“Didn’t it occur to you that if none of his fellow-servants were willing to help him black boots, and if he did it only because he was obliged to, it was hardly the sort of work for you?”
“Why, no,” said the Altrurian, with absolute simplicity. He must have perceived the despair I fell into at this answer, for he asked: “Why should I have minded doing for others what I should have been willing to do for myself?”
“There are a great many things we are willing to do for ourselves that we are not willing to do for others. But even on that principle, which I think false and illogical, you could not be justified. A gentleman is not willing to black his own boots. It is offensive to his feelings, to his self-respect; it is something he will not do if he can get anybody else to do it for him.”
“Then in America,” said the Altrurian, “it is not offensive to the feelings of a gentleman to let another do for him what he would not do for himself?”
“Certainly not.”
“Ah,” he returned, “then we understand something altogether different by the word gentleman in Altruria. I see, now, how I have committed a mistake. I shall be more careful hereafter.”
I thought I had better leave the subject, and, “By-the-way,” I said, “how would you like to take a little tramp with me to-day farther up into the mountains?”
“I should be delighted,” said the Altrurian, so gratefully that I was ashamed to think why I was proposing the pleasure to him.
“Well, then, I shall be ready to start as soon as we have had breakfast. I will join you down-stairs in half an hour.”
He left me at this hint, though really I was half afraid he might stay and offer to lend me a hand at my toilet, in the expression of his national character. I found him with Mrs. Makely, when I went down, and she began, with a parenthetical tribute to the beauty of the mountains in the morning light: “Don’t be surprised to see me up at this unnatural hour. I don’t know whether it was the excitement of our talk last night, or what it was, but my sulphonal wouldn’t act, though I took fifteen grains, and I was up with the lark, or should have been, if there had been any lark outside of literature to be up with. However, this air is so glorious that I don’t mind losing a night’s sleep now and then. I believe that with a little practice one could get along without any sleep at all here; at least, I could. I’m sorry to say poor Mr. Makely can’t, apparently. He’s making up for his share of my vigils, and I’m going to breakfast without him. Do you know, I’ve done a very bold thing: I’ve got the head-waiter to give you places at our table; I know you’ll hate it, Mr. Twelvemough, because you naturally want to keep Mr. Homos to yourself, and I don’t blame you at all; but I’m simply not going to let you, and that’s all there is about it.”