“Why, certainly. The fellow was immensely amusing, and you must have got a lot of money by him. It was an oversight not to make him a formal acknowledgment of some kind. If we offered him money, he would have to leave it all behind him here when he went home to Altruria.” “Just as _we_ do when we go to heaven,” I suggested; the banker did not answer, and I instantly felt that in the presence of the minister my remark was out of taste. “Well, then, don’t you think,” said Mrs. Makely, who had a leathery insensibility to everything but the purpose possessing her, “that we ought at least to go and say something to him personally?” “Yes, I think we ought,” said the banker, and we all walked up to where the Altrurian stood, still thickly surrounded by the lower classes, who were shaking hands with him and getting in a word with him now and then. One of the construction gang said, carelessly: “No all-rail route to Altruria, I suppose?” “No,” answered Homos, “it’s a far sea voyage.” “Well, I shouldn’t mind working my passage, if you think they’d let me stay after I got there.” “Ah, you mustn’t go to Altruria. You must let Altruria come to _you_” returned Homos, with that confounded smile of his that always won my heart. “Yes,” shouted Reuben Camp, whose thin face was red with excitement, “that’s the word. Have Altruria right here, and right now.” The old farmer, who had several times spoken, cackled out: “I didn’t know, one while, when you was talk’n’ about not havin’ no money, but what some on us had had Altrury here for quite a spell, already. I don’t pass more’n fifty dolla’s through my hands most years.” A laugh went up, and then, at sight of Mrs. Makely heading our little party, the people round Homos civilly made way for us. She rushed upon him, and seized his hand in both of hers; she dropped her fan, parasol, gloves, handkerchief, and vinaigrette in the grass to do so. “Oh, Mr. Homos,” she fluted, and the tears came into her eyes, “it was beautiful, _beautiful_, every word of it! I sat in a perfect trance from beginning to end, and I felt that it was all as true as it was beautiful. People all around me were breathless with interest, and I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough.” “Yes, indeed,” the professor hastened to say, before the Altrurian could answer, and he beamed malignantly upon him through his spectacles while he spoke, “it was like some strange romance.” “I don’t know that I should go so far as that,” said the banker, in his turn, “but it certainly seemed too good to be true.” “Yes,” the Altrurian responded, simply, but a little sadly; “now that I am away from it all, and in conditions so different, I sometimes had to ask myself, as I went on, if my whole life had not hitherto been a dream, and Altruria were not some blessed vision of the night.” “Then you know how to account for a feeling which I must acknowledge, too?” the lawyer asked, courteously. “But it was most interesting.”