A Traveler from Altruria

A Traveler from Altruria

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Title: A Traveler from Altruria: Romance
Author: W. D. Howells
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TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA: ROMANCE ***

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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.