They had secured the large parlor of the hotel, where the young people danced in the evening, and where entertainments were held, of the sort usually given in summer hotels; we had already had a dramatic reading, a time with the phonograph, an exhibition of necromancy, a concert by a college glee club, and I do not know what else. The room would hold perhaps two hundred people, if they were closely seated, and, by her own showing, Mrs. Makely had sold above two hundred and fifty tickets and chances. All Saturday forenoon she consoled herself with the belief that a great many people at the other hotels and cottages had bought seats merely to aid the cause, and would not really come; she estimated that at least fifty would stay away; but, if Reuben Camp had sold his tickets among the natives, we might expect every one of them to come and get his money’s worth; she did not dare to ask the head-waiter how he had got rid of his twenty-five tickets.
The hour set for the Talk to begin was three o’clock, so that people could have their naps comfortably over, after the one o’clock dinner, and be just in the right frame of mind for listening. But long before the appointed time the people who dine at twelve, and never take an afternoon nap, began to arrive, on foot, in farm-wagons, smart buggies, mud-crusted carryalls, and all manner of ramshackle vehicles. They arrived as if coming to a circus, old husbands and wives, young couples and their children, pretty girls and their fellows, and hitched their horses to the tails of their wagons, and began to make a picnic lunch in the shadow of the grove lying between the hotel and the station. About two we heard the snorting of a locomotive at a time when no train was due, and a construction train came in view, with the men waving their handkerchiefs from the windows, and apparently ready for all the fun there was to be in the thing. Some of them had a small flag in each hand, the American Stars and Stripes and the white flag of Altruria, in compliment to my guest, I suppose. A good many of the farmers came over to the hotel to buy tickets, which they said they expected to get after they came, and Mrs. Makely was obliged to pacify them with all sorts of lying promises. From moment to moment she was in consultation with the landlord, who decided to throw open the dining-room, which connected with the parlor, so as to allow the help and the neighbors to hear without incommoding the hotel guests. She said that this took a great burden off her mind, and that now she should feel perfectly easy, for now no one could complain about being mixed up with the servants and the natives, and yet every one could hear perfectly.
She could not rest until she had sent for Homos and told him of this admirable arrangement. I did not know whether to be glad or not when he instantly told her that, if there was to be any such separation of his auditors, in recognition of our class distinctions, he must refuse to speak at all.
“Then what in the world are we to do?” she wailed out, and the tears came into her eyes.
“Have you got the money for all your tickets?” he asked, with a sort of disgust for the whole transaction in his tone.
“Yes, and more, too. I don’t believe there’s a soul, in the hotel or out of it, that hasn’t paid at least a dollar to hear you; and that makes it so very embarrassing. Oh, dear Mr. Homos! You won’t be so implacably high-principled as all that! Think that you are doing it for the house of Gawd.”
The woman made me sick.
“Then no one,” said the Altrurian, “can feel aggrieved, or unfairly used, if I say what I have to say in the open air, where all can listen equally, without any manner of preference or distinction. We will go up to the edge of the grove overlooking the tennis-court, and hold our meeting there, as the Altrurian meetings are always held, with the sky for a roof, and with no walls but the horizon.”
“The very thing!” cried Mrs. Makely. “Who would ever have thought you were so practical, Mr. Homos? I don’t believe you’re an Altrurian, after all; I believe you are an American in disguise.”
The Altrurian turned away, without making any response to this flattering attribution of our nationality to him; but Mrs. Makely had not waited for any. She had flown off, and I next saw her attacking the landlord, with such apparent success that he slapped himself on the leg and vanished, and immediately the porters and bell-boys and all the men-servants began carrying out chairs to the tennis-court, which was already well set round with benches. In a little while the whole space was covered, and settees were placed well up the ground toward the grove.