Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/134

128 something he will not do if he can get anybody else to do it for him."

"Then, in America," said the Altrurian, "it is not offensive to the feelings of a gentleman to let another do for him what he would not do for himself?"

"Certainly not."

"Ah," he returned, "then we understand something altogether different by the word gentleman in Altruria. I see, now, how I have committed a mistake. I shall be more careful hereafter."

I thought I had better leave the subject, and, "By the way," I said, "how would you like to take a little tramp with me to-day, farther up into the mountains?"

"I should be delighted," said the Altrurian, so gratefully, that I was ashamed to think why I was proposing the pleasure to him.

"Well, then, I shall be ready to start as soon as we have had breakfast. I will join you down stairs in half an hour."

He left me at this hint, though really I was half afraid he might stay and offer to lend me a hand at my toilet, in the expression of his national character. I found him with Mrs. Makely, when I went down, and she began, with a parenthetical tribute to the