“Then the community takes his own from him.” Before I could think of anything to say to this he went on: “But I wish you would explain to me why it was left to this man’s neighbors to try and get him to sell his portion of the landscape?”
“Why, bless my soul!” I exclaimed, “who else was there? You wouldn’t have expected to take up a collection among the summer-boarders?”
“That wouldn’t have been so unreasonable; but I didn’t mean that. Was there no provision for such an exigency in your laws? Wasn’t the state empowered to buy him off at the full value of his timber and his land?”
“Certainly not,” I replied. “That would be rank paternalism.”
It began to get dark, and I suggested that we had better be going back to the hotel. The talk seemed already to have taken us away from all pleasure in the prospect; I said, as we found our way through the rich, balsam-scented twilight of the woods, where one joy-haunted thrush was still singing: “You know that in America the law is careful not to meddle with a man’s private affairs, and we don’t attempt to legislate personal virtue.”
“But marriage,” he said—“surely you have the institution of marriage?”
I was really annoyed at this. I returned, sarcastically; “Yes, I am glad to say that there we can meet your expectation; we have marriage, not only consecrated by the church, but established and defended by the state. What has that to do with the question?”
“And you consider marriage,” he pursued, “the citadel of morality, the fountain of all that is pure and good in your private life, the source of home and the image of heaven?”
“There are some marriages,” I said, with a touch of our national humor, “that do not quite fill the bill, but that is certainly our ideal of marriage.”
“Then why do you say that you have not legislated personal virtue in America?” he asked. “You have laws, I believe, against theft and murder, and slander and incest, and perjury and drunkenness?”