome bread was by my plate; a hot drink, which they
laughingly refused to name, proved most agreeable; a suave, cool salad
followed; fruits, some of which were new to me, and most delicate little
cakes, closed the meal.

They would not tell me a thing, only saying “Have some more!” and I did.
Not till I had eaten, with continuous delight, three helpings from the
large dish did I notice that it stood alone, so to speak.

Nellie followed my eye with her usual prompt intelligence. “Yes,” she
said, “this is all. But we can send for other things in the twinkling of
an eye; what would you like?”

I leaned back in my chair and looked at her reproachfully. “I would like
some of that salad—not very much, please! And some of those Burbankian
products yonder, and one particular brown little cake—if I can hold
it.”

Nellie smiled demurely. “Oh!” she mildly remarked, “I thought for the
moment that our little supper seemed scant to you.”

I glared at her, retorting, “Now I will not utter the grateful praises
that were rising to my lips. I will even try to look critical and
dissatisfied.” And I did, but they all laughed.

“It’s no manner of use, Uncle John,” cried my pretty niece; “we saw you
eat it.”

“‘It’ indeed!” I protested. “What is this undeniably easy-to-take
concoction you have stuffed me with?”

“My esteemed new brother,” Owen answered, “we have been considering your
case in conclave assembled, and we think it is wiser to feed you for
awhile and demand by all the rites of hospitality that you eat what is
set before you and ask no questions for conscience sake. When you begin
to pine, to lose your appetite, to look wan and hollow-eyed, then we may
reconsider. Meanwhile we will tell you everything you want to know about
food in general, and even some particulars—present dishes always
excepted.”

“I will now produce information,” began Hallie, “my office being that of
Food Inspector.”

“Her main purpose in bringing you here, Uncle, was to give you food and
then talk about it,” said Jerrold solemnly. Hallie only made a face at
him, and went on:

“We have a magnificent system of production and distribution,” she
explained, “with a decreasing use of animal foods.”

“Was this a vegetarian meal?” I asked in a hollow voice.

“Mostly; but you shall have meat when you want it—better meat than you
used to get, too.”

“Cold Storage Meat?”

“Oh, no; that’s long since stopped. The way we manage about meat is
this: A proper proportion of edible animals are raised under good
conditions—nice, healthy, happy beasts; killed so that they don’t know
it!---and never kept beyond a certain time limit.

“You see,” she paused, looking for the moment like her mother, “the
whole food business is changed—you don’t realize.”

“Go ahead and tell me—tell me all—my life at present is that of
Rollo, I perceive, and I am most complacent after this meal.”

“Uncle, I rejoice in your discovery, I do indeed. You are an uncle after
my own heart,” said Jerrold.

So my fair niece, looking like any other charming girl in a pretty
evening frock, began to expound her specialty. Her mother begged to
interrupt for the moment. “Let me recall to him things as they
were—which you hardly know, you happy child. Don’t forget, John, that
when we were young we did not know what good food was.”

I started to protest, but she shook her finger at me.

“No, we didn’t, my dear boy. We knew ‘what we liked,’ as the people said
at the picture show; but that did not make it good—good in itself or
good for us. The world was ill-fed. Most of the food was below par; a
good deal was injurious, some absolutely poison. People sold poison for
food in 1910, don’t forget that! You may remember the row that was
beginning to be made about it.”

I admitted recalling something of the sort, though it had not
particularly interested me at the time.

“Well, that row went on—and gained in force. The women woke up.”

“If you have said that once since we met, my dear sister, you’ve said it
forty times. I wish you would make a parenthesis in these food
discussions and tell me how, when and why the women woke up.”

Nellie looked a little dashed, and Owen laughed outright.

“You stand up for your rights, John!” he said, rising and slapping me on
the shoulder. “Let’s go in the other room and settle down for a
chin—it’s our fate.”

“Hold him till he sees our housekeeping,” said Jerrold. I stood
watching, while they rapidly placed our dishes—which I now noticed
were very few—in a neat square case which stood on a side table.
Everything went in out of sight; paper napkins from the same receptacle
wiped the shining table; and then a smooth-running dumbwaiter took it
from our sight.

“This is housework,” said Nellie, mischievously.

“I refuse to be impressed. Come back to our muttons,” I insisted. “You
can tell me about your domestic sleight-of-hand in due season.”

So we lounged in the large and pleasant parlor, the broad river before
us, rimmed with starry lamps, sparkling everywhere with the lights of
tiny pleasure craft, and occasionally the blaze and wash of larger
boats. I had a sense of pleasant well-being. I had eaten heartily, very
heartily, yet was not oppressed. My new-found family pleased me well.
The quiet room was beautiful in color and proportion, and as my eyes
wandered idly over it I noted how few in number and how harmonious were
its contents giving a sense of peace and spaciousness.

The air was sweet---I did not notice then, as I did later, that the
whole city was sweet-aired now; at least by comparison with what cities
used to be. From somewhere came the sound of soft music, grateful to the
ear. I stretched myself luxuriously with:

“Now, then, Nellie—let her go---‘the women woke up.’ "

“Some women were waking up tremendously, before you left, John
Robertson, only I dare say you never noticed it. They just kept on,
faster and faster, till they all did—about all. There are some Dodos
left, even yet, but they don’t count—discredited grandmothers!”

“And, being awake?” I gently suggested.

“And being awake, they” She paused for an instant, seeking an
expression, and Jerrold’s smooth bass voice put in, “They saw their duty
and they did it.”

“Exactly,” his mother agreed, with a proudly loving glance at him;
“that’s just what they did! And in regard to the food business, they
recognized at last that it was their duty to feed the world—and that
it was miserably done! So they took hold.”

“Now, mother, this is my specialty,” Hallie interposed.

“When a person can only talk about one thing, why oppose them?” murmured
Jerrold. But she quite ignored him, and re—opened her discussion.

“We—that is, most of the women and some of the men—began to
seriously study the food question, both from a hygienic and an economic
standpoint. I can’t tell you that thirty years’ work in a minute, Uncle
John, but here’s the way we manage it now: We have learned very
definitely what people ought not to eat, and it is not only a
punishable, but a punished offense to sell improper food stuffs.”

“How are the people to know?” I ventured.

“The people are not required to know everything. All the food is watched
and tested by specialists; what goes into the market is good—all of
it.”

“By impeccable angelic specialists—like my niece?”

She shook her head at me. “If they were not, the purchaser would spot
them at once. You see, our food supply is not at the mercy of the
millions of ignorant housewives any more. Food is bought and prepared by
people who know how—and they have all the means—and knowledge—for
expert tests.”

“And if the purchaser too was humanly fallible? "

She cast a pitying glance on me, and her father took the floor for a
moment.

“You see, John, in the old time the dealers were mostly poor, and sold
cheap and bad stuff to make a little money. The buyers were mostly poor,
and had to buy the cheap and nasty stuff. Even large manufacturers were
under pressure, and had to cheat to make a profit—or thought they had
to. Then when we got to inspectors and such like they were under the
harrow, too, and were by no means impeccable. Our big change is this:
Nobody is poor now.”

“I hear you say that,” I answered, “but I can’t seem to get it through
my head. Have you really divided all the property?”

“John Robertson, I’m ashamed of you!” cried Nellie. “Even in 1910 people
knew better than that—people who knew anything!”

“That wasn’t necessary,” said Owen, “nor desirable. What we have done is
this: First, we have raised the productive capacity of the population;
second, we have secured their right to our natural resources; third, we
have learned to administer business without waste. The wealth of the
world grows enormously. It is not what you call ‘equally distributed,’
but every one has enough. There is no economic danger any more; there is
economic peace.”

“And economic freedom?” asked I sharply.

“And economic freedom. People choose the work they like best, and
work—freely, more than they have to.”

I pondered on this. “Ah, but they have to—labor is compulsory.”

Owen grinned. “Yes, labor is compulsory—always was. It is compulsory
on everyone now. We used to have two sets who wouldn’t work—paupers
and the idle rich; no such classes left—all busy.”

“But, the freedom of the individual "

I persisted.

“Come, come, brother; society always played hob with the freedom of the
individuals whenever it saw fit. It killed, imprisoned, fined; it had
compulsory laws and regulations; it required people to wear clothes and
furnished no clothes for them to wear. If society has a right to take
human life, why has it not a right to improve it? No, my dear man,”
continued Owen (he was evidently launched on his specialty now) “society
is not somebody else domineering over us! Society is us—taking care of
ourselves.”

I took no exception to this, and he began again. “Society, in our young
days, was in a state of auto-intoxication. It generated its own poisons,
and absorbed them in peaceful, slow suicide. To think!---it seems im
possible now—to think of allowing anybody to sell bad food!”

“That wasn’t the only bad thing they sold” I suggested.

“No; unfortunately. Why, look here---" Owen slid a glass panel in the
wall and took out a book.

“That’s clever,” I remarked approvingly, “Bookcases built in!”

“Yes, they are everywhere now,” said Nellie. “Books—a few of
them—are common human necessities. Every home, every room almost, has
these little dust-tight, insect-proof wall cases. Concrete construction
has helped very much in all such matters.”

Owen had found his place, and now poured upon me a concentrated list of
the adulterated materials deteriorating the world in that period so
slightingly referred to as “my day.” I noticed with gratitude that Owen
said “When we were young!”

“You never were sure of getting anything pure,” he said scornfully, “no
matter what you paid for it. How we submitted to such rank outrage for
so long I cannot imagine I This was taken up very definitely some twenty
years ago, by the women mostly.”

“Aha---‘when the women woke up!’ " I cried.

“Yes, just that. It is true that their being mostly mere housewives and
seamstresses was a handicap in some ways; but it was a direct advantage
in others. They were almost all consumers, you see, not producers. They
were not so much influenced by considerations of the profits of the
manufacturer as they were by the direct loss to their own pockets and
health. Yes,” he smiled reminiscently, “there were some pretty warm
years while this thing was thrashed out. One of the most successful
lines of attack was in the New Food system, though.”

“I *will* talk!” cried Hallie. “Here I’ve inveigled Uncle John up
here—and—and fed him to repletion; and have him completely at my
mercy, and then you people butt in and do all the talking!”

“Go it, little sister—you’re dead right!” agreed Jerrold, “You see,
Uncle, it’s one thing to restrain and prevent and punish—and another
thing to substitute improvements.”

“Kindergarten methods?” I ventured.

“Yes, exactly. As women had learned this in handling children, they
began to apply it to grown people—the same children, only a little
older. Ever so many people had been talking and writing about this food
business, and finally some of them got together and really started it.”

“One of these cooperative schemes?” I was beginning, but the women
looked at me with such pitying contempt that I promptly withdrew the
suggestion.

“Not much!” said Nellie disdainfully. “Of course, those cooperative
schemes were a natural result of the growing difficulties in our old
methods, but they were on utterly wrong lines. No, sir; the new food
business was a real business, and a very successful one. The first
company began about 1912 or ’13, I think. Just some women with a real
business sense, and enough capital. They wisely concluded that a block
of apartments was the natural field for their services; and that
professional women were their natural patrons.”

“The unprofessional women—or professional wives, as you might call
them—had only their housewifery to preserve their self-respect, you
see,” put in Owen. “If they didn’t do housekeeping for a living,
what—in the name of decency—did they do?”

“This was called the Home Service Company,” said Hallie. "(I will talk,
mother!) They built some unusually attractive apartments, planned by
women, to please women; this block was one of the finest designs of
their architects—women, too, by the way.”

“Who had waked up,” murmured Jerrold, unnoticed.

“It was frankly advertised as specially designed for professional women.
They looked at it, liked it, and moved it; teachers, largely doctors,
lawyers, dressmakers; women who worked.”

Sort of a nunnery?” I asked.

“My dear brother, do you imagine that all working women were orphan
spinsters, even in your day?” cried Nellie. “The self-supporting women
of that time generally had other people to support, too. Lots of them
were married; many were widows with children; even the single ones had
brothers and sisters to take care of.”

“They rushed in, anyhow,” said Hallie. “The place was beautiful and
built for enjoyment. There was a nice garden in the middle "

“Like this one here?” I interrupted. “This is a charming patio. How did
they make space for it?”

“New York blocks were not divinely ordained,” Owen replied. “It occurred
to the citizens at last they they could bisect those 200x800-foot
oblongs, and they did. Wide, tree-shaded, pleasant ways run between the
old avenues, and the blocks remaining are practically squares.”

“You noticed the irregular border of grass and shrubbery as we came up,
didn’t you, Uncle?” asked Jerrold. “We forgot to speak about it, because
we are used to it.”

I did recall now that our ride had been not through monotonous,
stone-faced, right-angled ravines, but along the pleasant fronts of
gracious varying buildings, whose skyline was a pleasure and street line
bordered greenly,

“You didn’t live here and don’t remember, maybe,” Owen remarked, “but
the regular thing uptown was one of those lean, long blocks, flat-faced
and solid, built to the side-walk’s edge. If it was a line of private
houses they were bordered with gloomy little stone-paved areas, and
ornamented with ash-cans and garbage pails. If the avenue end was faced
with tall apartments, their lower margin was infested with a row of
little shops—meat, fish, vegetable, fruit—with all their litter and
refuse and flies, and constant traffic. Now a residence block is a thing
of beauty on all sides. The really necessary shops are maintained, but
planned for in the building, and made beautiful. Those fly-tainted meat
markets no longer exist.”

“I will talk!” said Hallie, so plaintively that we all laughed and let
her.

“That first one I was telling you about was very charming and
attractive. There were arrangements on the top floor for nurseries and
child gardens; and the roof was for children all day; evenings the
grown-ups had it. Great care was taken by the management in letting this
part to the best professionals in child culture.

“There were big rooms, too, for meetings and parties; places for
billiards and bowling and swimming—it was planned for real human
enjoyment, like a summer hotel.”

“But I thought you said this place was for women,” I incautiously
ventured.

“Oh, Uncle John! And has it never occurred to you that women like to
amuse themselves? Or that professional women have men relatives and men
friends? There were plenty of men in the building, and plenty more to
visit it. They were shown how nice it was, you see. But the chief card
was the food and service. This company engaged, at high wages,
first-class houseworkers, and the residents paid for them by the hour;
and they had a food service which was beyond the dreams of—of—homes,
or boarding houses.”

“Your professional women must have been millionaires,” I mildly
suggested.

“You think so because you do not understand the food business, Uncle
John; nobody did in those days. We were so used to the criminal waste of
individual house-keeping, with its pitifully low standards, and to
monotonous low-grade restaurant meals, with their waste and extortion,
that it never occurred to us to estimate the amount of profit there
really was in the business. These far-seeing women were pioneers—but
not for long! Dozens are claiming first place now, just as the early
‘Women’s Clubs’ used to.

“They established in that block a meal service that was a wonder for
excellence, and for cheapness, too; and people began to learn.”

I was impressed, but not convinced, and she saw it.

“Look here, Uncle John, I hate to use figures on a helpless listener,
but you drive me to it.”

Then she reached for the bookcase and produced her evidence, sparingly,
but with effect. She showed me that the difference between the expense
of hiring separate service and the same number of people patronizing a
service company was sufficient to reduce expenses to the patrons and
leave a handsome payment for the company

Owen looked on, interpreting to my ignorance.

“You never kept house, old, man,” he said, “nor thought much about it, I
expect; but you can figure this out for yourself easily enough. Here
were a hundred families, equal to, say, five hundred persons. They hired
a hundred cooks, of course; paid them something like six dollars a
week—call it five on an average. There’s $500 a week, just for
cooks---$26,000 a year!

“Now, as a matter of fact (our learned daughter tells us this), ten
cooks are plenty for five hundred persons—at the same price would cost
$1,300 a year!”

“Ten are plenty, and to spare,” said Hallie; “but we pay them
handsomely. One chef at $3,000; two next bests at $2,000 each, four
thousand; two at $1,000 apiece, two thousand; five at $800, four
thousand. That’s $18,000—half what we paid before, and the difference
in service between a kitchen maid and a scientific artist.”

“Fifty per cent, saved on wages, and 500 per cent, added to skill,” Owen
continued. “And you can go right on and add 90 per cent, saving in fuel,
90 per cent, in plant, 50 per cent, in utensils, and—how much is it,
Hallie, in materials?”

Hallie looked very important.

“Even when they first started, when food was shamefully expensive and
required all manner of tests and examinations, the saving was all of 60
per cent. Now it is fully 80 per cent.”

“That makes a good deal all told, Uncle John,” Jerrold quietly remarked,
handing me a bit of paper. “You see, it does leave a margin of profit.”

I looked rather helplessly at the figures; also at Hallie.

“It is a shame, Uncle, to hurry you so, but the sooner you get these
little matters clear in your head, the better. We have these great food
furnishing companies, now, all over the country; and they have market
gardens and dairies and so on, of their own. There is a Food Bureau in
every city, and a National Food Bureau, with international relations.
The best scientific knowledge is used to study food values, to improve
old materials and develop new ones; there’s a tremendous gain.”

“But—do the people swallow things as directed by the government?” I
protested. “Is there no chance to go and buy what you want to eat when
you want it?”

They rose to their feet with one accord. Jerrold seized me by the hand.

“Come on, Uncle!” he cried. “Now is as good a time as any. You shall see
our food department—come to scoff and remain to prey—if you like.”

The elevator took us down, and I was led unresistingly among their
shining modernities.

“Here is the source of supply,” said Owen, showing where the basement
supply room connected with a clean, airy subway under the glass-paved
sidewalk. “Ice we make, drinking water we distil, fuel is wired to us;
but the food stuffs are brought this way. Come down early enough and you
would find these arteries of the city flowing steadily with------"

“Milk and honey,” put in Jerrold.

“With the milk train, the meat train, the vegetable train, and so on.”

“Ordered beforehand?” I asked.

“Ordered beforehand. Up to midnight you may send down word as to the
kind of mushrooms you prefer—and no extra charge. During the day you
can still order, but there’s a trifle more expense—not much. But most
of us are more than content to have our managers cater for us. From the
home outfit you may choose at any time. There are lists upstairs, and
here is the array.”

There were but few officials in this part of the great establishment at
this hour, but we were politely shown about by a scholarly looking man
in white linen, who had been reading as we entered. They took me between
rows of glass cases, standing as books do in the library, and showed me
the day’s baking; the year’s preserves; the fragrant, colorful shelves
of such fruit and vegetables as were not fresh picked from day to day.

“We don’t get today’s strawberries till the local ones are ripe,”
Jerrold told us.

“These are yesterday’s, and pretty good yet.”

“Excuse me, but those have just come in,” said the white-linen person;
“this morning’s picking, from Maryland.”

I tasted them with warm approval. There was a fascinating display of
cakes and cookies, some old favorites, some of a new but attractive
aspect; and in glass-doored separate ice-chambers, meats, fish, milk,
and butter.

“Can people come in here and get what they want, though?” I inquired
triumphantly.

“They can, and occasionally they do. But what it will take you some time
to realize, John,” my sister explained, “is the different attitude of
people toward their food. We are all not only well fed—sufficiently
fed—but so wisely fed that we seldom think of wanting anything
further. When we do we can order from upstairs, come down to the eating
room and order, send to the big depots if it is some rare thing, or even
come in like this. To the regular purchasers it is practically free,”

“And how if you are a stranger—a man in the street?”

“In every city in our land you may go into any eating house and find
food as good—and cheap—as this,” said Hallie, triumphantly.

# Chapter 5.

WHILE below they took me into the patio, that quiet inner garden which
was so attractive from above. It was a lovely place. The moon was riding
high and shone down into it; a slender fountain spray rose shimmering
from its carved basin; on the southern-facing wall a great wistaria vine
drooped in budding purple, and beds of violets made the air rich with
soft fragrance.

Here and there were people walking; and in the shadowy corners sat young
couples, apparently quite happy.

“I suppose you don’t know the names of one of them,” I suggested.

“On the contrary, I know nearly all,” answered Hallie. “These apartments
are taken very largely by friends and acquaintances. You see, the
gardens and roofs are in common, and there are the reading-rooms,
ballrooms, and so on. It is pleasanter to be friends to begin with, and
most of us get to be afterward, if we are not at first.

“But surely there are some disagreeable people left on earth!”

“Yes; but where there is so much more social life people get together in
congenial sets,” put in Nellie; “just as we used to in summer resorts.,,

“There aren’t so many bores and fools as there used to be, John,” Owen
remarked. “We really do raise better people. Even the old ones have
improved. You see, life is so much pleasanter and more interesting.”

“We’re all healthier, Uncle John, because we’re better fed; that makes
us more agreeable.”

“There’s more art in the world to make us happier,” said Jerrold.
“Hallie thinks it’s all due to her everlasting bread and butter. Listen
to that now!”

From a balcony up there in the moonlight came a delicious burst of
melody; a guitar and two voices, and the refrain was taken up from
another window, from one corner of the garden, from the roof; all in
smooth accord.

“Your group here must be an operatic one,” I suggested. But my nephew
answered that it was not, but that music—good music—was so common
now, and so well taught, that the average was high in both taste and
execution.

We sat late that night, my new family bubbling over with things to say,
and filling my mind with a confused sense of new advantages, unexplained
and only half believed.

I could not bring myself to accept as commonplace facts the unusual
excellences so glibly described, and I suppose my silence showed this as
well as what I said, for my sister presently intervened with decision:

“We must all stop this for tonight,” she said. “John feels as if he was
being forcibly fed—he’s got to rest. Then I suggest that tomorrow Owen
take him in hand—go off for a tramp, why don’t you?---and really
straighten out things. You see, there are two distinct movements to
consider, the unconscious progress that would have taken place anyway in
thirty years, and then the deliberate measures adopted by the ‘New
Lifers,’ and it’s rather confusing. I’ve labored with him all the way
home now; I think the man’s point of view will help.”

Owen was a big man with a strong, wholesome face, and a quizzical little
smile of his own. He and I went up the river next morning in a swift
motor boat, which did not batter the still air with muffled banging as
they used to do, and strolled off in the bright spring sunshine into
Palisade Park.

“We’ve saved all the loveliest of it—for keeps,” he said. “Out here,
where the grass and trees are just as they used to be, you won’t be
bothered, and one expositor will be easier to handle than four at once.
Now, shall I talk, or will you ask questions?”

“I’d like to ask a few questions first, then you can expound by the
hour. Do give me the long and short of this ‘Women-waked-up’
proposition. What does it mean—to a man?”

Owen stroked his chin.

“No loss,” he said at length; “at least, no loss that’s not covered by a
greater gain. Do you remember the new biological theory in regard to the
relative position of the sexes that was beginning to make headway when
we were young?”

I nodded. “Ward’s theory? Oh, yes; I heard something of it. Pretty
far-fetched, it seemed to me.”

“Far-fetched and dear-bought, but true for all that. You’ll have to
swallow it. The female is the race type; the male is her assistant. It’s
established beyond peradventure.”

I meditated, painfully. I looked at Owen. He had just as happy and proud
a look as if he was a real man—not merely an Assistant. I though of
Jerrold—nothing cowed about him; of the officers and men on the ship;
of such men as I had seen in the street.

“I suppose this applies in the main to remote origins?” I suggested.

“It holds good all through life—is just as true as it ever was.”

“Then—do you mean that women run everything, and men are only
helpers?”

“Oh, no; I wasn’t talking about human life at all—only about sex.
‘Running things’ has nothing to do with that. Women run some businesses
and are in practically all, but men still do the bulk of the world’s
work. There is a natural division of labor, after all.”

This was pleasant to hear, but he dashed my hopes.

“Men do almost all the violent plain work—digging and hewing and
hammering; women, as a class, prefer the administrative and constructive
kinds. But all that is open yet, and settling itself gradually; men and
women are working everywhere. The big change which Nellie is always
referring to means simply that women ‘waked up’ to a realization of the
fact that they were human beings.”

“What were they before, pray?”

“Only female beings.”

“Female human beings, of course,” said I.

“Yes; a little human, but mostly female. Now they are mostly human. It
is a great change.”

“I don’t follow you. Aren’t they still wives and mothers?”

“They are still mothers—far more so than they were before, as a matter
of fact; but as to being wives—there’s a difference.”

I was displeased, and showed it.

“Well, is it Polygamy, or Polyandry, or Trial Marriages, or what?”

Owen gazed at me with an expression very like Nellie’s.

“There it is,” he said. “You can only think about women in some sort of
relation to men, of a change in marriage relations as merely a change in
kind; whereas what has happened is a change in degree. We still have
monogamous marriages, on a much purer and more lasting plane than a
generation ago; but the word ‘wife’ does not mean what it used to.”

“Go on---I can’t follow you at all.”

“A ‘wife’ used to be a possession; ‘wilt thou be mine?’ said the lover,
and the wife was his.”

“Well—whose else is she now?” I asked with some sharpness.

“She does not ‘belong’ to anyone in that old sense. She is the wife of
her husband in that she is his true lover, and that their marriage is
legally recorded; but her life and work does not belong to him. He has
no right to her ‘services’ any more. A woman who is in a business—like
Hallie, for instance—does not give it up when she marries.”

I stopped him. “What! Isn’t Hallie married?”

“No—not yet.”

“But—that is her flat?”

“Yes; why not?” He laughed at me. “You see, you can’t imagine a woman
having a home of her own. Hallie is twenty-three. She won’t marry for
some years, probably; but she has her position and is doing excellent
work. It’s only a minor inspectorship, but she likes it. Why shouldn’t
she have a home?”

“Why doesn’t she have it with you?”

“Because I like to live with my wife. Her business, and mine, are in
Michigan; Hallie’s in New York.”

“And when she marries she keeps on being an inspector?” I queried.

“Precisely. The man who marries that young woman will have much
happiness, but he will not ‘own’ her, and she will not be his wife in
the sense of a servant. She will not darn his socks or cook his meals.
Why should she?” “Will she not nurse his babies?” “No; she will nurse
her babies—their babies, not ‘his’ merely.”

“And keep on being an inspector?” “And keep on being an inspector—for
four hours a day—in two shifts. Not a bit more difficult than cooking,
my dear boy.” “But—she will not be with her children---" “She will be
with her children twenty hours out of the twenty-four—if she wants to.
But Hallie’s not specially good with children. . . . You see, John, the
women have specialized—even in motherhood.” Then he went on at
considerable length to show how there had arisen a recognition of far
more efficient motherhood than was being given; that those women best
fitted for the work had given eager, devoted lives to it and built up a
new science of Humaniculture; that no woman was allowed to care for her
children without proof of capacity. “Allowed by whom?” I put in.

“By the other women—the Department of Child Culture—the Government.”

“And the fathers—do they submit to this, tamely?”

“No; they cheerfully agree and approve. Absolutely the biggest thing
that has happened, some of us think, is that new recognition of the
importance of childhood. We are raising better people now.”

I was silent for a while, pulling up bits of grass and snapping small
sticks into inch pieces.

“There was a good deal of talk about Eugenics, I remember,” I said at
last, “and—what was that thing? Endowment of Motherhood?”

“Yes—man’s talk,” Owen explained. “You see, John, we couldn’t look at
women but in one way—in the old days; it was all a question of sex
with us—inevitably, we being males. Our whole idea of improvement was
in better breeding; our whole idea of motherhood was in each woman’s
devoting her whole life to her own children. That turbid freshet of an
Englishman, Wells, who did so much to stir his generation, said

‘I am wholly feminist’---and he was I He saw women only as females and
wanted them endowed as such. He was never able to see them as human
beings and amply competent to take care of themselves.

“Now, our women, getting hold of this idea that they really are human
creatures, simply blossomed forth in new efficiency. They specialized
the food business---Hallie’s right about the importance of that—and
then they specialized the baby business. All .women who wish to, have
babies; but if they wish to take care of them they must show a diploma.”

I looked at him. I didn’t like it—but what difference did that make? I
had died thirty years ago, it appeared.

“A diploma for motherhood!” I repeated; but he corrected me.

“Not at all. Any woman can be a mother—if she’s normal. I said she had
to have a diploma as a child-culturist—quite a different matter.”

“I don’t see the difference.”

“No, I suppose not. I didn’t, once,” he said. “Any and every mother was
supposed to be competent to ‘raise’ children—and look at the kind of
people we raised! You see, we are beginning to learn—just beginning.
You needn’t imagine that we are in a state of perfection—there are
more new projects up for discussion than ever before. We’ve only made a
start. The consequences, so far, are so good that we are boiling over
with propositions for future steps.”

“Go on about the women,” I said. “I want to know the worst and become
resigned.”

“There’s nothing very bad to tell,” he continued cheerfully. “When a
girl is born she is treated in all ways as if she was a boy; there is no
hint made in any distinction between them except in the perfectly open
physiological instruction as to their future duties. Children, young
humans, grow up under precisely the same conditions. I speak, of course,
of the most advanced people—there are still backward places—there’s
plenty to do yet.

“Then the growing girls are taught of their place and power as
mothers—and they have tremendously high ideals. That’s what has done
so much to raise the standard in men. It came hard, but it worked.”

I raised my head with keen interest, remarking, “I’ve glimpsed a sort of
Iron hand in a velvet glove back of all this. What did they do?”

Owen looked rather grim for a moment.

“The worst of it was twenty or twenty-five years back. Most of those men
are dead. That new religious movement stirred the socio-ethical sense to
sudden power; it coincided with the women’s political movement, urging
measures for social improvement; its enormous spread, both by preaching
and literature, lit up the whole community with new facts, ideas and
feelings. Health—physical purity—was made a practical ideal. The
young women learned the proportion of men with syphilis and gonorrhoea
and decided it was wrong to marry them. That was enough. They passed
laws in every State requiring a clean bill of health with every marriage
license. Diseased men had to die bachelors—that’s all.”

“And did men submit to legislation like that?” I protested.

“Why not? It was so patently for the protection of the race—of the
family—of the women and children. Women were solid for it, of
course---And all the best men with them. To oppose it was almost a
confession of guilt and injured a man’s chances of marriage.”

“It used to be said that any man could find a woman to marry him,” I
murmured, meditatively.

“Maybe he could—once. He certainly cannot now. A man who has one of
those diseases is so reported—just like small-pox, you see. Moreover,
it is registered against him by the Department of Eugenics—physicians
are required to send in lists; any girl can find out.”

“It must have left a large proportion of unmarried women.”

“It did, at first. And that very thing was of great value to the world.
They were wise, conscientious, strong women, you see, and they poured
all their tremendous force into social service. Lots of them went into
child culture—used their mother-power that way. It wasn’t easy for
them; it wasn’t easy for the left-over men, either!”

“It must have increased prostitution to an awful extent,” I said.

Owen shook his head and regarded me quizzically.

“That is the worst of it,” he said. “There isn’t any.”

I sat up. I stood up. I walked up and down. “No prostitution! I---I
can’t believe it. Why, prostitution is a social necessity, as old as
Nineveh!”.

Owen laughed outright. “Too late, old man; too late! I know we used to
think so. We did use to call it a ‘social necessity,’ didn’t we? Come,
now, tell me what necessity it was to the women?”

I stopped my march and looked at him.

“To the women,” he repeated. “What did they want of prostitution? What
good did it do them?”

“Why—why—they made a living at it,” I replied, rather lamely.

“Yes, a nice, honorable, pleasant, healthy living, didn’t they? With all
women perfectly well able to earn an excellent living decently; with all
women fully educated about these matters and knowing what a horrible
death was before them in this business; with all women brought up like
human beings and not like over-sexed female animals, and with all women
quite free to marry if they wished to—how many, do you think, would
choose that kind of business?

“We never waited for them to choose it, remember! We fooled them and
lied to them and dragged them in—and drove them in—forced them
in—and kept them as slaves and prisoners. They didn’t really enjoy the
life; you know that. Why should they go into it if they do not have
to—to accommodate us?”

“Do you mean to tell me there are no—wantons—among women?” I
demanded.

“No, I don’t mean any such thing. There are various kinds of
over-developed and morbidly developed women as there are men, and we
haven’t weeded them out entirely. But the whole thing is now recognized
as pathological—cases for medical treatment, or perhaps surgical.
Besides, wantonness is not prostitution. Prostitution is a social crime
of the worst order. No one thing did more harm. The women stamped it
out.”

“Legislated us all into morality, did they?” I inquired sarcastically.

“Legislation did a good deal; education did more; the new religion did
most; social opinion helped. You remember we men never really tried to
legislate against prostitution—we wanted it to go on.”

“Why, surely we did legislate against it—and it was of no use!” I
protested.

“No; we legislated against the women, but not against the men, or the
thing itself. We examined the women, and fined them, and licensed
them—and never did anything against the men. Women legislators used
very different measures, I assure you.”

“I suppose it is for the good of the world,” I presently admitted; “but
"

“But you don’t quite like to think of men in this new and peculiar
position of having to be good!”

“Frankly---I don’t. I’m willing to be good, but---I don’t like to be
given no choice.”

“Well, now, look at it. As it was, we had one way, according to what we
thought was good for us. Rather than lead clean, contented lives at some
expense to ourselves in the way of moral and physical control, we
deliberately sacrificed an army of women to a horrible life and a more
horrible death, and corrupted the blood of the nation. It was on the
line of health they made their stand, not on ‘morality’ alone. Under our
new laws it is held a crime to poison another human being with syphilis,
just as much as to use prussic acid.”

“Nellie said you had no crime now.” “Oh, well, Nellie is an optimist. I
suppose she meant the old kinds and definitions. We don’t call things
‘crimes’ any more. And then, really, there is not a hundredth part of
the evil done that there used to be. We know more, you see, and have
less temptation.”

We were silent for a while. I watched a gull float and wheel over the
blue water. Big airships flew steadily along certain lines. Little ones
sailed about on all sides.

One darted over our heads and lit with a soft swoop on an open
promontory.

“Didn’t they use to buzz?” I asked Owen, “Of course; just as the first
motor boats thumped and banged abominably. We will not stand for
unnecessary noise, as we used to.”

“How do you stop it? More interference with the individual rights?”

“More recognition of public rights. A bad noise is a nuisance, like a
bad smell. We didn’t used to mind it much—but the women did. You see,
what women like has to be considered now.”

“It always was considered!” I broke in with some heat. “The women of
America were the most spoiled, pampered lot on earth; men gave up to
them in all ways.”

“At home, perhaps, but not in public. The city and state weren’t run to
suit them at all.”

“Why should they be? Women belong at home. If they push into a man’s
world they ought to take the consequences.”

Owen stretched his long legs and looked up at the soft, brilliant blue
above us.

“Why do you call the world ‘man’s?” he asked.

“It was man’s; it ought to be. Woman’s place is in the home. I suppose I
sound like ancient history to you?” and I laughed a little shamefacedly.

“We have rather lost that point of view,”

Owen guardedly admitted. “You see " and then he laughed. “It’s no use,
John; no matter how we put it to you it’s a jar. The world’s thought has
changed—and you have got to catch up!”

“Suppose I refuse? Suppose I really am unable?”

“We won’t suppose it for a moment,” he said cheerfully. “Ideas are not
nailed down. Just take out what you had and insert some new ones. Women
are people—just as much as we are; that’s a fact, my dear fellow.
You’ll have to accept it.”

“And are men allowed to be people, too?” I asked gloomily.

“Why, of course! Nothing has interfered with our position as human
beings; it is only our sex supremacy that we have lost.”

“And do you like it?” I demanded.

“Some men made a good deal of fuss at first—the old-fashioned kind,
and all the worst varieties. But modern men aren’t worried in the least
over their position. ., .

See here, John, you don’t grasp this—women are vastly more agreeable
than they used to be.”

I looked at him in amazement.

“Fact!” he said. “Of course, we loved our own mothers and daughters and
sisters, more or less, no matter how they looked or what they did; and
when we were ‘in love’ there was no limit to the glory of ‘the beloved
object.’ But you and I know that women were pretty unsatisfactory in the
old days.”

I refused to admit it, but he went on calmly.

“The ‘wife and mother’ was generally a tired, nervous, overworked
creature. She soon lost her beauty and vigor, her charm and inspiration.
We were forever chasing fine, handsome, highly desirable young girls,
and forever reducing them to weary; worn-out women—in the name of
love! The gay outsiders were always a fresh attraction—as long as we
couldn’t have them. . . . See here, John, can’t you understand? Our old
way of using women wasn’t good for them—nor for us, either, by the
way—but it simply spoiled the women. They were hopelessly out of the
running with us in all human lines; their business was housework, and
ours was world work. There was very little real companionship.

“Now women are intelligent, experienced, well-trained citizens, fully
our equals in any line of work they take up, and with us everywhere.
It’s made the world over!”

“Made it ‘feminist’ through and through, I suppose!” I groaned.

“Not a bit! It used to be ‘masculist’ through and through; now it’s just
human. And, see here—women are more attractive, as women, than they
used to be.”

I stared at this, unbelieving.

“That’s true! You see, they are healthy; there’s a new standard of
physical beauty—very Greek—you must have noticed already the big,
vigorous, fresh-colored, free-stepping girls.”

I had, even in my brief hours of observation.

“They are far more perfect physically, better developed mentally, with a
higher moral sense—yes, you needn’t look like that! We used to call
them our ‘moral superiors,’ just because they had the one virtue we
insisted on—and we never noticed the lack in other lines. Women today
are truthful, brave, honest, generous, self—controlled; they
are—jollier, more reasonable, more companionable.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” I rather grudgingly admitted. “I was
afraid they would have lost all—charm.”

“Yes, we used to feel that way, I remember. Funny! We were convinced on
the one hand that there was nothing to a woman but her eternal
womanliness, and on the other we were desperately afraid her womanliness
would disappear the moment she turned her mind to anything else. I
assure you that men love women, in general and in particular, much more
than they used to.”

I pondered. “But—what sort of home life do you have?”

“Think for a moment of what we used to have—even in a ‘happy home.’
The man had the whole responsibility of keeping it up—his business
life and interests all foreign to her. She had the whole labor of
running it—the direct manual labor in the great majority of
cases—the management in any case. They were strangers in an industrial
sense.

“When he came home he had to drop all his line of thought—and she
hers, except that she generally unloaded on him the burden of inadequacy
in housekeeping. Sometimes he unloaded, too. They could sympathize and
condole, but neither could help the other.

“The whole thing cost like sin, too. It was a living nightmare to lots
of men—and women! The only things they had in common were their
children and ‘social interests.’

“Well—nowadays, in the first place every body is easy about money.
(I’ll go into that later.) No woman marries except for love—and good
judgment, too; all women are more desirable—more men want to marry
them—and that improves the men! You see, a man naturally cares more
for women than for anything else in life—and they know it! It’s the
handle they lift by. That’s what has eliminated tobacco.”

“Do you mean to say that these women have arbitrarily prevented
smoking?” I do not smoke myself, but I was angry nevertheless.

“Not a bit of it, John—not a bit of it. Anybody can smoke who wants
to.” “Then why don’t they?” “Because women do not like it.” “What has
that to do with it? Can’t a man do what he wants to—even if they don’t
like it?”

“Yes, he can; but it costs too much. Men like tobacco, but they like
love better, old man.”

“Is it one of your legal requirements for marriage?”

“No, not legal; but women disapprove of tobacco-y lovers, husbands,
fathers; they know that the excessive use of it is injurious, and won’t
marry a heavy smoker. But the main point is that they simply don’t like
the smell of the stuff, or of the man who uses it—most women, that
is.”

“But what difference does it make? I dare say that most women did not
like it before, but surely a man has a right "

“To make himself a disgusting object to his wife,” Owen interrupted.
“Yes, he has a ‘right’ to. We would have a right to bang on a tin pan, I
suppose—or to burn rubber, but he wouldn’t be popular!”

“It’s tyranny!” I protested.

“Not at all,” he said, imperturbably. “We had no idea what a nuisance we
used to be, that’s all; or how much women put up with that they did not
like at all. I asked a woman once—when I was a bachelor—why she
objected to tobacco, and she frankly replied that a man who did not
smoke was much pleasanter to kiss I She was a very fascinating little
widow---I confess it made me think.”

“It’s the same with liquor, I suppose? Let’s get it all told.”

“Yes, only more so. Alcoholism was a race evil of the worst sort. I
cannot imagine how we put up with it so long.”

“Is this spotless world of yours one solid temperance union?”

“Practically. We use some light wines and a little spirits yet, but
infrequently—in this country, at least, and Europe is vastly improved.

“But that was a much more serious thing than the other. It wasn’t a mere
matter of not marrying! They used all kinds of means. But come
on—we’ll be late to dinner; and dinner, at least, is still a joy,
Brother John.”

# Chapter 6

OUT of the mass of information offered by my new family and the pleasant
friends we met, together with the books and publications profusely
piling around me, I felt it necessary to make a species of digest for my
own consideration. This I submitted to Nellie, Owen, and one or two
others, adding suggestions and corrections; and thus established in my
own mind a coherent view of what had happened.

In the first place, as Owen repeatedly assured me, nothing was
done—finished—brought to static perfection.

“Thirty years isn’t much, you see,” he said cheerfully. “I dare say if
you’d been here all along you wouldn’t think it was such a great
advance. We have removed some obvious and utterly unnecessary evils, and
cleared the ground for new beginnings; but what we are going to do is
the exciting thing!

“Now you think it is so wonderful that we have no poverty. We think it
is still more wonderful that a world of even partially sane people could
have borne poverty so long.”

We naturally discussed this point a good deal, and they brought up a
little party of the new economists to enlighten me---Dr. Harkness,
sociologist; Mr. Alfred Brown, Department of Production; Mrs. Allerton
of the Local Transportation Bureau; and a young fellow named Pike, who
had written a little book on “Distinctive Changes of Three Decades,”
which I found very useful.

“It was such a simple matter, after all, you see,” the sociologist
explained to me, in an amiable class-room manner.

“Suppose now you were considering the poverty of one family, an isolated
family, sir. Now, if this family was poor, it would be due to the
limitations of the individual or of the environment. Limitations of the
individual would cover inefficiency, false theory of industry,
ill-judged division of labor, poor system of production, or misuse of
product. Limitation of environment would, of course, apply to climate,
soil, natural products, etc. No amount of health, intelligence or virtue
could make Iceland rich—if it was completely isolated; nor England,
for that matter, owing to the inexorable limitations of that
environment.

“Here in this country we have no complaint to make of our natural
resources. The soil is capable of sustaining an enormous population. So
we have merely to consider the limitations of individuals, transferring
our problem from the isolated family to the general public.

“What do we find? All the limitations I enumerated!
Inefficiency—nearly every one below par in working power in the
generation before last, as well as miserably educated; false theories of
industry everywhere—idiotic notions as to what work was ‘respectable’
and what wasn’t, more idiotic notions of payment; worst of all, most
idiotic ideas that work was a curse . . . Might as well call digestion a
curse! Dear! Dear! How benighted we were!

“Then there was ill-judged division of labor—almost universal; that
evil. For instance, look at this one point; half the workers of the
world, nearly, were restricted to one class of labor, and that in the
lowest industrial grade.”

“He means women, in housework, John,” Nellie interpolated. “We never
used to think of that as part of our economic problem.”

“It was a very serious part,” the professor continued, hastily
forestalling the evident intention of Mr. Brown to strike in, “but there
were many others. The obvious utility of natural specialization in labor
seemed scarcely to occur to us. Our system of production was archaic in
the extreme; practically no system was followed.”

“You must give credit to the work of the Department of Agriculture, Dr.
Harkness,” urged Mr. Brown, “the introduction of new fruits, the
improvement of stocks "

“Yes, yes,” agreed Dr. Harkness, “the rudiments were there, of course;
but no real grasp of organized productivity. And as to misuse of
product—why, my dear Mr. Robertson, it is a wonder anybody had enough
to live on in those days, in view of our criminal waste.

“The real turning point, Mr. Robertson, if we can put our finger on one,
is where the majority of the people recognized the folly and evil of
poverty—and saw it to be a thing of our own making. We saw that our
worst poverty was poverty in the stock—that we raised a terrible
percentage of poor people. Then we established a temporary Commission on
Human Efficiency, away back in 1913 or 14 "

“Thirteen,” put in Mr. Pike, who sat back listening to Dr. Harkness with
an air of repressed superiority.

“Thank you,” said the eminent sociologist courteously. “These young
fellows have it all at their fingers’ ends, Mr. Robertson. Better
methods in education nowadays, far better! As I was saying, we
established a Commission on Human Efficiency.”

“You will remember the dawning notions of ‘scientific management’ we
began to have in the first decade of the new century,” Mrs. Allerton
quietly suggested. “It occurred to us later to apply it to
ourselves—and we did.”

“The Commission found that the majority of human beings were not
properly reared,” Dr. Harkness resumed, “with a resultant low standard
of efficiency—shockingly low; and that the loss was not merely to the
individual but to the community. Then Society stretched out a long arm
and took charge of the work of humaniculture—began to lift the human
standard.

“I won’t burden you with details on that line at present; it touched but
one cause of poverty after all. The false theory of industry was next to
be changed. A few far-seeing persons were already writing and talking
about work as an organic social function, but the sudden spread of it
came through the new religion.”

“And the new voters, Dr. Harkness,” my sister added.

He smiled at her benevolently. A large, comfortable, full-bearded, rosy
old gentleman was Dr. Harkness, and evidently in full enjoyment of his
present task.

“Let us never forget the new voters, of course. They have ceased to be
thought of as new, Mr. Robertson—so easily does the human mind accept
established conditions. The new religion urged work—normal,
well-adapted work—as the duty of life—as life itself; and the new
voters accepted this idea as one woman.

“They were, as a class, used to doing their duty in patient industry,
generally distasteful to them; and the opportunity of doing work they
liked—with a sense of higher duty added—was universally welcomed.”

“I certainly remember a large class of women who practiced no industry
at all—no duty, either, unless what they called ‘social duties.’” I
rather sourly remarked. Mrs. Allerton took me up with sudden heat:

“Yes, there were such, in large numbers, in our great cities
particularly; but public opinion was rising against them even as far
back as 1910. The more progressive women turned the light on them first,
and then men took it up and began to see that this domestic pet was not
only expensive and useless but injurious and absurd. I don’t suppose we
can realize,” she continued meditatively,

“how complete the change in public opinion is—and how supremely
important. In visible material progress we have only followed simple
lines, quite natural and obvious, and accomplished what was perfectly
possible at any time—if we had only thought so.”

“That’s the point!” Mr. Pike was unable to preserve his air of restraint
any longer, and burst forth volubly.

“That was the greatest, the most sudden, the most vital of our changes,
sir—the: change in the world’s thought! Ideas are the real things,
sir! Brick and mortar? Bah! We can put brick and mortar in any shape we
choose—but we have to choose first! What held the old world back was
not facts—not conditions—not any material limitations, or psychic
limitations either. We had every constituent of human happiness,
sir—except the sense to use them. The channel of progress was
obstructed with a deposit of prehistoric ideas. We choked up our
children’s minds with this mental refuse as we choked our rivers and
harbors with material refuse, sir.”

Dr. Harkness still smiled. “Mr. Pike was in my class ten years ago,” he
observed amiably. “I always said he was the brightest young man I had.
We are all very proud of Mr. Pike.”

Mr. Pike seemed not over pleased with this communication, and the old
gentleman went on:

“He is entirely right. Our idiotic ideas and theories were the main
causes of poverty after all. The new views on economics—true social
economics, not the ‘dismal science’; with the blaze of the new religion
to show what was right and wrong, and the sudden uprising of half the
adult world—the new voters—to carry out the new ideas; these were
what changed things! There you have it, Mr. Robertson, in a
nutshell—rather a large nutshell, a pericarp, as it were—but I think
that covers it.”

“We students used always to admire Dr. Harkness’ power of easy
generalization,” said Mr. Pike, in a mild, subacid tone, “but if any
ground of inquiry is left to you, Mr. Robertson, I could, perhaps,
illuminate some special points.”

Dr. Harkness laughed in high good humor, and clapped his whilom pupil on
the back.

“You have the floor, Mr. Pike---I shall listen to you with edification.”

The young man looked a little ashamed of his small irony, and continued
more genially:

“Our first step—or one of our first steps, for we advanced like a
strenuous centipede—was to check the birth of defectives and
degenerates. Certain classes of criminals and perverts were rendered
incapable of reproducing their kind. In the matter of those diseases
most injurious to the young, very stringent measures were taken. It was
made a felony to infect wife or child knowingly, and a misdemeanor if it
were done unknowingly. Physicians were obliged to report all cases of
infectious disease, and young girls were clearly taught the consequence
of marriage with infected persons. The immediate result was, of course,
a great decrease in marriage; but the increase in population was scarce
checked at all because of the lowered death rate among children. It was
checked a little; but for twenty years now, it has been recovering
itself. We increase a little too fast now, but see every hope of a
balanced population long before the resources of the world are
exhausted.”

Mr. Brown seized upon a second moment’s pause to suggest that the
world’s resources were vastly increased also—and still increasing.

“Let Pike rest a moment and get his breath,” he said, warming to the
subject, “I want to tell Mr. Robertson that the productivity of the
earth is gaining every year. Here’s this old earth feeding us
all—laying golden eggs as it were; and we used to get those eggs by
the Caesarian operation! We uniformly exhausted the soil—uniformly!
Now a man would no more think of injuring the soil, the soil that feeds
him, than he would of hurting his mother. We steadily improve the soil;
we improve the seed; we improve methods of culture; we improve
everything.”

Mrs. Allerton struck in here, “Not forgetting the methods of
transportation, Mr. Robertson. There was one kind of old world folly
which made great waste of labor and time; that was our constant desire
to eat things out of season. There is now a truer sense of what is
really good eating; no one wants to eat asparagus that is not of the
best, and asparagus cut five or ten days cannot be really good. We do
not carry things about unnecessarily; and the carrying we do is swift,
easy and economical. For slow freight we use waterways wherever
possible—you will be pleased to see the ‘all-water routes’ that thread
the country now. And our roads—you haven’t seen our roads yet! We lead
the world.”

“We used to be at the foot of the class as to roads, did we not?” I
asked; and Mr. Pike swiftly answered:

“We did, indeed, sir. But that very need of good roads made easy to us
the second step in abolishing poverty. Here was a great social need
calling for labor; here were thousands of men calling for employment;
and here were we keeping the supply from the demand by main
strength—merely from those archaic ideas of ours.

“We had a mass of valuable data already collected, and now that the
whole country teemed with new ideals of citizenship and statesmanship,
it did not take very long to get the two together.”

“We furnished employment for all the women, too,” my sister added. “A
Social Service Union was formed the country over; it was part of the new
religion. Every town has one—men and women. The same spirit that used
to give us crusaders and missionaries now gave plenty of enthusiastic
workers.”

“I don’t see yet how you got up any enthusiasm about work,” said I.

“It was not work for oneself,” Nellie explained. “That is what used to
make it so sordid; we used really to believe that we were working each
for himself. This new idea was overwhelming in its simplicity—and
truth; work is social service—social service is religion—that’s
about it.”

“Not only so,” Dr. Harkness added, “it made a three-fold appeal; to the
old, deep-seated religious sense; to the new, vivid intellectual
acceptance; and to the very wide-spread, wholesome appreciation of a
clear advantage.

“When a thing was offered to the world that agreed with every social
instinct, that appealed to common sense, that was established by the
highest scientific authority, and that had the overwhelming sanction of
religion—why the world took to it.”

“But it is surely not natural to people to work—much less to like to
work!” I protested.

“There’s where the change comes in,” Mr. Pike eagerly explained. “We
used to think that people hated work—nothing of the sort! What people
hated was too much I work, which is death; work they were personally
unfit for and therefore disliked, which is torture; work under improper
conditions, which is disease; work held contemptible, looked down upon
by other people, which is a grievous social distress; and work so
ill-paid that no human beings could really live by it.”

“Why Mr. Robertson, if you can throw any light on the now inconceivable
folly of that time so utterly behind us, we shall be genuinely indebted
to you. It was quite understood in your day that the whole world’s life,
comfort, prosperity and progress depended upon the work done, was it
not?”

“Why, of course; that was an economic platitude,” I answered.

“Then why were the workers punished for doing it?”

“Punished? What do you mean?”

“I mean just what I say. They were punished, just as we punish
criminals—with confinement at hard labor. The great mass of the people
were forced to labor for cruelly long hours at dull, distasteful
occupations; is not that punishment?”

“Not at all,” I said hotly. “They were free at any time to leave an
occupation they did not like.”

“Leave it for what alternative?”

“To take up another,” said I, perceiving that this, after all, was not
much of an escape.

“Yes, to take up another under the same heavy conditions, if there was
any opening; or to starve—that was their freedom.”

“Well, what would you have?” I asked. “A man must work for his living
surely.”

“Remember your economic platitude, Mr. Robertson,” Dr. Harkness
suggested. “The whole world’s life, comfort, prosperity and progress
depends upon the work done, you know. It was not their living they were
working for; it was the world’s.”

“That is very pretty as a sentiment,” I was beginning; but his twinkling
eye reminded that an economic platitude is not precisely sentimental.

“That’s where the change came,” Mr. Pike eagerly repeated. “The idea
that each man had to do it for himself kept us blinded to the fact that
it was all social service; that they worked for the world, and the world
treated them shamefully—so shamefully that their product was
deteriorated, markedly deteriorated.”

“You will be continually surprised, Mr. Robertson, at the improvements
of our output,” remarked Mr. Brown. “We have standards in every form of
manufacture, required standards; and to label an article in correctly is
a misdemeanor.”

“That was just starting in the pure-food agitation, you remember,” my
sister put in---"(‘with apple juice containing one-tenth of one per
cent, of benzoate of soda’).” “And now,” Mr. Brown continued, " ‘all
wool’ is all wool; if it isn’t, you can have the dealer arrested. Silk
is silk, nowadays, and cream is cream.”

“And ‘caveat emptor’ is a dead letter?” “Yes, it is ‘caveat vendor’ now.
You see, selling goods is public service.”

“You apply that term quite differently from what it stood for in my
memory,” said I.

“It used to mean some sort of beneficent statesmanship, at first,”
Nellie agreed. “Then it spread to various philanthropic efforts and
wider grades of government activities. Now it means any kind of world
work.”

She saw that this description did not carry much weight with me, and
added, “Any kind of human work, John; that is, work a man gives his
whole time to and does not himself consume, is world work—is social
service.”

“If a man raises, by his own labor, just enough to feed himself—that
is working for himself,” Mr. Brown explained, “but if he raises more
corn than he consumes, he is serving humanity.”

“But he does not give it away,” I urged; “he is paid for it.”

“Well, you paid the doctor who saved your child’s life, but the doctor’s
work was social service none the less—and the teacher’s—anybody’s.”

“But that kind of work benefits humanity---"

“Yes, and does it not benefit humanity to eat—to have shoes and
clothes and houses? John, John, wake up!” Nellie for the first time
showed impatience with me. But my brother-in-law extended a protecting
arm.

Now, Nellie, don’t hurry him. This thing will burst upon him all at
once. Of course, it’s glaringly plain, but there was a time when you and
I did not see it either.”

I was a little sulky. “Well, as far as I gather,” and I took out my note
book, “people all of a sudden changed all their ideas about
everything—and your demi-millennium followed.”

“I wish we could say that,” said Mrs. Allerton. “We axe not telling you
of our present day problems and difficulties, you see. No, Mr.
Robertson, we have merely removed our most obvious and patently
unnecessary difficulties, of which poverty was at least the largest.

“What we did, as we have rather confusedly suggested, I’m afraid, was to
establish such measures as to insure better births, and vastly better
environment and education for every child. That raised the standard of
the people, you see, and increased their efficiency. Then we provided
employment for everyone, under good conditions, and improved the world
in two ways at once.”

“And who paid for this universal employment?” I asked.

“Who paid for it before?” she returned promptly.

“The employer, of course.”

“Did he? Out of his own private pocket? At a loss to himself.”

“Why, of course not,” I replied, a little nettled. “Out of the profits
of the business.”

“And ‘the business’ was the work done by the employees?”

“Not at all! He did it himself; they only furnished the labor.”

“Could he do it alone—without ‘labor?’ Did he furnish employment as a
piece of beneficence, outside of his business---Ah, Mr. Robertson,
surely it is clear that unless a man’s labor furnished a profit to his
employer, he would not be employed. It was on that profit that ‘labor’
was paid—they paid themselves. They do now, but at a higher rate.”

I was annoyed by this clever juggling with the hard facts of business.

“That is very convincing, Mrs. Allerton,” I said with some warmth, “but
it unfortunately omits certain factors. A lot of laborers could make a
given article, of course; but they could not sell it—and that is where
the profit comes in. What good would it do the laborer to pile up goods
if he could not sell them?”

“And what good would be the ability to sell goods if there were none,
Mr. Robertson. Of course, I recognize the importance of transportation;
that is my own line of work, but there must be something to transport.
As long ago as St. Paul’s day it was known that the hand could not say
to the foot, ‘I have no need of thee.’”

“To cover that ground more easily, Mr. Robertson,” Dr. Harkness
explained, “just put down in your digest there that Bureaus of
Employment were formed all over the country; some at first were of
individual initiative, but in a few years’ time all were in government
management. There was a swift and general improvement in the whole
country. The roads became models to the world, the harbors were cleared,
canals dug, cities rebuilt, bare hills reforested, the value of our
national property doubled and trebled—all owing to the employment of
hitherto neglected labor. Out of the general increase of wealth they got
their share, of course. And where there is work for everyone, at good
wages, there is no poverty; that’s clearly seen.”

# Chapter 7

THE country was as astonishing to me as the city—its old beauty added
to in every direction. They took me about in motor cars, motor boats and
air ships, on foot and on horseback (the only horses now to be found
were in the country) . And while I speak of horses, I will add that the
only dogs and cats I saw, or heard, were in the country, too, and not
very numerous at that. “We’ve changed our views as to ‘pets’ and
‘domestic animals,’ " Nellie said. “We ourselves are the only domestic
animals allowed now. Meat eating, as Hallie told you, is decreasing
every day; but the care and handling of our food animals improves even
more rapidly. Every city has its municipal pastures and dairies, and
every village or residence group. By the way, I might as well show you
one of those last, and get it clear in your mind.”

We were on an air trip in one of the smooth-going, noiseless machines
commonly used, which opened a new world of delight to me. This one held
two, with the aviator. I had inquired about accidents, and was glad to
find that thirty years’ practice had eliminated the worst dangers and
reared a race of flying men.

“In our educational plan today all the children are given full physical
development and control,” my sister explained. “That goes back to the
woman again—the mothers. There was a sort of Hellenic revival—a
recognition that it was possible for us to rear as beautiful human
beings as walked in Athens. When women were really free of man’s
selective discrimination they proved i quite educable, and learned to be
ashamed of their deformities. Then we began to appreciate the human body
and to have children reared in an atmosphere of lovely form and color,
statues and pictures all about them, and the new stories---Oh! I haven’t
told you a thing about them, have I?”

“No,” I said; “and please don’t. I started out to see the country, and
your new-fangled ‘residence groups,’ whatever they may be, and I refuse
to have my mind filled up with educational information. Take me on a
school expedition another time, please.”

“All right,” she agreed; “but I can tell you more about the beasts
without distracting your mind, I hope. For one thing, we have no longer
any menageries.”

“What?” I cried. “No menageries! How absurd! They were certainly
educational, and a great pleasure to children—and other people.”

“Our views of education have changed you see,” she replied; “and our
views of human relation to the animal world; also our ideas of pleasure.
People do not think it a pleasure now to watch animals in pain.”

“More absurdity! They were not in pain. They were treated better than
when left wild,” I hotly replied.

“Imprisonment is never a pleasure,” she answered; “it is a terrible
punishment. A menagerie is just a prison, not for any offense of the
inmates, but to gratify men in the indulgence of grossly savage
impulses. Children, being in the savage period of their growth, feel
anew the old satisfaction of seeing their huge enemies harmless or their
small victims helpless and unable to escape. But it did no human being
any good.”

“How about the study of these ‘victims’ of yours—the scientific
value?”

“For such study as is really necessary to us, or to them, some
laboratories keep a few. Otherwise, the student goes to where the
animals live and studies their real habits.”

“And how much would he learn of wild tigers by following them
about—unless it was an inside view?”

“My dear brother, can you mention one single piece of valuable
information for humanity to be found in the study of imprisoned tigers?
As a matter of fact, I don’t think there are any left by this time; I
hope not.”

“Do you mean to tell me that your new humanitarianism has exterminated
whole species?”

“Why not? Would England be pleasant if the gray wolf still ran at large?
We are now trying, as rapidly as possible, to make this world safe and
habitable everywhere.”

“And how about the hunting? Where’s the big game?”

“Another relic of barbarism. There is very little big game left, and
very little hunting.”

I glared at her, speechless. Not that I was ever a hunter myself, or
even wanted to be; but to have that splendid manly sport utterly
prevented—it was outrageous I “I suppose this is more of the women’s
work,” I said at length.

She cheerfully admitted it. “Yes, we did it. You see, hunting as a means
of livelihood is even lower than private housework—far too wasteful
and expensive to be allowed in a civilized world. When women left off
using skins and feathers, that was a great blow to the industry. As to
the sport, why, we had never greatly admired it, you know—the manly
sport of killing things for fun—and with our new power we soon made it
undesirable.”

I groaned in spirit. “Do you mean to tell me that you have introduced
legislation against hunting, and found means to enforce it?”

“We found means to enforce it without much legislation, John.”

As for instance?”

As for instance, in rearing children who saw and heard the fullest
condemnation of all such primitive cruelty. That is another place where
the new story-books come in. Why on earth we should have fed our
children on silly savagery a thousand years old, just because they liked
it, is more than I can see. We were always interfering with their likes
and dislikes in other ways. Why so considerate in this? We have a lot of
splendid writers now—first-class ones—making a whole lot of new
literature for children.”

“Do leave out your story books. You were telling me how you redoubtable
females coerced men into giving up hunting.”

“Mostly by disapproval, consistent and final.”

This was the same sort of thing Owen had referred to in regard to
tobacco. I didn’t like it. It gave me a creepy feeling, as of one slowly
surmounted by a rising tide. “Are you—do you mean to tell me, Nellie,
that you women are trying to make men over to suit yourselves?”

“Yes. Why not? Didn’t you make women to suit yourselves for several
thousand years? You bred and trained us to suit your tastes; you liked
us small, you liked us weak, you liked us timid, you liked us ignorant,
you liked us pretty—what you called pretty—and you eliminated the
kinds you did not like.”

“How, if you please?”

“By the same process we use—by not marrying them. Then, you see, there
aren’t any more of that kind.”

“You are wrong, Nellie—you’re absurdly wrong. Women were naturally
that way; that is, womanly women were, and men preferred that kind, of
course.”

“How do you know women were ‘naturally’ like that?---without special
education and artificial selection, and all manner of restrictions and
penalties? Where were any women ever allowed to grow up ‘naturally’
until now?”

I maintained a sulky silence, looking down at the lovely green fields
and forests beneath. “Have you exterminated dogs?” I asked.

“Not yet. There are a good many real dogs left. But we don’t make
artificial ones any more.”

“I suppose you keep all the cats—being women.” She laughed.

“No; we keep very few. Cats kill birds, and we need the birds for our
farms and gardens. They keep the insects down.”

“Do they keep the mice down, too?”

“Owls and night-hawks do, as far as they can. But we attend to the mice
ourselves. Concrete construction and the removal of the kitchen did
that. We do not live in food warehouses now. There, look! We are coming
to Westholm Park; that was one of the first.”

In all the beauty spread below me, the great park showed more beautiful,
outlined by a thick belt of trees.

We kept our vehicle gliding slowly above it while Nellie pointed things
out. “It’s about 300 acres,” she said. “You can see the woodland and
empty part—all that is left wild. That big patch there is
pasturage—they keep their own sheep and cows. There are gardens and
meadows. Up in the corner is the children’s playground, bathing pool,
and special buildings. Here is the playground for grown-ups—and their
lake. This big spreading thing is the guest house and general playhouse
for the folks—ballroom, billiards, bowling, and so on. Behind it is
the plant for the whole thing. The water tower you’ll see to more
advantage when we land. And all around you see the homes; each family
has an acre or so.”

We dropped softly to the landing platform and came down to the pleasure
ground beneath. In a little motor we ran about the place for awhile,
that I might see the perfect roads, shaded with arching trees, the
endless variety of arrangement, the miles of flowers, the fruit on every
side.

“You must have had a good landscape architect to plan this,” I
suggested.

“We did—one of the best.”

“It’s not so very unlike a great, first-class summer hotel, with
singularly beautiful surroundings.”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “We had our best summer resorts in mind when
we began to plan these places. People used to pay heavily in summer to
enjoy a place where everything was done to make life smooth and
pleasant. It occurred to us at last that we might live that way.”

“Who wants to live in a summer hotel all the time? Excuse me!”

“O, they don’t. The people here nearly all live in ‘homes’---the homiest
kind—each on its own ground, as you see. Only some unattached ones,
and people who really like it, live in the hotel—with transients, of
course. Let’s call here; I know this family.”

She introduced me to Mrs. Masson, a sweet, motherly little woman,
rocking softly on her vine-shadowed piazza, a child in her arms. She was
eager to tell me about things—most people were, I found.

“I’m a reactionary, Mr. Robertson. I prefer to work at home, and I
prefer to keep my children with me, all I can.”

“Isn’t that allowed nowadays?” I inquired.

“O, yes; if one qualifies. I did. I took the child-culture course, but I
do not want to be a regular teacher. My work is done right here, and I
can have them as well as not, but they won’t stay much.”

Even as she spoke the little thing in her arms whispered eagerly to her
mother, slipped to the floor, ran out of the gate, her little pink legs
fairly twinkling, and joined an older child who was passing.

“They like to be with the others, you see. This is my baby; I manage to
hold on to her for part of the day, but she’s always running off to The
Garden when she can.”

“The Garden?”

“Yes; it’s a regular Child Garden, where they are cultivated and grow!
And they do so love to growl”

She showed us her pretty little house and her lovely work—embroidery.
“I’m so fortunate,” she said, “loving home as I do, to have work that’s
just as well done here.”

I learned that there were some thirty families living in the grounds,
not counting the hotel people. Quite a number found their work in the
necessary activities of the place itself.

“We have a long string of places, you see—from the general manager to
the gardeners and dairymen. It is really quite a piece of work, to care
for some two hundred and fifty people,” Mrs. Masson explained with some
pride.

“Instead of a horde of servants and small tradesmen to make a living off
these thirty families, we have a small corps of highly trained
officers,” added Nellie.

“And do you cooperate in housekeeping?” I inquired, meaning no harm,
though my sister was quite severe with me for this slip.

“No, indeed,” protested Mrs. Masson. “I do despise being mixed up with
other families. I’ve been here nearly a year, and I hardly know anyone.”
And she rocked back and forth, complacently.

“But I thought that the meals were cooperative.”

“O, not at all—not at edit Just see my dining-room! And you must be
tired and hungry, now, Mrs. Robertson—don’t say no! I’ll have lunch in
a moment. Excuse me, please.”

She retired to the telephone, but we could hear her ordering lunch.
“Right away, please; No. 5; no, let me see---No. 7, please. And have you
fresh mushrooms? Extra; four plates.”

Her husband came home in time for the meal, and she presided just like
any other little matron over a pretty table and a daintily served lunch;
but it came down from the hotel in a neat, light case, to which the
remnants and the dishes were returned.

“O, I wouldn’t give up my own table for the world! And my own dishes;
they take excellent care of them. Our breakfasts we get all
together—see my kitchen!” And she proudly exhibited a small, light
closet, where an immaculate porcelain sink, with hot and cold water, a
glass-doored “cold closet” and a shining electric stove, allowed the
preparation of many small meals.

Nellie smiled blandly as she saw this little lady claiming conservatism
in what struck me as being quite sufficiently progressive, while Mr.
Masson smiled in proud content.

“I took you there on purpose,” she told me later. “She is really quite
reactionary for nowadays, and not over popular. Come and see the
guest-house.”

This was a big, wide-spread concrete building, with terraces and
balconies and wide roofs, where people strolled and sat. It rose proudly
from its wide lawns and blooming greenery, a picture of peace and
pleasure.

“It’s like a country club, with more sleeping rooms,” I suggested. “But
isn’t it awfully expensive—the year round?”

“It’s about a third cheaper than it would cost these people to live if
they kept house. Funny! It took nearly twenty years to prove that
organization in housekeeping paid, like any other form of organized
labor. Wages have risen, all the work is better done and it costs much
less. You can see all that. But what you can’t possibly realize is the
difference it makes to women. All the change the men feel is in better
food, no fret and worry at home, and smaller bills.”

“That’s something,” I modestly suggested.

“Yes, that’s a good deal; but to the women it’s a thousand times more.
The women who liked that kind of work are doing it now, as a profession,
for reasonable hours and excellent salaries; and the women who did not
like it are now free to do the work they are fitted for and enjoy. This
is one of our great additions to the world’s wealth—freeing so much
productive energy. It has improved our health, too. One of the worst
causes of disease is mal-position, you know. Almost everybody used to
work at what they did not like—and we thought it was beneficial to
character!”

I tried without prejudice to realize the new condition, but a house
without a house-wife, without children, without servants, seemed
altogether empty. Nellie reassured me as to the children, however.

“It’s no worse than when they went to school, John, not a bit. If you
were here at about 9 A. M., you’d see the mothers taking a morning walk,
or ride if it’s stormy, to the child-garden, and leaving the babies
there, asleep mostly. There are seldom more than five or six real little
ones at one time in a group like this.”

“Do mothers leave their nursing babies there?”

“Sometimes; it depends on the kind of work they do. Remember they only
have to work two hours, and many mothers get ahead on their work and
take a year off at baby time. Still, two hours’ work a day that one
enjoys, does not hurt even a nursing mother.”

I found it extremely difficult from the first, to picture a world whose
working day was but two hours long; or even the four hours they told me
was generally given.

“What do people do with the rest of their time; working people, I mean?”
I asked.

“The old ones usually rest a good deal, loaf, visit one another, play
games, in some cases they travel. Others, who have the working habit
ingrained, keep on in the afternoon; in their gardens often; almost all
old people love gardening; and those who wish, have one now, you see.
The city ones do an astonishing amount of reading, studying, going to
lectures, and the theatres. They have a good time.”

“But I mean the low rowdy common people—don’t they merely loaf and get
drunk?”

Nellie smiled at me good humoredly.

“Some of them did, for a while. But it became increasingly difficult to
get drunk. You see, their health was better, with sweeter homes, better
food and more pleasure; and except for the dipsomaniacs they improved in
their tastes presently. Then their children all made a great advance,
under the new educational methods; the women had an immense power as
soon as they were independent; and between the children’s influence and
the woman’s and the new opportunities, the worst men had to grow better.
There was always more recuperative power in people than they were given
credit for.”

“But surely there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, of hoboes and
paupers; wretched, degenerate creatures.”

Nellie grew sober. “Yes, there were. One of our inherited handicaps was
that great mass of wreckage left over from the foolishness and ignorance
of the years behind us. But we dealt very thoroughly with them. As I
told you before, hopeless degenerates were promptly and mercifully
removed. A large class of perverts were incapacitated for parentage and
placed where they could do no harm, and could still have some usefulness
and some pleasure. Many proved curable, and were cured. And for the
helpless residue; blind and crippled through no fault of their own, a
remorseful society provides safety, comfort and care; with all the
devices for occupation and enjoyment that our best minds could arrange.
These are our remaining asylums; decreasing every year. We don’t make
that kind of people any more.”

We talked as we strolled about, or sat on the stone benches under rose
bush or grape vine. The beauty of the place grew on me irresistibly.
Each separate family could do as they liked in their own yard, under
some restriction from the management in regard to general comfort and
beauty. I was always ready to cry out about interference with personal
rights; but my sister reminded me that we were not allowed to “commit a
nuisance” in the old days, only our range of objections had widened. A
disagreeable noise is now prohibited, as much as a foul smell; and
conspicuously ugly forms and colors, also.

“And who decides—who’s your dictator and censor?”

“Our best judges—we elect, recall and change them. But under their
guidance we have developed some general sense of beauty. People would
complain loudly now of what did not use to trouble them at all.”

Then I remembered that I had seen no row of wooden cows in the green
meadows, no invitation to “meet me at the fountain,” no assailing finger
to assure me that my credit was good, no gross cathartic reminders,
nothing anywhere to mar the beauty of the landscape; but many a graceful
gate, temple-like summer houses crowning the grassy hills, arbors,
pergolas, cool seats by stone-rimmed fountains, signs everywhere of the
love of beauty and the power to make it.

“I don’t see yet how you ever manage to pay for all this extra work
everywhere. I suppose in a place like this it comes out of the profit
made on food,” I suggested.

“No—the gardening expenses of these home clubs come out of the rent.”

“And what rent do they have to pay—approximately?”

“I can tell you exactly about this place, because it was opened by a
sort of stock company of women, and I was in it for a while. The land
cost $100.00 an acre then---$30,000.00. To get it in shape cost
$10,000.00, to build thirty of these houses about $4,000.00
apiece—there was great saving in doing it all at one time, the
guest-house, furnished, was only $50,000.00, it is very simple, you
see; and the general plant and child-garden, and everything else, some
$40,000.00 more. I know we raised a capital of $250,000.00, and used
it all. The residents pay $600.00 a year for house-rent and $100.00
more for club privileges. That is $28,000.00. We take 4 per cent, and
it leaves plenty for taxes and up-keep. Those who have children keep up
the child-garden. The hotel makes enough to keep everything going
easily, and the food and service departments pay handsomely. Why, if
these people had kept on living in New York, it would have cost them
altogether at least $8,000.00 a year. Here it just costs them about
$2,000.00—and just see what they get for it.”

I had an inborn distrust of my sister’s figures, and consulted Owen
later; also Hallie, who had much detailed knowledge on the subject; and
furthermore I did some reading.

There was no doubt about it. The method of living of which we used to be
so proud, for which I still felt a deep longing, was abominably
expensive. Much smaller amounts, wisely administered, produced better
living, and for the life of me I could not discover the cackling herds
of people I had been led to expect when such “Utopian schemes” used to
be discussed in my youth.

From the broad, shady avenues of this quiet place we looked over green
hedges or wire fences thick with honeysuckle and rose, into pleasant
homelike gardens where families sat on broad piazzas, swung in hammocks,
played tennis, ball, croquet, tether-ball and badminton, just as
families used to.

Groups of young girls or young men—or both—strolled under the trees
and disported themselves altogether as I remembered them to have done,
and happy children frolicked about in the houses and gardens, all the
more happily, it would appear, because they had their own place for part
of the day.

We had seen the fathers come home in time for the noon meal. In the
afternoon most of the parents seemed to think it the finest thing in the
world to watch their children learning or playing together, in that
amazing Garden of theirs, or to bring them home for more individual
companionship. As a matter of fact, I had never seen, in any group of
homes that I could recall, so much time given to children by so many
parents—unless on a Sunday in the suburbs.

I was very silent on the way back, revolving these things in my mind.
Point by point it seemed so vividly successful, so plainly advantageous,
so undeniably enjoyed by those who lived there; and yet the old
objections surged up continually.

The “noisy crowd all herding together to eat!”---I remembered Mr.
Masson’s quiet dining-room—they all had dining-rooms, it appeared. The
“dreadful separation of children from their parents!” I thought of all
those parents watching with intelligent interest their children’s
guarded play, or enjoying their companionship at home.

The “forced jumble with disagreeable neighbors!” I recalled those
sheltered quiet grounds; each house with its trees and lawn, its garden
and its outdoor games.

It was against all my habits, principles, convictions, theories, and
sentiments; but there it was, and they seemed to like it. Also, Owen
assured me, it paid.

# Chapter 8

AFTER all, it takes time for a great change in world-thought to strike
in. That’s what Owen insisted on calling it. He maintained that the
amazing up-rush of these thirty years was really due to the wholesale
acceptance and application of the idea of evolution.

“I don’t know which to call more important—the new idea, or the new
power to use it,” he said. “When we were young, practically all men of
science accepted the evolutionary theory of life; and it was in general
popular favor, though little understood. But the governing ideas of all
our earlier time were so completely out of touch with life; so
impossible of any useful application, that the connection between belief
and behavior was rusted out of us. Between our detached religious ideas
and our brutal ignorance of brain culture, we had made ourselves
preternaturally inefficient.

“Then—you remember the talk there was about Mental Healing---‘Power in
Repose’---‘The Human Machine’---or was that a bit later? Anyway, people
had begun to waken up to the fact that they could do things with their
brains. At first they used them only to cure diseases, to maintain an
artificial ‘peace of mind,’ and tricks like that. Then it suddenly burst
upon us—two or three important books came along nearly at once, and
hosts of articles—that we could use this wonderful mental power every
day, to live with! That all these scientific facts and laws had an
application to life—human life.”

I nodded appreciatively. I was getting quite fond of my brother-in-law.
We were in a small, comfortable motor boat, gliding swiftly and
noiselessly up the beautiful Hudson. Its blue cleanness was a joy. I
could see fish—real fish—in the clear water when we were still.

The banks were one long succession of gardens, palaces, cottages and
rich woodlands, charming to view.

“It’s the time that puzzles me more than thing,” I said, “even more than
the money. How on earth so much could be done in so little time!”

“That’s because you conceive of it as being done in one place after
another, instead of in every place at once,” Owen replied. “If one city,
in one year, could end the smoke at once,” Owen replied. “If one city,
in one year, could end the smoke nuisance, so could all the cities on
earth, if they chose to. We chose to, all over the country, practically
at once.”

“But you speak of evolution. Evolution is the slowest of slow processes.
It took us thousands of dragging years to evolve the civilization of
1910, and you show me a 1940 that seems thousands of years beyond that.”

“Yes; but what you call Evolution’ was that of unaided nature. Social
evolution is a distinct process. Below us, you see, all improvements had
to be built into the stock—transmitted by heredity. The social
organism is open to lateral transmission—what we used to call
education. We never understood it. We thought it was to supply certain
piles of information, mostly useless; or to develop certain qualities.”

“And what do you think it is now?” I asked.

“We know now that the social process is to constantly improve and
develop society. This has a necessary corollary of improvement in
individuals; but the thing that matters most is growth in the social
spirit—and body.”

“You’re beyond me now, Owen.”

“Yes; don’t you notice that ever since you began to study our advance,
what puzzles you most is not the visible details about you, but a
changed spirit in people? Thirty years ago, if you showed a man that
some one had dumped a ton of soot in his front yard he would have been
furious, and had the man arrested and punished. If you showed him that
numbers of men were dumping thousands of tons of soot all over his city
every year, he would have neither felt nor acted. It’s the other way,
now.”

“You speak as if man had really learned to ‘love his neighbor as
himself,’” I said sarcastically.

“And why not? If you have a horse, on whose strength you absolutely
depend to make a necessary journey, you take good care of that horse and
grow fond of him. It dawned on us at last that life was not an
individual affair; that other people were essential to our
happiness—to our very existence. We are not what they used to call
‘altruistic’ in this. We do not think of ‘neighbors,’ ‘brothers,’
‘others’ any more. It is all ‘ourself.’”

“I don’t follow you—sorry.”

Owen grinned at me amiably. “No matter, old chap, you can see results,
and will have to take the reasons on trust. Now here’s this particular
river with its natural beauties, and its unnatural defilements. We
simply stopped defiling it—and one season’s rain did the rest.”

“Did the rains wash away the rail-roads?”

“Oh, no—they are there still. But the use of electric power has
removed the worst evils. There is no smoke, dust, cinders, and a yearly
saving of millions in forest fires on the side! Also very little noise.
Come and see the way it works now.”

We ran in at Yonkers. I wouldn’t have known the old town. It was as
beautiful as---Posilippo.”

“Where are the factories?” I asked.

“There—and there—and there.”

“Why, those are palaces!”

“Well? Why not? Why shouldn’t people work in palaces? It doesn’t cost
any more to make a beautiful building than an ugly one. Remember, we are
much richer, now—and have plenty of time, and the spirit of beauty is
encouraged.”

I looked at the rows of quiet, stately buildings; wide windowed;
garden-roofed.

“Electric power there too?” I suggested.

Owen nodded again. “Everywhere,” he said. “We store electricity all the
time with wind-mills, water-mills, tide-mills, solar engines—even hand
power.”

“What!”

“I mean it,” he said. “There are all kinds of storage batteries now.
Huge ones for mills, little ones for houses; and there are ever so many
people whose work does not give them bodily exercise, and who do not
care much for games. So we have both hand and foot attachments; and a
vigorous man, or woman—or child, for that matter, can work away for
half an hour, and have the pleasant feeling that the power used will
heat the house or run the motor.

“Is that why I don’t smell gasoline in the streets?”

“Yes. We use all those sloppy, smelly things in special places—and
apply all the power by electric storage mostly. You saw the little
batteries in our boat.”

Then he showed me the railroad. There were six tracks, clean and
shiny—thick turf between them.

“The inside four are for the special trains—rapid transit and long
distance freight. The outside two are open to anyone.”

We stopped long enough to see some trains go by; the express at an
incredible speed, yet only buzzing softly; and the fast freight; cars
seemingly of aluminum, like a string of silver beads.

“We use aluminum for almost everything. You know it was only a question
of power—the stuff is endless,” Owen explained.

And all the time, on the outside tracks, which had a side track at every
station, he told me, ran single coaches or short trains, both passenger
and freight, at a comfortable speed.

“All kinds of regular short-distance traffic runs this way. It’s a great
convenience. But the regular highroads are the best. Have you noticed?”

I had seen from the air-motor how broad and fine they looked, but told
him I had made no special study of them.

“Come on—while we’re about it,” he said; and called a little car. We
ran up the hills to Old Broadway, and along its shaded reaches for quite
a distance. It was broad, indeed. The center track, smooth, firm, and
dustless, was for swift traffic of any sort, and well used. As the
freight wagons were beautiful to look at and clean, they were not
excluded, and the perfect road was strong enough for any load. There
were rows of trees on either side, showing a good growth, though young
yet; then a narrower roadway for slower vehicles, on either side a
second row of trees, the footpaths, and the outside trees. i

“These are only about twenty-five years old. Don’t you think they are
doing well?”

“They are a credit to the National Bureau of Highways and Arboriculture
that I see you are going to tell me about.”

“You are getting wise,” Owen answered, with a smile. “Yes—that’s what
does it. And it furnishes employment, I can tell you. In the early
morning these roads are alive with caretakers. Of course the bulk of the
work is done by running machines; but there is a lot of pruning and
trimming and fighting with insects. Among our richest victories in that
line is the extermination of the gipsy moth—brown tail—elm beetle
and the rest.”

“How on earth did you do that?”

“Found the natural devourer—as we did with the scale pest. Also by
raising birds instead of killing them; and by swift and thorough work in
the proper season. We gave our minds to it, you see, at last.”

The outside path was a delightful one, wide, smooth, soft to the foot,
agreeable in color.

“What do you make your sidewalk of?” I asked.

Owen tapped it with his foot. “It’s a kind of semi-flexible
concrete—wears well, too. And we color it to suit ourselves, you see.
There was no real reason why a path should be ugly to look at.”

Every now and then there were seats; also of concrete, beautifully
shaped and too heavy to be easily moved. A narrow crack ran along the
lowest curve.

“That keeps ‘em dry,” said Owen.

Drinking fountains bubbled invitingly up from graceful standing basins,
where birds drank and dipped in the overflow.

“Why, these are fruit trees,” I said suddenly, looking along the outside
row.

“Yes, nearly all of them, and the next row are mostly nut trees. You
see, the fruit trees are shorter and don’t take the sun off. The middle
ones are elms wherever elms grow well. I tell you, John, it is the
experience of a lifetime to take a long motor trip over the roads of
America! You can pick your climate, or run with the season. Nellie and I
started once from New Orleans in February—the violets out. We came
north with them; I picked her a fresh bunch every day!”

He showed me the grape vines trained from tree to tree in Tuscan
fashion; the lines of berry bushes, and the endless ribbon of perennial
flowers that made the final border of the pathway. On its inner side
were beds of violets, lilies of the valley, and thick ferns; and around
each fountain were groups of lilies and water-loving plants.

I shook my head.

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I simply don’t believe it! How could any
nation afford to keep up such roads!”

Owen drew me to a seat—we had dismounted to examine a fountain and see
the flowers. He produced pencil and paper.

“I’m no expert,” he said. “I can’t give you exact figures. But I want
you to remember that the trees pay. Pay! These roads, hundreds of
thousands of miles of them, constitute quite a forest, and quite an
orchard. Nuts, as Hallie told you, are in growing use as food. We have
along these roads, as beautiful clean shade trees, the finest improved
kinds of chestnut, walnut, butternut, pecan—whatever grows best in the
locality.”

And then he made a number of startling assertions and computations, and
showed me the profit per mile of two rows of well-kept nut trees.

“I suppose Hallie has told you about tree farming?” he added.

“She said something about it—but I didn’t rightly know what she
meant.”

“Oh, it’s a big thing; it has revolutionized agriculture. As you’re
sailing over the country now you don’t see so many bald spots. A
healthy, permanent world has to keep its fur on.”

I was impressed by that casual remark, “As you’re sailing over the
country.”

“Look here, Owen, I think I have the glimmer of an idea. Didn’t the
common use of airships help to develop this social consciousness you’re
always talking about—this general view of things?”

He clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re dead right, John—it did, and I
don’t believe any of us would have thought to mention it.” He looked at
me admiringly. “Behold the power of a naturally strong mind—in spite
of circumstances! Yes, really that’s a fact. You see few people are able
to visualize what they have not seen. Most of us had no more idea of the
surface of the earth than an ant has of a meadow. In each mind was only
a thready fragment of an idea of the world—no real geographic view.
And when we got flying all over it commonly, it became real and familiar
to us—like a big garden.

“I guess that helped on the tree idea. You see, in our earlier kind of
agriculture the first thing we did was to cut down the forest, dig up
and burn over, plow, harrow, and brush fine—to plant our little
grasses. All that dry, soft, naked soil was helplessly exposed to the
rain—and the rain washed it steadily away. In one heavy storm soil
that it had taken centuries of forest growth to make would be carried
off to clog the livers and harbors. This struck us all at once as
wasteful. We began to realize that food could grow on trees as well as
grasses; that the cubic space occupied by a chestnut tree could produce
more bushels of nutriment than the linear space below it. Of course we
have our wheat fields yet, but around every exposed flat acreage is a
broad belt of turf and trees; every river and brook is broadly bordered
with turf and trees, or shrubs. We have stopped soil waste to a very
great extent. Also we make soil—but that is a different matter.”

“Hurrying Mother Nature again, eh?” “Yes, the advance in scientific
agriculture is steady. Don’t you remember that German professor who
raised all kinds of things in water? Just fed them a pinch of chemicals
now and then? They said he had a row of trees before his door with their
roots in barrels of water—the third generation that had never touched
ground. We kept on studying, and began to learn how to put together the
proper kind of soil for different kinds of plants. Rock-crushers
furnished the basis, then add the preferred constituents and sell, by
the bag or the ship load. You can have a radish bed in a box on your
window sill, if you like radishes, that will raise you the fattest,
sweetest, juiciest, crispiest, tenderest little pink beauties you ever
saw—all the year round. No weed seeds in that soil, either.”

We rolled slowly back in the green shade. There was plenty of traffic,
but all quiet, orderly, and comfortable. The people were a constant
surprise to me. They were certainly better looking, even the poorest.
And on the faces of the newest immigrants there was an expression of
blazing hope that was almost better than the cheery peacefulness of the
native born.

Wherever I saw workmen, they worked swiftly, with eager interest.
Nowhere did I see the sagging slouch, the slow drag of foot and dull
swing of arm which I had always associated with day laborers. We saw men
working in the fields—and women, too; but I had learned not to lay my
neck on the block too frequently. I knew that my protest would only
bring out explanations of the advantage of field work over house
work—and that women were as strong as men—or thereabouts. But I was
surprised at their eagerness.

“They look as busy as a lot of ants on an ant heap,” I said.

“It’s their heap, you see,” Owen answered. “And they are not
tired—that makes a great difference.”

“They seem phenomenally well dressed—looks like a scene in an opera.
Sort of agricultural uniform?”

“Why not?” Owen was always asking me “why not”---and there wasn’t any
answer to it. “We used to have hunting suits and fishing suits and
plumbing suits, and so on. It isn’t really a uniform, just the natural
working out of the best appointed dress for the trade.”

Again I held my tongue; not asking how they could afford it, but
remembering the shorter hours, the larger incomes, the more universal
education.

We got back to Yonkers, put up the car—these things could be hired, I
found, for twenty-five cents an hour—and had lunch in a little eating
place which bore out Hallie’s statement as to the high standard of food
everywhere. Our meal was twenty-five cents for each of us. I saw Owen
smile at me, but I refused to be surprised. We settled down in our boat
again, and pushed smoothly up the river.

“I wish you’d get one thing clear in my mind,” I said at last. “Just how
did you tackle the liquor question. I haven’t seen a saloon—or a
drunken man. Nellie said something about people’s not wanting to drink
any more—but there were several millions who did want to, thirty years
ago, and plenty of people who wanted them to. What were your steps?”

“The first step was to eliminate the self-interest of the dealer—the
big business pressure that had to make drunkards. That was done in state
after state, within a few years, by introducing government ownership and
management. With that went an absolute government guarantee of purity.
In five or six years there was no bad liquor sold, and no public
drinking places except government ones.

“But that wasn’t enough—not by a long way. It wasn’t the love of
liquor that supported the public house—it was the need of the public
house itself.”

I stared rather uncertainly,

“The meeting place,” he went on. “Men have to get together. We have had
public houses as long as we have had private ones, almost. It is a
social need.”

“A social need with a pretty bad result, it seems to me,” I said, “that
took men away from their families, leading to all manner of vicious
indulgence.”

“Yes, they used to; but that was because only men used them. I said a
social need, not a masculine one. We have met it in this way. Whenever
we build private houses—if it is the lowest country unit, or the
highest city block, we build accommodations for living together.

“Every little village has its Town House, with club rooms of all sorts;
the people flock together freely, for games, for talk, for lectures, and
plays, and dances, and sermons—it is universal. And in the city—you
don’t see a saloon on every corner, but you do see almost as many places
where you can ‘meet a man’ and talk with him on equal ground.”

“Meet a woman, too?” I suggested.

“Yes; especially, yes. People can meet, as individuals or in groups,
freely and frequently, in city or country. But men can not flock by
themselves in special places provided for their special vices—without
taking a great deal of extra trouble.”

“I should think they would take the trouble, then,” said I.

“But why? When there is every arrangement made for a natural good time;
when you are not overworked, not underfed, not miserable and hopeless.
When you can drop into a comfortable chair and have excellent food and
drink in pleasant company; and hear good music, or speaking, or reading,
or see pictures; or, if you like, play any kind of game; swim, ride,
fly, do what you want to, for change and recreation—why long for
liquor in a low place?”

“But the men—the real men, people as they were,” I insisted. “You had
a world full of drinking men who liked the saloon; did you—what do you
call it?---eliminate them?”

A few of them, yes,” he replied gravely; Some preferred it; others,
thorough-going dipsomaniacs, we gave hospital treatment and permanent
restraint; they lived and worked and were well provided for in places
where there was no liquor. But there were not many of that kind. Most
men drank under a constant pressure of conditions driving them to it,
and the mere force of habit.

“Just remember that the weight and terror of life is lifted off us—for
good and all.”

“Socialism, you mean?”

“Yes, real socialism. The wealth and power of all of us belongs to all
of us now. The Wolf is dead.”

“Other things besides poverty drove a man to drink in my time,” I
ventured.

“Oh, yes—and some men continued to drink. I told you there was liquor
to be had—good liquor, too. And other drug habits held on for a while.
But we stopped the source of the trouble. The old men died off, the
younger ones got over it, and the new ones—that’s what you don’t
realize yet: We make a new kind of people now.”

He was silent, his strong mouth set in a kind smile, his eyes looking
far up the blue river.

“Well, what comes next? What’s done it?” I demanded. “Religion,
education, or those everlasting women?”

He laughed outright; laughed till the boat rocked,

“How you do hate to admit that it’s their turn. John! Haven’t we had
full swing—everything in our hands—for all historic time? They have
only begun. Thirty years? Why, John, they have done so much in these
thirty years that the world’s heart is glad at last. You don’t know "

I didn’t know. But I did feel a distinct resentment at being treated
like an extinct species.

“They have simply stepped on to an eminence men have been all these
years building,” I said. “We have done all the hard work—are doing it
yet, for all I see. We have made it possible for them to live at all! We
have made the whole civilization of the world—they just profit by it.
And now you speak as if, somehow, they had managed to achieve more than
we have!”

Owen considered a while thoughtfully. “What you say is true. We have
done a good deal of the work; we did largely make and modify our
civilization. But if you read some of the newer histories " he stopped
and looked at me as if I had just happened. “Why you don’t know yet, do
you? History has been rewritten.”

“You speak as if ‘history’ was a one act play.”

“I don’t mean it’s all done, of course—but we do have now a complete
new treatment of the world’s history. Each nation its own, some several
of them, there’s no dead level of agreement, I assure you. But our old
androcentric version of life began to be questioned about 1910, I
think—and new versions appeared, more and more of them. The big
scholars took it up, there was new research work, and now we are not so
glib in our assurance that we did it all.”

“You’re getting pretty close to things I used to know something about,”
I remarked drily.

“If you knew all that was known, then, you wouldn’t know this, John.
Don’t you remember what Lester Ward calls ‘the illusion of the
near’---how the most familiar facts were precisely those we often failed
to understand? In all our history, ancient and modern, we had the
underlying assumption that men were the human race, the people who did
things; and that women—were ‘their women.’ "

And precisely what have you lately discovered? That Horatio at the
bridge was Horatia, after all? That the world was conquered by an
Alexandra—and a Napoleona?” I laughed with some bitterness.

“No,” said Owen gently, “There is no question about the battles—men
did the fighting, of course. But we have learned that ‘the decisive
battles of history’ were not so decisive as we thought them. Man, as a
destructive agent did modify history, unquestionably. What did make
history, make civilization, was constructive industry. And for many ages
women did most of that.”

“Did women build the Pyramids? the Acropolis? the Roads of Rome?”

“No, nor many other things. But they gave the world its first start in
agriculture and the care of animals; they clothed it and fed it and
ornamented it and kept it warm; their ceaseless industry made rich the
simple early cultures. Consider—without men, Egypt and Assyria could
not have fought—but they could have grown rich and wise. Without
women—they could have fought until the last man died alone—if the
food held out.

“But I won’t bother you with this, John. You’ll get all you want out of
books better than I can give it. What I set out to say was that the most
important influence in weeding out intemperance was that of the women.”

I was in a very bad temper by this time, it was disagreeable enough to
have this—or any other part of it, true; but what I could not stand
was to see that big hearted man speak of it in such a cheerful
matter-of-fact way.

“Have the men of today no pride?” I asked. “How can you stand it—being
treated as inferiors—by women?”

“Women stood it for ten thousand years,” he answered, “being treated as
inferiors—by men.”

We went home in silence.

# Chapter 9

I LEARNED to understand the immense material prosperity of the country
much more easily than its social progress.

The exquisite agriculture which made millions of acres from raw farms
and ranches into rich gardens, the forestry which had changed our
straggling woodlands into great tree-farms, yielding their steady crops
of cut boughs, thinned underbrush, and full-grown trunks, those endless
orchard roads, with their processions of workers making continual
excursions in their special cars, keeping roadway and bordering trees in
perfect order—all this one could see.

There were, of course far more of the wilder, narrower roads, perfect as
the road-bed, but not parked, with all untrimmed nature to travel
through.

The airships did make a difference. To look down on the flowing,
outspread miles beneath gave a sense of the unity and continuous beauty
of our country, quite different from the streak views we used to get. An
airship is a moving mountain-top.

The cities were even more strikingly beautiful, in that the change was
greater, the contrast sharper. I never tired of wandering about on foot
along the streets of cities, and I visited several, finding, as Nellie
said, that it took no longer to improve twenty than one; the people in
each could do it as soon as they chose to.

But what made them choose? What had got into the people? That was what
puzzled me most. It did not show outside, like the country changes, and
the rebuilt cities; the people did not look remarkable, though they were
different, too. I watched and studied them, trying to analyze the
changes that could be seen. Most visible was cleanliness, comfort, and
beauty in dress.

I had never dreamed of the relief to the spectator in not seeing any
poverty. We were used to it, of course; we had our excuses, religious
and economic, we even found, or thought we found, artistic pleasure in
this social disease. But now I realized what a nightmare it had
been—the sights, the sounds, the smells of poverty—merely to an
outside observer.

These people had good bodies, too. They were not equally beautiful, by
any means; thirty years, of course, could not wholly return to the
normal a race long stunted and overworked. But in the difference in the
young generation I could see at a glance the world’s best hope, that the
“long inheritance” is far deeper than the short.

Those of about twenty and under, those who were born after some of these
changes had been made, were like another race. Big, sturdy, blooming
creatures, boys and girls alike, swift and graceful, eager, happy,
courteous---I supposed at first that these were the children of
exceptionally placed people; but soon found, with a heart-stirring sort
of shock, that all the children were like that.

Some of the old folk still carried the scars of earlier conditions, but
the children were new people.

Then of my own accord I demanded reasons. Nellie laughed sweetly.

“I’m so glad you’ve come to your appetite,” she said. “I’ve been longing
to talk to you about that, and you were always bored.”

“It’s a good deal of a dose, Nell; you’ll admit that. And one hates to
be forcibly fed. But now I do want to get an outline, a sort of general
idea, of what you do with children. Can you condense a little recent
history, and make it easy to an aged stranger?”

“Aged I You are growing younger every day, John. I believe that
comparatively brainless life you led in Tibet was good for you. That was
all new impression on the brain; the first part rested. Now you are
beginning where you left off. I wish you would recognize that.”

I shook my head. “Never mind me, I’m trying not to think of my
chopped-off life; but tell me how you manufacture this kind of people.”

My sister sat still, thinking, for a little. “I want to avoid repetition
if possible—tell me just how much you have in mind already.” But I
refused to be catechised.

“You put it all together, straight; I want to get the whole of it—as
well as I can.”

“All right. On your head be it. Let me see—first Oh, there isn’t any
first, John! We were doing ever so much for children before you
left—before you and I were born! It is the vision of all the great
child-lovers; that children are people, and the most valuable people on
earth. The most important thing to a child is its mother. We made new
mothers for them---I guess that is ‘first.’

“Suppose we begin this way:

“a. Free, healthy, independent, intelligent mothers.

“b. Enough to live on—right conditions for child-raising.

“c. Specialized care.

“d. The new social consciousness, with its religion, its art, its
science, its civics, its industry, its wealth, its brilliant efficiency.
That’s your outline.”

I set down these points in my notebook.

“An excellent outline, Nellie. Now for details on ‘a.’ I will set my
teeth till that’s over.”

My sister regarded me with amused tenderness. “How you do hate the new
women, John—in the abstract! I haven’t seen you averse to any of them
in the concrete!”

At the time I refused to admit any importance to this remark, but I
thought it over later—and to good purpose. It was true. I did hate the
new kind of human being who loomed so large in every line of progress.
She jarred on every age-old masculine prejudice—she was not what woman
used to be. And yet—as Nellie said—the women I met I liked.

“Get on with the lesson, my dear,” said I. “I am determined to learn and
not to argue. What did your omnipresent new woman do to improve the
human stock so fast?”

Then Nellie settled down in earnest and gave me all I wanted—possibly
more.

“They wakened as if to a new idea, to their own natural duty as mothers;
to the need of a high personal standard of health and character in both
parents. That gave us a better start right away—clean-born, vigorous
children, inheriting strength and purity.

“Then came the change in conditions, a change so great you\‘ve hardly
glimpsed it yet. No more, never more again, please God, that brutal
hunger and uncertainty, that black devil of want and fear.
Everybody—everybody—sure of decent living! That one thing lifted the
heaviest single shadow from the world, and from the children.

“Nobody is overworked now. Nobody is tired, unless they tire themselves
unnecessarily. People live sanely, safely, easily. The difference to
children, both in nature and nurture, is very great. They all have
proper nourishment, and clothing, and environment—from birth.

“And with that, as advance in special conditions for child-culture, we
build for babies now. We, as a community, provide suitably for our most
important citizens.”

At this point I opened my mouth to say something, but presently shut it
again.

“Good boy!” said Nellie. “I’ll show you later.”

“The next is specialized care. That one thing is enough, almost, to
account for it all. To think of all the ages when our poor babies had no
benefit at all of the advance in human intelligence!

“We had the best and wisest specialists we could train and hire in every
other field of life—and the babies left utterly at the mercy of
amateurs!

“Well, I mustn’t stop to rage at past history. We do better now. John,
guess the salary of the head of the Baby Gardens in a city.”

“Oh, call it a million, and go on,” I said cheerfully; which somewhat
disconcerted her.

“It’s as big a place as being head of Harvard College,” she said, “and
better paid than that used to be. Our highest and finest people study
for this work. Real geniuses, some of them. The babies, all the babies,
mind you, get the benefit of the best wisdom we have. And it grows fast.
We are learning by doing it. Every year we do better. ' Growing up’ is
an easier process than it used to be.”

“I’ll have to accept it for the sake of argument,” I agreed. “It’s the
last point I care most for, I think. All these new consciousnesses you
were so glib about. I guess you can’t describe that so easily.”

She grew thoughtful, rocking to and fro for a few moments.

“No,” she said at length, “it’s not so easy. But I’ll try. I wasn’t very
glib, really. I spoke of religion, art, civics, science, industry,
wealth, and efficiency, didn’t I? Now let’s see how they apply to the
children.

“This religion Dear me, John! am I to explain the greatest sunburst of
truth that that ever was—in two minutes?”

“Oh, no,” I said loftily. “I’ll give you five! You’ve got to try,
anyway.”

So she tried.

“In place of Revelation and Belief,” she said slowly, “we now have Facts
and Knowledge. We used to believe in God—variously, and teach the
belief as a matter of duty. Now we know God, as much as we know anything
else—more than we know anything else—it is The Fact of Life.

“This is the base of knowledge, underlying all other knowledge, simple
and safe and sure—and we can teach it to children! The child mind,
opening to this lovely world, is no longer filled with horrible or
ridiculous old ideas—it learns to know the lovely truth of life.”

She looked so serenely beautiful, and sat so still after she said this,
that I felt a little awkward.

“I don’t mean to jar on you, Nellie,” I said. “I didn’t know you were
so—religious.”

Then she laughed again merrily. “I’m not,” she said. “No more than
anybody is. We don’t have ‘religious’ people any more, John. It’s not a
separate thing; a ‘body of doctrine’ and set of observances—it is what
all of us have at the bottom of everything else, the underlying basic
fact of life. And it goes far, very far indeed, to make the strong good
cheer you see in these children’s faces.

“They have never been frightened, John. They have never been told any of
those awful things we used to tell them. There is no struggle with
church-going, no gagging over doctrines, no mysterious queer mess—only
life. Life is now open to our children, clear, brilliant, satisfying,
and yet stimulating.

“Of course, I don’t mean that this applies equally to every last one.
The material benefit does, that could be enforced by law where
necessary; but this world-wave of new knowledge is irregular, of course.
It has spread wider, and gone faster than any of the old religions ever
did, but you can find people yet who believe things almost as dreadful
as father did!”

I well remembered my father’s lingering Calvinism, and appreciated its
horrors.

“Our educators have recognized a new duty to children,” Nellie went on;
“to stand between them and the past. We recognize that the child mind
should lift and lead the world; and we feed it with our newest, not our
oldest ideas.

“Also we encourage it to wander on ahead, fearless and happy. I began to
tell you the other day—and you snubbed me, John, you did
really!---that we have a new literature for children, and have dropped
the old.”

At this piece of information I could no longer preserve the attitude of
a patient listener. I sat back and stared at my sister, while the full
awfulness of this condition slowly rolled over me.

“Do you mean,” I said slowly, “that children are taught nothing of the
past?”

“Oh, no, indeed; they are taught about the past from the earth’s
beginning. In the mind of every child is a clear view of how Life has
grown on earth.”

“And our own history?”

“Of course; from savagery to today—that is a simple story, endlessly
interesting as they grow older.”

“What do you mean, then, by cutting off the past?”

“I mean that their stories, poems, pictures, and the major part of their
instruction deals with the present and future—especially the future.
The whole teaching is dynamic—not static. We used to teach mostly
facts, or what we thought were facts. Now we teach processes. You’ll
find out if you talk to children, anywhere.”

This I mentally determined to do, and in due course did. I may as well
say right here that I found children more delightful companions than
they used to be. They were polite enough, even considerate; but so
universally happy, so overflowing with purposes, so skilful in so many
ways, so intelligent and efficient, that it astonished me. We used to
have a sort of race-myth about “happy childhood,” but none of us seemed
to study the faces of the children we saw about us. Even among
well-to-do families, the discontented, careworn, anxious, repressed, or
rebellious faces of children ought to have routed our myth forever.

Timid, brow-beaten children, sulky children, darkly resentful; nervous,
whining children, foolish, mischievous, hysterically giggling children,
noisy, destructive, uneasy children—how well I remembered them.

These new ones had a strange air of being Persons, not subordinates and
dependents, but Equals; their limitations frankly admitted, but not cast
up at them, and their special powers fully respected. That was it!

I am wandering far ahead of that day’s conversation, but it led to wide
study among children, analysis, and some interesting conclusions. When I
hit on this one I began to understand. Children were universally
respected, and they liked it. In city or country, place was made for
them, permanent, pleasant, properly appointed place; to use, enjoy, and
grow up in. They had their homes and families as before, losing nothing;
but they added to this background their own wide gardens and houses,
where part of each day was spent.

From earliest infancy they absorbed the idea that home was a place to
come out from and go back to; the sweetest, dearest place—for there
was mother, and father, and one’s own little room to sleep in; but the
day hours were to go somewhere to learn and do, to work and play, to
grow in.

I branched off from Nellie’s startling me with her
“new-literature-for-children” idea. She went on to explain it further.

“The greatest artists work for children now, John,” she said. “In the
child-gardens and child-homes they are surrounded with beauty. I do not
mean that we hire painters and poets to manufacture beauty for them; but
that painters and poets, architects and landscape artists, designers and
decorators of all kinds, love and revere childhood, and delight to work
for it.

“Remember that half of our artists are mothers now—a loving, serving,
giving spirit has come into expression—a wider and more lasting
expression than it was ever possible to put into doughnuts and
embroidery! Wait till you see the beauty of our child-gardens!”

“Why don’t you call them schools? Don’t you have schools?”

“Some. We haven’t wholly outgrown the old academic habit. But for the
babies there was no precedent, and they do not ‘go to school.’ "

“You have a sort of central nursery?” I ventured.

“Not necessarily ‘central,’ John. And we have great numbers of them. How
can I make it any way clear to you? See here. Suppose you were a mother,
and a very busy one, like the old woman in the shoe; and suppose you had
twenty or thirty permanent babies to be provided for? And suppose you
were wise and rich—able to do what you wanted to? Wouldn’t you build
an elaborate nursery for those children? Wouldn’t you engage the very
best nurses and teachers? Wouldn’t you want the cleanest, quietest
garden for them to play or sleep in? Of course you would.

“That is our attitude. We have at last recognized babies as a permanent
class. They are always here, about a fifth of the population. And we,
their mothers, have at last ensured to these, our babies, the best
accommodation known to our time. It im proves as we learn, of course.”

“Mm!” I said. “I’ll go and gaze upon these Infant Paradises later—at
the sleeping hour, please! But how about that new literature you
frightened me with?”

“Oh. Why, we have tried to treat their minds as we do their
stomachs—putting in only what is good for then. I mean the very
littlest, understand. As they grow older they have wider range; we have
not expunged the world’s past, my dear brother! But we do prepare with
all the wisdom, love, and power we have, the mental food for little
children. Simple, lovely music is about them always—you must have
noticed how universally they sing?”

I had, and said so.

“The coloring and decoration of their rooms is beautiful—their clothes
are beautiful—and simple—you’ve seen that, too?”

“Yes, dear girl. It’s because I’ve seen—and heard—and noticed the
surprisingness of the New Child that I sit here fairly guzzling
information. Pray proceed to the literature.”

“Literature is the most useful of the arts—the most perfect medium for
transfer of ideas. We wish to have the first impressions in our
children’s minds, above all things, true. All the witchery and
loveliness possible in presentation—but the things presented are not
senseless and unpleasant.

“We have plenty of ‘true stories,’ stories based on real events and on
natural laws and processes; but the viewpoint from which they are
written has changed; you’ll have to read some to see what I mean. But
the major difference is in our stories of the future, our future here on
earth. They are good stories, mind, the very best writers make them;
good verses and pictures, too. And a diet like that, while it is just as
varied and entertaining as the ‘once upon a time’ kind, leaves the child
with a sense that things are going to happen—and he, or she, can help.

“You see, we don’t consider anything as done. To you, as a new visitor,
we ‘point with pride,’ but among ourselves we ‘view with alarm.’ We are
just as full of Reformers and Propagandists as ever, and overflowing
with plans for improvement.

“These are the main characteristics of the new child literature: Truth
and Something Better Ahead.”

“I don’t like it!” I said firmly. “No wonder you dodged about so long.
You\‘ve apparently made a sort of pap out of Grad-grind and Rollo, and
feed it to these poor babies through a tube P

This time my sister rebelled. She came firmly to my side and pulled my
hair—precisely as she used to do forty years ago and more—the few
little hairs at the crown which still troubled me in brushing—because
of being pulled out straight so often.

“You shall have no more oral instruction, young man,” said she. “You
shall be taken about and shown things; you shall ‘Stop! Look! Listen!’
until you admit the advantages I have striven in vain to pump into your
resisting intellect—you Product of Past Methods!”

“You’re the product of the same methods yourself, my dear,” I replied
amiably; “but I’m quite willing to be shown—always was something of a
Missourian.”

No part of my re-education was pleasanter, and I’m sure none was more
important, than the next few days. We visited place after place, in
different cities, or in the country, and everywhere was the same high
standard of health and beauty, of comfort, fun, and visible growth.

I saw babies and wee toddlers by the thousands, and hardly ever heard
one cry! Out of that mass of experience some vivid pictures remain in my
mind. One was “mother time” in a manufacturing village. There was a big
group of mills with water-power; each mill a beautiful, clean place,
light, airy, rich in color, sweet with the flowers about it, where men
and women worked their two-hour shifts.

The women took off their work-aprons and slipped into the neighboring
garden to nurse their babies. They were in no haste. They were
pleasantly dressed and well-fed and not tired.

They were known and welcomed by the women in charge of the child-garden;
and each mother slipped into a comfortable rocker and took into her arms
that little rosy piece of herself and the man she loved—it was a thing
to bring one’s heart into one’s throat. The clean peace and quiet of it,
time enough, the pleasant neighborliness, the atmosphere of contented
motherhood, those healthy, drowsy little mites, so busy with their
dinner.

Then they put them down, asleep For the most part, kissed them, and
strolled back to the pleasant workroom for another two hours.

Specialization used to be a terror, when a whole human being was held
down to one notion for ten hours. But specialization hurts nobody when
it does not last too long.

In the afternoons some mothers took their babies home at once. Some
nursed them and then went out together for exercise or pleasure. The
homes were clean and quiet, too; no kitchen work, no laundry work, no
self-made clutter and dirt. It looked so comfortable that I couldn’t
believe my eyes, yet it was just common, everyday life.

As the babies grew old enough to move about, their joys widened. They
were kept in rooms of a suitable temperature, and wore practically no
clothes. This in itself I was told was one main cause of their health
and contentment. They rolled and tumbled on smooth mattresses; pulled
themselves up and swung back and forth on large, soft horizontal ropes
fastened within reach; delightful little bunches of rose leaves and
dimples, in perfect happiness.

Very early they had water to play in; clean, shallow pools, kept at a
proper temperature, where they splashed and gurgled in rapture, and
learned to swim before they learned to walk, sometimes.

As they grew larger and more competent, their playgrounds were more
extensive and varied; but the underlying idea was always clear—safety
and pleasure, full exercise and development of every power. There was no
quarrelling over toys—whatever they had to play with they all had in
abundance; and most of the time they did not have exchangeable objects,
but these ropes, pools, sand, clay, and so on, materials common to all;
and the main joy was in the use of their own little bodies, is as many
ways as was possible.

At any time when they were not asleep a procession of crowing toddlers
could be seen creeping up a slight incline and sliding or rolling
triumphantly down the other side. A sort of beautified cellar door,
this.

Strange that we always punished children for sliding down unsuitable
things and never provided suitable ones. But then, of course, one could
not have machinery like this in one brief family. Swings, see-saws, all
manner of moving things they had, with building-blocks, of course, and
balls. But as soon as it was easy to them they had tools and learned to
use them; the major joy of their expanding lives was doing things. I
speak of them in an unbroken line, for that was the way they lived. Each
stage lapped over into the next, and that natural ambition to be with
the older ones and do what they did was the main incentive in their
progress.

To go on, to get farther, higher, to do something better and more
interesting, this was in the atmosphere; growth, exercise, and joy.

I watched and studied, and grew happy as I did so; which I could see was
a gratification to Nellie.

“Aren’t they ever naughty?” I demanded one day.

“Why should they be?” she answered. “How could they be? What we used to
call ‘naughtiness’ was only the misfit. The poor little things were in
the wrong place—and nobody knew how to make them happy. Here there is
nothing they can hurt, and nothing that can hurt them. They have earth,
air, fire, and water to play with.”

“Fire?” I interrupted.

“Yes, indeed. All children love fire, of course. As soon as they can
move about they are taught fire.”

“How many burn themselves up?”

“None. Never any more. Did you never hear ‘a burnt child dreads the
fire’? We said that, but we never had sense enough to use it. No proverb
ever said ‘a whipped child dreads the fire’! We never safe-guarded them,
and the poor little things were always getting burned to death in our
barbarous ‘homes’!”

“Do you arbitrarily burn them all?” I asked. “Have an annual
‘branding’?”

“Oh, no; but we allow them to burn themselves—within reason. Come and
see.”

She showed me a set of youngsters learning Heat and Cold, with basins of
water, a row of them; eagerly experimenting with cautious little
fingers—very cold, cold, cool, tepid, warm, hot, very hot. They could
hardly say the words plain, but learned them all, even when they all had
to shut their eyes and the basins were changed about.

Straying from house to house, from garden to garden, I watched them grow
and learn. On the long walls about them were painted an endless panorama
of human progress. When they noticed and asked questions they were told,
without emphasis, that people used to live that way; and grew to
this—and this.

I found that as the children grew older they all had a year of travel;
each human being knew his world. And when I questioned as to expense, as
I always did, Nellie would flatten me with things like this:

“Remember that we used to spend 70 per cent, of our national income on
the expenses of war, past and present. If we women had done no more than
save that, it would have paid for all you see.”

Or she would remind me again of the immense sums we used to spend on
hospitals and prisons; or refer to the general change in economics, that
inevitable socialization of industry, which had checked waste and
increased productivity so much.

“We are a rich people, John,” she repeated. “So are other nations, for
that matter; the world’s richer. We have increased our output and
lowered our expenses at the same time. One of our big present problems
is what to do with our big surplus; we quarrel roundly over that. But
meanwhile it is a very poor nation indeed that does not provide full
education for its children.”

I found that the differences in education were both subtle and profound.
The babies’ experience of group life, as well as the daily return to
family life, gave a sure ground-work for the understanding of civics.
Their first impressions included other babies; no child grew up with the
intensified self-consciousness we used to almost force upon them.

In all the early years learning was ceaseless and unconscious. They grew
among such carefully chosen surroundings as made it impossible not to
learn what was really necessary; and to learn it as squirrels learn the
trees—by playing and working in them. They learned the simple
beginnings of the world’s great trades, led by natural interest and
desire, gathering by imitation and asked instruction.

I saw nowhere the enforced task; everywhere the eager attention of real
interest.

“Are they never taught to apply themselves? To concentrate?” I asked.
And for answer she showed me the absorbed, breathless concentration of
fresh young minds and busy hands.

“But they soon tire of these things and want to do something else, do
they not?”

“Of course. That is natural to childhood. And there is always something
else for them to do.”

“But they are only doing what they like to do—that is no preparation
for a life work surely.”

“We find it an excellent preparation for life work. You see, we all work
at what we like now. That is one reason we do so much better work.”

I had talked on this line before with those who explained the workings
of industrial socialism.

“Still, as a matter of education,” I urged, “is it not necessary for a
child to learn to compel himself to work?”

“Oh, no,” they told me; and, to say truth, convincingly showed me.
“Children like to work. If any one does not, we know he is sick.”

And as I saw more and more of the child-gardens, and sat silently
watching for well-spent hours, I found how true this was.

The children had around them the carefully planned stimuli of a
genuinely educational environment. The work of the world was there, in
words of one syllable, as it were; and among wise, courteous, pleasant
people, themselves actually doing something, yet always ready to give
information when asked.

First the natural appetite of the young brain, then every imaginable
convenience for learning, then the cautiously used accessories to
encourage further effort; and then these marvelous teachers—who seemed
to like their work, too. The majority were women, and of them nearly all
were mothers. It appeared that children had not lost their mothers, as
at first one assumed, but that each child kept his own and gained
others. And these teaching mothers were somehow more motherly than the
average.

Nellie was so pleased when I noticed this. She liked to see me “going to
school” so regularly. I was not alone in it, either. There seemed to be
numbers of people who cared enough for children to enjoy watching them
and playing with them. Nobody was worn out with child care. The parents
were not—the nurses and teachers had short shifts—it seemed to be
considered a pleasure and an honor to be allowed with the little ones.

And in all this widespread, costly, elaborate, and yet perfectly simple
and lovely environment, these little New Persons grew and blossomed with
that divine unconsciousness which belongs to children.

They did not know that the best intellects were devoted to their
service, they never dreamed what thought and love and labor made these
wide gardens, these bright playing-places, these endlessly interesting
shops where they could learn to make things as soon as they were old
enough. They took it all as life—just Life, as a child must take his
first environment.

“And don’t you think, John,” Nellie said, when I spoke of this, “don’t
you really think this is a more normal environment for a young human
soul than a kitchen? Or a parlor? Or even a nursery?”

I had to admit that it had its advantages. As they grew older there was
every chance for specialization. In the first years they gathered the
rudiments of general knowledge, and of general activity, of both hand
and brain, and from infancy each child was studied, and his growth—or
hers—carefully recorded; not by adoring, intimately related love, but
by that larger, wiser tenderness of these great child-lovers who had had
hundreds of them to study.

They were observed intelligently. Notes were made, the mother and father
contributed theirs; in freedom and unconsciousness the young nature
developed, never realizing how its environment was altered to fit its
special needs.

As the cool, spacious, flower-starred, fruitful forests of this time
differed from the tangled underbrush, with crooked, crowded, imperfect
trees struggling for growth, that I remembered as “woods,” or from
clipped and twisted products of the forcing and pruning process; so did
the new child-gardens differ from the old schools.

No wonder children wore so different an aspect. They had the fresh,
insatiable thirst for knowledge which has been wisely slaked, but never
given the water-torture. As I recalled my own youth, and thought of all
those young minds set in rows, fixed open as with a stick between the
teeth, and forced to drink, drink, drink till all desire was turned to
loathing, I felt a sudden wish to be born again—now!---and begin over.

As an adult observer, I found this re-arranged world jarring and
displeasing in many ways; but as I sat among the children, played with
them, talked with them, became somewhat acquainted with their views of
things, I began to see that to them the new world was both natural and
pleasant.

When they learned that I was a “left-over” from what to them seemed past
ages, I became extremely popular. There was a rush to get near me, and
eager requests to tell them about old times—checked somewhat by
politeness, yet always eager.

But the cheerful pride with which I began to describe the world as I
knew it was considerably dashed by their comments. What I had considered
as necessary evils, or as no evils at all, to them appeared as silly and
disgraceful as cannibalism; and there grew among them an attitude of
chivalrous pity for my unfortunate upbringing which was pretty to see.

“I see no child in glasses!” I suddenly remarked one day.

“Of course not,” answered the teacher I stood by. “We use books very
little, you see. Education no longer impairs our machinery.”

I recalled the Boston school children and the myopic victims of
Germany’s archaic letter-press; and freely admitted that this was
advance. Much of the instruction was oral—much, very much, came
through games and exercises; books, I found, were regarded rather as
things to consult, like a dictionary, or as instruments of high
enjoyment.

“School books”---“text books”---scarcely existed, at least for children.
The older ones, some of them, plunged into study with passion; but their
eyes were good and their brains were strong; also their general health.
There was no “breakdown from over-study;" that slow, cruel, crippling
injury—sometimes death, which we, wise and loving parents of past
days, so frequently forced upon our helpless children.

Naturally happy, busy, self-respecting, these grew up; with a wide
capacity for action, a breadth of general knowledge which was almost
incredible, a high standard of courtesy, and vigorous, well-exercised
minds. They were trained to think, I found; to question, discuss,
decide; they could reason.

And they faced life with such loving enthusiasm! Such pride in the new
accomplishments of the world! Such a noble, boundless ambition to do
things, to make things, to help the world still further.

And from infancy to adolescence—all through these years of happy
growing—there was nothing whatever to differentiate the boys from the
girls! As a rule, they could not be distinguished.

# Chapter 10

IT was this new growth of humanity which made continuing social progress
so rapid and so sure.

These young minds had no rubbish in them. They had a vivid sense of the
world as a whole, quite beyond their family “relations.” They were
marvelously reasonable, free from prejudice, able to see and willing to
do. And this spreading tide of hope and courage flowed back into the
older minds, as well as forward into the new

I found that peopled ideas of youth and age had altered materially.
Nellie said it was due to the change in women—but then she laid most
things to that. She reminded me that women used to be considered only as
females, and were “old” when no longer available in that capacity; but
that as soon as they recognized themselves as human beings they put
“Grandma” into the background, and “Mother” too; and simply went on
working and growing and enjoying life up into the lively eighties—even
nineties, sometimes.

“Brains do not cease to function at fifty,” she said. “Just because a
woman is no longer an object to ‘fall in love’ with, it does not follow
that life has no charms for her. Women today have all that they ever had
before, all that was good in it; and more, a thousand times more. When
the lives of half the world widen like that it widens the other half
too.”

This quite evidently had happened.

The average mental standard was higher, the outlook broader. I found
many very ordinary people, of course; some whose only attitude toward
this wonderful new world was to enjoy its advantages; and even some who
grumbled. These were either old persons with bad digestions or new
immigrants from very backward countries.

I traveled about, visiting different places, consulting all manner of
authorities, making notes, registering objections. It was all
interesting, and grew more so as it seemed less strange. My sense of
theatrical unreality gave way to a growing appreciation of the universal
beauty about me.

Art, I found, held a very different position from what it used to hold.
It had joined hands with life again, was common, familiar, used in all
things. There were pictures, many and beautiful, but the great word Art
was no longer so closely confined to its pictorial form. It was not
narrow, expensive, requiring a special education, but part of the
atmosphere in which all children grew, all people lived.

For instance the theatre, which I remember as a two-dollar affair, and
mainly vulgar and narrow, was now the daily companion and teacher. The
historic instinct with which nearly every child is born was cultivated
without check. The little ones played through all their first years of
instruction, played the old stone age (most natural to them!) the new
stone age, the first stages of industry. Older children learned history
that way; and as they reached years of appreciation, special dramas were
written for them, in which psychology and sociology were learned without
hearing their names.

Those happy, busy, eager young things played gaily through wide ranges
of human experience; and when these emotions touched them in later
years, they were not strange and awful, but easy to understand.

In every smallest village there was a playhouse, not only in the
child-gardens, but for the older people. They each had their dramatic
company, as some used to have their bands; had their musical companies
too, and better ones.

Out of this universal use of the drama rose freely those of special
talent who made it the major business of their lives; and the higher
average everywhere gave to these greater ones the atmosphere of real
appreciation which a growing art must have.

I asked Nellie how the people managed who lived in the real
country—remote and alone.

“We don’t live that way any more,” she said. “Only some stubborn old
people, like Uncle Jake and Aunt Dorcas. You see the women decided that
they must live in groups to have proper industrial and educational
advantages; and they do.”

“Where do the men live?” I asked grimly.

“With the women, of course---Where should they? I don’t mean that a
person cannot go and live in a hut on a mountain, if he likes; we do
that in summer, very largely. It is a rest to be alone part of the time.
But living, real human living, requires a larger group than one family.
You can see the results.”

I could and I did; though I would not always admit it to Nellie; and
this beautiful commonness of good music, good architecture, good
sculpture, good painting, good drama, good dancing, good literature,
impressed me increasingly. Instead of those perpendicular peaks of
isolated genius we used to have, surrounded by the ignorantly
indifferent many, and the excessively admiring few, those geniuses now
sloped gently down to the average on long graduated lines of decreasing
ability. It gave to the commonest people a possible road of upward
development, and to the most developed a path of connection with the
commonest people. The geniuses seemed to like it too. They were not so
conceited, not so disagreeable, not so lonesome.

People seemed to have a very good time, even while at work; indeed very
many found their work more fun than anything else. . The abundant
leisure gave a sort of margin to life which was wholly new, to the
majority at least. It was that spare time, and the direct efforts of the
government in wholesale educational lines, which had accomplished so
much in the first ten years.

Owen reminded me of the educational vitality even of the years I knew;
of the university extension movement, the lectures in the public
schools, the push of the popular magazines; the summer schools, the
hundreds of thousands of club women, whose main effort seemed to be to
improve their minds.

“And the Press,” I said---“our splendid Press.”

“That was one of our worst obstacles, I’m sorry to say,” he answered.

I looked at him. “Oh, go ahead, go ahead! You’ll tell me the public
schools were an obstacle next.”

“They would have been—if we hadn’t changed them,” he agreed. “But they
were in our hands at least, and we got them re-arranged very promptly.
That absurd old despotism which kept the grade of teachers down so low,
was very promptly changed. We have about five times as many teachers
now, fifty times as good and far better paid, not only in cash, but in
public appreciation. Our teachers are ‘leading citizens’ now—we have
elected one President from the School Principalship of a state.”

This was news, and not unpleasant.

“Have you elected any Editors?”

“No—but we may soon. They are a new set of men now I can tell you; and
women, of course. You remember in our day journalism was frankly treated
as a trade; whereas it is visibly one of the most important
professions.”

“And did you so reform those Editors, so that they became as
self-sacrificing as country doctors?”

“Oh, no. But we changed the business conditions. It was the advertising
that corrupted the papers—mostly; and the advertisers were only
screaming for bread and butter—especially butter. When Socialism
reorganized business there was no need to scream.

“But I find plenty of advertising in the papers and magazines.”

“Certainly—it is a great convenience. Have you studied it?”

I had to own that I had not particularly---I never did like advertising.

“You’ll find it worth reading. In the first place it’s all true.”

“How do you secure that?”

“We have made lying to the public a crime—don’t you remember? Each
community has its Board of Standards; there is a constant effort to
improve standards you see, in all products; and expert judgment may
always be had, for nothing. If any salesman advertises falsely he loses
his job, if he’s an official; and is posted, if he’s selling as a
private individual. When the public is told officially that Mr. Jones is
a liar it hurts his trade.”

“You have a Government Press?”

“Exactly. The Press is pre-eminently a public function—it is not and
never was a private business—not legitimately.”

“But you do have private papers and magazines?”

“Yes indeed, lots of them. Ever so many personal ‘organs’ large and
small. But they don’t carry advertising. If enough people will buy a
man’s paper to pay him, he’s quite free to publish.”

“How do you prevent his carrying advertising?”

“It’s against the law—like any other misdemeanor. Post Office won’t
take it—he can’t distribute. No, if you want to find out about the
latest breakfast food---( and there are a score you never heard of)---or
the last improvement in fountain pens or air-ships—you find it all,
clear, short, and reliable, in the hotel paper of every town. There’s no
such bulk of advertising matter now, you see; not so many people
struggling to sell the same thing.”

“Is all business socialized?”

“Yes—and no. All the main business is; the big assured steady things
that our life depends on. But there is a free margin for individual
initiative—and always will be. We are not so foolish as to cut off
that supply. We have more inventors and idealists than ever; and plenty
of chance for trial. You see the two hours a day which pays board, so to
speak, leaves plenty of time to do other work; and if the new thing the
man does is sufficiently valuable to enough people, he is free to do
that alone. Like the little one-man papers I spoke of. If a man can find
five thousand people who will pay a dollar a year to read what he says
he’s quite as likely to make his living that way.” “Have you no
competition at all?” “Plenty of it. All our young folks are? racing and
chasing to break the record; to do more work, better work, new work.”

“But not under the spur of necessity.”

“Why, yes they are. The most compelling necessity we know. They have to
do it; it is in them and must come out.”

“But they are all sure of a living, aren’t they?”

“Yes, of course. Oh, I see! What you meant by necessity was hunger and
cold. Bless you, John, poverty was no spur. It was a deadly
anaesthetic.”

I looked my disagreement, and he went on: “You remember the hideous
poverty and helplessness of the old days—did that ‘spur’ the
population to do anything? Don’t you see, John, that if poverty had been
the splendid stimulus it used to be thought, there wouldn’t have been
any poverty? Some few exceptional persons triumphed in spite of it, but
we shall never know the amount of world loss in the many who did not.

“It was funny,” he continued meditatively, “how we went on believing
that in some mysterious way poverty ‘strengthened character,’ ‘developed
initiative,’ ‘stimulated industry,’ and did all manner of fine things;
and never turned our eyes on the millions of people who lived and died
in poverty with weakened characters, no initiative, a slow, enforced and
hated industry. My word, John, what fools we were!”

I was considering this Government Press he described. “How did you
dispose of the newspapers you had?”

“Just as we disposed of the saloons; drove them out of business by
underselling them with better goods. The laws against lying helped too.”

“I don’t see how you can stop people’s lying”

“We can’t stop their lying in private, except by better social
standards; but we can stop public lying, and we have. If a paper
published a false statement anyone could bring a complaint; and the
district attorney was obliged to prosecute. If a paper pleaded ignorance
or misinformation it was let off with a fine and a reprimand the first
time, a heavy fine the second time, and confiscation the third time; as
being proved by their own admission incompetent to tell the truth! If it
was shown to be an intentional falsehood they were put out of business
at once.”

“That’s all very pretty,” I said, “and sounds easy as you tell it; but
what made people so hot about lying? They didn’t used to mind it. The
more you tell me of these things the more puzzled I am as to what
altered the minds of the people. They certainly had to alter
considerably from the kind I remember, to even want all these changes,
much more to enforce them.”

Owen wasn’t much of a psychologist, and said so. He insisted that people
had wanted better things, only they did not know it.

“Well—what made them know it?” I insisted. “Now here’s one thing,
small in a way, but showing a very long step in alteration; people dress
comfortably and beautifully; almost all of them. What made them do it?”

“They have more money,” Owen began, “more leisure and better education.”

But I waved this aside.

“That has nothing to do with it. The people with money and education
were precisely the ones who wore the most outrageous clothes. And as to
leisure—they spent their leisure in getting up foolish costumes,
apparently.”

“Women are more intelligent, you see,” he began again; but I dismissed
this also.

“The intelligence of a Lord Chancellor didn’t prevent his wearing a wig!
How did people break loose from the force of fashion, I want to know?”

He could not make this clear, and said he wouldn’t try.

“You show me all these material changes,” I went on; “and I can see that
there was no real obstacle to them; but the obstacle that lasted so long
was in the people’s minds. What moved that? Then you show me this
marvellous new education, as resulting in new kinds of people, better
people, wiser, freer, stronger, braver; and I can see that at work. But
how did you come to accept this new education? You needn’t lay it all to
the women, as Nellie does. I knew one or two of the most advanced of
them in 1910, and they had no such world-view as this. They wore foolish
clothes and had no ideas beyond ‘Votes for Women’---some of them.”

“No sir! I admit that there was potential wealth enough in the earth to
support all this ease and beauty; and potential energy in the people to
produce the wealth. I admit that it was possible for people to leave off
being stupid and become wise—evidently they have done so. But I don’t
see what made them.”

“You go and see Dr. Borderson,” said Owen.

# Chapter 11

DR. BORDERSON, it seemed, held the chair in Ethics at the University, I
knew a Borderson once and was very fond of him. Poor Frank! If he was
alive he would have more likely reached a prison or a hospital than a
professorship. Yet he was brilliant enough. We were great friends in
college, and before; let me see—thirty-five years ago. But he was
expelled for improper conduct, and went from bad to worse. The last I
had heard of him was in a criminal case—but he had run away and
disappeared. I well remembered the grief and shame it was to me at the
time to see such a promising young life ruined and lost so early.

Thinking of this, I was shown into the study of the great teacher of
ethics, and as I shook hands I met the keen brown eyes of---Frank
Borderson. He had both my hands and shook them warmly.

“Well, John! It is good to see you again. How well you look; how little
you have changed! It’s a good world you’ve come back to, isn’t it?”

“You are the most astonishing thing I’ve seen so far,” I replied. “Do
you really mean it? Are you—a Professor of Ethics?”

“When I used to be a God-forsaken rascal, eh? Yes, it’s really so. I\‘ve
taught Ethics for twenty years, and gradually pushed along to this
position. And I was a good deal farther off than Tibet, old man.”

I was tremendously glad to see him. It was more like a touch of the old
life than anything I had yet found—except Nellie, of course. We spoke
for some time of those years of boyhood; of the good times we had had
together; of our common friends.

He kept me to dinner; introduced me to his wife, a woman with a rather
sad, sweet face, which seemed to bear marks of deep experience; and we
settled down for an evening’s talk.

“I think you have come to the right person, John; not only because of my
special studies, but because of my special line of growth. If I can tell
you what changed me, so quickly and so wholly, you won’t be much puzzled
about the others, eh?”

I fully agreed with him. The boy I knew was clever enough to dismiss all
theology, to juggle with philosophy and pick ethics to pieces; but his
best friends had been reluctantly compelled to admit that he had “no
moral character.” He had, to my knowledge, committed a number of
unquestionable “sins,” and by hearsay I knew of vices and crimes that
followed. And he was Dr. Borderson!

“Ill take myself as a sample, Whitman fashion,” said he. “There I was
when you knew me—conceited, ignorant, clever, self-indulgent, weak,
sensual, dishonest. After I was turned out of college I broke a good
many laws and nearly all the commandments. What was worse, in one way,
was that my ‘wages’ were being paid me in disease—abominable disease.
Also I had two drug habits—alcohol and cocaine. Will you take me as a
sample?”

I looked at him. He had not the perfect health I saw so much of in the
younger people; but he seemed in no way an invalid, much less a drug
victim. His eyes were clear and bright, his complexion good, his hand
steady, his manner assured and calm.

“Frank,” said I, “you beat anything I’ve seen yet. You stand absolutely
to my mind as an illustration of ‘Before Taking’ and ‘After Taking.’ Now
in the name of reason tell me what it was you Took!”

“I took a new grip on Life—that’s the whole answer. But you want to
know the steps, and I’ll tell you. The new stage of ethical perception
we are in now—or, as you would probably say, this new
religion—presents itself to me in this way:

“The business of the universe about us consists in the Transmission of
Energy. Some of it is temporarily and partially arrested in material
compositions; some is more actively expressed in vegetable and animal
form; this stage of expression we call Life. We ourselves, the human
animals, were specially adapted for high efficiency in storing and
transmitting this energy; and so were able to enter into a combination
still more efficient; that is, into social relations. Humanity, man in
social relation, is the best expression of the Energy that we know. This
Energy is what the human mind has been conscious of ever since it was
conscious at all; and calls God. The relation between this God and this
Humanity is in reality a very simple one. In common with all other life
forms, the human being must express itself in normal functioning.
Because of its special faculty of consciousness, this human engine can
feel, see, think, about the power within it; and can use it more fully
and wisely. All it has to learn is the right expression of its degree of
life-force, of Social Energy.” He beamed at me. “I think it’s about all
there, John.”

“You may be a very good Professor of Ethics for these new-made minds,
but you don’t reach the old kind—not a little bit. To my mind you
haven’t said anything—yet.”

He seemed a little disappointed, but took it mildly. “Perhaps I am a
little out of touch. Wait a moment—let me go back and try to take up
the old attitude.”

He leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes, I saw an expression of
pain slowly grow and deepen on his face; and suddenly realized what he
was doing.

“Oh, never mind, Frank; don’t do it; don’t try, I’ll catch on somehow.”

He seemed not to hear me; but dropped his face in his hands. When he
raised it it was clear again. “Now I can make things clearer perhaps,”
he said. “We had in our minds thirty years ago a strange hodge-podge of
old and new ideas. What was called God was still largely patterned after
the old tribal deity of the Hebrews. Our ideas of ‘Sin’ were still
mostly of the nature of disobedience—wrong only because we were told
not to do it. Sin as a personal offence against Somebody, and Somebody
very much offended; that was it. We were beginning to see something of
Social values, too, but not clearly. Our progress was in what we called
‘The natural sciences’; and we did not think with the part of our minds
wherein we stored religion. Yet there was very great activity and
progress in religious thought; the whole field was in motion; the new
churches widening and growing in every direction; the older ones holding
on like grim death, trying not to change, and changing in spite of
themselves; and Ethics being taught indeed, but with no satisfying
basis. That’s the kind of atmosphere you and I grew up in, John. Now
here was I, an ill-assorted team of impulses and characteristics,
prejudiced against religion, ignorant of real ethics, and generally
going to the devil—as we used to call it I You know how far down I
went—or something of it.”

“Don’t speak of it, Frank!” I said. “That was long ago; forget it, old
man!” But he turned toward me a smile of triumph.

“Forget it! I wouldn’t forget one step of it if I could! Why, John, it’s
because of my intimate knowledge of these down-going steps that I can
help other people up them!”

“You looked decidedly miserable just now, all the same, when you were
thinking them over.”

“Oh, bless you, John, I wasn’t thinking of myself at all! I was thinking
of the awful state of mind the world was in, and how it suffered! Of all
the horror and misery and shame; all that misplaced, unnecessary cruelty
we called punishment; the Dark Ages we were still in, in spite of all we
had to boast of. However, this new perception came.”

I interrupted him.

“What came? Who came? Did you have a new revelation? Who did it? What do
you call it? Nobody seems to be able to give me definite information.”

He smiled broadly. “You’re a beautiful proof of the kind of mental
jumble I spoke of. Knowledge of evolution did not come by a revelation,
did it? Or did any one man, or two, give it to us? Darwin and Wallace
were not the only minds that helped to see and express that great idea;
and many more had to spread it. These great truths break into the
world-mind through various individuals, and coalesce so that we cannot
dis connect them. We have had many writers, preachers, lecturers, who
discoursed and explained; this new precept as to the relation between
man and God came with such a general sweep that no one even tries to
give personal credit for it. These things are not personal—they are
world-percepts.”

“But every religion has had its Founder, hasn’t it?”

"*I* don’t call it a religion, my dear fellow! It’s a science, like any
other science. Ethics is The Science of Human Relation. It is called
Applied Sociology—that’s all.”

“How does a thing like that touch one, personally?” I asked.

“How does any science touch one personally? One studies a science, one
teaches a science, one uses a science. That’s the point—the use of it.
Our old scheme of religion was a thing to ‘believe,’ or ‘deny’; it was a
sort of shibboleth, a test question one had to pass examination in to
get good marks! What I’m telling you about is a general recognition of
right behavior, and a general grasp of the necessary power.”

“You leave out entirely the emotional side of religion.”

“Do I? I did not intend to. You see, we do not distinguish religion from
life now, and are apt to forget old terms. You are thinking, I suppose,
of the love of God, and man, which we used to preach. We practice it
now.

“That Energy I spoke of, when perceived by us, is called Love. Love, the
real thing we had in mind when we said ‘God is Love,’ is beneficent
energy. It is the impulse of service, the desire to do, to help, to
make, to benefit. That is the ‘love’ we were told to bestow on one
another. Now we do.”

“Yes; but what made you do it? What keeps you up to it?”

“Just nature, John. It is human nature. We used to believe otherwise.”
He was quiet for a while.

“One of these new doctors got hold of me, when I was about as near the
bottom as one can go and get back. Not a priest with a formula, nor a
reformer with an exhortation; but a real physician, a soul-doctor, with
a passionate enthusiasm for an interesting case. That’s what I was,
John; not a lost soul; not even a ‘sinner’---just ‘a case.’ Have you
heard about these moral sanitariums?”

“Yes—but not definitely.”

“Well, as soon as this view of things took hold, they began to want to
isolate bad cases, and cure them if they could. And they cured me.”

“How, Frank—how? What did they tell you that you didn’t know before?
What did they do to you?”

“Sane, strong, intelligent minds put themselves in connection with mine,
John, and shared their strength with me. I was matters to feel that my
individual failure was no great matter, but that my social duty wast
that the whole of my dirty past was as nothing to all our splendid
future, that whatever I had done was merely to be forgotten—the sooner
the better, and that all life was open before me—all human life;
endless, beautiful, profoundly interesting—the game was on, and I was
in it.

“John---I wish I could make you feel it. It was as if we had all along
had inside us an enormous reservoir of love, human love, that had
somehow been held in and soured! This new arrangement of our minds let
it out—to our limitless relief and joy. No ‘sin’---think of that I
Just let it sink in. No such thing as sin. . . . We had, collectively
and privately, made mistakes, and done the wrong thing, often. What of
it? Of course we had. A growing race grew that way.

“Now we are wiser and need not keep on going wrong. We had learned that
life was far easier, pleasanter, more richly satisfying when followed on
these new lines—and the new lines were not hard to learn. Love was the
natural element of social life. Love meant service, service meant doing
one’s special work well, and doing it for the persons served—of
course!

“All our mistakes lay in our belated Individualism. You cannot predicate
Ethics of individuals; you cannot fulfill any religion as individuals.
My fellow creatures took hold of me, you see. That power that was being
used so extensively for physical healing in our young days had become a
matter of common knowledge—and use.”

“How many of these—moral hygienists—did you have?”

“Scores, hundreds, thousands—we all help one another now. If a person
is tired and blue and has lost his grip, if he can’t rectify it by
change of diet and change of scene, he goes to a moral hygienist, as you
rightly call it, and gets help. I do a lot of that sort of work.”

I meditated awhile, and again shook my head. “I’m afraid it’s no use. I
can’t make it seem credible. I hear what you say and I see what you’ve
done—but I do not get any clear understanding of the process. With
people as they were, with all those case-hardened old sinners, all the
crass ignorance, the stupidity, the sodden prejudice, the apathy, the
selfishness—to make a world like that see reason—in thirty
years!---No---I don’t get it.”

“You are wrong in your premises, John. Human nature is, and was, just as
good as the rest of nature. Two things kept us back—wrong conditions,
and wrong ideas; we y; have changed both. I think you forget the '
sweeping advance in material conditions and its effect on character.
What made the well-bred, well-educated, well-meaning, pleasant people we
used to know? Good conditions, for them and their ancestors. There were
just as pleasant people among the poor and among their millions of
children; they had every capacity for noble growth—given the chance.
It took no wholesale change of heart to make people want shorter hours,
better pay, better housing, food, clothes, amusements. As soon as the
shameful pressure of poverty was taken off humanity it rose like a freed
spring. Humanity’s all right.” I “There were some things all wrong,” I
replied, “that I know. You could not obliterate hereditary disease in
ten—or thirty years. You couldn’t make clean women of hundreds of
thousands of prostitutes. You couldn’t turn an invalid tramp into a
healthy gentleman.”

He stopped me. “We could do better than that,” he said, “and we have. I
begin to see your central difficulty, John; the difficulty that used to
hold us all. You are looking at life as a personal affair—a matter of
personal despair or salvation.”

“Of course, what else is it?”

“What else! Why, that is no part of human life! Human life is social,
John, collectively, common, or it isn’t human life at all. Hereditary
disease looks pretty hopeless when you see one generation or two or
three so cursed. But when you realize how swiftly the stream of human
life can be cleansed of it, you take a fresh hold. The percentage of
hereditary disease has sunk by more than half in thirty years, John, and
at its present rate of decrease will be gone, clean gone, in another
twenty. Remember that every case is known, and that they are either
prevented from transmitting the inheritance, isolated, or voluntarily
living single. Diseases from bad conditions we no longer endure, nor
diseases from ignorance, those from bacilli we are able to resist or
cure; disease was never a permanent thing—only an accident. As for the
prostitutes—we thought them ‘ruined’ because they were no longer
suitable for our demands in marriage. As if that was everything! I tell
you we opened a way out for them!”

“Namely?”

“Namely all the rest of life! Sex-life isn’t everything, John. Not fit
to be a mother, we said to them; never mind—there is everything else
in the world to be. You may remember, my friend, that thousands of men,
as vicious as any prostitutes, and often as diseased, continued to live,
to work, and to enjoy. Why shouldn’t the women? You haven’t ruined your
lives, we said to them; only one part. It’s a loss, a great loss, but
never mind, the whole range of human life remains open to you, the great
moving world of service and growth and happiness. If you’re sick, you’re
sick—we’ll cure it if possible. If not, you’ll die—never mind, we
all die—that’s nothing.”

“Does your new religion call death nothing?”

“Certainly. The fuss we made about death was wholly owing to the old
religions; the post-mortem religions, their whole basis was death.”

“Hold on a bit. Do you mean to tell me the people aren’t afraid of death
any more?”

“Not a bit. Why should they be? Every living thing dies; that’s part of
the living. We do not hide it from children now, we teach it to them.”

“Teach death—to children! How horrible!”

“Did you see or hear anything horrible in your educational excursions,
John? I know you didn’t. No, they learn it naturally; in their gardens;
in their autumn and winter songs; in their familiarity with insects and
animals. Our children learn life, death, and immortality, from
silk-worms; and, then only incidentally. The silk is what they are
studying.

“It takes a great many silk-worms to make silk, generations of them.
They see them horn, live and die, as incidents in silk culture. So we
show them how people are horn, live and die, in the making of human
history. The idea is worked into our new educational literature—and
all our literature for that matter. We see human life as a continuous
whole now. People are only temporary parts of it. Dying isn’t any more
trouble than being born.

“People feared death, originally, because it hurt; being chased and
eaten was not pleasant. But natural dying does not hurt. Then they were
made to fear it by the hell-school of religions. All that is gone by.
Our religion rests on life.”

“The life of this world or the life eternal?”

“The eternal life of this world, John. We have no quarrel with anyone’s
belief as to what may happen after death, that is a free field; but the
glory and power of our religion is that it rests with assurance on
common knowledge of the beautiful facts of life. Here is Humanity, a
continuing stream of life. Its line of advance is clear. That which
makes Humanity stronger, wiser and happier is evidently what is right
for it to do. We do teach it to all our children.”

“And they do it?”

“Of course they do it. Why shouldn’t they?”

“But our evil tendencies "

“We don’t have evil tendencies, John—and never did. We have earlier
and later tendencies; and it is perfectly possible to show the child
which is which.”

“But surely it is easier to follow the lower impulses than the higher;
easier to give way than to strive.”

“There’s the old misconception, John, that Striving idea.’ We assumed
that it was ‘natural’ to be ‘bad’ and ‘unnatural’ to be ‘good’---that we
had to make special efforts, painful and laborious, to become better. We
had not seen, thirty years ago, that social evolution is as ‘natural’ as
the evolution of the horse from the eohippus. If it was easier to be an
eohippus than a horse why did the thing change?

“As to that army of ‘fallen women 5 you are so anxious about, they just
got up again, that’s all, got up and went on. They had only fallen from
one position; there was plenty of room left to stand and walk. Why they
were not a speck on society compared to the ‘fallen men.’ Two hundred
thousand prostitutes in the city of New York—well? How many patrons? A
million, at the least. They kept on doing business, and enjoying life. I
tell you, John, all the unnecessary evils of condition in the old days,
were as nothing to the unnecessary evils of our foolish ideas! And ideas
can be changed in the twinkling of an eye!

“As to your hoboes and bums, that invalid tramp you instanced---I can
settle your mind on that point. I was an invalid tramp, John; a
drunkard, a cocaine fiend, a criminal, sick, desperate, as bad as they
make them.”

“Which brings us back to that ‘moral sanitarium’ I suppose?”

“Yes. I strayed away from it. I keep forgetting my own case. But it is
an excellent one for illustration. I was taken hold of with the strong
hand, and given a course of double treatment, deep and thorough. By
double treatment I mean physical and mental at once; such a complete
overhauling and wise care as enabled my exhausted vitality slowly to
reassert itself, and at the same time such strong tender cheerful
companionship, such well-devised entertainment, such interesting,
irresistible instruction---Why, John—put a tramp into Paradise, and
there’s some hope of him.”

I was about to say that tramps did not deserve Paradise, but as I
remembered what this man had been, and saw what he was now, I refrained.

He read my mind at once.

“It’s not a question of desert, John. We no longer deal in terms of
personal reward or punishment. If I have a bad finger or a bad tooth I
save it if I can; not because it deserves it, but because I need it.
People who used to be called sinners are now seen to be diseased members
of society, and society turns all its regenerative forces on at once. We
never used to dream of that flood of power we had at hand—the
Regenerative Forces of Society!”

He sat smiling, his fine eyes full of light. “Sometimes we had to
amputate,” he continued, “especially at first. It is very seldom
necessary now.”

“You mean you killed the worst people?”

“We killed many hopeless degenerates, insane, idiots, and real perverts,
after trying our best powers of cure. But it is really astonishing to
see how much can be done with what we used to call criminals, merely by
first-class physical treatment. I can remember how strange it seemed to
me, having elaborate baths, massage, electric stimulus, perfect food,
clean comfortable beds, beautiful clothes, books, music, congenial
company, and wonderful instruction. It was very confusing. It went far
to rearrange all my ideas.”

“If you treat—social invalids—like that, I should think they would
‘lie down;' just to remain in hospital forever. Or go out and be bad in
order to get back again.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “A healthy man can’t lie around and do nothing very
long. Also it is good outside too, remember. Life is good, pleasant,
easy. Why on earth should a man want to prowl around at night and steal
when he can have all he wants, with less effort, in the daytime? Happy
people do not become criminals.

“But I can tell you what treatment like that does to one. It gives a man
a new view of human life, of what it is he belongs to. A sense of pride
in our common accomplishment, of gratitude for the pleasure he receives,
of a natural desire to contribute something. I took this new ethics—it
satisfied me, it’s reasonable, it’s necessary. We make it our basic
study now, in all the schools. You must have noticed that?”

“Yes, I had noticed it, as I looked back. But they don’t call it that,”
I said.

“No, they don’t call it anything to the children. It is just life, the
rules of decent behavior.”

We sat silent awhile after this. Things were clearing up a little in my
mind.

“A sort of crystallization of chaotic progressive thought into clear
diamonds of usable truth—is that about what happened?” I said.

“That’s exactly it,”

“And a general refutation and clearing out of—of---"

“Of a lot of things we deeply believed—that were not so! That is what
was the matter with us, John. Our minds were full of what Mrs. Eddy
christened error. I wish I could make you feel what a sunrise it was to
the world when we left off believing lies and learned the facts.”

“Can you, in a few words, outline a little of your new ‘Ethics’ to the
lay mind?”

“Easily. It is all ‘lay’ enough. We don’t make a separate profession of
religion, or a separate science of ethics. Ethics is social hygiene—it
teaches how humanity must live in order to be well and strong. We show
the child the patent facts of social relation, how all our daily life,
our accumulated wealth and beauty and continuing power, rests on common
action, on what people do together. Everything about him teaches that.
Then we show him the reasons why such and such actions are wrong, what
the results are; how to avoid wrong lines of action and adopt right
ones. It’s no more difficult than teaching any other game, and far more
interesting.”

I suppose I looked unconvinced, for he added, “Remember we have nature
on our side. It is natural for a social animal to develop social
instincts; any personal desire which works against the social good is
clearly a survival of a lower presocial period; wrong, in that it is out
of place. What we used to call criminals were relics of the past. By
artificially maintaining low conditions, such as poverty, individual
wealth, we bred low-grade types. We do not breed them any more.”

Again we sat silent. I was nursing my knee and sat looking into the
fire; the soft shimmering play of rosy light and warmth with which
electricity now gave jewels to our rooms.

He followed my eyes.

“That clean, safe, beautiful power was always here, John—but we had
not learned of it. The power of wind and water and steam were
here—before we learned to use them. All this splendid power of human
life was here—only we did not know it.”

After that talk with Frank Borderson I felt a little clearer in my mind
about what had taken place. I saw a good deal of him, and he introduced
me to others who were in his line of work. Also I got to know his wife
pretty well. She was not so great an authority on ethics as he; but an
excellent teacher, widely useful.

One day I said something to her about her lovely spirit, and what she
must have been to him—such an uplifting influence.

She laughed outright.

“Ill have to tell you the facts, Mr. Robertson, as part of your
instruction. So far from my uplifting him, he picked me out of the
gutter, literally, dead drunk in the gutter, the lowest kind of wreck.
He made me over. He gave me---Life.”

Her eyes shone.

“We work together,” she added cheerfully.

They did work together, and evidently knew much happiness. I noted a
sort of deep close understanding between them, as in those who have been
through the wars in company,

I found Nellie knew about them. “Yes, indeed,” she said. “They are
devoted to each other, and most united in their work. He was just
beginning to try to work, after his own rebuilding; but feeling pretty
lonesome. He felt that he had no chance of any personal life, you see,
and there were times hen he missed it badly. He had no right to marry,
of course; that is, with a well woman. And then he found this broken
lily—and mended it. There can’t be any children, but there is great
happiness, you can see that.”

“And they are—received?”

“Received?---Oh, I remember. You mean they are invited to dinners and
parties. Why, yes.”

“Not among the best people, surely?”

“Precisely that, the very best; people who appreciate their wonderful
lives.”

“Tell me this, Sister; what happened to the Four Hundred—the F. F.
V’s—and the rest of the aristocracy?”

“The same thing that happened to all of us. They were only people, you
see. Their atrophied social consciousness was electrified with the new
thoughts and feelings. They woke up, too, most of them. Some just died
out harmlessly. They were only by-products.”

I consulted a rather reactionary old professor of Sociology, Morris
Banks; one who had been teaching Political Economy in my youth, and who
ought to be able to remember things. I asked him if he would be so good
as to show me the dark side of this shield.

“Surely there must have been opposition, misunderstanding, the usual
difficulties of new adjustments,” I said. “You remember the first years
of change---I wish you would give me a clear account of it.”

The old man considered awhile: “Take any one state, any city, or country
locality, and study back a little,” he said, “and you find the story is
about the same. There was opposition and dissent, of course, but it
decreased very rapidly. You see the improvements at first introduced
were such universal benefits that there could not be any serious
complaint.

“By the time we had universal suffrage the women were more than ready
for it, full of working plans to carry out, and rich by the experience
of the first trials.

“By the time Socialism was generally adopted we had case after case of
proven good in Socialistic methods; and also the instructive background
of some failures.”

“But the big men who ran the country to suit themselves in my time, they
didn’t give up without a struggle surely? You must have had some
fighting,” I said.

He smiled in cheerful reminiscence. “We had a good deal of noise, if
that’s what you mean. But there’s no fighting to be done, with soldiers,
if the soldiers won’t fight.

Our workingmen declined to shoot or to be shot any longer, and left the
big capitalists to see what they could do alone.”

“But they had the capital?”

“Not all of it. The revenues of the cities and of the United States
Government are pretty considerable, especially when you save the seventy
per cent, we used to spend on wars past and possible; and the ten or
twenty-more that went in waste and graft. With a Socialist State private
Capital has no grip!”

“Did you confiscate it?”

“Did not have to. The people who were worth anything, swung into line
and went to work like other people. Those that weren’t were just let
alone. Nobody has any respect for them now.”

“You achieved Socialism without blood-shed?”

“We did. It did not happen all at once, you see; just spread and spread
and proved its usefulness.”

# Chapter 12.

MORE and more I cut loose from the explanatory guiding strings of my
sister and the family, even from the requested information of
specialists, and wandered by myself in search of the widening daily
acquaintance which alone could make life seem real again.

It was an easy world to wander in. The standard of general courtesy and
intelligence of the officials, and of the average passer-by, was as much
above what I remembered as the standard in Boston used to be above that
of New York.

As most of the business was public business one could study and inquire
freely. As much work as could be advantageously localized was so
arranged, this saving in transportation. The clothing industry, for in
stance, instead of being carried on in swarming centers, and then
distributed all over the country, formed part of the pleasant everyday
work in each community and was mostly in the hands of women.

As a man I could appreciate little of the improved quality of fabrics,
save as I noticed their beauty, and that my own clothes wore longer, and
both looked and felt more agreeable. But women told me how satisfying it
was to know that silk was silk, and wool, wool. This improvement in
textile values, with the outgrowing of that long obsession called
fashion, reduced the labor of clothes-making materially.

Women’s clothes, I found, as I strolled were very delicate and fine, and
had a gracious dignity and sanity far removed from the frantic
concoctions I remembered in the windows;---shredded patchwork of muslin
and lace, necessarily frail and short-lived even as ornaments, never
useful, and costing arduous labor in construction, with corresponding
expense to the purchaser.

The robes and gowns were a joy to the eye. Some showed less taste than
others, naturally, but nowhere was to be seen the shameless ugliness so
common in my youth.

Beauty and peace, I found, care, leisure, quietness, plenty of gaiety,
too, both in young and old. It struck me that the young (people, owing
to their wider and sounder upbringing, were more serious, and that older
people, owing to their safer, easier lives, were jollier. These
sweet-faced, broad-minded young women did not show so much giggling
inanity as once seemed necessary to them; and a young man, even a young
man in college, did not, therefore, find pleasure in theft, cruelty,
gross practical jokes and destruction of property.

As I noted this, I brought myself up with a start. It looked as if
Nellie had written it. Surely, when I was in college—and there rose up
within me a memory of the crass, wasteful follies that used to be called
“pranks” in my time, and considered perfectly natural in young men. I
had not minded them in those days. It gave me a queer feeling to see by
my own words how my judgment was affected already.

I explored the city from end to end, and satisfied myself that there was
no poverty in it, no street that was not clean, no house that was not
fit for human habitation. That is, as far as I could judge from an
outside view.

Among the masses of people, after their busy mornings, there were vast
numbers who used the afternoons for learning, the easy, interesting,
endless learning now carried on far and wide. The more they learned the
more they wanted to know; and the best minds, free for research work,
and upheld in it by the deepening attention of the world, constantly
pushed on the boundaries of knowledge.

There were some hospitals yet, but as one to a hundred of what used to
be, of higher quality, and fuller usefulness. There were some of what I
should have called prisons, though the life inside was not only as
comfortable as that without, but administered with a stricter care for
the advantage of those within.

There were the moral sanitariums—healthful and beautiful, richly
endowed with the world’s best methods of improvement, and managed by the
world’s best people. It made me almost dizzy to try to take in this
opposite pole of judgment on the criminal.

Out of town I found that the park-like roads, so generally in use, by no
means interfered with the wide stretches of what I used to call “real
country.” Intensive agriculture took less ground, rather more; and the
wide use of food-bearing trees had restored the wooded aspect, so
pleasant in every sense.

The small country towns were of special interest to me; I visited scores
of them; each differing from the others, all beautiful and clean and
busy. They were numerous too; replacing the areas of scattered lonely
farmhouses, with these comfortable and pretty groups, each in its home
park, with its standard of convenience as high as that in any town.

The smallest group had its power plant, supplying all the houses with
heat, light and water, had its child gardens, its Town House and Club
House, its workshops and foodshops as necessary as its postoffices.

The Socialized industries ensured employment to every citizen, and
provided all the necessaries of life—larger order this than it used to
be. Quite above this broad base of social control, the life of the
people went on; far freer and more open to individual development than
it had ever had a chance to be in the whole history of the world.

This I frankly conceded. I found I was making more concessions in my
note-book than I had yet made to either Nellie or Owen. They encouraged
me to travel about by myself. In fact, my sister was now about to resume
her college position and Owen was going with her.

They both advised me not to settle upon any work for a full year.

“That’s little enough time in which to cover thirty,” Nellie said,
patting my shoulder. “But you’re doing splendidly, John. We are proud of
you. And there’s no hurry. You know there’s enough from our mine to
enable you to join the leisure class’---if you want to!”

I had no idea of doing this, as she well knew, but I did feel it
necessary to get myself in some way grafted on to this new world before
I took up regular employment. I found that there was not much call for
ancient languages in the colleges, even if I had been in touch with the
new methods; but there remained plenty of historical work, for which I
had now a special fitness. Indeed some of my new scientific friends
assured me I could be of the utmost service, with my unique experience.

So I was not worried about what to do, nor under any pressure about
doing it. But the more I saw of all these new advantages, the more I was
obliged to admit that they were advantages; the more I traveled and read
and learned, the more lonesome and homesick I became.

It was a beautiful world, but it was not my world. It was like a
beautiful dream, but seemed a dream nevertheless. I could no longer
dispute that it was possible for people to be “healthy, wealthy and
wise”; and happy, too—visibly happy—here they all were; working and
playing and enjoying life as naturally as possible. But they were not
the people I used to know; those, too, were like Frank Borderson and
Morris Banks—changed so that they seemed more unreal than the others.

The beauty and peace and order of the whole thing wore on—me. I wanted
to hear the roar of the elevated—to smell the foul air of the subway
and see the people pile in, pushing and angry, as I still remembered in
my visits to New York.

I wanted to see some neglected-looking land, some ragged suburbs, some
far-away farmhouse alone under its big elms, with its own barns in
odorous proximity, its own cows, boy-driven, running and stumbling home
to be milked.

I wanted a newspaper which gave me the excitement of guessing what the
truth was, I wanted to see some foolish, crazily dressed, giggling
girls, and equally foolish boys, but better dressed and less giggling,
given to cigarettes and uproarious “good times.”

I was homesick, desperately homesick. So without saying a word to anyone
I betook myself to old Slide-face, to see Uncle Jake.

All the way down—and I went by rail—no air travel for this
homecoming!---I felt an increasing pleasure in the familiar look of
things. The outlines of the Alleghanies had not changed. I would not get
out at any town, the shining neatness of the railroad station was
enough; but the sleeping cars were a disappointment. The beds were wide,
soft, cool, the blankets of light clean wool, the air clear and fresh,
the noise and jar almost gone. Oh, well, I couldn’t expect to have
everything as it used to be, of course.

But when I struck out, on foot, from Paintertown, and began to climb the
road that led to my old home, my heart was in my mouth. It was a better
road, of course—but I hardly noticed that. All the outlying farms were
better managed and the little village groups showed here and there—but
I shut my eyes to these things.

The hills were the same—the hills I had grown up among. They couldn’t
alter the face of the earth much—that was still recognizable. Our own
house I did not visit—both father and mother were gone, and the little
wooden building replaced by a concrete mining office. Nellie had told me
about all this; it was one reason why I had not come back before.

But now I went past our place almost with my eyes shut; and kept on
along the road to Uncle Jake’s. He had been a rich man, as farmers went,
owning the land for a mile or two on every side, owning Slide-face as a
matter of fact; and as he made enough from the rich little upland valley
where the house stood, to pay his taxes, he owned it still.

The moment I reached his boundary I knew it, unmistakably. A ragged,
home-made sign, sagging from its nails, announced “Private Road. No
trespassers allowed.” Evidently they heeded the warning, for the stony,
washed-out roadbed was little traveled.

My heart quite leaped as I set foot on it. It was not “improved” in the
least from what I remembered in my infrequent visits. My father and
Uncle Jake had “a coldness” between them; which would have been a
quarrel, I fancy, if father had not been a minister, so I never saw much
of these relations.

Drusilla I remembered well enough, though, a pretty, babyish thing, and
Aunt Dorcas’s kind, patient, tired smile, and the fruit cakes she made.

Up and up, through the real woods, ragged and thick with dead boughs,
fallen trunks and underbrush, not touched by any forester, and finally,
around the shoulder of Slide-face, to the farm.

I stood still and drew in a long breath of utter satisfaction. Here was
something that had not changed. There was an old negro plowing, the same
negro I remembered, apparently not a day older. It is wonderful ( how
little they do change with years. His wool showed white though, as he
doffed his ragged cap and greeted me with cheerful cordiality as Mass’
John.

“We all been hearin’ about you, Mass’ John. We been powerful sorry ‘bout
you long time, among de heathen,” he said. “You folks’ll be glad to see
you!”

“Well, young man!” said Uncle Jake, with some show of cordiality;
“better late than never. We wondered if you intended to look up your
country relations.”

But Aunt Dorcas put her thin arms around my neck and kissed me, teary
kisses with little pats and exclamations. “To think of it! Thirty years
among savages! We heard about it from Nellie—she wrote us, of course.
Nellie’s real good to Keep us posted.”

“She never comes to see us!” said my Uncle. “Nor those youngsters of
hers. We’ve never had them here but once. They’re too ‘advanced’ for
old-fashioned folks.”

Uncle Jake’s long upper lip set firmly; I remembered that look, as he
used to sit in his wagon and talk with mother at our gate, refusing to
come in, little sunny-haired Drusilla looking shyly at me from under her
sunbonnet the while.

Where was Drusilla? Surely not—that! A frail, weak, elderly, quiet,
little woman stood there by Aunt Dorcas, her smooth fine, ash-brown hair
drawn tightly back to a flat knot behind, her dull blue calico dress
falling starkly about her.

She came forward, smiling, and held out a thin work-worn hand. “We’re so
glad to see you, Cousin John,” she said. “We certainly are.”

They made much of me in the old familiar ways I had so thirsted for. The
sense of family background, of common knowledge and experience was
comforting in the extreme, the very furnishings and clothes as I
recalled them. I told them what a joy it was.

This seemed to please Uncle Jake enormously.

“I thought you’d do it,” he said. “Like to find one place that hasn’t
been turned upside down by all these new-fangled notions. Dreadful
things have been goin’ on, John, while you were amongst them Feejees.”

I endeavored to explain to him something of the nature and appearance of
the inhabitants of Tibet, but it made small impression. Uncle Jake’s
mind was so completely occupied by what was in it, that any outside fact
or idea had small chance of entry.

“They’ve got wimmin votin’ now, I understand,” he pursued; “I don’t read
the papers much, they are so ungodly, but I’ve heard that. And they’ve
been meddlin’ with Divine Providence in more ways than one—but I keep
out of it, and so does Aunt Dorcas and the girl here.”

He looked around at my Aunt, who smiled her gentle, faithful smile, and
at Drusilla, who dropped her eyes and flushed faintly. I suspected her
of secret leanings toward the movement of the world outside.

“I don’t allow my family off the farm,” he went on, “except when we go
to meetin’, and that’s not often. There’s hardly an orthodox preacher
left, seems to me; hut we go up to the Ridge meetin’ house sometimes.”

“I should think you would find it a little dull—don’t you?” I
ventured.

Drusilla flashed a grateful look at me.

“Nothing of the sort,” he answered. “I was horn on this farm, and it’s
big enough for anybody to be contented on. Your Aunt was born over in
Hadley Holler—and she’s contented enough. As for Drusilly---" he
looked at her again with real affection, “Drusilly’s always been a good
girl—never made any trouble in her life. Unless ’twas when she pretty
near married that heretic minister—eh, Drusilly?”

My cousin did not respond warmly to this sally, but neither did she show
signs of grief. I was conscious of a faint satisfaction that she had not
married the heretic minister.

They made me very welcome, so welcome indeed that as days passed, Uncle
Jake even broached the subject of my remaining there.

“I’ve got no son,” he said, “and a girl can’t run the farm. You stay
here, John, and keep things goin’, and I’ll will it to you—what do you
say? You ain’t married, I see. Just get you a nice girl—if there’s any
left, and settle down here.”

I thanked him warmly, but said I must have time to consider—that I had
thought of accepting other work which offered.

He was most insistent about it. “You better stay here, John. Here’s pure
air and pure food—none of these artificial kickshaws I hear of folks
havin’ nowadays. We smoke our own hams just as we used to do in my
grandfather’s time—there’s none better. We buy sugar and rice and
coffee and such as that; but I grind my own corn in the little mill
there on the creek—reckon I’m the only one who uses it now. And your
Aunt runs her loom to this day. Drusilly can, too, but she ‘lows she
hates to do it. Girls aren’t what they used to be when I was young!”

It did not seem possible that Uncle Jake had ever been young. His
sturdy, stooping frame, his hard, ruddy features were the same at
seventy as I remembered them at forty, only the hair, whitened and
thinned, was different.

My bedroom was exactly as when I last slept in it, on my one visit to
the farm as a boy of fifteen. Drusilla had seemed only a baby then—a
slender little five-year old. She had followed me about in silence, with
adoring eyes, and I had teased her!---I hated to think of how I had
teased her.

The gold in her hair was all dulled and faded, the rose-leaf color of
her cheeks had faded, too, and her blue eyes wore a look of weary
patience. She worked hard. Her mother was evidently feeble now, and the
labor required in that primitive home was considerable.

The old negro brought water from the spring and milked the cows, but all
the care of the dairy, the cooking for the family, the knitting and
sewing and mending and the sweeping, scrubbing and washing was in the
hands of Aunt Dorcas and Drusilla.

She would make her mother sit down and chat with me, while Uncle Jake
smoked his cob pipe, but she herself seemed always at work.

“There’s no getting any help nowadays,” said my Uncle. “Even if we
needed it. Old Joe there stayed on—he was here before I was born. Joe
must be eighty or over—there’s no telling the age of niggers. But the
young ones are too uppity for any use. They want to be paid out of all
reason, and treated like white folks at that!”

He boasted that he had never worn a shirt or a pair of socks made off
the place. “In my father’s time we raised a heap of cotton and sold it.
Plenty of niggers then. Now I manage to get enough for my own use, and
we spin and weave it on the spot!”

I watched Aunt Dorcas at her wheel and loom, and rubbed my eyes. It was
only in the remote mountain regions that these things were done when I
was young, and to see it now seemed utterly incredible. But Uncle Jake
was proud of it.

“I don’t believe there’s another wheel agoin’ in the whole country,” he
said. “The mountains ain’t what they used to be, John. They’ve got the
trees all grafted up with new kinds of foolishness—nuts and fruit and
one thing’n another—and unheard-of kinds of houses and schools, and
play-acting everywhere. I can’t abide it,”

He set his jaw firmly, making the stiff white beard stand out at a sharp
angle. “The farm’ll keep us for my time,” he concluded; “but I should
hate to have it all ‘reformed’ and torn to pieces after I’m gone.” And
he looked meaningly at me.

I lingered on, still enjoying the sense of family affection, but my
satisfaction in the things about me slowly cooling.

A cotton quilt was heavier but not so warm as a woolen blanket. Homespun
sheets were durable, doubtless, but not comfortable. The bathing to be
done in a small steep-sided china basin, with water poured from a
pitcher the outlines of which were more concave than convex, was
laborious and unsatisfying.

The relish of that “hog and hominy” and the beaten biscuit, the corn
pone, the molasses and pork gravy of my youth, wore off as the same
viands reappeared on the table from day to day and week to week, and
seemed ceaselessly present within me.

It was pleasant to listen to Aunt Dorcas’s gentle reminiscences of the
past years, of my father and mother in their youth, of my infancy, and
Drusilla’s. She grieved that she had not more to tell. “I never was one
to visit much,” she said.

But it was saddening to find that the dear old lady could talk of
absolutely nothing else. In all her sixty-eight years she had known
nothing else; her father’s home and her husband’s, alike in their
contents and in their labors, her own domestic limitations, and those of
her neighbors, and her church paper—taken for forty years, and
arbitrarily discontinued by Uncle Jake because it had grown too liberal.

“It never seemed over-liberal to me,” she said softly, “and I do miss
it. I wouldn’t a’believed ‘Id a’missed anything so much. It used to come
every week, and I kept more acquainted with what the rest of this
circuit was doing. But your Uncle Jake is so set against liberalism!”

I turned to my cousin for some wider exchange of thoughts, and strove
with all the remembered arts of my youth, and all the recently acquired
wisdom of my present years, to win her confidence.

It was difficult at first. She was shy with the dumb shyness of an
animal; not like a wild animal, frankly curious, not like a hunted
animal, which runs away and hides, but like an animal in a menagerie, a
sullen, hopeless timidity, due to long restriction. Life had slipped by
her, all of it, as far as she knew. She had been an “old maid” for
twenty-five years—they call them that in these mountains if they are
not married at twenty. Her father’s domineering ways had discouraged
most of the few young men she had known, and he had ruthlessly driven
away the only one who came near enough to be dismissed.

Then it was only the housework, and caring for her mother as she grew
older. The one pleasure of her own she ever had was in her flowers. She
had transplanted wild ones, had now and then been given “a slip” by
remote neighbors—in past years; and those carefully nurtured blossoms
were all that brought color and sweetness into her gray life.

She did not complain. For a long time I could not get her to talk to me
at all about herself, and when she did it was without hope or protest.
She had practically no education—only a few years in a country school
in childhood, and almost no reading, writing, conversation, any sort of
knowledge of the life of the world about her.

And here she lived, meek, patient, helpless, with neither complaint nor
desire, endlessly working to make comfortable the parents who must some
day leave her alone—to what?

My thirty years in Tibet seemed all at once a holiday Compared to this
thirty years on an upland farm in the Alleghanies of Carolina. My loss
of life—what was it to this loss? I, at least, had never known it, not
until I was found and brought back, and she had known it every day and
night for thirty years. I had come back at fifty-five, regaining a new
youth in a new world. She apparently had had no youth, and now was
old—older at forty-five than women of fifty and sixty whom I had met
and talked with recently.

I thought of them, those busy, vigorous, eager, active women, of whom no
one would ever predicate either youth or age; they were just women,
permanently, as men were men. I thought of their wide, free lives, their
absorbing work and many minor interests, and the big, smooth, beautiful,
moving world in which they lived, and my heart went out to Drusilla as
to a baby in a well.

“Look here, Drusilla,” I said to her at last, “I want you to marry me.
We’ll go away from here; you shall see something of life, my
dear—there’s lot of time yet.”

She raised those quiet blue eyes and looked at me, a long, sweet,
searching look, and then shook her head with gentle finality. “O, no,”
she said. “Thank you,’ Cousin John, but I could not do that.”

And then, all at once I felt more lonely and out of life than when the
first shock met me.

“O, Drusilla!” I begged; “Do-do! Don’t you see, if you won’t have me
nobody ever will? I am all alone in the world, Drusilla; the world has
all gone away from me! You are the only woman alive who would
understand. Dear cousin—dear little girl—you’ll have to marry
me—out of pity!” And she did.

Nobody would know Drusilla now. She grew young at a rate that seemed a
heavenly miracle. To her the world was like heaven, and, being an angel
was natural to her anyway.

I grew to find the world like heaven, too—if only for what it did to
Drusilla.