Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/167

Rh followed Christ, and might be supposed to be directly influenced by his life, there was an altruism practiced as radical as that which we have organized into a national polity and a working economy in Altruria."

"Ah, but you know," said Mrs. Makely, with the air of advancing a point not to he put aside, "they had to drop that. It was a dead failure. They found that they couldn't make it go at all, among cultivated people, and that, if Christianity was to advance, they would have to give up all that crankish kind of idolatry of the mere letter. At any rate," she went on, with the satisfaction we all feel in getting an opponent into close quarters, "you must confess that there is a much greater play of individuality here."

Before the Altrurian could reply, young Camp said: "If you want to see American individuality, the real, simon-pure article, you ought to go down to one of our big factory towns, and look at the mill-hands coming home in droves after a day's work, young girls and old women, boys and men, all fluffed over with cotton, and so dead-tired that they can hardly walk. They come shambling along with all the individuality of a flock of sheep."

"Some," said Mrs. Makely, heroically, as if she