Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/112

106 "Use? Why should it have any? It kills time."

"Then you are shut up to a hideous slavery without use, except to kill time, and you cannot escape from it without taking away the living of those dependant on you?"

"Yes," I put in, "and that is a difficulty that meets us at every turn. It is something that Matthew Arnold urged with great effect in his paper on that crank of a Tolstoy. He asked what would become of the people who need the work, if we served and waited on ourselves, as Tolstoy preached. The question is unanswerable."

"That is true; in your conditions, it is unanswerable," said the Altrurian.

"I think," said Mrs. Makely, "that under the circumstances we do pretty well."

"Oh, I don't presume to censure you. And if you believe that your conditions are the best"—

"We believe them the best in the best of all possible worlds," I said devoutly; and it struck me that if ever we came to have a national church, some such affirmation as that concerning our economical conditions ought to be in the confession of faith.

The Altrurian's mind had not followed mine so far.