“We are still far from thinking our civilization perfect; but we are sure that our civic ideals are perfect. What we have already accomplished is to have given a whole continent perpetual peace; to have founded an economy in which there is no possibility of want; to have killed out political and social ambition; to have disused money and eliminated chance; to have realized the brotherhood of the race, and to have outlived the fear of death.”
The Altrurian suddenly stopped with these words and sat down. He had spoken a long time, and with a fulness which my report gives little notion of; but, though most of his cultivated listeners were weary, and a good many ladies had left their seats and gone back to the hotel, not one of the natives, or the work-people of any sort, had stirred; now they remained a moment motionless and silent before they rose from all parts of the field and shouted: “Go on! Don’t stop! Tell us all about it!”
I saw Reuben Camp climb the shoulders of a big fellow near where the Altrurian had stood; he waved the crowd to silence with out-spread arms. “He isn’t going to say anything more; he’s tired. But if any man don’t think he’s got his dollar’s worth, let him walk up to the door and the ticket-agent will refund him his money.”
The crowd laughed, and some one shouted: “Good for you, Reub!”
Camp continued: “But our friend here will shake the hand of any man, woman, or child that wants to speak to him; and you needn’t wipe it on the grass first, either. He’s a man! And I want to say that he’s going to spend the next week with us, at my mother’s house, and we shall be glad to have you call.”
The crowd, the rustic and ruder part of it, cheered and cheered till the mountain echoes answered; then a railroader called for three times three, with a tiger, and got it. The guests of the hotel broke away and went toward the house over the long shadows of the meadow. The lower classes pressed forward, on Camp’s invitation.
“Well, did you ever hear a more disgusting rigmarole?” asked Mrs. Makely, as our little group halted indecisively about her.
“With all those imaginary commonwealths to draw upon, from Plato, through More, Bacon, and Campanella, down to Bellamy and Morris, he has constructed the shakiest effigy ever made of old clothes stuffed with straw,” said the professor.
The manufacturer was silent. The banker said: “I don’t know. He grappled pretty boldly with your insinuations. That frank declaration that Altruria was all these pretty soap-bubble worlds solidified was rather fine.”
“It was splendid!” cried Mrs. Makely. The lawyer and the minister came toward us from where they had been sitting together. She called out to them: “Why in the world didn’t one of your gentlemen get up and propose a vote of thanks?”