Equality Page 9

  CHAPTER IX.

  SOMETHING THAT HAD NOT CHANGED.

  When we parted with the superintendent of the paper-process factory Isaid to Edith that I had taken in since that morning about all the newimpressions and new philosophies I could for the time mentally digest,and felt great need of resting my mind for a space in the contemplationof something--if indeed there were anything--which had not changed orbeen improved in the last century.

  After a moment's consideration Edith exclaimed: "I have it! Ask noquestions, but just come with me."

  Presently, as we were making our way along the route she had taken, shetouched my arm, saying, "Let us hurry a little."

  Now, hurrying was the regulation gait of the nineteenth century. "Hurryup!" was about the most threadbare phrase in the English language, andrather than "_E pluribus unum_" should especially have been themotto of the American people, but it was the first time the note of hastehad impressed my consciousness since I had been living twentieth-centurydays. This fact, together with the touch of my companion upon my arm asshe sought to quicken my pace, caused me to look around, and in so doingto pause abruptly.

  "What is this?" I exclaimed.

  "It is too bad!" said my companion. "I tried to get you past withoutseeing it."

  But indeed, though I had asked what was this building we stood inpresence of, nobody could know so well as I what it was. The mystery washow it had come to be there for in the midst of this splendid city ofequals, where poverty was an unknown word, I found myself face to facewith a typical nineteenth-century tenement house of the worst sort--oneof the rookeries, in fact, that used to abound in the North End and otherparts of the city. The environment was indeed in strong enough contrastwith that of such buildings in my time, shut in as they generally were bya labyrinth of noisome alleys and dark, damp courtyards which werereeking reservoirs of foetid odors, kept in by lofty, light-excludingwalls. This building stood by itself, in the midst of an open square, asif it had been a palace or other show place. But all the more, indeed, bythis fine setting was the dismal squalor of the grimy structureemphasized. It seemed to exhale an atmosphere of gloom and chill whichall the bright sunshine of the breezy September afternoon was unable todominate. One would not have been surprised, even at noonday, to seeghosts at the black windows. There was an inscription over the door, andI went across the square to read it, Edith reluctantly following me.These words I read, above the central doorway:

  "THIS HABITATION OF CRUELTY IS PRESERVED AS A MEMENTO TO COMINGGENERATIONS OF THE RULE OF THE RICH."

  "This is one of the ghost buildings," said Edith, "kept to scare thepeople with, so that they may never risk anything that looks likebringing back the old order of things by allowing any one on any plea toobtain an economic advantage over another. I think they had much betterbe torn down, for there is no more danger of the world's going back tothe old order than there is of the globe reversing its rotation."

  A band of children, accompanied by a young woman, came across the squareas we stood before the building, and filed into the doorway and up theblack and narrow stairway. The faces of the little ones were veryserious, and they spoke in whispers.

  "They are school children." said Edith. "We are all taken through thisbuilding, or some other like it, when we are in the schools, and theteacher explains what manner of things used to be done and endured there.I remember well when I was taken through this building as a child. It waslong afterward before I quite recovered from the terrible impression Ireceived. Really, I don't think it is a good idea to bring young childrenhere, but it is a custom that became settled in the period after theRevolution, when the horror of the bondage they had escaped from was yetfresh in the minds of the people, and their great fear was that by somelack of vigilance the rule of the rich might be restored.

  "Of course," she continued, "this building and the others like it, whichwere reserved for warnings when the rest were razed to the ground, havebeen thoroughly cleaned and strengthened and made sanitary and safe everyway, but our artists have very cunningly counterfeited all the oldeffects of filth and squalor, so that the appearance of everything isjust as it was. Tablets in the rooms describe how many human beings usedto be crowded into them, and the horrible conditions of their lives. Theworst about it is that the facts are all taken from historical records,and are absolutely true. There are some of these places in which theinhabitants of the buildings as they used to swarm in them are reproducedin wax or plaster with every detail of garments, furniture, and all theother features based on actual records or pictures of the time. There issomething indescribably dreadful in going through the buildings fittedout in that way. The dumb figures seem to appeal to you to help them. Itwas so long ago, and yet it makes one feel conscience-stricken not to beable to do anything."

  "But, Julian, come away. It was just a stupid accident my bringing youpast here. When I undertook to show you something that had not changedsince your day, I did not mean to mock you."

  Thanks to modern rapid transit, ten minutes later we stood on the oceanshore, with the waves of the Atlantic breaking noisily at our feet andits blue floor extending unbroken to the horizon. Here indeed wassomething that had not been changed--a mighty existence, to which athousand years were as one day and one day as a thousand years. Therecould be no tonic for my case like the inspiration of this greatpresence, this unchanging witness of all earth's mutations. How pettyseemed the little trick of time that had been played on me as I stood inthe presence of this symbol of everlastingness which made past, present,and future terms of little meaning!

  In accompanying Edith to the part of the beach where we stood I had takenno note of directions, but now, as I began to study the shore, I observedwith lively emotion that she had unwittingly brought me to the site of myold seaside place at Nahant. The buildings were indeed gone, and thegrowth of trees had quite changed the aspect of the landscape, but theshore line remained unaltered, and I knew it at once. Bidding her followme, I led the way around a point to a little strip of beach between thesea and a wall of rock which shut off all sight or sound of the landbehind. In my former life the spot had been a favorite resort when Ivisited the shore. Here in that life so long ago, and yet recalled as ifof yesterday, I had been used from a lad to go to do my day dreaming.Every feature of the little nook was as familiar to me as my bedroom andall was quite unchanged. The sea in front, the sky above, the islands andthe blue headlands of the distant coast--all, indeed, that filled theview was the same in every detail. I threw myself upon the warm sand bythe margin of the sea, as I had been wont to do, and in a moment theflood of familiar associations had so completely carried me back to myold life that all the marvels that had happened to me, when presently Ibegan to recall them, seemed merely as a day dream that had come to melike so many others before it in that spot by the shore. But what a dreamit had been, that vision of the world to be; surely of all the dreamsthat had come to me there by the sea the weirdest!

  There had been a girl in the dream, a maiden much to be desired. It hadbeen ill if I had lost her; but I had not, for this was she, the girl inthis strange and graceful garb, standing by my side and smiling down atme. I had by some great hap brought her back from dreamland, holding herby the very strength of my love when all else of the vision had dissolvedat the opening of the eyes.

  Why not? What youth has not often been visited in his dreams by maidenlyideals fairer than walk on earth, whom, waking, he has sighed for and fordays been followed by the haunting beauty of their half-remembered faces?I, more fortunate than they, had baffled the jealous warder at the gatesof sleep and brought my queen of dreamland through.

  When I proceeded to state to Edith this theory to account for herpresence, she professed to find it highly reasonable, and we proceeded atmuch length to develop the idea. Falling into the conceit that she was ananticipation of the twentieth-century woman instead of my being anexcavated relic of the nineteenth-century man, we speculated what weshould do for the summer. We decided to visit the great plea
sure resorts,where, no doubt, she would under the circumstances excite much curiosityand at the same time have an opportunity of studying what to hertwentieth-century mind would seem even more astonishing types of humanitythan she would seem to them--namely, people who, surrounded by a needyand anguished world, could get their own consent to be happy in afrivolous and wasteful idleness. Afterward we would go to Europe andinspect such things there as might naturally be curiosities to a girl outof the year 2000, such as a Rothschild, an emperor, and a few specimensof human beings, some of which were at that time still extant in Germany,Austria, and Russia, who honestly believed that God had given to certainfellow-beings a divine title to reign over them.