A Traveler from Altruria | Page 9

and the very hearthstone shall be a
tablet of laws."
"Isn't marriage a rather intimate relation of life?" asked the Altrurian.

"And I understood that gentleman on the train to say that you had laws
against cruelty to children, and societies established to see them
enforced. You don't consider such laws an invasion of the home, do
you, or a violation of its immunities? I imagine," he went on, "that the
difference between your civilization and ours is only one of degree,
after all, and that America and Altruria are really one at heart."
I thought his compliment a bit hyperbolical, but I saw that it was
honestly meant, and as we Americans are first of all patriots, and vain
for our country before we are vain for ourselves, I was not proof
against the flattery it conveyed to me civically if not personally.
We were now drawing near the hotel, and I felt a certain glow of
pleasure in its gay effect on the pretty knoll where it stood. In its artless
and accidental architecture it was not unlike one of our immense
coastwise steamboats. The twilight had thickened to dusk, and the
edifice was brilliantly lighted with electrics, story above story, which
streamed into the gloom around like the lights of saloon and state-room.
The corner of wood making into the meadow hid the station; there was
no other building in sight; the hotel seemed riding at anchor on the
swell of a placid sea. I was going to call the Altrurian's attention to this
fanciful resemblance when I remembered that he had not been in our
country long enough to have seen a Fall River boat, and I made toward
the house without wasting the comparison upon him. But I treasured it
up in my own mind, intending some day to make a literary use of it.
The guests were sitting in friendly groups about the piazzas or in rows
against the walls, the ladies with their gossip and the gentlemen with
their cigars. The night had fallen cool after a hot day, and they all had
the effect of having cast off care with the burden of the week that was
past, and to be steeping themselves in the innocent and simple
enjoyment of the hour. They were mostly middle-aged married folk,
but some were old enough to have sons and daughters among the young
people who went and came in a long, wandering promenade of the
piazzas, or wove themselves through the waltz past the open windows
of the great parlor; the music seemed one with the light that streamed
far out on the lawn flanking the piazzas. Every one was well-dressed

and comfortable and at peace, and I felt that our hotel was in some sort
a microcosm of the republic.
We involuntarily paused, and I heard the Altrurian murmur: "Charming,
charming! This is really delightful!"
"Yes, isn't it?" I returned, with a glow of pride. "Our hotel here is a type
of the summer hotel everywhere; it's characteristic in not having
anything characteristic about it; and I rather like the notion of the
people in it being so much like the people in all the others that you
would feel yourself at home wherever you met such a company in such
a house. All over the country, north and south, wherever you find a
group of hills or a pleasant bit of water or a stretch of coast, you'll find
some such refuge as this for our weary toilers. We began to discover
some time ago that it would not do to cut open the goose that laid our
golden eggs, even if it looked like an eagle, and kept on perching on
our banners just as if nothing had happened. We discovered that, if we
continued to kill ourselves with hard work, there would be no
Americans pretty soon."
The Altrurian laughed. "How delightfully you put it! How quaint! How
picturesque! Excuse me, but I can't help expressing my pleasure in it.
Our own humor is so very different."
"Ah," I said; "what is your humor like?"
"I could hardly tell you, I'm afraid; I've never been much of a humorist
myself."
Again a cold doubt of something ironical in the man went through me,
but I had no means of verifying it, and so I simply remained silent,
waiting for him to prompt me if he wished to know anything further
about our national transformation from bees perpetually busy into
butterflies occasionally idle. "And when you had made that discovery?"
he suggested.
"Why, we're nothing if not practical, you know, and as soon as we
made that discovery we stopped killing ourselves and invented the

summer resort. There are very few of our business or professional men
now who don't take their four or