A Traveler from Altruria: Romance by W. D. Howells

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A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA

Romance

By W. D. HOWELLS

Author of "THE COAST OF BOHEMIA", "THE QUALITY OF MERCY",
"A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES" etc.

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1908

A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA

I

I confess that with all my curiosity to meet an Altrurian, I was in no
hospitable mood toward the traveler when he finally presented himself,
pursuant to the letter of advice sent me by the friend who introduced him.
It would be easy enough to take care of him in the hotel; I had merely to
engage a room for him, and have the clerk tell him his money was not good
if he tried to pay for anything. But I had swung fairly into my story; its
people were about me all the time; I dwelt amid its events and places, and
I did not see how I could welcome my guest among them, or abandon them for
him. Still, when he actually arrived, and I took his hand as he stepped
from the train, I found it less difficult to say that I was glad to see
him than I expected. In fact, I was glad, for I could not look upon his
face without feeling a glow of kindness for him. I had not the least
trouble in identifying him, for he was so unlike all the Americans who
dismounted from the train with him, and who all looked hot, worried, and
anxious. He was a man no longer young, but in what we call the heyday of
life, when our own people are so absorbed in making provision for the
future that they may be said not to live in the present at all. This
Altrurian's whole countenance, and especially his quiet, gentle eyes,
expressed a vast contemporaneity, with bounds of leisure removed to the
end of time; or, at least, this was the effect of something in them which
I am obliged to report in rather fantastic terms. He was above the middle
height, and he carried himself vigorously. His face was sunburned, or
sea-burned, where it was not bearded; and, although I knew from my
friend's letter that he was a man of learning and distinction in his own
country, I should never have supposed him a person of scholarly life, he
was so far from sicklied over with anything like the pale cast of thought.
When he took the hand I offered him in my half-hearted welcome he gave it
a grasp that decided me to confine our daily greetings to something much
less muscular.

"Let me have your bag," I said, as we do when we meet people at the train,
and he instantly bestowed a rather heavy valise upon me, with a smile in
his benignant eyes, as if it had been the greatest favor. "Have you got
any checks?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, in very good English, but with an accent new to me, "I
bought two." He gave them to me, and I passed them to our hotel porter,
who was waiting there with the baggage-cart. Then I proposed that we
should walk across the meadow to the house, which is a quarter of a mile
or so from the station. We started, but he stopped suddenly and looked
back over his shoulder. "Oh, you needn't be troubled about your trunks," I
said. "The porter will get them to the house all right. They'll be in your
room by the time we get there."

"But he's putting them into the wagon himself," said the Altrurian.

"Yes; he always does that. He's a strong young fellow. He'll manage it.
You needn't--" I could not finish saying he need not mind the porter; he
was rushing back to the station, and I had the mortification of seeing him
take an end of each trunk and help the porter toss it into the wagon; some
lighter pieces he put in himself, and he did not stop till all the baggage
the train had left was disposed of.

I stood holding his valise, unable to put it down in my embarrassment at
this eccentric performance, which had been evident not to me alone, but to
all the people who arrived by the train, and all their friends who came
from the hotel to meet them. A number of these passed me on the tally-ho
coach; and a lady, who had got her husband with her for over Sunday, and
was in very good spirits, called gayly down to me: "Your friend seems fond
of exercise!"

"Yes," I answered, dryly; the sparkling repartee which ought to have come
to my help failed to show up. But it was impossible to be vexed with the
Altrurian when he returned to me, unruffled by his bout with the baggage
and serenely smiling.

"Do you know," he said, "I fancied that good fellow was ashamed of my
helping him. I hope it didn't seem a reflection upon him in any way before
your people? I ought to have thought of that."

"I guess we can make it right with him. I dare say he felt more surprised
than disgraced. But we must make haste a little now; your train was half
an hour late, and we shall not stand so good a chance for supper if we are
not there pretty promptly."

"No?" said the Altrurian. "Why?"

"Well," I said, with evasive lightness, "first come, first served, you
know. That's human nature."

"Is it?" he returned, and he looked at me as one does who suspects another
of joking.

"Well, isn't it?" I retorted; but I hurried to add: "Besides, I want to
have time after supper to show you a bit of our landscape. I think you'll
enjoy it." I knew he had arrived in Boston that morning by steamer, and I
now thought it high time to ask him: "Well, what do you think of America,
anyway?" I ought really to have asked him this the moment he stepped from
the train.

"Oh," he said, "I'm intensely interested," and I perceived that he spoke
with a certain reservation. "As the most advanced country of its time,
I've always been very curious to see it."

The last sentence raised my dashed spirits again, and I said, confidently:
"You must find our system of baggage-checks delightful." I said this
because it is one of the first things we brag of to foreigners, and I had
the habit of it. "By-the-way," I ventured to add, "I suppose you meant to
say you _brought_ two checks when I asked you for them at the train just
now? But you really said you _bought_ them."

"Yes," the Altrurian replied, "I gave half a dollar apiece for them at the
station in Boston. I saw other people doing it," he explained, noting my
surprise. "Isn't it the custom?"

"I'm happy to say it isn't yet, on most of our roads. They were tipping
the baggage-man, to make sure that he checked their baggage in time and
put it on the train. I had to do that myself when I came up; otherwise it
might have got along here some time next day. But the system is perfect."

"The poor man looked quite worn out," said the Altrurian, "and I am glad I
gave him something. He seemed to have several hundred pieces of baggage to
look after, and he wasn't embarrassed like your porter by my helping him
put my trunks into the car. May I confess that the meanness of the
station, its insufficient facilities, its shabby waiting-rooms, and its
whole crowded and confused appearance gave me rather a bad impression?"

"I know," I had to own, "it's shameful; but you wouldn't have found
another station in the city so bad."

"Ah, then," said the Altrurian, "I suppose this particular road is too
poor to employ more baggage-men or build new stations; they seemed rather
shabby all the way up."

"Well, no," I was obliged to confess, "it's one of the richest roads in
the country. The stock stands at about 180. But I'm really afraid we shall
be late to supper if we don't get on," I broke off; though I was not
altogether sorry to arrive after the porter had disposed of the baggage. I
dreaded another display of active sympathy on the part of my strange
companion; I have often felt sorry myself for the porters of hotels, but I
have never thought of offering to help them handle the heavy trunks that
they manage.

The Altrurian was delighted with the hotel; and in fact it did look
extremely pretty, with its branching piazzas full of well-dressed people,
and its green lawns where the children were playing. I led the way to the
room which I had taken for him next my own; it was simply furnished, but
it was sweet with matting, fresh linen, and pure whitewashed walls. I
flung open the window-blinds and let him get a glimpse of the mountains
purpling under the sunset, the lake beneath, and the deeply foliaged
shores.

"Glorious! glorious!" he sighed.

"Yes," I modestly assented. "We think that's rather fine." He stood
tranced before the window, and I thought I had better say: "Well, now I
can't give you much time to get the dust of travel off; the dining-room
doors close at eight, and we must hurry down."

"I'll be with you in a moment," he said, pulling off his coat.

I waited impatiently at the foot of the stairs, avoiding the question I
met on the lips and in the eyes of my acquaintance. The fame of my
friend's behavior at the station must have spread through the whole place;
and everybody wished to know who he was. I answered simply he was a
traveler from Altruria; and in some cases I went further and explained
that the Altrurians were peculiar.

In much less time than it seemed my friend found me; and then I had a
little compensation for my suffering in his behalf. I could see that,
whatever people said of him, they felt the same mysterious liking at
sight of him that I had felt. He had made a little change in his dress,
and I perceived that the women thought him not only good-looking but
well-dressed. They followed him with their eyes as we went into the
dining-room, and I was rather proud of being with him, as if I somehow
shared the credit of his clothes and good looks. The Altrurian himself
seemed most struck with the head-waiter, who showed us to our places, and
while we were waiting for our supper I found a chance to explain that he
was a divinity student from one of the fresh-water colleges, and was
serving here during his summer vacation. This seemed to interest my friend
so much that I went on to tell him that many of the waitresses, whom he
saw standing there subject to the order of the guests, were country
school-mistresses in the winter.

"Ah, that is as it should be," he said; "that is the kind of thing I
expected to meet with in America."

"Yes," I responded, in my flattered national vanity, "if America means
anything at all it means the honor of work and the recognition of personal
worth everywhere. I hope you are going to make a long stay with us. We
like to have travelers visit us who can interpret the spirit of our
institutions as well as read their letter. As a rule Europeans never quite
get our point of view. Now a great many of these waitresses are ladies, in
the true sense of the word--selfrespectful, intelligent, refined, and fit
to grace--"

I was interrupted by the noise my friend made in suddenly pushing back his
chair and getting to his feet. "What's the matter?" I asked. "You're not
ill, I hope?"

But he did not hear me. He had run half down the dining-hall toward the
slender young girl who was bringing us our supper. I had ordered rather
generously, for my friend had owned to a good appetite, and I was hungry
myself with waiting for him, so that the tray the girl carried was piled
up with heavy dishes. To my dismay I saw, rather than heard at that
distance, the Altrurian enter into a polite controversy with her, and
then, as if overcoming all her scruples by sheer strength of will, possess
himself of the tray and make off with it toward our table. The poor child
followed him, blushing to her hair; the head-waiter stood looking
helplessly on; the guests, who at that late hour were fortunately few,
were simply aghast at the scandal; the Altrurian alone seemed to think
his conduct the most natural thing in the world. He put the tray on the
side-table near us, and in spite of our waitress's protests insisted upon
arranging the little bird-bath dishes before our plates. Then at last he
sat down, and the girl, flushed and tremulous, left the room, as I could
not help suspecting, to have a good cry in the kitchen. She did not come
back, and the head-waiter, who was perhaps afraid to send another in her
place, looked after our few wants himself. He kept a sharp eye on my
friend, as if he were not quite sure he was safe, but the Altrurian
resumed the conversation with all that lightness of spirits which I
noticed in him after he helped the porter with the baggage. I did not
think it the moment to take him to task for what he had just done; I was
not even sure that it was the part of a host to do so at all, and between
the one doubt and the other I left the burden of talk to him.

"What a charming young creature!" he began. "I never saw anything prettier
than the way she had of refusing my help, absolutely without coquetry or
affectation of any kind. She is, as you said, a perfect lady, and she
graces her work, as I am sure she would grace any exigency of life. She
quite realizes my ideal of an American girl, and I see now what the spirit
of your country must be from such an expression of it."

I wished to tell him that while a country school-teacher who waits at
table in a summer hotel is very much to be respected in her sphere, she is
not regarded with that high honor which some other women command among us;
but I did not find this very easy, after what I had said of our esteem for
labor; and while I was thinking how I could hedge, my friend went on.

"I liked England greatly, and I liked the English, but I could not like
the theory of their civilization or the aristocratic structure of their
society. It seemed to me iniquitous, for we believe that inequality and
iniquity are the same in the last analysis."

At this I found myself able to say: "Yes, there is something terrible,
something shocking, in the frank brutality with which Englishmen affirm
the essential inequality of men. The affirmation of the essential equality
of men was the first point of departure with us when we separated from
them."

"I know," said the Altrurian. "How grandly it is expressed in your
glorious Declaration!"

"Ah, you have read our Declaration of Independence, then?"

"Every Altrurian has read that," answered my friend.

"Well," I went on smoothly, and I hoped to render what I was going to say
the means of enlightening him without offence concerning the little
mistake he had just made with the waitress, "of course we don't take that
in its closest literality."

"I don't understand you," he said.

"Why, you know it was rather the political than the social traditions of
England that we broke with, in the Revolution."

"How is that?" he returned. "Didn't you break with monarchy and nobility,
and ranks and classes?"

"Yes, we broke with all those things."

"But I found them a part of the social as well as the political structure
in England. You have no kings or nobles here. Have you any ranks or
classes?"

"Well, not exactly in the English sense. Our ranks and classes, such as we
have, are what I may call voluntary."

"Oh, I understand. I suppose that from time to time certain ones among you
feel the need of serving, and ask leave of the commonwealth to subordinate
themselves to the rest of the state and perform all the lowlier offices in
it. Such persons must be held in peculiar honor. Is it something like
that?"

"Well, no, I can't say it's quite like that. In fact I think I'd better
let you trust to your own observation of our life."

"But I'm sure," said the Altrurian, with a simplicity so fine that it was
a long time before I could believe it quite real, "that I shall approach
it so much more intelligently with a little instruction from you. You say
that your social divisions are voluntary. But do I understand that those
who serve among you do not wish to do so?"

"Well, I don't suppose they would serve if they could help it," I replied.

"Surely," said the Altrurian, with a look of horror, "you don't mean that
they are slaves."

"Oh no! oh no!" I said; "the war put an end to that. We are all free now,
black and white."

"But if they do not wish to serve, and are not held in peculiar honor for
serving--"

"I see that my word 'voluntary' has misled you," I put in. "It isn't the
word exactly. The divisions among us are rather a process of natural
selection. You will see, as you get better acquainted with the workings of
our institutions, that there are no arbitrary distinctions here but the
fitness of the work for the man and the man for the work determines the
social rank that each one holds."

"Ah, that is fine!" cried the Altrurian, with a glow of enthusiasm. "Then
I suppose that these intelligent young people who teach school in winter
and serve at table in the summer are in a sort of provisional state,
waiting for the process of natural selection to determine whether they
shall finally be teachers or waiters."

"Yes, it might be stated in some such terms," I assented, though I was not
altogether easy in my mind. It seemed to me that I was not quite candid
with this most candid spirit. I added: "You know we are a sort of
fatalists here in America. We are great believers in the doctrine that it
will all come out right in the end."

"Ah, I don't wonder at that," said the Altrurian, "if the process of
natural selection works so perfectly among you as you say. But I am afraid
I don't understand this matter of your domestic service yet. I believe you
said that all honest work is honored in America. Then no social slight
attaches to service, I suppose?"

"Well, I can't say that, exactly. The fact is, a certain social slight
does attach to service, and that is one reason why I don't quite like to
have students wait at table. It won't be pleasant for them to remember it
in after-life, and it won't be pleasant for their children to remember
it."

"Then the slight would descend?"

"I think it would. One wouldn't like to think one's father or mother had
been at service."

The Altrurian said nothing for a moment. Then he remarked: "So it seems
that while all honest work is honored among you, there are some kinds of
honest work that are not honored so much as others."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because some occupations are more degrading than others."

"But why?" he persisted, as I thought, a little unreasonably.

"Really," I said, "I think I must leave you to imagine."

"I am afraid I can't," he said, sadly. "Then, if domestic service is
degrading in your eyes, and people are not willing servants among you, may
I ask why any are servants?"

"It is a question of bread-and-butter. They are obliged to be."

"That is, they are forced to do work that is hateful and disgraceful to
them because they cannot live without?"

"Excuse me," I said, not at all liking this sort of pursuit, and feeling
it fair to turn even upon a guest who kept it up. "Isn't it so with you in
Altruria?"

"It was so once," he admitted, "but not now. In fact, it is like a waking
dream to find one's self in the presence of conditions here that we
outlived so long ago."

There was an unconscious superiority in this speech that nettled me, and
stung me to retort: "We do not expect to outlive them. We regard them as
final, and as indestructibly based in human nature itself."

"Ah," said the Altrurian, with a delicate and caressing courtesy, "have I
said something offensive?"

"Not at all," I hastened to answer. "It is not surprising that you did not
get our point of view exactly. You will by-and-by, and then, I think, you
will see that it is the true one. We have found that the logic of our
convictions could not be applied to the problem of domestic service. It is
everywhere a very curious and perplexing problem. The simple old solution
of the problem was to own your servants; but we found that this was not
consistent with the spirit of our free institutions. As soon as it was
abandoned the anomaly began. We had outlived the primitive period when the
housekeeper worked with her domestics and they were her help, and were
called so; and we had begun to have servants to do all the household work,
and to call them so. This state of things never seemed right to some of
our purest and best people. They fancied, as you seem to have done, that
to compel people through their necessities to do your hateful drudgery,
and to wound and shame them with a name which every American instinctively
resents, was neither republican nor Christian. Some of our thinkers tried
to mend matters by making their domestics a part of their families; and in
the life of Emerson you'll find an amusing account of his attempt to have
his servant eat at the same table with himself and his wife. It wouldn't
work. He and his wife could stand it, but the servant couldn't."

I paused, for this was where the laugh ought to have come in. The
Altrurian did not laugh, he merely asked, "Why?"

"Well, because the servant knew, if they didn't, that they were a whole
world apart in their traditions, and were no more fit to associate than
New-Englanders and New-Zealanders. In the mere matter of education--"

"But I thought you said that these young girls who wait at table here were
teachers."

"Oh, I beg your pardon; I ought to have explained. By this time it had
become impossible, as it now is, to get American girls to take service
except on some such unusual terms as we have in a summer hotel; and the
domestics were already ignorant foreigners, fit for nothing else. In such
a place as this it isn't so bad. It is more as if the girls worked in a
shop or a factory. They command their own time, in a measure, their hours
are tolerably fixed, and they have one another's society. In a private
family they would be subject to order at all times, and they would have no
social life. They would be in the family, out not of it. American girls
understand this, and so they won't go out to service in the usual way.
Even in a summer hotel the relation has its odious aspects. The system of
giving fees seems to me degrading to those who have to take them. To offer
a student or a teacher a dollar for personal service--it isn't right, or I
can't make it so. In fact, the whole thing is rather anomalous with us.
The best that you can say of it is that it works, and we don't know what
else to do."

"But I don't see yet," said the Altrurian, "just why domestic service is
degrading in a country where all kinds of work are honored."

"Well, my dear fellow, I have done my best to explain. As I intimated
before, we distinguish; and in the different kinds of labor we distinguish
against domestic service. I dare say it is partly because of the loss of
independence which it involves. People naturally despise a dependant."

"Why?" asked the Altrurian, with that innocence of his which I was
beginning to find rather trying.

"Why?" I retorted. "Because it implies weakness."

"And is weakness considered despicable among you?" he pursued.

"In every community it is despised practically, if not theoretically," I
tried to explain. "The great thing that America has done is to offer the
race an opportunity--the opportunity for any man to rise above the rest
and to take the highest place, if he is able." I had always been proud of
this fact, and I thought I had put it very well, but the Altrurian did not
seem much impressed by it.

He said: "I do not see how it differs from any country of the past in
that. But perhaps you mean that to rise carries with it an obligation
to those below 'If any is first among you, let him be your servant.' Is it
something like that?"

"Well, it is not quite like that," I answered, remembering how very little
our self-made men as a class had done for others. "Every one is expected
to look out for himself here. I fancy that there would be very little
rising if men were expected to rise for the sake of others, in America.
How is it with you in Altruria?" I demanded, hoping to get out of a
certain discomfort I felt in that way. "Do your risen men generally devote
themselves to the good of the community after they get to the top?"

"There is no rising among us," he said, with what seemed a perception of
the harsh spirit of my question; and he paused a moment before he asked in
his turn: "How do men rise among you?"

"That would be rather a long story," I replied. "But, putting it in the
rough, I should say that they rose by their talents, their shrewdness,
their ability to seize an advantage and turn it to their own account."

"And is that considered noble?"

"It is considered smart. It is considered at the worst far better than a
dead level of equality. Are all men equal in Altruria? Are they all alike
gifted or beautiful, or short or tall?"

"No, they are only equal in duties and in rights. But, as you said just
now, that is a very long story. Are they equal in nothing here?"

"They are equal in opportunities."

"Ah!" breathed the Altrurian, "I am glad to hear that."

I began to feel a little uneasy, and I was not quite sure that this last
assertion of mine would hold water. Everybody but ourselves had now left
the dining-room, and I saw the head-waiter eying us impatiently. I pushed
back my chair and said: "I'm sorry to seem to hurry you, but I should like
to show you a very pretty sunset effect we have here before it is too
dark. When we get back, I want to introduce you to a few of my friends. Of
course, I needn't tell you that there is a good deal of curiosity about
you, especially among the ladies."

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