The house was built of rough gray stone which showed silver glintings in the sun. Here and there, delicate vines clung to the walls. There was a carriage porch—into which the children drove—and windows jutting out into the light, and many verandas and little balconies, that seemed to give the place a friendly and hospitable air. Above there was a spacious observatory, in which was mounted a very fine telescope that must have cost a fortune,—though my friends were not enormously rich, as I had learned from Severnius. But these people do not regard the expenditure of even very large sums of money for the means of the best instruction and the best pleasures as extravagance, if no one suffers in consequence. I cannot go into their economic system very extensively here, but I may say that it provides primarily that all shall share bountifully in the general good; and after that, individuals may gratify their respective tastes—or rather, satisfy their higher needs; for their tastes are never fanciful, but always real—as they can afford.
I do not mean that this is a written law, a formal edict, to be evaded by such cunning devices as we know in our land, or at best loosely construed; nor is it a mere sentiment preached from pulpits and glorified in literature,—a beautiful but impracticable conception! It is purely a moral law, and being such it is a vital principle in each individual consciousness.
The telescope was Calypso’s dearest possession, but I never doubted his willingness to give it up, if there should come a time when the keeping of it would be the slightest infringement of this law. I may add that in all the time I spent in Caskia, I never saw a man, woman, or child, but whose delight in any possession would have been marred by the knowledge that his, or her, gratification meant another’s bitter deprivation. The question between Thou and I was always settled in favor of Thou. And no barriers of race, nationality, birth, or position, affected this universal principle.
I made a discovery in relation to the Caskians which would have surprised and disappointed me under most circumstances; they had no imagination, and they were not given to emotional excitation. Their minds touched nothing but what was real. But mark this: Their real was our highest ideal. The moral world was to them a real world; the spiritual world was to them a real world. They had no need of imagery. And they were never carried away by floods of feeling, for they were always up to their highest level,—I mean in the matter of kindness and sympathy and love. Moreover, their intellectual perceptions were so clear, and the mysteries of nature were unrolled before their understanding in such orderly sequence, that although their increase of knowledge was a continuous source of delight, it never came in shocks of surprise or excited childish wonderment. I cannot hope to give you more than a faint conception of the dignity and majesty of a people whose triple nature was so highly and so harmoniously developed. One principle governed the three: Truth. They were true to every law under which they had been created and by which they were sustained. They were taught from infancy—but of this further on. I wish to reintroduce Ariadne to you and let her explain some of the wonders of their teaching, she being herself a teacher.
The observatory was a much used apartment, by both the family and by guests. It was a library also, and it contained musical instruments. A balcony encircled it on the outside, and here we often sat of evenings, especially if the sky was clear and the stars and moon were shining. The heavens as seen at night were as familiar to Clytia and Calypso, and even to the children, as a friend’s face.
It was pleasant to sit out upon the balcony even on moonless nights and when the stars were hidden, and look down upon the city all brilliantly alight, and listen to the unceasing music of the Falls of Eudosa. I, too, soon learned his many “moods.”
Back of the house there rose a long succession of hills, ending finally in snow-capped mountains, the highest of which was called the Spear, so sharply did it thrust its head up through the clouds into the heavens.
The lower hills had been converted into vineyards. A couple of men were fixing the trellises, and Calypso excused himself to his wife and me and went over to them. A neatly dressed maid came out of the house and greeted the children, who had much important news to relate concerning their drive; and a last year’s bird-nest to show her, which they took pains to explain was quite useless to the birds, who were all making nice new nests. The sight of the maid,—evidently an intelligent and well-bred girl,—whose face beamed affectionately upon the little ones, prompted a question from me:
“How do you manage about your servants, I mean house servants,” I asked; “do you have people here who are willing to do menial work?”
Clytia looked up at me with an odd expression. Her answer, coming from any one less sincere, would have sounded like cant.