Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Appletons’

Town and Country

Library

No. 212

PERFECTION CITY

PERFECTION CITY

BY

MRS. ORPEN

AUTHOR OF MARGARETA COLBERG, MR. ADOLF, THE CHRONICLES OF THE SID, ETC.

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1897

Copyright, 1897,

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

CONTENTS.

PERFECTION CITY.

CHAPTER I.
HOME-COMING OF THE BRIDE.

“This road isn’t called Perfection Road, is it?” she asked jerkily, as she held tight hold of the edge of the waggon to prevent herself from being pitched head foremost off the seat. She would have laid her head against her companion’s shoulder only that it was square and hard, and she was afraid of getting her temple “stove in,” as the sailors say, by the terrific bumps caused by the wheels going over a big stone or down into a deep rut. She was a bride, and he was bringing her to their new home on the Kansas Prairie.

“My poor little pet,” he said tenderly, “it is very rough here. We are going down into Cotton Wood Creek, and these stones were cast up by the last freshet which pretty well washed the road away.”

They plunged headlong into the muddy waters of the Creek, and the little bride would have felt frightened only that “he” was by her side, for the waggon creaked and groaned with the strain, and the horses snorted uneasily, feeling their way carefully through the rushing torrent. The Creek was safely passed, and they slowly toiled up the long hill out of the bottom-lands, and pulled up when once more on the high prairie.

“There is our home, dearie,” he said, pointing with his whip to some scattered houses a couple of miles away. And being a bridegroom he kissed her.

“So that is Perfection City, is it?” said she, shading her eyes with her hand, for the afternoon sun sent level rays into her face. “You know, Ezra, it is such a funny name, I always feel inclined to laugh when I say it. And how I shall ever dare to put it at the top of my letters as a real address when I write to the girls at the College at Smyrna, is more than I know.”

“Then don’t write it,” replied Ezra, a trifle sternly. “It will hurt our feelings very much if you laugh at it. You know it means a great deal to all of us.”

“Then I’ll never laugh at it,” said the little bride.

“Which is our house?” she asked a moment later.

“The one half way up the slope.”

“Oh, that is nice. I like looking down across things. I shouldn’t like to live in a valley and always have to look up, you know.”

“The large building is the Academy,” said Ezra. “That is where we hold our meetings and gather together for all the best purposes of our little community-life.”

“Is it there that Madame Morozoff-Smith lives?” asked his wife.

“Her house is the one just opposite.”

“Oh, that big one! It is quite the largest in the village—the City, I mean.”

Ezra did not make any reply to this remark. He had never realised that Madame’s house was indeed the largest in their Community, and now he felt vexed that this fact should have been the first his wife noted.

A small boy with shining black face and shining white teeth, along with a yellow puppy, welcomed them.

“This is Napoleon Pompey,” said Ezra, with much decorum presenting the small darkie who grinned and bobbed his head. “And this is Diana,” pointing to the puppy that had come up to the bars along with the negro. Diana jumped upon her new mistress and left two black dust marks on her dress. Dust is black in London and on the western prairie, nowhere else.

“Oh, you dirty dog,” said the little bride, who was a very natty body.

“You’ll have to get used to dirt in all degrees out here, Ollie,” said her husband as he led her to the door. She looked like a little girl as she stood beside him, for he was tall and angular and long of leg. A sloping plank with battens nailed across it led to the door, there were no steps. As the pair entered, Napoleon Pompey and Diana took the horses and waggon to the stable and began respectively to unharness and worry them.

“What a dear little house! It is just like a toy! And do look at the saws hanging on the walls beside the covers of the pots! Oh, won’t it be so nice and free living here! I shall feel like an explorer in a far country. And how funny to have nail-kegs for seats, and oh, you dear old darling!”

Olive jumped up and kissed her big husband.

“Things are rough now, dearie,” he said with infinite tenderness, looking at her with loving admiration, “but by and by we shall have everything very nice.”

“But I think it is just as nice as it can be now.”

“This is our room,” said he, opening a door to the right.

“Why, if you haven’t gone and got a rocking-chair!” exclaimed Olive, glancing around the small apartment.

“I made it for you myself in spare time,” answered Ezra, pleased that she had noticed the chair the first thing: he had often wondered, when working at that rocking-chair, whether she would be pleased with it. “You see,” he continued, “we have to work only five days a week for the Community. All the rest of our time is at our own disposal, and by and by, when we are flourishing, four days for the Community will suffice.”

“Do you like working for other people and not being paid?” asked Olive.

“I do not consider it as working for other people without pay,” replied her husband, with some quickness. “We each work for the general good, and if I happen to plant corn that someone else will eat, then some other member of the Community raises potatoes that I shall eat.”

“There, there, don’t be cross,” said the little wife, noting the flush that had risen to his brow as he spoke. “I am sure it is nice, and I shall like it when I understand it all. At any rate we shall be very happy whatever happens, and I like my dear little house, and please, I am very thirsty, can I have a drink?”

He brought her some water in a tin dipper with a long handle, and she did not make a face, but drank the water gratefully. She determined in her own mind, however, to have a glass tumbler the very next day, but she was new to the prairie, and she did not get the tumbler the next day, nor the next week, nor for many, many long months.

“What time are we to have breakfast?” she asked, when taking over the household from Napoleon Pompey and Diana, who had run the establishment while her husband had been to fetch her from Ohio.

“Yo’ kin eat when yo’ like,” said Napoleon Pompey, desiring to be all that was polite to his new mistress.

“But I want to know what time you have breakfast?” repeated Olive with persistence.

“We uns got ter be hout on der lan’ ploughin’ afore sun-up,” said Napoleon Pompey concisely.

“Dear me! Why, that is before six o’clock!” exclaimed Olive.

“I calkerlate,” said Napoleon Pompey affably.

Ezra did not want Olive to think she was bound to get up and prepare the working-man’s breakfast.

“You are not used to that sort of hard work, dearie. We can do very well with cold corn-bread.”

“Of all things the most stoggy and hopelessly uninviting,” interrupted his wife. “No, Ezra, I won’t have any of the people out here think I am a little fool that can’t do any useful work. I have my pride as well as other folks. I shall cook your breakfast to-morrow and every day afterwards, and I shall cook it well, see if I don’t.”

“I am sure of that,” said her husband with the confidence of a bridegroom.

The house of which the young bride had just taken possession was by no means an ordinary prairie house. Far from it. It had pretensions to comfort which the true prairie house should never possess, and it lacked the few elements of picturesqueness with which the genuine article is sometimes endowed. The plan on which it was built was of the simplest—the same that children adopt in building their doll’s houses—four sides and a sloping roof, all of wood from top to bottom. It was not a log-house, which has a few broken lines to rest the eye of the beholder and present possibilities to the artist, it was a frame house, that is, the straightest, stiffest, squarest, most hopelessly unpicturesque object that it is possible to imagine, and to make matters worse it was painted a glaring white from eave to foundation. There was not a broken line or a broken tint anywhere to refresh the eye, and it stood on the high prairie, as if hurled into a glaring world by a Titan’s hand.

The prairie is fertile, and in the eye of a farmer may possess the beauty of usefulness, but otherwise it is hideous. The long rolling billows of grass present no character, while the trees are confined to the river valleys where they find refuge from prairie fires, and can therefore lead a sufficiently undisturbed existence to reach quite a respectable height. A couple of small locust trees, not three feet high, were all that did duty as shade-giving plants near Olive’s house, which accordingly faced the world and its storms entirely on its own individual merits. Judged by prairie standard the house was “tip-top.” It possessed no less than four rooms, while the regular settler’s cabin was wont to indulge in only a single comprehensive apartment, which was kitchen, parlour and bedroom all in one. The two lower rooms were the kitchen, which was fairly large, and a smaller one off it, reserved for the private use of the young wife. The kitchen looked like a ship’s cabin, only that it had more light than usually penetrates into a ship’s cabin. In fact it was very light, for there were two large windows, one to the north and one to the south, geometrically opposite each other. These two windows, so exactly facing each other, were fairly typical of the house itself, which was the embodiment of mathematical accuracy. The building was placed exactly east and west, as if it had been a carefully oriented church. There was a door on the south side, exactly in the middle, and a window on either side of the door, placed accurately in the centre of the space left between the side of the door and the end of the house. Over these two windows were two others exactly one half their size, giving light to the loft, and exactly in the centre of the roof-ridge was a black stove-pipe.

The average prairie man is a genius in the way of doing without things. He can live in a house of the smallest dimensions, containing the minimum of utensils. In fact, his idea of a house is that it should be a miner’s tent solidified into substantiality. The miner in a newly-prospected gold-field is a person who spends his days in a hole, and has no belongings but the clothes on his back and the shovel in his hand. He lives on his expectations. The regular prairie settler, would arrive in the spring, camp in his waggon, stick grains of corn under the sod, and think himself lucky if he could raise both the corn and a loghut, fourteen by twelve feet, before the cold weather set in. Those who have passed through such a severe school prune down their requirements. Therefore the house to which Ezra Weston brought his little bride was rightly considered to be a model of luxury, or in prairie phraseology to be “powerful full o’ truck.”

The kitchen certainly was full. The stove, black and business-like, stood near the partition wall, and on it rested a couple of huge iron pots with covers. Chairs there were none, as Olive had remarked, but boxes and nail-kegs did as well and were useful in holding things. There was a large wooden table, very strongly made, on one side, and a set of shelves in one corner. The walls and ceiling, which were of wood closely jointed, added to the ship-like appearance of the room, but the presence of two large saws and a horse-collar which hung above them made a considerable deduction from the nautical character of the apartment.

This model dwelling stood in the midst of a large tract of fenced-in land. Part of this was already under cultivation and showed a dark purple surface to the heavens, betokening newly turned up prairie sod full of the natural plant foods stored there for thousands of ages. These were now about to be recklessly used up by the ordinary system of prairie farming, which consisted of taking everything out of the land and of putting nothing back into it. A sort of road, that is to say a beaten track with deep channels on either side, led from the house to the bars, which did duty as gate to the premises. These bars were precisely what the name implies, bars of wood lying on supports made for them between posts, and they were simply let down whenever horses or other animals had to pass in or out, and were climbed over by active children too lazy to let them down or rather, perhaps, too lazy to put them up again.

On one side of the bars stretching out at an angle was an orchard just planted with trees that probably would be worth having twenty years hence, and further away was another field consisting simply of fenced-in prairie grass. The fields, and indeed everything else, were square, and every fence that did not run north and south, ran east and west. The whole place seemed under a despotism of compass and measuring chain. Indeed, the prairie itself was under the same iron rule: and by the authorities had been plotted out into squares of a mile each way called “sections,” of which persons could buy of the Government quarter sections or multiples of a quarter section at a low rate. Fortunately for humanity this conspiracy to turn the world into a surveyor’s map was to some extent defeated by the rivers and streams, which ran as Heaven and the water-sheds decreed, and not as the officials at Washington desired. This fact, and this alone, has in some measure saved the prairie from the awful fate of mathematical damnation.

CHAPTER II.
UNCLE DAVID.

Mrs. Weston was tired and sat down in her rocking-chair to rest. Her day’s work was fairly over. The breakfast had been ready punctually at half past five, and it was well-cooked, as she had boasted it would be—corn-bread smoking hot, fried chicken, potatoes, flap-jacks and molasses—a meal for a king, to say nothing of a working-man and his negro help. Ezra and Napoleon Pompey had partaken heartily, especially the latter, for he had been living on underdone hoe-cake and cold pork. Then they had gone off to the ploughing, while Olive had bustled around and got forward with her house-work. At eleven o’clock she had run up the towel against the shady side of the house, a signal easily seen from the distant field, and signifying that dinner was ready. They had come home, men and horses thoroughly hungry and ready for food and rest. Ezra lay on the kitchen floor and talked to her while she washed up the dishes. And now it was three o’clock, and all the work was done. She thought she would read a little. She had several books with her that she had been looking forward to reading. So she took up one of them and seated herself comfortably in the rocking-chair. The door was open and a warm air came in from the south along with the gleaming sunshine. Diana lay across the door-way, but kept one eye open, so as to see when the black hen came near enough to have a spring at her with any chance of grabbing a mouthful of tail-feathers. Olive’s eyes rested very little on the book, but much on the view outside. It looked pleasant enough in the bright May sunshine. The long brown patch of the garden showed a few methodical green lines that spoke of vegetables beginning to sprout. The meadow of blue grass just beyond was likewise by its hue showing the on-coming of the warm spring weather, and yet again further off, on the other side of the meadow, lay the vast field which her husband was ploughing. Once in every half hour she could see him turn at the head-land, and noted how seldom he seemed to stop and rest. Napoleon Pompey was riding the off leader, and from that distance they seemed little insects gently crawling backwards and forwards across the land. Pleasant it looked too and by no means hard work. Olive determined to go out to the field one day soon and watch the process from a nearer point of view; she might indeed herself hold the plough-handles, it looked easy, she would ask Ezra to let her, she would like to learn to do all sorts of work so as to be very useful, she would—confused images swept slowly over her mind, she leaned back her pretty little head and slept in her chair.

She awoke with a start. A large square figure stood in the door-way, blocking out the sunshine, and Diana, with the insane friendliness of a puppy, was trying to clamber up one of his legs.

“Well, little gal, I reckon you’re ’most tired out, ain’t you?” said the big man, coming straight into the room.

Mrs. Weston rose to her utmost height of five feet two inches, and tried to be dignified.

“Do you wish to see my husband?” she inquired stiffly.

“No, I don’t want to see Ezry. I come to talk to you a spell, and see you.”

“You are very kind I’m sure,” returned the little lady icily, but the stranger did not seem one whit abashed. He took a nail-keg and sat down on it and looked about him. “Wal, now,” he remarked, nodding his head, “Ezry is real downright handy. He’s gone and got your house fine and fixed up, ain’t he now?”

“It is extremely comfortable, Mr.—ah—I don’t think you mentioned your name,” said Mrs. Weston, with a snap of her black eyes. She didn’t at all relish the free and easy way in which this man spoke of her husband.

“Do tell!” exclaimed the stranger with vast cordiality. “An’ you didn’t know who I was. Why, I’m Uncle David. I guessed everybody ’ud know me. There ain’t nobody else so big and awkward looking ’bout here on this prairie as me. Why, there was a man over to Perfection City yesterday, he come from beyond Cotton Wood Creek, and he said he calculated I’d be powerful useful on washing days, ’cause if they tied the clothes-line to me I’d do instead of a pole, an’ timber is mighty scarce anyhow.”

Uncle David gave a long loud laugh that set Diana into an ecstasy of delight, and was of itself so joyous that, after a moment, Olive also joined in with a merry titter. She had often heard her husband speak of Uncle David, as being one of the kindest and most simple-hearted of men. Her frigid manner melted rapidly and completely.

“Wal, now,” began Uncle David again, after his merriment had subsided, “how do you like our name?”

“Your name,” repeated Olive considerably puzzled.

“No, our name, the name of the Community, Perfection City. Do you like it?”

“I don’t think I do,” replied she.

“Jes’ so,” broke in Uncle David, apparently much pleased with this answer. “I knew you wouldn’t. Nobody does.”

“Why did you call it such a name—such a horrid name—and if nobody likes it, what is the use?”

“There now, that’s what they all say, until I talk to ’em,” said Uncle David. “You see I gave the name to the place.”

“Oh, it was your choice!” said Olive.

“When we came here, Niece and I, there wasn’t no town nor nothing, it was just open prairie. Ezry he come along too with us, and the Carpenters, and Mrs. Ruby, and the Wrights.”

“You leave out Madame Morozoff-Smith,” interrupted Olive.

“I thought you knew. Why, Madame, she’s Niece. She ain’t my real niece, she wasn’t born in my family, but she’s niece by adoption, and I hold she’s more to me than half the nieces I ever seen. I ain’t cute like most of the folks here, an’ there wasn’t no use in having me at Perfection City. I can’t do nothing. I can’t compose papers like Brother Wright. So I was studyin’ to see some way for me to come with ’em. It would ha’ broke my heart to be left behind. Madame, she come to me, an’ says she: ‘You’ll be my uncle. I want an uncle very much, and I’ll love you dearly.’ An’ so I was. I call it the greatest honour of my life when Madame made me her uncle, and added my name to hers.” Uncle David stooped and patted Diana’s head thoughtfully.

“When did you think of the name?” said Olive with a view to bringing him back to the point.

“Yes, jes’ so, that’s ’xactly what I was comin’ to. You see, when Ezry fust come here with us he wasn’t quite clear in his mind ’bout joinin’ in with us, leastways not to be one of the Community for his whole mortal life. It’s a serious step to take, and he was a-doubtin’ in his mind, leastways till Madame she talked to him for a spell. He wasn’t sure fust if he’d got a call to community-life. He knowed it was the best, of course, and the true life: he knowed all that right enough, but he didn’t feel sure of himself as bein’ fit to found a city. It is a most responsible thing to be a founder. ’Taint everybody as is fit for it. Then Madame made it clear how she was a founder, an’ she is the most wonderful woman ever lived in this world, an’ she showed Ezry how it was his duty to help in this great work, an’ when he saw that clear he was dreadful sot on it too. We was a-gettin’ our houses up as spry as ever we could, and ole Wright he was a-buildin’ th’ Academy, then Ezry says: ‘What’s goin’ to be our name?’ It was jes’ called Weddell’s Gully, ’cause we bought from a man o’ that name. So Ezry said: ‘Let’s call it something to signify our principles,’ and one person said one name and one said another, then Wright said ‘Let’s call it Teleiopolis.’”

“Oh, that sounds very pretty,” exclaimed Olive. “Why didn’t you?”

“Wal, now, I said that’s very pretty, jes’ the same as you did. What does it mean, do you know?”

“No, I don’t know. I suppose it is Greek for something.”

“’Zactly so. It is Greek for something, and that something is Perfection City.”

“It sounds nicer.”

“Maybe so, but you look here. Are we Greeks?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why talk in Greek?”

“I don’t know, except it is prettier.”

“Do you suppose them old Greeks, when they went an’ founded cities, they called ’em names out o’ some other language they didn’t understand, or did they called ’em good solid Greek names as any little boy ’ud know what they meant?” asked Uncle David with rising energy.

“I believe they called their cities by Greek names, in fact I know they did,” said Olive, hastily reviewing her stock of history.

“An’ why?” asked Uncle David.

“I don’t know.”

“Because they wasn’t ’shamed o’ their mother tongue like we are. That’s why,” said Uncle David, clapping his big hand on his knee.

“Oh indeed,” said Olive.

“An’ that’s what I said, says I, ‘We are ’Mericans, we are founding a new city that’s goin’ to be great things one day. We have our principles. Let’s live up to them. We hain’t shamed o’ nothin’. Leastways not to my knowledge. We are goin’ to be an example to these folks roun’ here. We are goin’ to show ’em how to live a better life nor they ever did before. An’ how in thunder can we do that if we start by being ’shamed of our own mother tongue? We hain’t Greeks, we don’t talk in Greek. This hain’t Teleiopolis, this is Perfection City.’ That is what I said to ’em.”

“What did they say to that?” asked Olive, much interested in the rugged honesty of Uncle David.

“Wal, I don’t know as they said anything much, on’y Ezry, he said he guessed he’d had his fust lesson, an’ he come and shook hands an’ said it certainly should be Perfection City, an’ so it was.”

“I shall think better of the name now,” said Olive. “Only at first I was afraid of people laughing, people who didn’t understand it, you see.”

“Oh, people’ll laugh,” said Uncle David. “People does a heap o’ laughing in this world without makin’ it one mite merrier for anybody. I like laughing myself. It’s awful good an’ satisfyin’ to have a real square laugh, but t’aint that sort. Mos’ folks’ laugh hain’t got no more fun in it than the laugh of a hoot-owl. I’d a heap sight rather have none at all. You ain’t agoin’ to mind that sort, I hope?” Uncle David spoke with a shade of anxiety in his manner.

“Oh no, I’m not thin-skinned,” said Olive with a superior smile.

“Some folks is made that way. When they have found a tender spot in anybody they can’t rest no how till they’ve stuck some sort o’ pin into it.”

“Tell me, does everything belong to everybody generally out here? It is so puzzling. This house, for instance, is it ours or yours or everybody’s?” asked Olive.

“The land an’ the horses an’ the cattle an’ waggons was mostly bought with community-money, that is Madame, she gave the money, she’s rich you know, an’ she’s generous and always givin’ to the Community, her whole heart is in it. But Ezry worked a heap on this house, he mostly built it all, an’ it’s his, an’ t’other folks’ houses are theirs. That’s Brother Wright’s over yonder, an’ that’s our house beside the ’Cademy, most everybody worked to get it up and fix it comfortable for Madame. Old Mrs. Ruby, she lives to herself in the log cabin we bought from Weddell, we had it moved there a purpose over from the Gully, ’cause she liked to live beside the spring so as to get her water handy. She had a little mite of money which we used in buyin’ stock.”

“So you do have some things as private property, just like ordinary people,” observed Olive.

“Of course. It would not be any sort o’ use to have everything in common, ’cause folks’ notions don’t always ’xactly suit. An’ what we want is to have everybody free, so they can be perfectly happy here. We don’t want to have no strife, an’ no jealousy, an’ no ill feeling one towards another. But there can’t be community in all things. What sort o’ use would it be for you an’ me to have community o’ boots an’ shoes?” said Uncle David with a great laugh, sticking out his enormous foot towards where Olive’s dainty little slipper peeped from beneath her dress.

“Your shoes, my dear, wouldn’t go on my two fingers, an’ mine ’ud be big enough to make a tol’eble boat for you. There couldn’t be community in shoes, so there ain’t none. But with the lan’ it’s different. We all work that for the benefit of everybody, there ain’t no strugglin’ to be fust an’ get ahead o’ one another. We are all brothers at Perfection City.”

Olive was full of excitement when Ezra came back at sun-down.

“Just fancy, I’ve had my first visitor,” she said as she stood beside her husband while he was watering the horses.

“Who was it? Mrs. Ruby?”

“No, it was Uncle David,” and she gave a merry little laugh.

“Well, and how did you like him?”

“I think he is just charming. He is just like a piece of granite or oak or something of that sort, not smooth or shiny on the outside, but solid and sound to the very core. Oh! I shall love Uncle David.”

“That’s right. He is a good man,” said Ezra.

“And you know? he has made me understand about Perfection City. I shan’t want to laugh at it any more, and I don’t care if anybody else does. It was real brave of you showing your colours plain and sticking to them,” said Olive with a skip and a clap of her little hands.

CHAPTER III.
SISTER MARY WINKLE.

The very next morning just as she was washing her potatoes for dinner, another visitor called upon Olive, a visitor of whose sex she was for a moment or two in doubt. The visitor wore a large sunbonnet, a check blouse, and a pair of Zouave trowsers fastened in at the ankle.

“How do you do, Olive Weston?” said this person, in a deep serious voice. Olive, who had not seen her, started in surprise and dropped her potato into the basin.

“I am Mary Winkle. That’s my house over yonder.”

“Oh, the Wrights’! Yes, to be sure. Come in and sit down,” said Olive hospitably, although she felt considerable surprise at her visitor’s appearance.

“You don’t wear the reformed dress yet, I see,” said Mary Winkle.

“No, I don’t,” acquiesced Olive.

“Shall you?”

“I don’t know. I have not thought about it. I suppose there is no regulation about what one wears on the prairie. There is no fashion here I suppose,” said Olive politely.

“No, only the fashion of common sense.”

“Do all the ladies dress that way, Miss Winkle?” inquired Olive.

“Only my daughter and myself.”

“I beg your pardon, I should have said Mrs. Winkle,” said Olive, in some confusion.

“No, you shouldn’t,” replied her visitor. “I am not Mrs. Winkle.”

“I am afraid I am very stupid. Would you tell me then how I should address you. I don’t understand.”

“Address me as Mary Winkle, and my husband as John Wright.”

Olive stared at her.

“Are you not Mrs. Wright then?”

“No, certainly not. I scorn the title. It is a symbol of subjection. I did not lose my identity when I chose to marry. I am the same Mary Winkle that I was before, and as such I desire to retain the name that I always possessed. Why should I take a new name simply because I am married?”

“It is usual,” stammered Olive. “I shouldn’t like not to be called Mrs. Weston. It is so confusing, you see.”

“Mere custom and prejudice. Why should not your husband take your name, instead of its always being the wife who is absorbed?”

“I don’t know, but I never heard of it before.”

“Ah, that is one of the first changes that must be made when women get their rights,” observed Mary Winkle.

“But I don’t want the change one bit. I much prefer the old way.”

“I dare say. Slaves often feel no want of freedom.”

“I’m not a slave,” said Olive, flushing angrily. “You cannot be in the least acquainted with my husband.”

“Oh, I know your husband very well, an excellent man in many respects, but narrow in others; however, I referred to general slavery, to custom, not to any individual slavery in your case.”

“I don’t think there is any good in destroying customs, unless there is something better to be got in a new custom.”

“Ah yes, no doubt it seems so to you; but there is inestimable gain in the mere protest against tyranny. Why, that’s what we are all here for, to protest against everything and live a life of freedom.”

“And freedom may as well begin here and now, and in its name I will wear long dresses and be called Mrs. Weston, because I prefer the older customs,” said Olive with some archness.

“Yes, you may do as you like, but you will get heartily sick of those skirts, I can tell you.”

Olive remembering sundry pretty dresses she had in her trunk, was privately convinced she would not get sick of them.

“I haven’t seen Madame yet,” she said, “and I feel the greatest curiosity about her. She must be a remarkable woman by all accounts. Does she wear the same sort of dress as you do?”

“No, she doesn’t, and it’s a great pity, for her influence would be very great with the other women. I suppose you’ll see her to-morrow evening. You’ll come to the Academy, won’t you?”

“Yes, certainly, if Ezra is going. I should like to go ever so much and see all my neighbours, but perhaps he will be too tired. He does work dreadfully hard, it seems to me.”

“He ought to do a little brain-work. Wright says nothing rests one like brain-work. He’s been doing a spell of that lately. He’s been writing an essay on ‘The Ultimate Perfection of Being.’ He’ll most likely read some of it to-morrow at the Academy.”

“I shouldn’t think essays would be much use in planting corn,” said Olive rather tartly, remembering at what hour her husband had come from the harrowing.

“Wright and I, we don’t believe in making a god of work. We have a much higher ideal of life than that. We don’t want anything sordid in our lives, Wright and I. We haven’t any sympathy with this restless striving to get on. One of the great advantages of Perfection City is that we all have time for the cultivation of our higher natures.”

“Just now,” said Olive, “my husband seems to have no thought in his mind but the cultivation of that field over there. He is at work early and late. No person could possibly work harder for himself or his individual advantage than he does for the Community.”

“There’s just a case in point,” remarked Mary Winkle complacently. “I always thought your husband very narrow in his views. He slaves away at this corn planting as if that were the chief end and object of his existence. It is all very well to work at times, but working in order to store up food for the body is the lowest possible form that human activity can take.”

“It is the most indispensable form,” remarked Olive.

“By no means,” replied Mary Winkle with precision. “That observation would seem to indicate that you are more narrow even than your husband. The body is merely the servant of the mind: the mind needs to be fed, and it is the food for the mind which your husband appears so careless about providing. Fortunately for Perfection City, Wright has taken thought on that subject. Wright has a very high standard of what is necessary for the mind.”

“It appears to me,” said Olive with a snap of her black eyes and an ominous red spot on her cheeks, “that if we all lived up to your standard, it might very well happen that by next winter our minds might be uncomfortably full and our stomachs correspondingly empty. If Ezra did not plough and get his land ready for planting as fast as mortal man can, how is the land to be got ready? It doesn’t plough itself, does it, even at Perfection City?”

“I see you will have to get rid of many prejudices,” observed Mary Winkle. “Of course community-life only comes easy to people who are adapted to it. Wright and I are adapted. We like it. We shall stay here. We shall succeed therefore. You and Brother Ezra will have to go through a season of training first. You both need it. I dare say you may hear something that you will find useful to you to-morrow from Wright. I will just mention to him where your particular blindness seems to lie. Wright is a very profound thinker. He has given great thought to the subject of the Ultimate Perfection of People. He can explain every step in the training of a perfect communist, and show clearly just where everybody has hitherto gone wrong in their attempts to realize their ideal, and exactly what mistakes they have made. I am glad you have come in time to hear his paper; it will be of lasting good to you. You will be able to profit by it, because you are in great need of proper training. I dare say you need it more even than Ezra. For, after all, he must have learned something from us in the year he has been with us.”

CHAPTER IV.
MADAME MOROZOFF-SMITH.

The Academy at Perfection City was not a pretentious building in anything but in name. It was a plain wooden house, almost square, having a window on three sides and a door on the fourth, facing south. Inside there were several rough benches, two tables, an iron stove, and a large easy chair, with a small desk beside it, upon which stood a pair of candles. There were no curtains and no carpets, absolutely no attempts at beautifying the place. But the board-floor was clean.

Olive dressed herself in a flutter of expectation for her first visit to this abode of wisdom.

“I expect everybody will be there, because they’ll all want to see you, little woman,” said her husband, who, tired as he was after his day’s work, changed his earth-stained clothes for a fresh suit. Olive wore a white dress with lavender ribbons, and looked as fresh as a daisy as she tripped along daintily holding up her skirts. She wore the nattiest of boots over the neatest of feet, altogether a bright and unexpected sight upon the glum-looking prairie. It was a quarter of a mile to the Academy, down a road hardly more than a cart-track, and across a dry gully where there were no stepping stones.

As Ezra had predicted, everybody had turned out to welcome the new bride. Uncle David met her at the door.

“Wal, little girl,” he said, “we’re all a-looking out for you. Here’s Sister Mary Winkle, you’ve seen her, and this is her husband, Brother Wright.”

Olive shook hands with a dark, broad-shouldered man who spoke in snaps as if he had been a dog. He had glittering white teeth.

“We’ve been looking to have your husband back,” he said.

“I’m sure you’re very kind,” murmured Olive conventionally.

“We needed him for the ploughing,” snapped Wright.

“Oh indeed!” said Olive less cordially.

“This is the busy time of the year.”

“All times a-year is the busy time in my ’pinion and ’sperience,” said Uncle David smiling comprehensively, “but most everyone spares time one way or ’nother to get married if they have a mind that way. Come along an’ see Brother and Sister Dummy. That ain’t their name, but we call ’em so, they’re deaf and mostly dumb now. They’re real good folks too.”

A sad-eyed red-haired man shook hands with her, and a sad-eyed woman kissed her. They put into her hand a slip of paper on which was written a message of welcome.

“They can talk a little, but they can’t hear one mite, and they don’t like to talk, because they can’t tell when they are whispering and when they are yelling, and it makes strangers jump to hear them sometimes.”

Olive felt drawn towards this poor silent pair, but did not know how to express her sympathy. There were others in the room, but before she had time to speak to them the door opened and Madame Morozoff-Smith entered, and from that moment she seemed to see no one else. Madame was a remarkable looking woman. She was tall, large and fair, with keen grey eyes, full red lips, and a mass of pale gold hair rising over a forehead that was broad and smooth. A woman of indeterminate age with an air of youthfulness and command about her. She was dressed in a dark dress and wore a bright bunch of ribbons in her hair. It looked at first sight like a rose, only roses don’t grow on the prairie in the month of May. She came straight to where Olive was standing. She gave one the impression of floating, for although a large woman, she walked so lightly as to make no noticeable sound on the wooden floor. Taking Olive’s two hands in her warm large grasp, she kissed her on the forehead murmuring “Welcome,” and then stepping back she said in a clear voice that vibrated through the room:

“Ah! now I understand that hurried courtship and swift marriage. I see what it was in Brother Ezra’s case. It was love at first sight. You are very pretty. I suppose, however, you know that very well. It is a secret seldom kept from young girls.”

Olive was so startled by this unexpected address that she blushed to the roots of her black hair. Ezra stood looking down at his little wife smiling with pleasure. He was delighted to think that Madame found her so pretty. He had indeed thought her beautiful from the first moment when his eyes had rested on her, but then he loved her, and it was but natural that in his eyes she should be lovely. Madame, however, judged her unprejudiced, and yet if his delighted heart had room for one regret, it was that Madame’s praise had been so very public. If she had only whispered it softly to him in that wonderful voice of hers, which had often caught up his inmost thoughts and clothed them in words of eloquence, how much more precious would the tribute have been. He dismissed the half-formed regret as unworthy, and took himself to task for not exulting at this moment. The meeting of Madame and Olive was an event in his life. Olive, his sweet little rose-bud of a wife, on the one hand, and Madame, his venerated, nay his worshipped, friend, on the other. The one, the companion of his heart: the other, the guide of his mind who embodied in herself all that he held highest in the possibilities of womanhood, his true and noble-hearted friend, his inspired leader. How blest was the portion of him who stood that night the husband of the one, the disciple of the other! Ezra’s dark eyes shone with joy, and his square chin quivered with the smiles that lurked about his lips. He was not a handsome man, perhaps, but there was something grand in the large full forehead, strong eyebrows, and deep dark eyes. His massive frame bespoke strength, which in itself has always a great attraction for women.

When Madame had addressed those words to the new sister all the members of the Community had scanned her narrowly, for the opinion of their leader had immense weight with the Pioneers. The men looked at Olive with increased admiration, and the women with envy. Only Uncle David appeared disappointed and wiped his face many times with his red pocket-handkerchief saying, “Wal, wal, now,” in a tone of earnest reproof.

After this bewildering introduction in which her vanity had been not a little excited, Olive received a salutary check from the words of Brother Wright.

“Before beginning to read my paper,” said he, “I should like to say a few words to the new sister who has come among us. We expect soon to be having new members join us so fast that perhaps we shall not be able to specially mark the entrance of each. But in this case there are peculiar reasons for exhortation. Sister Olive has not joined under ordinary circumstances. She did not, like the rest of us, feel a call to the higher life: she only came out of personal affection for one of the members of the Community.”

Olive looked with a shy glance towards her husband, who took her hand in his for a moment, while Uncle David, who sat at the end of the room near Madame, said in a loud voice:

“Quite right, quite right, couldn’t ha’ had a better reason.”

“Therefore it becomes our duty to impress upon our new sister the principles which have been active in forming this Community,” said Brother Wright, without paying any heed to Uncle David’s interruption. “Perfection City has been founded to teach the world how to live. The old civilization has been tried and found wanting. It is time for a new one. Perfection City is the beginning of a new era. We are the Pioneers of a new world. We shall show the old and worn-out world how to banish evil from life. We cannot perhaps banish all physical evil, and for a time at least there may be sickness even among us, but we shall at once set about freeing ourselves from all the other troubles of life. There is nobody in Perfection City who will get rich, and nobody will ever be poor. We are all alike, and we shall none of us envy our neighbours his belongings, simply because everything belongs to all. The lesson we have to teach is the grandest the world ever saw, and when men know what it is, I foresee a future before Perfection City greater than that of any other city of the world. Rome lasted a good long while, but Rome didn’t possess the vital spark of life: Rome wasn’t communistic, therefore Rome fell. Perfection City won’t fall like that, but will go on teaching the world after we, its founders, are all dead. But our memories will live for the great things that we taught and through our example have made possible.”

Brother Wright stopped for a few seconds, and Uncle David said admiringly,

“You have a fine command of words, Brother Wright, and you have a way of making things sound uncommon grand. It always does me good to hear you talk of the grand future of our City; but we’ll have to get up some houses, and bigger ones, ’fore folks ’ull believe us.”

Uncle David was as simple as a child, or some of his hearers might have suspected a sarcasm in his words.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, as I’ve heard say,” remarked Brother Green, with a strong English accent, “and I shall be glad if our little village ever grows to half its power and honour.”

“Brother Green, I should refuse to have anything to say to the founding of another city like Rome,” interrupted Brother Wright with decisiveness.

“It seems to me,” said Ezra in a shy hesitating manner, “that what we are here for is to demonstrate, if we can, how a better life can be lived here than is possible in the older communities, where circumstances are too strong and too hampering for people to rise above them. The older civilization has done much, it has raised our race to a high standard. What we want to do is to carry on that work, and above all to bring everyone within reach of the best that life has to offer. The older civilization has left so many stranded ones, who have lost their strength in the wild struggle; while we hope to bring all along equally and give to each a share of happiness. As usual, my friends, when I try to express my ideas I find that someone else has already put them into incomparably finer language than I can ever command. It has been so again. I find that our great poet, Walt Whitman, has said better than I can what I feel. May I quote him to you?

‘Have the elder races halted?

Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?

We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,

Pioneers! O pioneers!’”

Ezra sat down after reciting his verse, and his wife looked at him with glowing eyes. He had not said much, but his words had seemed to her so much fuller of thought and feeling than the easy monotonous flow from Brother Wright. That individual himself had not received Ezra’s remarks with quite so much delight. It was Brother Wright’s nature to see fight and contradiction in all things, even the most pacific. His eyes would flash and his black beard bristle in argument, almost as if he were a dog preparing to fight, and if one might be permitted to liken any Pioneer to one of the canine species, the bull-dog would undoubtedly be the variety most nearly resembling Brother Wright.

“I don’t see that we need be beholden to anyone, poet or otherwise,” he said sharply, “for our opinions or sentiments. We have found them for ourselves, just as we have founded our City. It is our work, both opinions and practice.”

“I think,” said Madame, rising and speaking with a deep clear voice, which a slight foreign accent seemed to render only the more attractive, “I think I see better than they do themselves where our two brothers agree. Brother Ezra, with that diffidence which strong natures often exhibit, thought he found in the lines of another man his own ideas more succinctly embodied than they would have been in his own words. Brother Ezra should not doubt his powers. Speech comes slowly to those who most deeply think, but he should consider how much we benefit by his words and how grateful we are to him for them. Brother Wright, it seems to me that you, perhaps, do not sufficiently appreciate the efforts of others who have gone before us on this road. We are not the first who have been discontented with the actual order of things, nor are we the first who have striven to make life brighter and easier. In all ages there have been those penetrated with these thoughts, and in different ways men, and women too, have striven earnestly, devotedly, to realize these ideas. Some indeed have imagined they had found a solution of all doubts and difficulties, and have in perfect good faith and self-satisfaction buried themselves in convents and monasteries and have ‘roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,’ and have ‘built them fanes of fruitless prayer.’ We have come to different conclusions by following a different road. We do not shut ourselves out of the world, rather we endeavour to raise it by showing a living example of what may be done now, in this age, by human beings such as we are. But if we are to succeed we must not reject the experience, nor fail to profit by the example, of others who have gone before us and felt earnestly on this subject.”

Madame paused for a moment, and her keen glance rested upon the small assembly. Each individual seemed to feel that she was looking at him or at her. Certainly each member was looking intently at her. She seldom made speeches to them; she only interposed her observations, as on this occasion, between the speakers; but the last word usually remained with her.

“Brother Wright, will you now read us your paper, as the evening is passing and we are all anxious to hear it. What is the title and subject?”

“The Ultimate Perfection of Being is the title,” said Brother Wright, “and I think that pretty well sums up the subject also.”

So apparently thought the audience, which resigned itself to a severe mental excursion into the unknown regions of Brother Wright’s imaginative metaphysics. Some of them fell out very soon, finding the road harder to follow than they had foreseen; but Brother Wright kept sturdily on, unheeding the signs of weakness and disaffection as betrayed by movings of feet and stifled yawns.

Olive, not being able to understand what Brother Wright was saying, employed herself in watching Madame, who sat motionless beside her table, resting her head upon her supple white hand. At her feet lay what seemed to be a large brown rug, but was in fact her dog Balthasar, a blood-hound, who always stayed with her and was as gentle as a lamb, notwithstanding his name and breed.

“Brother Green! That’s the second time you’ve snored,” suddenly exclaimed Brother Wright in the midst of his reading. Everybody was wide awake in an instant. Madame hid a smile with her hand, but not before Olive had noticed it.

“Brother Green is perhaps tired. His work is very hard,” said Madame.

“Well, the fact is I had to put a new point to the ploughshare this morning before I went to fetch my load of iron, and I began work before daybreak. I am very tired.”

Brother Green was the blacksmith of Perfection City, an industrious hard-working man who thought life would show him a fairer side on the prairie than it had ever done in the far-away village in Sussex where he was born.

“I think that it might be better to have our gatherings rather shorter now,” said Madame softly. “The workers in our little hive are all tired. I wish I could do more of the labour that is needed. I would gladly——”

Madame was interrupted by a sharp rap on the table, a signal from Brother Huntley that he wanted to speak. He was the deaf and dumb man. She instantly rose and bowed to him with singular graciousness. Madame’s manner towards the deaf brethren was all that was exquisite. Huntley stood up and began in a voice almost inaudible which rose by sudden degrees to the intensity of a steam-whistle.

“I want to know when we’re going to get our corn planted? We’re behindhand; most other folk’s corn is in already.”

“As usual, Brother Huntley has something practical to say,” observed Madame.

“He didn’t know we were discussing quite another subject, else his remark would have been rude and irrelevant,” said Wright, vexed at this cutting into his paper on the ultimate perfection of his and everybody’s being.

“I think it would be very useful to see what we can do about the corn,” said the blacksmith. “If we are late the chances are there’ll be another drought in July, and our crop won’t be first-class.”

“Is anyone’s land ready for planting?” inquired Madame.

“None as I know of, except Brother Dummy’s,” said Uncle David. “He’s more forward nor anybody: always first in work.”

“Of course, poor deaf creature! he can’t do anything but dumbly work like a——” began Brother Wright.

“My land is ready for planting,” burst in Brother Huntley with a scream.

“Then it shall be planted to-morrow,” cried Madame. “I’ll go myself.”

“You!” exclaimed Olive.

“Certainly, child. Don’t you think I can work as well as any other woman?”

She rapidly wrote a few words on a slip of paper and passed it to Brother Huntley, who read it, nodded with satisfaction, and said: “Five o’clock in the morning!” in a voice so low that no one knew he was speaking.

“I suppose he begins work about six?” said Madame.

“No, he don’t, he’s mighty spry,” said old Mrs. Ruby, who lived near the Huntleys. “I hear him a-movin’ off with his plough every morning at five by the clock. He’s terrible sot on his work.”

“Then I shall be there ready to go to work at five o’clock in the morning, and I shall begin by going to bed now, so as to be able to give a good day’s work. Good-night, friends all.”

She rose, included them all in a sweeping salute and left the room as lightly as she had entered. Balthasar rose and slowly followed her.

When Madame left the room the meeting broke up. No one felt inclined to linger when she was gone. It was from her they drew their interest in each other, as well as their belief in themselves and in Perfection City. She possessed the secret of influencing people without seeming to do so. The thought that she was going out on the land at five in the morning to plant corn made everyone ten times more eager to work than heretofore.

Wright and his independent spouse, Mary Winkle, were infected by her example as they went home.

“Now, Wright, don’t you go and do any more essaying till the crop is in. I think people oughtn’t to write except in winter time,” said Mary Winkle with firmness.

“I never believed in nothing but manual work. Why, if I did, I should be still slaving away on that farm out in Illinois, instead of joining a community here where one can follow the bent of his higher nature, to the advantage of his neighbours as well as of himself,” said Wright.

“Well, let that be,” said Mary hastily, recognising her own words and oft-expressed opinions, but not quite knowing what to do with them—a predicament not unexampled among theoretical philosophers, “but see and be out on the land to-morrow as early as anyone. Are you ready for the planting? Because I’ll go out and plant if you are.”

“No, my drills won’t be ready for the planting till day after to-morrow.”

“Then I’ll go and plant on Brother Dummy’s piece along with Madame.”

“You’d better not. You’re not fit for such work. You’ll get sick and not be able to cook me any supper when I come home.”

“No, I shan’t get sick. I ain’t going to let any person beat me at work, when I set my mind to it, and she in her long skirts too! I’ll show her the advantage of the reformed dress anyhow.”

Thus the Wright and Winkle pair on their way home.

“And will she really plant corn?” asked Olive in some curiosity.

“Certainly she will. Madame never despised work.”

“Oh! I don’t despise work, but she seems such a fine lady to go out on the land and plant corn just like a negro woman.”

“That is one of the things our life here is intended to show, dearie, that no one is too grand for any honest work that he or she is physically capable of performing.”

CHAPTER V.
CORN PLANTING.

Punctual to the minute, there was Madame with her bag of corn on her left arm, following Brother Huntley and his plough-horses to the field, in the damp white fog of sunrise. Balthasar in deep disgust was there too, as in duty bound, but he had not a wag for anybody. How could a rational dog be in good spirits at that hour of the morning! Madame was dressed in a short calico frock well up to her ankles. Her fair hair was loosely wisped at the back of her head, and a large straw hat, tied down with a green gauze veil, made her look at once comfortable in the fog and ready for the expected sunshine. There were no corn-planters at Perfection City: farm-machinery was not then so plentiful on the prairie as now, and money was if possible scarcer. Corn planting was, therefore, done by hand. Brother Dummy’s drills of longitude were already ploughed, and he began on the drills of latitude forthwith. Into the hollows made by the intersection of these two sets of drills Madame was to drop three grains of corn, neither more nor less. It is dizzying work. After walking up and down the drills for hours one becomes oppressed by the never-ceasing square constantly recurring every two steps. The check pattern bewilders you, and you begin to wonder how a chess-man would feel if, endowed with sensibility and the power of motion, he had to march up and down his chess-board, always keeping to the lines for hours at a stretch.

About seven o’clock Mary Winkle came upon the scene and plodded and planted for four hours. The sun was blazing down upon them pitilessly, and the parching south wind blew the fine black dust up from the rich dry soil, until their eyes and ears and noses were full of it.

The field which they were planting was on the extreme verge of the community-land, far away from the houses. These were somewhat clustered towards the centre of the holding, which consisted of two sections or a little over twelve hundred acres. The workers, therefore, were a long way from home, considerably over a mile, and since corn planting entails ceaseless walking through heavy ploughed land, it had been settled that their dinner should be brought out to them, so as to enable the workers to rest during the whole dinner hour. Olive and Mrs. Ruby were to supply the necessary food, and the former, aided by Napoleon Pompey, was to bring it to the field at eleven o’clock. The little grove of locust trees just beginning to grow beside the far spring was the trysting place. Water would thus be handy, and the horses’ feed was already put there by the provident Brother Huntley. A little before the hour Olive and her black attendant arrived at the grove, bringing their load of food, and Olive set down her big tin can with a sigh of relief. Her arms ached with carrying it, for it was heavy and the way was long. Napoleon Pompey had carried two cans, each heavier than hers, but the lad seemed to feel no inconvenience from the load. Olive looked at him with envy and thought with contempt of her own muscles which appeared so inefficient. As she unpacked the food, it seemed to her that nothing she had learnt at Smyrna and could best do, was wanted on the prairie, and she remembered with some amusement and not a little bitterness Mary Winkle’s words about food for the mind. At this moment she reflected that all the learning in the world was not so much needed by that philosophical lady as the very gross and material food which was being taken out of the heavy tin cans and laid on the grass. The working-party, men, women and horses, arrived while Olive was thus engaged. Mary Winkle instantly sat down and leaned against a tree and threw off her sunbonnet. Her thin black hair was matted down to her temples, her cheeks were yellow, and her eyes looked dull. Madame also took off her hat and veil and shook up the coil of hair on her head with a sigh of relief.

“Does your head ache too?” said Mary Winkle wearily.

“Not in the least,” replied Madame. “A sunbonnet is a bad shelter against heat. You should wear a good hat, it is far better.”

“I wonder how you can bear all that hair on your head. Why don’t you cut it off?”

“Why, it is an admirable protection against both heat and cold,” said Madame laughing. “It is my greatest comfort.” She might have added her greatest beauty.

The food which Olive brought was most appetising, roast chicken, hot corn-bread, and pumpkin pies, with plenty of milk and water to drink. Before eating Madame went to the spring to wash her hands and face, and Mary Winkle sat limply against the tree trunk with her eyes shut.

“Eat something, it will revive you,” said Olive, looking with pity upon her sallow cheeks.

“I don’t feel hardly able to eat,” she said in a weak voice. “It seems to me I don’t ever want to open my eyes again.”

“You are overworking yourself,” said Olive, “you should not attempt this field work: it is beyond your strength.”

“What! and let her see me give in?” said Mary Winkle with reviving spirit.

Madame came up at this moment looking as fresh as a lily: she glanced sharply at Sister Mary. “You appear very much exhausted,” she remarked.

Sister Mary raised her head and opened her eyes, but did not speak.

“It’s a pity you don’t take wine,” she continued, sitting down and beginning on her piece of chicken with relish. “A good glass of Burgundy would set you up in no time.”

Sister Mary herself sat up at this.

“I wouldn’t touch wine, no, not if I was dying,” she said resolutely.

Madame smiled. “I didn’t recommend it because you were dying: wine as everything else is then useless: but because you look weak. I suggested a medicine.”

“As a medicine it is worse than useless, and as a drink I scorn to take a rank poison.”

“Poisons are sometimes given as medicine, witness strychnine in small doses for certain forms of dyspepsia, and I believe satisfactorily,” said Madame.

“Wine is worse than strychnine, because more insidious in its action and more liable to abuse,” said Mary Winkle decisively, as she took the tin cup of milk and water handed her by Olive, and drank it with eagerness.

“Well, at all events admit that wine has been of benefit to you on this occasion,” observed Madame smiling. “I merely mentioned it to you, and you look already revived and more like yourself. Doesn’t she, Sister Olive?”

“It was the milk and water did it,” said Sister Mary Winkle hurriedly, at which Madame smiled again.

Brother Dummy and Napoleon Pompey now came up to the group of women. They had been watering and unharnessing the horses who were at the present moment munching their corn. The white man, although dirty as a ploughman would be after half a day’s hard work, sat down promptly beside Mary Winkle and helped himself to a leg of chicken: the negro boy stood aside doubtfully, eyeing the group and the food with longing looks.

“Come along, N. P.,” said Olive brightly, “sit down there.” She pointed to a place on the other side of Mary Winkle, where there seemed a good opening in front of a huge piece of corn-bread.

“No, if you please,” said Sister Mary, rising to her feet with resentment.

“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Olive flushing with surprise. “Napoleon Pompey won’t bite you.”

“I have never sat down to eat beside a negro, and I don’t feel inclined to begin now.”

“Let the lad sit beside me,” said Madame gently. “I have seen people of too many shades of colour and no colour to mind a little extra dash of black. Come here, boy, come and have this piece of bread and meat.”

Napoleon Pompey grinning with all his white teeth sprang to the place beside Madame, and buried those same teeth eagerly in his chunk of bread. Mary Winkle sat down again and leaned against the tree. Olive’s face took a deeper tinge of red and her eyes snapped.

“Do you consider yourself made of such fine clay that it won’t bear contact with a negro?” she asked hotly. “It seems to me a little of what used to be called Christian charity might come in useful here. I never aspired to the heights of Perfection City people, but I never refused the rights of brotherhood to the negro simply because of the curl of his hair or the colour of his skin.”

“I am quite willing to give them all their rights and will be glad to see them educated and all that, but I never sat at dinner with a negro, and I am not going to begin now,” said Mary Winkle setting her thin pale lips with the utmost stubbornness.

“Well, I call it perfectly monstrous,” retorted Olive, “and you setting yourself up to show the better life and all the rest of it! I should have thought the first thing to do before teaching the highest perfection was to practise the simplest justice.”

“And you, Sister Olive,” said Madame’s cool sweet voice, “will have to learn to respect the prejudices of other people even when they run counter to your most cherished theories. I do not myself share the feeling of repulsion that Sister Mary has in this case, but I respect it. I would suggest to you to do the same. It is an inconvenient fact, perhaps, that people do not all think alike, but it is one that must be resolutely faced nevertheless.”

Olive was silent under this reproof, but she looked angrily at Mary Winkle from time to time, and revenged herself by feeding up Napoleon Pompey and petting him to an alarming extent, much to the delight of that young darkie who ate until he seemed to ooze out unctuous joy.

Brother Dummy ate, as he worked, silently, conscientiously, continuously. Olive was amazed at the amount he seemed able to consume, while of milk and water he drank half a gallon or thereabouts.

“How can he do it?” said Olive in astonishment.

“You forget,” replied Madame, “that he has been following that plough for six long hours, and the dry wind raised such a dust around him that he must have swallowed a vast quantity of it in the course of the day. It takes a good deal to slake the thirst after such a dust visitation as that.”

When Brother Dummy had eaten and drunk his fill he lay down on the grass and went instantly to sleep. The three women looked at him for a moment or two.

“He seems to have very little enjoyment in his life,” said Olive compassionately.

“But then he has also few sorrows,” said Madame. “The high lights are wanting, perhaps, but so are the dark shadows. His life is like a grey landscape. It has a beauty of its own, but not everyone can see it.”

“To live in eternal silence seems to me the most awful curse,” said Olive.

“I can imagine many a worse one,” replied Madame, looking out from among the few bare trees away across the open prairie.

“What could be worse?”

“Well, for example, to know that someone you loved did not love you. To have to shut up your heart within iron doors, and never open them to let it out. That would be worse than to be denied the power of speech, which after all can now be supplemented in many ways by artificial means. Brother Huntley is not actively unhappy, I should judge. He and his wife have always appeared to me to be a very united couple.”

“They cannot quarrel, at all events,” said Olive.

“No, not, at least, in the ordinary way,” replied Madame.

When Brother Dummy awoke after his little snooze, he got up, looked at the sun to see what time of day it was, and then signed to Napoleon Pompey to rouse up. That young person was lethargic, owing to his anaconda-like meal, accordingly Brother Dummy roused him with his foot. The darkie rolled over and said “Yah!” and started for the horses, who were nodding over their corn-cobs, now nibbled down to the smallest dimensions. Olive, whose resentment at the slight put upon Napoleon Pompey by Mary Winkle urged her to identify herself with the negro boy, walked away with him and Brother Dummy to watch the hitching up. Madame employed herself in throwing scraps of bread to Balthasar, who would have much preferred eating the chicken bones, only that was a debauch not permitted to a dog of his manners. Mary Winkle looked hopelessly along those weary furrows, up and down which it would be her duty to march again, dropping her seeds of corn as before.

“Are you going to work all the afternoon?” she asked of her companion.

“Yes, I think so. We shall get this field planted and covered in by sun-down, I should think. And that will be a great piece of work done. We cannot afford to let the individualists beat us at corn planting, can we? We must do at least as well as they, and I should hope we might do better.”

“I don’t know how you can stand so much heat and hard work,” said Mary, “and in that dress too. Why, if I were to attempt to work in long skirts I should be dead in a week.”