The Altrurian looked so blank and baffled that I could hardly help laughing. “Then I should not know how to explain Altruria to you, I’m afraid.”
“Well,” she returned, lightly, “if it’s anything like neighborliness as I’ve seen it in small places, deliver me from it! I like being independent. That’s why I like the city. You’re let alone.”
“I was down in New York once, and I went through some of the streets and houses where the poor people live,” said young Camp, “and they seemed to know each other and to be quite neighborly.”
“And would you like to be all messed in with one another that way?” demanded the lady.
“Well, I thought it was better than living as we do in the country, so far apart that we never see one another, hardly. And it seems to me better than not having any neighbors at all.”
“Well, every one to his taste,” said Mrs. Makely. “I wish you would tell us how people manage with you socially, Mr. Homos.”
“Why, you know,” he began, “we have neither city nor country in your sense, and so we are neither so isolated nor so crowded together. You feel that you lose a great deal in not seeing one another oftener?” he asked Camp.
“Yes. Folks rust out living alone. It’s Human nature to want to get together.”
“And I understand Mrs. Makely that it is human nature to want to keep apart?”
“Oh no, but to come together independently,” she answered.