“But, madam,” he began, “you are supposing our family to be made up of people with all the antagonistic interests of your civilization. As a matter of fact--” “No, no! _I know human nature_, Mr. Homos!” She suddenly jumped up and gave him her hand. “Good-night,” she said, sweetly, and as she drifted off on her husband’s arm she looked back at us and nodded in gay triumph. The Altrurian turned upon me with unabated interest. “And have you no provision in your system for finally making the lower classes understand the sufferings and sacrifices of the upper classes in their behalf? Do you expect to do nothing to bring them together in mutual kindness?” “Well, not this evening,” I said, throwing the end of my cigar away. “I’m going to bed--aren’t you?” “Not yet.” “Well, good-night. Are you sure you can find your room?” “Oh yes. Good-night.” VI I left my guest abruptly, with a feeling of vexation not very easily definable. His repetition of questions about questions which society has so often answered, and always in the same way, was not so bad in him as it would have been in a person of our civilization; he represented a wholly different state of things, the inversion of our own, and much could be forgiven him for that reason, just as in Russia much could be forgiven to an American if he formulated his curiosity concerning imperialism from a purely republican experience. I knew that in Altruria, for instance, the possession of great gifts, of any kind of superiority, involved the sense of obligation to others, and the wish to identify one’s self with the great mass of men, rather than the ambition to distinguish one’s self from them; and that the Altrurians honored their gifted men in the measure they did this. A man reared in such a civilization must naturally find it difficult to get our point of view; with social inclusion as the ideal, he would with difficulty conceive of our ideal of social exclusion; but I think we had all been very patient with him; we should have made short work with an American who had approached us with the same inquiries. Even from a foreigner, the citizen of a republic founded on the notion, elsewhere exploded ever since Cain, that one is his brother’s keeper, the things he asked seemed inoffensive only because they were puerile; but they certainly were puerile. I felt that it ought to have been self-evident to him that when a commonwealth of sixty million Americans based itself upon the great principle of self-seeking, self-seeking was the best thing, and, whatever hardship it seemed to work, it must carry with it unseen blessings in tenfold measure. If a few hundred thousand favored Americans enjoyed the privilege of socially contemning all the rest, it was as clearly right and just that they should do so as that four thousand American millionaires should be richer than all the other Americans put together. Such a status, growing out of our political