"Not at all," I hastened to answer. "It is not surprising that you did not
get our point of view exactly. You will by-and-by, and then, I think, you
will see that it is the true one. We have found that the logic of our
convictions could not be applied to the problem of domestic service. It is
everywhere a very curious and perplexing problem. The simple old solution
of the problem was to own your servants; but we found that this was not
consistent with the spirit of our free institutions. As soon as it was
abandoned the anomaly began. We had outlived the primitive period when the
housekeeper worked with her domestics and they were her help, and were
called so; and we had begun to have servants to do all the household work,
and to call them so. This state of things never seemed right to some of
our purest and best people. They fancied, as you seem to have done, that
to compel people through their necessities to do your hateful drudgery,
and to wound and shame them with a name which every American instinctively
resents, was neither republican nor Christian. Some of our thinkers tried
to mend matters by making their domestics a part of their families; and in
the life of Emerson you'll find an amusing account of his attempt to have
his servant eat at the same table with himself and his wife. It wouldn't
work. He and his wife could stand it, but the servant couldn't."

I paused, for this was where the laugh ought to have come in. The
Altrurian did not laugh, he merely asked, "Why?"

"Well, because the servant knew, if they didn't, that they were a whole
world apart in their traditions, and were no more fit to associate than
New-Englanders and New-Zealanders. In the mere matter of education--"

"But I thought you said that these young girls who wait at table here were
teachers."