THE HERLAND TRILOGY: Moving the Mountain, Herland & With Her in Ourland (Complete Edition) E-Book
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's THE HERLAND TRILOGY: Moving the Mountain, Herland & With Her in Ourland (Complete Edition) is a groundbreaking feminist utopian fiction that challenges traditional gender roles and societal constructs. The trilogy explores the hypothetical society of Herland, a secluded all-female civilization free from the influence of men, highlighting themes of equality, motherhood, and the rejection of capitalist ideologies. Gilman's writing style is concise yet thought-provoking, captivating readers with her vivid descriptions of this idealistic world while also critiquing the limitations of the patriarchal society in which she lived. The Herland Trilogy stands as a classic work of feminist literature, inspiring generations of readers to envision a more equitable future for all. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a prominent feminist and social reformer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, draws upon her own experiences and observations to craft this thought-provoking trilogy. Influenced by her own struggles within a male-dominated society, Gilman's work serves as a powerful call to action for women's rights and liberation. I highly recommend THE HERLAND TRILOGY to readers interested in feminist literature, utopian fiction, and social critique, as it offers a thought-provoking exploration of gender, society, and the possibilities of a more equal world.
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THE HERLAND TRILOGY: Moving the Mountain, Herland & With Her in Ourland
(Complete Edition)
Published by
Books
Table of Contents
Moving the Mountain
Moving the Mountain
Preface
ONE of the most distinctive features of the human mind is to forecast better things.
“We look before and after And pine for what is not.”
This natural tendency to hope, desire, foresee and then, if possible, obtain, has been largely diverted from human usefulness since our goal was placed after death, in Heaven. With all our hope in “Another World,” we have largely lost hope of this one.
Some minds, still keen in the perception of better human possibilities, have tried to write out their vision and give it to the world. From Plato’s ideal Republic to Wells’ Day of the Comet we have had many Utopias set before us, best known of which are that of Sir Thomas More and the great modern instance, “Looking Backward.”
All these have one or two distinctive features — an element of extreme remoteness, or the introduction of some mysterious out-side force. “Moving the Mountain” is a short distance Utopia, a baby Utopia, a little one that can grow. It involves no other change than a change of mind, the mere awakening of people, especially the women, to existing possibilities. It indicates what people might do, real people, now living, in thirty years — if they would.
One man, truly aroused and redirecting his energies, can change his whole life in thirty years.
So can the world.
Chapter 1.
ON a gray, cold, soggy Tibetan plateau stood glaring at one another two white people — a man and a woman.
With the first, a group of peasants; with the second, the guides and carriers of a well-equipped exploring party.
The man wore the dress of a peasant, but around him was a leather belt — old, worn, battered — but a recognizable belt of no Asiatic pattern, and showing a heavy buckle made in twisted initials.
The woman’s eye had caught the sunlight on this buckle before she saw that the heavily bearded face under the hood was white. She pressed forward to look at it.
“Where did you get that belt?” she cried, turning for the interpreter to urge her question.
The man had caught her voice, her words.
He threw back his hood and looked at her, with a strange blank look, as of one listening to something far away.
“John!” she cried. “John! My Brother!” He lifted a groping hand to his head, made a confused noise that ended in almost a shout of “Nellie!” reeled and fell backward.
. . . . .
When one loses his mind, as it were, for thirty years, and finds it again; when one wakes up; comes to life; recognizes oneself an American citizen twenty-five years old
No. This is what I find it so hard to realize. I am not twenty-five; I am fifty-five.
. . . . .
Well, as I was saying, when one comes to life again like this, and has to renew acquaintance with one’s own mind, in a sudden swarming rush of hurrying memories — that is a good deal of pressure for a brain so long unused.
But when on top of that, one is pushed headlong into a world immeasurably different from the world one has left at twenty-five — a topsy-turvy world, wherein all one’s most cherished ideals are found to be reversed, rearranged, or utterly gone; where strange new facts are accompanied by strange new thoughts and strange new feelings — the pressure becomes terrific,
Nellie has suggested that I write it down, and I think for once she is right. I disagree with her on so many points that I am glad to recognize the wisdom of this idea. It will certainly be a useful process in my re-education; and relieve the mental tension.
So, to begin with my first life, being now in my third
. . . . .
I am the only son of a Methodist minister of South Carolina. My mother was a Yankee. She died after my sister Ellen was born, when I was seven years old. My father educated me well. I was sent to a small Southern college, and showed such a talent for philology that I specialized in ancient languages, and, after some teaching and the taking of various degrees, I had a
Two pages are missing here. ED.
they never mentioned such a detail. Furthermore, they gave so dim an account of where the place was that we don’t know now; should have to locate that night’s encampment, and then look for a precipice and go down it with ropes.
As I have no longer any interest in those venerable races and time-honored customs, I think we will not do this.
Well, she found me, and something happened. She says I knew her — shouted “Nellie!” and fell down — fell on a stone, too, and hit my head so hard they thought I was dead this time “for sure.” But when I “came to” I came all the way, back to where I was thirty years ago; and as for those thirty years — I do not remember one day of them.
Nor do I wish to. I have those filthy Tibetan clothes, sterilized and packed away, but I never want to look at them.
I am back in the real world, back where I was at twenty-five. But now I am fifty-five —
. . . . .
Now, about Nellie. I must go slowly and get this thing straightened out for good and all.
My little sister! I was always fond of her, and she adored me. She looked up to me, naturally; believed everything I told her; minded me like a little dog — when she was a child. And as she grew into girl-hood, I had a strong restraining influence upon her. She wanted to be educated — to go to college — but father wouldn’t hear of it, of course, and I backed him up. If there is anything on earth I always hated and despised, it is a strong-minded woman! That is — it was. I certainly cannot hate and despise my sister Nellie.
Now it appears that soon after my departure from this life father died, very suddenly. Nellie inherited the farm — and the farm turned out to be a mine, and the mine turned out to be worth a good deal of money.
So that poor child, having no natural guardian or protector, just set to work for herself — went to college to her heart’s content, to a foreign university, too. She studied medicine, practiced a while, then was offered a chair in a college and took it; then — I hate to write it — but she is now president of a college — a coeducational college!
“Don’t you mean ‘dean?’” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “There is a dean of the girl’s building — but I am the president.”
My little sister!
. . . . .
The worst of it is that my little sister is now forty-eight, and I— to all intents and purposes — am twenty-five! She is twenty-three years older than I am. She has had thirty years of world-life which I have missed entirely, and this thirty years, I begin to gather, has covered more changes than an ordinary century or two.
It is lucky about that mine.
“At least I shall not have to worry about money,” I said to her when she told me about our increased fortune.
She gave one of those queer little smiles, as if she had something up her sleeve, and said:
“No; you won’t have to worry in the about money.”
Having all that medical skill of hers in the background, she took excellent care of me up there on those dreary plains and hills, brought me back to the coast by easy stages, and home on one of those new steamers — but I mustn’t stop to describe the details of each new thing I notice!
I have sense enough myself, even if I’m not a doctor, to use my mind gradually, not to swallow too fast, as it were.
Nellie is a little inclined to manage me. I don’t know as I blame her. I do feel like a child, sometimes. It is so humiliating not to know little common things such as everybody else knows. Air ships I expected, of course; they had started before I left. They are common enough, all sizes. But water is still the cheaper route — as well as slower.
Nellie said she didn’t want me to get home too quick; she wanted time to explain things. So we spent long, quiet hours in our steamer chairs, talking things over.
It’s no use asking about the family; there is only a flock of young cousins and “once removed” now; the aunts and uncles are mostly gone. Uncle Jake is left. Nellie grins wickedly when she mentions him.
“If things get too hard on you, John, you can go down to Uncle Jake’s and rest up. He and Aunt Dorcas haven’t moved an inch. They fairly barricade their minds against a new idea — and he ploughs and she cooks up on that little mountain farm just as they always did. People go to see them ”
“Why shouldn’t they?” I asked. And she smiled that queer little smile again.
“I mean they go to see them as if they were the Pyramids.”
“I see,” said I. “I might as well prepare for some preposterous nightmare of a world, like — what was that book of Wells’, ‘The Sleeper Awakened?’ ”
“Oh, yes; I remember that book,” she answered, “and a lot of others. People were already guessing about things as they might be, weren’t they? But what never struck any of them was that the people themselves could change.”
“No,” I agreed. “You can’t alter human nature.”
Nellie laughed — laughed out loud. Then she squeezed my hand and patted it.
“You Dear! she said. “You precious old Long–Lost Brother! When you get too utterly upset I’ll wear my hair down, put on a short dress and let you boss me awhile — to keep your spirits up. That was just the phrase, wasn’t it? — ‘You can’t alter human nature!’ ” And she laughed again.
There is something queer about Nellie — very queer. It is not only that she is different from my little sister — that’s natural; but she is different from any woman of forty-eight I ever saw — from any woman of any age I ever saw.
In the first place, she doesn’t look old — not at all. Women of forty, in our region, were old women, and Nellie’s near fifty! Then she isn’t — what shall I call it — dependent; not the least in the world. As soon as I became really conscious, and strong enough to be of any use, and began to offer her those little services and attentions due to a woman, I noticed this difference.
She is brisk, firm, assured — not unpleasantly so; I don’t mean a thing of that sort; but somehow like — almost like a man! No, I certainly don’t mean that. She is not in the least mannish, nor in the least self-assertive; but she takes things so easily — as if she owned them.
I suppose it will be some time before my head is absolutely clear and strong as it used to be. I tire rather easily. Nellie is very reassuring about it. She says it will take about a year to re-establish connections and renew mental processes. She advises me to read and talk only a little every day, to sleep all I can, and not to worry.
“You’ll be all right soon, my dear,” she says, “and plenty of life before you. You seem to have led a very healthy out-door life. You’re really well and strong — and as good-looking as ever.”
At least she hasn’t forgotten that woman’s chief duty is to please.
“And the world is a much better place to be in than it was,” she assured me. “Things will surprise you, of course — things I have gotten used to and shall forget to tell you about. But the changes are all good ones, and you’ll soon get — acclimated. You’re young yet.”
That’s where Nellie slips up. She cannot help having me in mind as the brave young brother she knew. She forgets that I am an old man now. Finally I told her that.
“No, John Robertson,” she she, “that’s where you are utterly wrong. Of course, you don’t know what we’re doing about age — how differently we feel. As a matter of physiology we find that about one hundred and fifty ought to be our natural limit; and that with proper conditions we can easily get to be a hundred now. Ever so many do.”
“I don’t want to be a hundred,” I protested. “I saw a man of ninety-eight once, and never want to be one.”
“It’s not like that now,” she said. “I mean we live to be a hundred and enjoy life still — ‘keep our faculties,’ as they used to put it. Why, the ship’s doctor here is eighty-seven.”
This surprised me a good deal. I had talked a little with this man, and had thought him about sixty.
“Then a man of a hundred, according to your story, would look like — like —:— ”
“Like Grandpa Ely,” she offered.
I remembered my mother’s father — a tall, straight, hale old man of seventy-five. He had a clear eye, a firm step, a rosy color in his face. Well, that wasn’t so bad a prospect.
“I consent to be a hundred — on those terms,” I told her.
. . . . .
She talked to me a good bit, in small daily doses, of the more general changes in the world, showed me new maps, even let me read a little in the current magazines.
“I suppose you have a million of these now,” I said. “There were thousands when I left!”
“No,” she answered. “There are fewer, I believe; but much better.”
I turned over the one in my hand. It was pleasantly light and thin, it opened easily, the paper and presswork were of the best, the price was twenty-five cents.
“Is this a cheap one — at a higher price? or have the best ones come down?”
“It’s a cheap one,” she told me, “if you mean by that a popular one, and it’s cheap enough. They have all of a million subscribers.”
“And what’s the difference, beyond the paper and print?” I asked.
“The pictures are good.”
I looked it through again.
“Yes, very good, much improved. But I don’t see anything phenomenal — unless it is the absence of advertisements.”
Nellie took it out of my hand and ran it over.
“Just read some of that,” she said. “Read this story — and this article — and that.”
So I sat reading in the sunny silence, the gulls wheeling and dipping just as they used to, and the wide purple ocean just as changeable — and changeless — as ever.
One of the articles was on an extension of municipal service, and involved so much comment on preceding steps that I found it most enlightening. The other was a recent suggestion in educational psychology, and this too carried a retrospect of recent progress which gave me food for thought. The story was a clever one. I found it really amusing, and only on a second reading did I find what it was that gave the queer flavor to it. It was a story about women — two women who were in business partnership, with their adventures, singly and together.
I looked through it carefully. They were not even girls, they were not handsome, they were not in process of being married — in fact, it was not once mentioned whether they were married or not, ever had been or ever wanted to be. Yet I had found it amusing!
I laid the magazine on my rug-bound knees and meditated. A queer sick feeling came over me — mental, not physical. I looked through the magazine again. It was not what I should have called “a woman’s magazine,” yet the editor was a woman, most of the contributors were women, and in all the subject matter I began to detect allusions and references of tremendous import.
Presently Nellie came to see how I was getting on. I saw her approaching, a firm, brisk figure, well and becomingly dressed, with a tailored trimness and convenience, far indeed from the slim, graceful, yielding girl I had once been so proud to protect and teach.
“How soon do we get in, Lady Manager?” I asked her.
“Day after tomorrow,” she answered back promptly — not a word about going to see, or asking anyone!
“Well, ma’am, I want you to sit down here and tell me things — right now. What am I to expect? Are there no men left in America?”
She laughed gaily.
“No men! Why, bless you, there are as many men as there are women, and a few more, I believe. Not such an over-plus as there used to be, but some to spare still. We had a million and a half extra in your day, you know.”
“I’m glad to learn we’re allowed to live!” said I. “Now tell me the worst — are the men all doing the housework?”
“You call that ‘the worst,’ do you?” inquired Nellie, cocking her head to one side and looking at me affectionately, and yet quizzically. “Well, I guess it was — pretty near ‘the worst!’ No dear, men are doing just as many kinds of business as they ever were.”
I heaved a sigh of relief and chucked my magazine under the chair.
“I’d begun to think there weren’t any men left. And they still wear trousers, don’t they?”
She laughed outright.
“Oh, yes. They wear just as many trousers as they did before.”
“And what do the women wear,” I demanded suspiciously.
“Whatever kind of clothing their work demands,” she answered.
“Their work? What kind of work do they do?”
“All kinds — anything they like.”
I groaned and shut my eyes. I could see the world as I left it, with only a small proportion of malcontents and a large majority of contented and happy homes; and then I saw this awful place I was coming to, with strange, masculine women and subdued men.
“How does it happen that there aren’t any on this ship?” I inquired.
“Any what?” asked Nellie.
“Any of these — New Women?”
“Why, there are. They’re all new, except Mrs. Talbot. She’s older than I am, and rather reactionary.”
This Mrs. Talbot was a stiff, pious, narrow-minded old lady, and I had liked her the least of any on board.
“Do you mean to tell me that pretty Mrs. Exeter is — one of this new kind?”
“Mrs. Exeter owns — and manages — a large store, if that is what you mean.”
“And those pretty Borden girls?”
“They do house decorating — have been abroad on business.”
“And Mrs. Green — and Miss Sandwich?”
“One of them is a hat designer, one a teacher. This is toward the end of vacation, and they’re all coming home, you see.”
“And Miss Elwell?”
Miss Elwell was quite the prettiest woman on board, and seemed to have plenty of attention — just like the girls I remembered.
“Miss Elwell is a civil engineer,” said my sister.
“It’s horrid,” I said. “It’s perfectly horrid! And aren’t there any women left?”
“There’s Aunt Dorcas,” said Nellie, mischievously, “and Cousin Drusilla. You remember Drusilla?”
Chapter 2.
THE day after tomorrow! I was to see it the day after tomorrow — this strange, new, abhorrent world!
The more I considered what bits of information I had gleaned already, the more I disliked what lay before me. In the first blazing light of returned memory and knowledge, the first joy of meeting my sister, the hope of seeing home again, I had not distinguished very sharply between what was new to my bewildered condition and what was new indeed — new to the world as well as to me. But now a queer feeling of disproportion and unreality began to haunt me.
As my head cleared, and such knowledge as I was now gathering began to help towards some sense of perspective and relation, even my immediate surroundings began to assume a sinister importance.
Any change, to any person, is something of a shock, though sometimes a beneficial one. Changes too sudden, and too great, are hard to bear, for any one. But who can understand the peculiar horror of my unparalleled experience?
Slowly the thing took shape in my mind.
There was the first, irrevocable loss — my life!
Thirty years — the thirty years in which a man may really live — these were gone from me forever.
I was coming back; strong to be sure; well enough in health; even, I hoped, with my old mental vigor — but not to the same world.
Even the convict who survives thirty years imprisonment, may return at length to the same kind of world he had left so long.
But I! It was as if I had slept, and, in my sleep, they had stolen my world.
I threw off the thought, and started in to action.
Here was a small world — the big steamer beneath me. I had already learned much about her. In the first place, she was not a
“steamer,” but a thing for which I had no name; her power was electric,
“Oh, well,” I thought, as I examined her machinery, “this I might have expected. Thirty years of such advances as we were making in 1910 were sure to develop electric motors of all sorts.”
The engineer was a pleasant, gentlemanly fellow, more than willing to talk about his profession and its marvellous advances. The ship was well manned, certainly; though the work required was far less than it used to be, the crew were about as numerous. I had made some acquaintances among the ship’s officers — even among the men, who were astonishingly civil and well-mannered — but I had not at first noticed the many points of novelty in their attitude or in my surroundings.
Now I paced the deck and considered the facts I had observed — the perfect ventilation of the vessel, the absence of the smell of cooking and of bilge water, the dainty convenience and appropriate beauty of all the fittings and furnishings, the smooth speed and steadiness of her,
The quarters of the crew I found as remarkable as anything else about the vessel; indeed the forecastle and steerage differed more from what I remembered than from any other part. Every person on board had a clean and comfortable lodging, though there were grades of distinction in size and decoration. But any gentleman could have lived in that “foks’le” without discomfort. Indeed, I soon found that many gentlemen did. I discovered, quite by accident, that one of the crew was a Harvard man. He was not at all loath to talk of it, either — was evidently no black sheep of any sort.
Why had he chosen this work?
Oh, he wanted the experience — it widened life, knowing different trades.
Why was he not an officer then?
He didn’t care to work at it long enough — this was only experience work, you see.
I did not see, nor ask, but I inferred, and it gave me again that feeling as if the ground underfoot had wiggled slightly.
Was that old dream of Bellamy’s stalking abroad? Were young men portioned out to menial service, willy-nilly?
It was evidently not a universal custom, for some of the sailors were much older men, and long used to the business. I got hold of one who seemed more like the deckhands of old days, though cleaner and more cheerful; a man who was all of sixty.
Yes he had f followed the sea from boyhood. Yes, he liked it, always had liked it, liked it better now than when he was young.
He had seen many changes? I listened carefully, though I asked the question lightly enough.
Changes! He guessed he had. Terbacca was better for one thing — I was relieved to see that men still smoked, and then the jar came again as I remembered that save for this man, and one elderly officer, I had not seen anyone smoking on the vessel.
“How do you account for it?” I asked the old Yankee. “For tobacco’s being better?”
He grinned cheerfully.
“Less run on it, I guess,” said he. “Young fellers don’t seem to smoke no more, and I ain’t seen nobody chewing for — well, for ten years back,”
ee-ls it cheaper as well as better?” No, sir, it ain’t. It’s perishing high. But then, wages is high, too,” he grudgingly admitted.
“Better tobacco and better wages — anything else improved?”
“Yes, sir-ee! Grub’s better, by square miles — and ’commodations — an’ close. Make better stuff now.
“Well! well!” said I as genially as I knew how. “That’s very different from my young days. Then everybody older than I always complained about all manner of things, and told how much better — and cheaper — things were when they were young.”
“Yes, ’twas so,” he admitted meditatively. “But ‘tain’t so now. Shoes is better, most things is better, I guess. Seems like water runnin’ up hill, don’t it, sir?”
It did. I didn’t like it. I got away from the old man, and walked by myself — like Kipling’s cat.
“Of course, of course!” I said to myself impatiently, “I may as well expect to find everything as much improved from what it was in my time as in, say, sixty years before.
That sort of progress goes faster and faster. Things change, but people — ”
And here is where I got this creepy sense of unreality.
At first everything was so strange to me, and my sister was so kind and thoughtful, so exquisitely considerate of my feelings and condition, that I had failed to notice this remarkable circumstance — so were the other people. It was like being in a — well, in a house-party of very nice persons. Kind, cheerful, polite — here I suddenly realized that I had not seen a grouchy face, heard an unkind remark, felt, as one does feel through silk and broadcloth, the sense of discontent and disapproval.
There was one, the somewhat hard-faced old lady, Mrs. Talbot, of whom I had hopes. I sought her, and laid myself out to please her by those little attentions which are so grateful to an elderly woman from a young man.
Her accepting these as a commonplace, her somewhat too specific inquiries about my health, suddenly reminded me that I was not a young man.
She talked on while I made again that effort at readjustment which was so hideously hard. Gone in a night — all my young manhood — gone untasted!
“Do you find it difficult to concentrate your attention?” she was saying, a steely eye fixed upon my face.
“I beg your pardon, madam. I fear I do. You were saying — ”
“I was saying that you will find many changes when you get back.”
“I find them already, Mrs. Talbot. They rather loom up. It is sudden, you see.”
“Yes, you’ve been away a long time, I understand. In the far East?”
Mrs. Talbot was the first person who had asked me a question. Evidently hers were the manners of an older generation, and for once I had to admit that the younger generation had improved.
But I recalled the old defensive armor against the old assaults.
“Quite a while,” I answered cheerfully, “Quite a while. Now what should you think would impress me most — in the way of change?” it
“The women,” she answered promptly.
I smiled my gallantest, and replied, bowing:
“I find them still charming.”
Her set face broke into a pleased smile.
“You do my heart good!” she cried. “I haven’t heard a compliment in fifteen years.”
“Good Heavens, madam! what are our men thinking of?”
“It’s not the men’s fault; it’s the women’s. They won’t have it.”
“Are there many of these — new women?”
“There’s nothing else — except a few old ones like me.”
I hastened to assure her that a woman like her would never be called old — and she looked as pleased as a girl.
Presently I excused myself and left her, with relief. It was annoying beyond measure to have the only specimen of the kind of woman I used to like turn out to be personally the kind I never liked.
On the opposite deck, I found Miss Elwell — and for once alone. A retiring back, wearing an aggrieved expression showed that it had not been for long.
“May I join you, Miss Elwell?”
I might. I did. We paced up and down, silent for a bit.
She was a joy to the eye, a lovely, straight, young thing, with a fresh, pure color and eyes of dancing brightness. I spoke of this and that aboard ship — the sea, the weather; and she was so gaily friendly, so sweet and modest, yet wholly frank, that I grew quite happy in her company.
My sister must have been mistaken about her being a civil engineer. She might be a college girl — but nothing worse. And she was so pretty!
I devoted myself to Miss Elwell ‘till she took herself off, probably to join her — her — it occurred to me that I had seen no one with Miss Elwell.
“Nellie” said I, “for heaven’s sake give me the straight of all this. I’m going distracted with the confusion. What has happened to the world? Tell me all, I can bear it — as the extinct novels used to say. But I cannot bear this terrible suspense! Don’t you have novels any more?”
“Novels? Oh, yes, plenty; better than ever were written. You’ll find it splendidly worth while to read quite a few of them while you’re getting oriented . . . Well, you want a kind of running, historic sketch?”
“Yes. Give me the outlines — just the heads, as it were. You see, my dear, it is not easy to get readjusted even to the old things, and there are so many new ones ”
We were in our steamer chairs, most people dozing after their midday meal. She reached over and took my hand in hers, and held it tight. It was marvelously comforting, this one live visible link between what was forever past and this uncertain future. But for her, even those old, old days might have flickered and seemed doubtful — I should have felt like one swimming under water and not knowing, which way was up. She gave me solid ground underfoot at any rate. Whatever her place might be in this New World, she had talked to me only of the old one.
In these long, quiet, restful days, she had revived in my mind the pleasant memories of our childhood together; our little Southern home; our patient, restrained Northern mother and the fine education she gave her school-less little ones; our high-minded — and, alas, narrow-minded — father, handsome, courteous, inflexible. Under Nellie’s gentle leading, my long unused memory-cells had revived like rain-washed leaves, and my past life had, at last, grown clear and steady.
My college life; my old chum, Granger, who had visited us once; our neighbors and relations; little gold-haired Cousin Drusilla, whom I, in ten years proud seniority, had teased as a baby, played with and tyrannized over as a confiding child, and kissed good-bye — a slim, startled little figure — when I left for Asia.
Nellie had always spoken of things as I remembered them, and avoided adroitly, or quietly refused to discuss, their new aspects.
I think she was right — at first.
“Out with it!” said I. “Come — Have we adopted Socialism?” I braced myself for the answer.
“Socialism? Oh — why, yes. I think we did. But that was twenty years ago.”
“And it didn’t last? You’ve proved the impracticable folly of it? You've discarded it?”
I sat up straight, very eager.
“Why, no — ” said Nellie. “It’s very hard to put these new things into old words — We’ve got beyond it.”
“Beyond Socialism! Not — not — Anarchy?”
“Oh, bless you, no; no indeed! We understand better what socialism meant, that’s all. We have more, much more, than it ever asked; but we don’t call it that.”
I did not understand.
“It’s like this,” she said. “Suppose you had left a friend in the throes of a long, tempestuous’ courtship, full of ardor, of keen joy, and keener anticipation. Then, returning, you say to your friend, ‘Do you still have courtship?’ And he says, ‘Why no, I’m married.’ It’s not that he has discarded it, proved it’s impracticable folly. He had to have it — he liked it — but he’s got beyond it.”
“Go on and elucidate,” I said. “I don’t quite follow your parable.”
She considered a bit.
“Well, here’s a more direct parallel. Back in the 18th century, the world was wild about Democracy — Democracy was going to do all things for all men. Then, with prodigious struggles, they acquired some Democracy — set it going. It was a good thing. But it took time. It grew. It had difficulties. In the next century, there was less talk about all the heavenly results of Democracy, and more definite efforts to make it work.”
This was clearer.
“You mean,” I followed her slowly.
“That what was called socialism was attained — and you’ve been improving upon it?”
“Exactly, Brother, ‘you are on’ — as we used to say. But even that’s not the main step.”
“No? What else?”
“Only a New Religion.”
I showed my disappointment. Nellie watched my face silently. She laughed. She even kissed me.
“John” said she, “I could make vast sums by exhibiting you to psychologists! as An Extinct Species of Mind. You’d draw better than a Woolly Mammoth.”
I smiled wryly; and she squeezed my hand. “Might as well make a joke of it, Old Man — you’ve got to get used to it, and ‘the sooner the quicker!’ ”
“All right — Go ahead with your New Religion.”
She sat back in her chair with an expression of amused retrospection.
“I had forgotten,” she said, “I had really forgotten. We didn’t use to think much of religion, did we?”
“Father did,” said I.
“No, not even Father and his kind — they only used it as a — what was the old joke? a patent fire escape! Nobody appreciated Religion!”
“They spent much time and money on it,” I suggested.
“That’s not appreciation!”
“Well, come on with the story. Did you have another Incarnation of any body?”
“You might call it that,” Nellie allowed, her voice growing quietly earnest, “We certainly had somebody with an unmistakable Power.”
This did not interest me at all. I hated to see Nellie looking so sweetly solemn over her “New Religion,” In the not unnatural reaction of a minister’s son, rigidly reared, I had had small use for religion of any sort. As a scholar I had studied them all, and felt as little reverence for the ancient ones as for the shifty mushroom crop of new sects and schools of thought with which the country teemed in my time.
“Now, look here, John,” said she at length, “I’ve been watching you pretty closely and I think you’re equal to a considerable mental effort — In one way, it may be easier for you, just because you’ve not seen a bit of it — anyhow, you’ve got to face it. Our world has changed in these thirty years, more than the change between what it used to be and what people used to imagine about Heaven. Here is the first thing you’ve got to do — mentally. You must understand, clearly, in your human consciousness, that the objection and distaste you feel is only in your personal consciousness. Everything is better; there is far more comfort, pleasure, peace of mind; a richer swifter growth, a higher happier life in every way; and yet, you won’t like it because your — ” she seemed to hesitate for a word, now and then; as one trying to translate, “reactions are all tuned to earlier con ditions. If you can understand this and see over your own personal — attitudes it will not be long before a real convincing sense of joy, of life, will follow the intellectual perception that things are better.”
“Hold on,” I said, “Let me chew on that a little.”
“As if,” I presently suggested, “as if I’d left a home that was poor and dirty and crowded, with a pair of quarrelsome inefficient parents — drunken and abusive, maybe, and a lot of horrid, wrangling, selfish, little brothers and sisters — and woke up one fine morning in a great clean beautiful house — richly furnished — full of a lot of angels — who were total strangers?”
“Exactly!” she cried. “Hurrah for you, Johnnie, you couldn’t have defined it better.”
“I don’t like it,” said I. “I’d rather have my old home and my own family than all the princely palaces and amiable angels you could dream of in a hundred years.”
“Mother had an old story-book by a New England author,” Nellie quietly remarked, “where somebody said, ‘You can’t always have your “druthers” ‘ — she used to quote it to me when I was little and complained that things were not as I wanted them. John, dear, please remember that the new people in the new world find it ‘like home’ and love it far better than we used to. It’ll be queer to you, but it’s a pleasant commonplace to them. We have found out at last that it is natural to be happy.”
She was silent and I was silent; till I asked her “What’s the name of your new religion?”
“It hasn’t any,” she answered.
“Hasn’t any? What do they call it? the Believers, I mean?”
“They call it ‘Living’ and ‘Life’ — that’s all.”
“Hm! and what’s their specialty?”
Nellie gave a funny little laugh, part sad, part tender, part amused.
“I had no idea it would be so hard to tell you things,” she said. “You’ll have to just see for yourself, I guess.”
“Do go on, Nellie. I’ll be good. You were going to tell me, in a nutshell, what had happened — please do.”
“The thing that has happened,” said she, slowly, “is just this. The world has come alive. We are doing in a pleasant, practical way, all the things which we could have done, at any time before — only we never thought so. The real change is this: we have changed our minds. This happened very soon after you left. Ah! that was a time! To think that you should have missed it!” She gave my hand another sympathetic squeeze and went on. “After that it was only a question of time, of how soon we could do things. And we’ve been doing them ever since, faster and faster.”
This seemed rather flat and disappointing.
“I don’t see that you make out anything wonderful — so far. A new Religion which seems to consist only in behaving better; and a gradual improvement of social conditions — all that was going on when I left.”
Nellie regarded me with a considering eye.
“I see how you interpret it,” she said, “behaving better in our early days was a small personal affair; either a pathetically inadequate failure to do what one could not, or a pharisaic, self-righteous success in doing what one could. All personal — personal!”
“Good behavior has to be a personal affair, hasn’t it?” I mildly protested.
“Not by any means!” said Nellie with decision. “That was precisely what kept us so small and bad, so miserably confined and discouraged. Like a lot of well-meaning soldiers imagining that their evolutions were ‘a personal affair’ — or an orchestra plaintively protesting that if each man played a correct tune of his own choosing, the result would be perfect! Dear! dear! No, Sir” she continued with some fierceness, “that’s just where we changed our minds! Humanity has come alive, I tell you and we have reason to be proud of our race!”
She held her head high, there was a glad triumphant look in her eyes — not in the least religious. Said she: “You’ll see results. That will make it clearer to you than anything I can say. But if I may remark that we have no longer the fear of death — much less of damnation, and no such thing as ‘sin’; that the only kind of prison left is called a quarantine — that punishment is unknown but preventive means are of a drastic and sweeping nature such as we never dared think of before — that there is no such thing in the civilized world as poverty — no labor problem — no color problem — no sex problem — almost no disease — very little accident — practically no fires — that the world is rapidly being reforested — the soil improved; the output growing in quantity and quality; that no one needs to work over two hours a day and most people work four — that we have no graft — no adulteration of goods — no malpractice — no crime.”
“Nellie,” said I, “you are a woman and my sister. I’m very sorry, but I don’t believe it.”
“I thought you wouldn’t,” said she. Women always will have the last word.
Chapter 3
THE blue shore line of one’s own land always brings a thrill of the heart; to me, buried exile as I had been, the heart-leap was choking.
Ours was a slow steamer, and we did not stop at Montauk where the mail and the swiftest travelers landed, nor in Jamaica Harbor with the immigrants.
As we swept along the sunny, level spaces of the South shore, Nellie told me how Long Island was now the “Reception Room” of our country, instead of poor, brutal little Ellis Island.
“The shores are still mostly summer places,” she said. “One of the most convincing of our early lines of advance was started on the South shore; and there are plenty of Country Clubs, Home Parks and things like that; but the bulk of the island toward the western end is an experiment station in applied sociology.
I was watching the bright shore hungrily. With a glass I could see many large buildings, not too closely set.
“I should think it would spoil the place for homes,” I said.
Nellie had a way of listening to my remarks, kindly and pleasantly, but as if I were somehow a long way off and she was trying to grasp what I said.
“In a way it did — at first;” she explained presently, “but even then it meant just as many homes for other people, and now it means so much more!”
She hesitated a moment and then plunged in resolutely.
“You’re in for a steady course of instructive remarks from now on. Everybody will be explaining things and bragging about them. We haven’t outgrown some of the smaller vices, you see. As to this ‘Immigration Problem’ — we woke up to this fact among others, that the ‘reintegration of peoples’ as Ward called it, was a sociological process not possible to stop, but quite possible to assist and to guide to great advantage. And here in America we recognized our own special place — “the melting pot you know?”
Yes, I remembered the phrase, I never liked it. Our family were pure English stock, and rightly proud of their descent.
“I begin to see, my dear sister, that while receiving the torrent of instructive remarks you foretell, the way of wisdom for me is steadfastly to withhold my own opinions.”
Nellie laughed appreciatively.
“You always had a long head, John. Well, whether you like it or not, our people saw their place and power at last and rose to it. We refuse no one. We have discovered as many ways of utilizing human waste as we used to have for the waste products of coal tar.”
“You don’t mean to say idiots and criminals?” I protested.
“Idiots, hopeless ones, we don’t keep any more,” she answered gently. “They are very rare now. The grade of average humanity is steadily rising; and we have the proud satisfaction of knowing we have helped it rise. We organized a permanent ‘reception committee’ for the whole country, one station here and one in California. Anybody could come — but they had to submit to our handling when they did come.”
“We used to have physical examination, didn’t we?”
“A rudimentary one. What we have now is Compulsory Socialization.”
I stared at her.
“Yes, I know! You are thinking of that geological kind of evolution people used to talk about, and ‘you can’t alter human nature.’ In the first place, we can. In the second place, we do. In the third place, there isn’t so much alteration needed as we used to think. Human nature is a pretty good thing. No immigrant is turned loose on the community till he or she is up to a certain standard, and the children we educate.”
“We always did, didn’t we?”
“Always did? Why brother, we didn’t know what the word meant in your time.”
“I shall be glad to follow that up,” I assured her. “Education was improving even in the old days, I remember. I shall be glad to see the schools.”
“Some of them you won’t know when you do see them,” said Nellie. “On Long Island we have agricultural and industrial stations like — like — I think we had something like it in some of our Western colleges, which it was the fashion to look down upon. We have a graded series of dwellings where the use of modern conveniences is taught to all newcomers.”
“Suppose they won’t learn? They used to prefer to live like hogs, as I remember.”
Again Nellie looked at me as if I were speaking to her from a distance.
“We used to say so — and I suppose we used to think so — some of us. But we know better now. These people are not compelled to come to our country, but if they come they know what they have to do — and they do it. You may have noticed that we have no ‘steerage’.”
I had noticed it.
“They have decent surroundings from the first step. They have to be antiseptically clean, they and all their belongings, before entering the ship.”
“But what an awful expense!” I ventured.
“Suppose you keep cattle, John, and knew how to fatten and improve them; and suppose your ranch was surrounded by strays — mavericks — anxious to come in. Would you call it ‘an expense’ to add to your herd?”
“You can’t sell people.”
“No, but you can profit by their labor.”
“That sounds like the same old game. I should think your Socialism would have put an end to that.”
“Socialism did not alter the fact that wealth comes by labor,” she replied. “All these people work. We provide the opportunity for them, we train them to higher efficiency, especially the children. The very best and wisest of us are proud to serve there — as women used to be proud when they were invited ‘to help receive’ some personage. We receive Humanity — and in troduce it to America. What they produce is used to cover the expense of their training, and also to lay up a surplus for themselves.”
“They must produce more than they used to,” observed I drily.
“They do,” said Nellie. You might as well finish this thing up,” I said. “Then when people talk to me about immigration, I can look intelligent and say, ‘I know about that.’ And really, I’m interested. How do you begin with ’em?”
“When they come into Jamaica Harbor they see a great crescent of white piers, each with its gate. We’ll go and see it some day — splendid arches with figures on them, like the ones they used to put up for Triumphs. There’s the German Gate and the Spanish Gate, the English Gate, the Italian Gate — and so on. There is welcome in their own language — and instruction in ours. There is physical examination — the most searching and thorough — microscopic — chemical. They have to come up to a certain standard before they are graduated, you see.”
“Graduated?”
“Yes. We have a standard of citizenship now — an idea of what people ought to be and how to make them so. Dear me! To think that you don’t know about that — ”
“I shouldn’t think they’d stand for it — all this examination and so on.”
“No country on earth offers so much happiness to its people. Nowhere else — yet — is there as good opportunity to be helped up, to have real scientific care, real loving study and assistance! Everybody likes to be made the most of! Everybody — nearly — has the feeling that they might be something better if they had a chancel We give them the chance.”
“Then I should think you’d have all creation on your hands at once.”
“And depopulate the other nations? They had something to say about that! You see this worked all sorts of ways. In the first place, when we got all the worst and lowest people, that left an average of better ones at home — people who could learn more quickly. When we proved what good stuff human nature was, rightly treated, they all took heart of grace and began to improve their own. Then, as our superior attractions steadily drew off ‘the lower classes,’ that raised the value of those who remained. They were better paid, better thought of at home. As more and more people came to us, the other nations got rather alarmed, and began to establish counter attractions — to keep their folks at home. Also, many other nations had some better things than we did, you remember. And finally most people love their own country better than any other, no matter how good. No, the balance of population is not seriously altered.”
“Still, with such an influx of low-grade people you must have a Malthusian torrent of increasing population on your hands.”
Again that odd listening look, her head a little on one side.
I have to keep remembering,” she said. Have to recall what people wrote and said and thought in the past generation. The idea was that people had to increase like rabbits, and would eat up the food supply, so wars and pestilences and all manner of cruel conditions were necessary to ‘keep down the population.’ Wasn’t that it?”
“You are twenty years out, my dear!” I rejoiced to assure her. “We had largely passed that, and were beginning to worry about the decreasing birth rate — among the more intelligent. It was only the lowest grade that kept on ‘like rabbits’ as you say. But it’s that sort you seem to have been filling in with. I should think it would have materially lowered the average. Or have you, in this new ‘forcing system’ made decent people out of scrubs?”
“That’s exactly what we’ve done; we’ve improved the people and lowered the birth-rate at one stroke!”
“They were beginning to talk eugenics when I left.”
“This is not eugenics — we have made great advances in that, of course; but the chief factor in this change is a common biological law — ‘individuation is in inverse proportion to reproduction,’ you know. We individualize the women — develop their personal power, their human characteristics — and they don’t have so many children.”
“I don’t see how that helps unless you have eliminated the brutality of men.”
“My dear brother, the brutality of men lowered the birthrate — it didn’t raise it! One of those undifferentiated peasant women would have a baby every year if she was married to a saint — and she couldn’t have more in polyandry — unless it were
J” twins I No, the birthrate was for women to settle — and they have.”
“Out of fashion to have children at all?”
“No, John, you needn’t sneer. We have better children than ever were born on earth before, and they grade higher every year. But we are approaching a balanced population.”
I didn’t like the subject, and turned to the clear skyline of the distant city. It towered as of old, but seemed not so close-packed. Not one black cloud — and very few white ones!
“You’ve ended the smoke nuisance, I’m glad to see. Has steam gone, too?”
“We use electricity altogether in all the cities now,” she said. “It occurred to us that to pipe a leaking death into every bedroom; to thread the city with poison, fire and explosion, was foolish.”
“Defective wiring used to cause both death and conflagration, didn’t it?”
“It did,” she admitted; “but it is not ‘defective’ any more.” Is the coal all gone?” if
“No, but we burn it at the mines — by a process which does not waste ninety per cent of the energy — and transmit the power.”
“For all New York?”
“Oh, no. New York has enough water power, you see. The tide mills are enough for this whole region.”
“They solved the tide-mill problem, did they?”
“Yes. There are innumerable mechanical advances, of course. You’ll en j oy them.”
We were near enough now to see the city clearly.
“What a splendid water front!” I cried. “Why, this is glorious.”
It surely was. The wide shores swung away, glittering in the pure sunlight. Staten Island lay behind us, a vision of terraced loveliness; the Jersey shore shone clear, no foul pall of oil smoke overhanging; the Brooklyn banks were banks of palaces, and Manhattan itself towered royally before us, all bordered with broad granite piers.
“‘Marginal mile after mile of smooth-running granite embankment’” quoted Nellie. “‘Broad steps of marble descending for the people to enter the water. White-pillared piers ”
“Look at the water!” I cried, suddenly. “It’s clear!”
“Of course it’s clear,” she agreed laughingly. “This is a civilized country, I tell you.”
I looked and looked. It was blue and bright in the distance; it was a clear, soft green beneath us. I saw a fish leap ”
“So far I’m with you, anyhow,” said I. “That certainly is a big step — and looks like a miracle. New York harbor clean! . . . How about customs?” I asked as we drew in.
“Gone — clean forgotten — with a lot of other foolishness. The air ships settled that. We couldn’t plant custom houses in the air, you see — along ten thousand miles of coast and border.”
I was watching the shore. There were plenty of people about, but strangely gay of aspect and bright-colored in raiment. I could see amusement piers — numbers of them — some evidently used as gymnasia, in some there was dancing. Motor cars of all descriptions ran swiftly and quietly about. Air ships, large and small, floated off, to the north and west mostly. The water was freckled with pleasure boats. I heard singing — and music.
“Some new holiday?” I ventured.
“Not at all,” said my sister. “It is afternoon.”
She watched me, quizzically.
“It is afternoon,” she repeated. “Let that sink in!”
It sank in, slowly.
“Do you mean that no one works in the afternoon?”
“No one — except those who don’t work in the morning. Some kinds of work can’t stop, of course; but most kinds can. I told you before — no one has to work more than two hours a day; most people work four. Why?” She saw my unbelieving stare. “Because we like to. Also because we are ambitious,” she went on. “I told you of the gain we’ve made in ‘the civilized world.’ Not all of it is civilized. We are still missionarying. And while there is need of help anywhere on earth, most of us work overtime. Also it lays up public capital — we are planning some vast undertakings — and gives a wider margin for vacations.”
I was thinking in a hazy way of a world that was not tired, not driven, no nose on any grindstone; of a people who only had to work two hours — and worked four! Yet there was every evidence of increased wealth.
Suddenly Nellie gave a joyous little cry.
“Why, there’s Owen!” she waved her veil. “And there’s Jerrold and Hallier. She fairly danced with pleasure.
I could see a big grayish man madly waving his hat down there — and two young folks hopping up and down and flourishing handkerchiefs, among many similarly excited.
“Oh, how good of him!” she cried. “I never dreamed they’d be here!”
“Nellie,” said I sternly. “You never told me you were married!”
“Why should I?” she asked innocently. “You never asked me.”
I had not. I had seen that she signed her name “Ellen Robertson,” and I knew she was president of a college — how could I imagine her married. Married she evidently was, and even her long-lost brother was forgotten for a moment as the big man engulfed her in his gray overcoat, and the tall son and daughter added their arms to the group.
But it was only a moment, and the big brotherly grasp of my new relation’s hand, the cordial nephewly grip, and affectionate niecely kiss gave me a new and unexpected sense of the joys of homecoming.
These were people, real people, as warm and kind and cheery as people ever were; and they greeted me with evident good will. It was “Uncle John” in no time, and Hallie in especial seized upon me as her own.
“I know mother’s got you all broken in by this time,” she said. “And that you are prepared for all manner of amazing disclosures. But Mother never told us how handsome you are, Uncle John!”
“In vain is the net spread in sight of any bird,” murmured young Jerrold mischievously.
“Don’t listen to him, Uncle! I am perfectly sincere,” she protested, leaning over to hug her mother again, and turning back to me with a confiding smile.
“Why should I doubt such evident good judgment?” said I. And she slipped her hand in mine and squeezed it. Nellie sat there, looking as proud and happy and matronly and motherly as anybody could, and a great weight rolled off my heart. Some things were left of my old world anyway.
We talked gaily and excitedly on our way of immediate plans, rolling smoothly along broad, open streets. A temporary conclusion was to stop at Hallie’s apartment for the time being; and I was conscious of a distinct sense of loss to think of my new-found niece being already married.
“How still it is!” I presently observed. “Is that because it is afternoon, too?”
“Oh, no,” they assured me. “We aren’t as noisy as we used to be.”
“These children don’t know anything about what we used to have to put up with,” said Owen. “They never were in New York while it was screaming. You see, there are no horses; all surface vehicles are rubber-tired; the minor delivery is pneumatic, and the freight all goes underneath — on those silent monorails.”
