such refuge as this for our weary toilers. We began to discover some time
ago that it would not do to cut open the goose that laid our golden eggs,
even if it looked like an eagle, and kept on perching on our banners just
as if nothing had happened. We discovered that, if we continued to kill
ourselves with hard work, there would be no Americans pretty soon."

The Altrurian laughed. "How delightfully you put it! How quaint! How
picturesque! Excuse me, but I can't help expressing my pleasure in it. Our
own humor is so very different."

"Ah," I said; "what is your humor like?"

"I could hardly tell you, I'm afraid; I've never been much of a humorist
myself."

Again a cold doubt of something ironical in the man went through me, but I
had no means of verifying it, and so I simply remained silent, waiting for
him to prompt me if he wished to know anything further about our national
transformation from bees perpetually busy into butterflies occasionally
idle. "And when you had made that discovery?" he suggested.

"Why, we're nothing if not practical, you know, and as soon as we made
that discovery we stopped killing ourselves and invented the summer
resort. There are very few of our business or professional men now who
don't take their four or five weeks' vacation. Their wives go off early in
the summer, and, if they go to some resort within three or four hours of
the city, the men leave town Saturday afternoon and run out, or come up,
and spend Sunday with their families. For thirty-eight hours or so a hotel
like this is a nest of happy homes."