“Oh, I don’t blame you, you poor things! There’s nothing to be done about it; it’s just got to go on and on; I don’t see how it’s ever to end.” The Altrurian had been following us with that air of polite mystification which I had begun to dread in him. “Then, in your good society you postpone, and even forego, the happiness of life in the struggle to be rich?” “Well, you see,” said Makely, “a fellow don’t like to ask a girl to share a home that isn’t as nice as the home she has left.” “Sometimes,” his wife put in, rather sadly, “I think that it’s all a mistake, and that we’d be willing to share the privations of the man we loved.” “Well,” said Makely, with a laugh, “we wouldn’t like to risk it.” I laughed with him, but his wife did not, and in the silence that ensued there was nothing to prevent the Altrurian from coming in with another of his questions: “How far does this state of things extend downward? Does it include the working classes, too?” “Oh no!” we all answered together, and Mrs. Makely said: “With your Altrurian ideas, I suppose you would naturally sympathize a great deal more with the lower classes, and think they had to endure all the hardships in our system; but if you could realize how the struggle goes on in the best society, and how we all have to fight for what we get, or don’t get, you would be disposed to pity our upper classes, too.” “I am sure I should,” said the Altrurian. Makely remarked: “I used to hear my father say that slavery was harder on the whites than it was on the blacks, and that he wanted it done away with for the sake of the masters.” Makely rather faltered in conclusion, as if he were not quite satisfied with his remark, and I distinctly felt a want of proportion in it; but I did not wish to say anything. His wife had no reluctance. “Well, there’s no comparison between the two things, but the struggle certainly doesn’t affect the working classes as it does us. They go on marrying and giving in marriage in the old way. They have nothing to lose, and so they can afford it.” “Blessed am dem what don’t expect nuffin! Oh, I tell you, it’s a working-man’s country,” said Makely, through his cigar-smoke. “You ought to see them in town, these summer nights, in the parks and squares and cheap theatres. Their girls are not off for their health, anywhere, and their fellows are not off growing up with the country. Their day’s work is over, and they’re going in for a good time. And, then, walk through the streets where they live, and see them out on the stoops with their wives and children! I tell you, it’s enough to make a fellow wish he was poor himself.” “Yes,” said Mrs. Makely, “it’s astonishing how strong and well those women keep, with their great families and their hard work. Sometimes I really envy them.”