Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance

by William Dean Howells

  V

  I wish you could be making tour of the Regionic capitals with us, Dolly!There are swift little one-rail electric expresses running daily from onecapital to another, but these are used only when speed is required, andwe are confessedly in no hurry: Aristides wanted me to see as much of thecountry as possible, and I am as eager as he. The old steam-roads of thecapitalistic epoch have been disused for generations, and their beds arenow the country roads, which are everywhere kept in beautiful repair.There are no horse vehicles (the electric motors are employed in thetowns), though some people travel on horseback, but the favorite means ofconveyance is by electric van, which any citizen may have on proof of hisneed of it; and it is comfortable beyond compare--mounted on easysprings, and curtained and cushioned like those gypsy vans we see in thecountry at home. Aristides drives himself, and sometimes we both get outand walk, for there is plenty of time.

  I don't know whether I can make you understand how everything has tendedto simplification here. They have disused the complicated facilities andconveniences of the capitalistic epoch, which we are so proud of, andhave got back as close as possible to nature. People stay at home a greatdeal more than with us, though if any one likes to make a journey or tovisit the capitals he is quite free to do it, and those who have someuseful or beautiful object in view make the sacrifice, as they feel it,to leave their villages every day and go to the nearest capital to carryon their studies or experiments. What we consider modern conveniencesthey would consider a superfluity of naughtiness for the most part. As_work_ is the ideal, they do not believe in what we call labor-savingdevices.

  When we approach a village on our journey, one of the villagers,sometimes a young man, and sometimes a girl, comes out to meet us, andwhen we pass through they send some one with us on the way a little. Thepeople have a perfect inspiration for hospitality: they not only knowwhen to do and how much to do, but how little and when not at all. Ican't remember that we have ever once been bored by those nice youngthings that welcomed us or speeded us on our way, and when we havestopped in a village they have shown a genius for leaving us alone, afterthe first welcome, that is beautiful. They are so regardful of ourprivacy, in fact, that if it had not been for Aristides, who explainedtheir ideal to me, I should have felt neglected sometimes, and shouldhave been shy of letting them know that we would like their company. Buthe understood it, and I must say that I have never enjoyed people andtheir ways so much. Their hospitality is a sort of compromise betweenthat of the English houses where you are left free at certain houses tofollow your own devices absolutely, and that Spanish splendor whichassures you that the host's house is yours without meaning it. In fact,the guest-house, wherever we go, _is_ ours, for it belongs to thecommunity, and it is absolutely a home to us for the time being. It isusually the best house in the village, the prettiest and cosiest, whereall the houses are so pretty and cosey. There is always another buildingfor public meetings, called the temple, which is the principal edifice,marble and classic and tasteful, which we see almost as much of as theguest-house, for the news of the Emissary's return has preceded him, andeverybody is alive with curiosity, and he has to stand and deliver in thevillage temples everywhere. Of course I am the great attraction, andafter being scared by it at first I have rather got to like it; thepeople are so kind, and unaffected, and really delicate.

  You mustn't get the notion that the Altrurians are a solemn people atall; they are rather gay, and they like other people's jokes as well astheir own; I am sure Mr. Makely, with his sense of humor, would be athome with them at once. The one thing that more than any other has helpedthem to conceive of the American situation is its being the gigantic jokewhich we often feel it to be; I don't know but it appears to them moregrotesque than it does to us even. At first, when Aristides would explainsome peculiarity of ours, they would receive him with a gale of laughing,but this might change into cries of horror and pity later. One of thethings that amused and then revolted them most was our patriotism. Theythought it the drollest thing in the world that men should be willing togive their own lives and take the lives of other men for the sake of acountry which assured them no safety from want, and did not even assurethem work, and in which they had no more logical interest than thecountry they were going to fight. They could understand how a rich manmight volunteer for one of our wars, but when they were told that most ofour volunteers were poor men, who left their mothers and sisters, ortheir wives and children, without any means of support, except theirmeagre pay, they were quite bewildered and stopped laughing, as if thething had passed a joke. They asked, "How if one of these citizensoldiers was killed?" and they seemed to suppose that in this case thecountry would provide for his family and give them work, or if thechildren were too young would support them at the public expense. Itmade me creep a little when my husband answered that the family of acrippled or invalided soldier would have a pension of eight or ten orfifteen dollars a month; and when they came back with the question whythe citizens of such a country should love it enough to die for it, Icould not have said why for the life of me. But Aristides, who is somagnificently generous, tried to give them a notion of the sublimitywhich is at the bottom of our illogicality and which adjusts so manyapparently hopeless points of our anomaly. They asked how this sublimitydiffered from that of the savage who brings in his game and makes a feastfor the whole tribe, and leaves his wife and children without provisionagainst future want; but Aristides told them that there were essentialdifferences between the Americans and savages, which arose from the factthat the savage condition was permanent and the American conditions wereunconsciously provisional.

  They are quite well informed about our life in some respects, but theywished to hear at first hand whether certain things were really so ornot. For instance, they wanted to know whether people were allowed tomarry and bring children into the world if they had no hopes ofsupporting them or educating them, or whether diseased people wereallowed to become parents. In Altruria, you know, the families aregenerally small, only two or three children at the most, so that theparents can devote themselves to them the more fully; and as there is nofear of want here, the state interferes only when the parents aremanifestly unfit to bring the little ones up. They imagined that therewas something of that kind with us, but when they heard that the stateinterfered in the family only when the children were unruly, and then itpunished the children by sending them to a reform school and disgracingthem for life, instead of holding the parents accountable, they seemedto think that it was one of the most anomalous features of our greatanomaly. Here, when the father and mother are always quarrelling, thechildren are taken from them, and the pair are separated, at first for atime, but after several chances for reform they are parted permanently.

  But I must not give you the notion that all our conferences are soserious. Many have merely the character of social entertainments, whichare not made here for invited guests, but for any who choose to come;all are welcome. At these there are often plays given by amateurs, andimprovised from plots which supply the outline, while the performerssupply the dialogue and action, as in the old Italian comedies. TheAltrurians are so quick and fine, in fact, that they often remind me ofthe Italians more than any other people. One night there was for mybenefit an American play, as the Altrurians imagined it from what theyhad read about us, and they had costumed it from the pictures of us theyhad seen in the newspapers Aristides had sent home while he was with us.The effect was a good deal like that American play which the Japanesecompany of Sada Yacco gave while it was in New York. It was all about amillionaire's daughter, who was loved by a poor young man and escapedwith him to Altruria in an open boat from New York. The millionaire couldbe distinctly recognized by the dollar-marks which covered him all over,as they do in the caricatures of rich men in our yellow journals. It wasfunny to the last degree. In the last act he was seen giving his millionsaway to poor people, whose multitude was represented by the continuallycoming and going of four or five performers in and out of the do
or, inoutrageously ragged clothes. The Altrurians have not yet imagined thenice degrees of poverty which we have achieved, and they could not haveunderstood that a man with a hundred thousand dollars would have seemedpoor to that multi-millionaire. In fact, they do not grasp the idea ofmoney at all. I heard afterwards that in the usual version themillionaire commits suicide in despair, but the piece had been given ahappy ending out of kindness to me. I must say that in spite of themonstrous misconception the acting was extremely good, especially that ofsome comic characters.

  But dancing is the great national amusement in Altruria, where it has notaltogether lost its religious nature. A sort of march in the temples isas much a part of the worship as singing, and so dancing has beenpreserved from the disgrace which it used to be in with serious peopleamong us. In the lovely afternoons you see young people dancing in themeadows, and hear them shouting in time to the music, while the older menand women watch them from their seats in the shade. Every sort ofpleasure here is improvised, and as you pass through a village the firstthing you know the young girls and young men start up in a sort of_girandole_, and linking hands in an endless chain stretch the figurealong through the street and out over the highway to the next village,and the next and the next. The work has all been done in the forenoon,and every one who chooses is at liberty to join in the fun.

  The villages are a good deal alike to a stranger, and we knew what toexpect there after a while, but the country is perpetually varied, andthe unexpected is always happening in it. The old railroad-beds, onwhich we travelled, are planted with fruit and nut trees and floweringshrubs, and our progress is through a fragrant bower that is practicallyendless, except where it takes the shape of a colonnade near the entranceof a village, with vines trained about white pillars, and clusters ofgrapes (which are ripening just now) hanging down. The change in theclimate created by cutting off the southeastern peninsula and letting inthe equatorial current, which was begun under the first Altrurianpresident, with an unexpended war-appropriation, and finished for whatone of the old capitalistic wars used to cost, is something perfectlyastonishing. Aristides says he told you something about it in his speechat the White Mountains, but you would never believe it without theevidence of your senses. Whole regions to the southward, which werenearest the pole and were sheeted with ice and snow, with the temperatureand vegetation of Labrador, now have the climate of Italy; and themountains, which used to bear nothing but glaciers, are covered witholive orchards and plantations of the delicious coffee which they drinkhere. Aristides says you could have the same results at home--no! _in theUnited States_--by cutting off the western shore of Alaska and letting inthe Japanese current; and it could be done at the cost of any averagewar.