The next excursion of any importance which I made was in the company of Principal Grey, who proved a splendid cicerone, inasmuch as she spared no pains to explain everything which presented itself to me in a puzzling aspect. I had often visited different European countries, and had been greatly interested by many things I saw. But in New Amazonia the constant predominating feeling was amazement, not mere interest.
Fancy going through a city, anywhere in Europe, in our own days, without seeing either a beggar or a poverty stricken individual of any sort. Dirt, squalor, drunkenness, profane language, sickness, rags, and a thousand other miseries, meet us at every turn in the poorer quarters of our big cities. But not one of these things did I note in New Amazonia. Purity, peace, health, harmony, and comfort reigned in their stead, and presented a picture such as I had never hoped to gaze upon in this world.
But what ultimately struck me as the strangest thing I had yet observed, was the fact that I had not seen a single old woman or man since I came here, and I determined to appease my curiosity on the subject as soon as possible, by addressing some questions to Principal Grey.
“How is it that I have seen no old people since I came to your country?” I asked. “Is it because you keep them secluded after they have arrived at a certain age, or because you die comparatively young?”
“My dear woman,” was the Principal’s reply, “We have both met and spoken to a great many old people this very evening. Do you mind telling me what you call old age? Perhaps your ideas and mine on the subject differ considerably.”
“Well,” I replied, “We call seventy or eighty very old, of course.”
The Professor looked at me with great astonishment. “Seventy or eighty!” she exclaimed. “Why, how old do you take me to be?”
Had it been an ordinary English lady who had asked me this home question, I should probably have hesitated in my reply. But this was a being who despised the appellative lady, with all its accompanying affectations, and prided herself upon nothing so much as being an honest, truthful, candid woman. So I made what I considered to be a fair guess, and replied that I judged her age to be about forty or thereabouts.
“Only forty!” was the disparaging comment upon this guess. “I am very glad to say that it is long since I passed that baby age. One must be at least forty-five before a position like mine is attainable. I have occupied my present post for thirty-five years.”
“Now, you are asking me to believe too much,” I expostulated. “Why, you would at that rate be eighty years old at the very least, and you have not even the suspicion of a wrinkle about you.”