that I didn’t ever have to wake up from.
It ain’t any too good to be true for me.
Anyway, I’m going to get back somehow, and give
it another chance to be a fact.” Wasn’t
that charming? It had a real touch of poetry in
it, but it was prose that followed. I couldn’t
help asking him whether there had been nothing to
mar the pleasure of their stay in Altruria, and he
answered: “Well, I don’t know as
you could rightly say mar; it hadn’t ought
to have. You see, it was like this. You
see, some of the mates wanted to lay off and have
a regular bange, but that don’t seem to be the
idea here. After we had been ashore a day or
two they set us to work at different jobs, or wanted
to. The mates didn’t take hold very lively,
and some of ’em didn’t take hold a bit.
But after that went on a couple of days, there wa’n’t
any breakfast one morning, and come noontime there
wa’n’t any dinner, and as far forth as
they could make out they had to go to bed without supper.
Then they called a halt, and tackled one of your head
men here that could speak some English. He didn’t
answer them right off the reel, but he got out his
English Testament and he read ’em a verse that
said, ’For even when we were with you this we
commanded you, that if any one would not work neither
should he eat.’ That kind of fetched ’em,
and after that there wa’n’t any sojerin’,
well not to speak of. They saw he meant business.
I guess it did more than any one thing to make ’em
think they wa’n’t dreamin’.”
IV
You must not think, Dolly, from anything I have been
telling you that the Altrurians are ever harsh.
Sometimes they cannot realize how things really are
with us, and how what seems grotesque and hideous to
them seems charming and beautiful, or at least chic,
to us. But they are wonderfully quick to see
when they have hurt you the least, and in the little
sacrifices I have made of my wardrobe to the cause
of general knowledge there has not been the least
urgence from them. When I now look at the things
I used to wear, where they have been finally placed
in the ethnological department of the Museum, along
with the Esquiman kyaks and the Thlinkeet totems,
they seem like things I wore in some prehistoric age—
“When wild in woods the noble savage ran.”
Now, am I being unkind? Well, you mustn’t
mind me, Dolly. You must just say, “She
has got it bad,” and go on and learn as
much about Altruria as you can from me. Some
of the things were hard to get used to, and at first
seemed quite impossible. For one thing, there
was the matter of service, which is dishonorable with
us, and honorable with the Altrurians: I was
a long time getting to understand that, though I knew
it perfectly well from hearing my husband talk about
it in New York. I believe he once came pretty
near offending you by asking why you did not do your
own work, or something like that; he has confessed
Copyrights
Through the Eye of the Needle from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
