Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/198

192 brother in the world. Very few young fellows would waste their lives on an old farm like that; I suppose when his mother dies he will marry and strike out for himself in some growing place."

"He did not seem to think the world held out any very bright inducements for him to leave home," the Altrurian suggested.

"Oh, let him get one of these lively, pushing Yankee girls for a wife, and he will think very differently," said Mrs. Makely.

The Altrurian disappeared that afternoon, and I saw little or nothing of him till the next day at supper. Then he said he had been spending the time with young Camp, who had shown him something of the farm work, and introduced him to several of the neighbors; he was very much interested in it all, because at home he was, at present, engaged in farm work himself, and he was curious to contrast the American and Altrurian methods. We began to talk of the farming interest again, later in the day, when the members of our little group came together, and I told them what the Altrurian had been doing. The doctor had been suddenly called back to town; but the minister was there, and the lawyer, and the professor,