"Good behavior has to be a personal affair, hasn't it?" I mildly protested.
"Not by any means!" said Nellie with decision. "That was precisely what kept us so small and bad, so miserably confined and discouraged. Like a lot of well-meaning soldiers imagining that their evolutions were 'a personal affair'—or an orchestra plaintively protesting that if each man played a correct tune of his own choosing, the result would be perfect! Dear! dear! No, Sir," she continued with some fierceness, "that's just where we changed our minds! Humanity has come alive, I tell you and we have reason to be proud of our race!"
She held her head high, there was a glad triumphant look in her eyes—not in the least religious. Said she:
"You'll see results. That will make it clearer to you than anything I can say. But if I may remark that we have no longer the fear of death—much less of damnation, and no such thing as 'sin'; that the only kind of prison left is called a quarantine—that punishment is unknown but preventive means are of a drastic and sweeping nature such as we never dared think of before—that there is no such thing in the civilized world as poverty—no labor problem—no color problem—no sex problem—almost no disease—very little accident—practically no fires—that the world is rapidly being reforested—the soil improved; the output growing in quantity and quality; that no one needs to work over two hours a day and most people work four—that we have no graft—no adulteration of goods—no malpractice—no crime."
"Nellie," said I, "you are a woman and my sister. I'm very sorry, but I don't believe it."
"I thought you wouldn't," said she. Women always will have the last word.
[CHAPTER III]
The blue shore line of one's own land always brings a thrill of the heart; to me, buried exile as I had been, the heart-leap was choking.
Ours was a slow steamer, and we did not stop at Montauk where the mail and the swiftest travelers landed, nor in Jamaica Harbor with the immigrants.
As we swept along the sunny, level spaces of the South shore, Nellie told me how Long Island was now the "Reception Room" of our country, instead of poor, brutal little Ellis Island.