A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII.
YESTERDAY'S flight was too much for me; but a bright fresh morning has brought restoration of my tired faculties.
Breakfast—vegetables and bread—just finished. A servant clears the table. She opens a door in the glass pillar, and by a flight of stairs follows the tray, which is being raised to an upper room used for the performance of what little culinary work there is to be done.
This woman, a complete lady in all her movements, will work until twelve o'clock, then leave, having the remainder of the day for recreation or instruction. She has the same expression of noble integrity that all people here have. Refined and graceful as her employer.
Again in the air carriage with all the family. This motion appears very little after yesterday's, and being nearer the ground there is no longer that half-maddening illusion which so disturbed my power of thought. Besides, the human mind soon becomes accustomed to what was at first a startling novelty to its unused strength. Veritée cleverly steers the carriage through a wide opening, into the highest room of a large factory.
Her father alights. Carl steps into his uncle's place, amidst mingled adieus and greetings and we start for the instruction galleries.
Carl is about twenty-six. He has a grandly good countenance, evidencing thought of high tendency.
I learn he accompanies us to take the carriage back, that his uncle may join us "after work."I hear some say, "work!" Yes, my fine pretentious fools of the nineteenth century, that noble man—gentleman in his every thought, word and act—is a mechanic; his "comrade" far excelling the "greatest lady" among you.
Education, bringing its refinement into the mind as surely to be reflected in speech and actions, is the true and certain leveller.
Intellect and benevolence are the coming aristocrats, before whom you shams must disappear. You, who have extra words before your names because some of your ancestors were more brutal or more subtle in legalised murder, for that, and naught higher, is the horrid remnant of savage customs called war. As reward for unusual ferocity in helping their chiefs to rob some, who were numerically weaker, of their homes, your ancestors were apportioned slices of such robberies—politely termed annexations—to which was added the privilege of placing an additional word or words before their names. Then compelled the rightful owners of such lands to slave for them, by which means they acquired wealth as contemptibly as they did lands and titles. Because you were born to a name having those extra words attached, you consider your so-called noble selves too exquisite to associate with others who are really often far above you. You think you confer a favor in receiving, as your guest, a person of scientific or literary acquirements, if such person have only a few letters after her or his name. The time is steadily advancing when those letters will be the only titles the world will respect.
To none others would I bow; and this not, as some little minds may imagine, from paltry envy, for one of those contemptible blood-stained titles is in my own family. Should a son of mine succeed to it, I would implore him not to disgrace his name by adding sham honors thereto.