"Really," I said, "I think I must leave you to imagine."
"I am afraid I can't," he said, sadly. "Then, if domestic service is
degrading in your eyes, and people are not willing servants among you, may
I ask why any are servants?"
"It is a question of bread-and-butter. They are obliged to be."
"That is, they are forced to do work that is hateful and disgraceful to
them because they cannot live without?"
"Excuse me," I said, not at all liking this sort of pursuit, and feeling
it fair to turn even upon a guest who kept it up. "Isn't it so with you in
Altruria?"
"It was so once," he admitted, "but not now. In fact, it is like a waking
dream to find one's self in the presence of conditions here that we
outlived so long ago."
There was an unconscious superiority in this speech that nettled me, and
stung me to retort: "We do not expect to outlive them. We regard them as
final, and as indestructibly based in human nature itself."
"Ah," said the Altrurian, with a delicate and caressing courtesy, "have I
said something offensive?"
"Not at all," I hastened to answer. "It is not surprising that you did not
get our point of view exactly.
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