with the life of work, and when we begin to live the life of pleasure we
must borrow from the people abroad, who have always lived the life of
pleasure."

"Mr. Homos, you know," Mrs. Makely explained for me, as if this were the
aptest moment, "thinks we all ought to work. He thinks we oughtn't to
have any servants."

"Oh no, my dear lady," I put in. "I don't think that of you as you
_are_. None of you could see more plainly than I do that in your
conditions you _must_ have servants, and that you cannot possibly
work unless poverty obliges you."

The other ladies had turned upon me with surprise and horror at Mrs.
Makely's words, but they now apparently relented, as if I had fully
redeemed myself from the charge made against me. Mrs. Strange alone
seemed to have found nothing monstrous in my supposed position.
"Sometimes," she said, "I wish we had to work, all of us, and that we
could be freed from our servile bondage to servants."

Several of the ladies admitted that it was the greatest slavery in the
world, and that it would be comparative luxury to do one's own work. But
they all asked, in one form or another, what were they to do, and Mrs.
Strange owned that she did not know. The facetious gentleman asked me how
the ladies did in Altruria, and when I told them, as well as I could,
they were, of course, very civil about it, but I could see that they all
thought it impossible, or, if not impossible, then ridiculous. I did not
feel bound to defend our customs, and I knew very well that each woman
there was imagining herself in our conditions with the curse of her
plutocratic tradition still upon her. They could not do otherwise, any of