Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance Read online

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  THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

  A Romance

  With An Introduction

  By William Dean Howells

  1907

  INTRODUCTION

  Aristides Homos, an Emissary of the Altrurian Commonwealth, visited theUnited States during the summer of 1893 and the fall and winterfollowing. For some weeks or months he was the guest of a well-knownman of letters at a hotel in one of our mountain resorts; in the earlyautumn he spent several days at the great Columbian Exhibition inChicago; and later he came to New York, where he remained until hesailed, rather suddenly, for Altruria, taking the circuitous route bywhich he came. He seems to have written pretty constantly throughout hissojourn with us to an intimate friend in his own country, giving freelyhis impressions of our civilization. His letters from New York appear tohave been especially full, and, in offering the present synopsis of theseto the American reader, it will not be impertinent to note certainpeculiarities of the Altrurian attitude which the temperament of thewriter has somewhat modified. He is entangled in his social sophistriesregarding all the competitive civilizations; he cannot apparently do fulljustice to the superior heroism of charity and self-sacrifice aspractised in countries where people live _upon_ each other as theAmericans do, instead of _for_ each other as the Altrurians do; buthe has some glimmerings of the beauty of our living, and he hasundoubtedly the wish to be fair to our ideals. He is unable to value ourdevotion to the spirit of Christianity amid the practices which seem todeny it; but he evidently wishes to recognize the possibility of such athing. He at least accords us the virtues of our defects, and, amongthe many visitors who have censured us, he has not seen us with hiscensures prepared to fit the instances; in fact, the very reverse hasbeen his method.

  Many of the instances which he fits with his censures are such as hecould no longer note, if he came among us again. That habit ofcelebrating the munificence of the charitable rich, on which he spendshis sarcasm, has fallen from us through the mere superabundance ofoccasion. Our rich people give so continuously for all manner of goodobjects that it would be impossible for our press, however vigilant, tonote the successive benefactions, and millions are now daily bestowedupon needy educational institutions, of which no mention whatever is madein the newspapers. If a millionaire is now and then surprised in a goodaction by a reporter of uncommon diligence, he is able by an appeal totheir common humanity to prevail with the witness to spare him therevolting publicity which it must be confessed would once have followedhis discovery; the right hand which is full to overflowing is now asskilled as the empty right hand in keeping the left hand ignorant of itsdoings. This has happened through the general decay of snobbishness amongus, perhaps. It is certain that there is no longer the passion for aknowledge of the rich, and the smart, which made us ridiculous to Mr.Homos. Ten or twelve years ago, our newspapers abounded in intelligenceof the coming and going of social leaders, of their dinners and lunchesand teas, of their receptions and balls, and the guests who were biddento them. But this sort of unwholesome and exciting gossip, which wasformerly devoured by their readers with inappeasable voracity, is nolonger supplied, simply because the taste for it has wholly passed away.

  Much the same might be said of the social hospitalities which raised ourvisitor's surprise. For example, many people are now asked to dinner whoreally need a dinner, and not merely those who revolt from the notion ofdinner with loathing, and go to it with abhorrence. At the tables of ourhighest social leaders one now meets on a perfect equality persons ofinteresting minds and uncommon gifts who would once have been excludedbecause they were hungry, or were not in the hostess's set, or had not anew gown or a dress-suit. This contributes greatly to the pleasure of thetime, and promotes the increasing kindliness between the rich and poorfor which our status is above all things notable.

  The accusation which our critic brings that the American spirit has beenalmost Europeanized away, in its social forms, would be less grounded inthe observance of a later visitor. The customs of good society must bethe same everywhere in some measure, but the student of the competitiveworld would now find European hospitality Americanized, rather thanAmerican hospitality Europeanized. The careful research which has beenmade into our social origins has resulted in bringing back many of theaboriginal usages; and, with the return of the old American spirit offraternity, many of the earlier dishes as well as amenities have beenrestored. A Thanksgiving dinner in the year 1906 would have been foundmore like a Thanksgiving dinner in 1806 than the dinner to which Mr.Homos was asked in 1893, and which he has studied so interestingly,though not quite without some faults of taste and discretion. Theprodigious change for the better in some material aspects of our statuswhich has taken place in the last twelve years could nowhere be so wellnoted as in the picture he gives us of the housing of our people in 1893.His study of the evolution of the apartment-house from the oldflat-house, and the still older single dwelling, is very curious, and,upon the whole, not incorrect. But neither of these last differed somuch from the first as the apartment-house now differs from theapartment-house of his day. There are now no dark rooms opening onairless pits for the family, or black closets and dismal basements forthe servants. Every room has abundant light and perfect ventilation, andas nearly a southern exposure as possible. The appointments of the housesare no longer in the spirit of profuse and vulgar luxury which it must beallowed once characterized them. They are simply but tastefully finished,they are absolutely fireproof, and, with their less expensive decoration,the rents have been so far lowered that in any good position a quarter ofnine or ten rooms, with as many baths, can be had for from three thousandto fifteen thousand dollars. This fact alone must attract to ourmetropolis the best of our population, the bone and sinew which have nolonger any use for themselves where they have been expended in rearingcolossal fortunes, and now demand a metropolitan repose.

  The apartments are much better fitted for a family of generous size thanthose which Mr. Homos observed. Children, who were once almost unheardof, and quite unheard, in apartment-houses, increasingly abound underfavor of the gospel of race preservation. The elevators are full of them,and in the grassy courts round which the houses are built, the littleones play all day long, or paddle in the fountains, warmed withsteam-pipes in the winter, and cooled to an agreeable temperature in asummer which has almost lost its terrors for the stay-at-home New-Yorker.Each child has his or her little plot of ground in the roof-garden, wherethey are taught the once wellnigh forgotten art of agriculture.

  The improvement of the tenement-house has gone hand in hand with that ofthe apartment-house. As nearly as the rate of interest on the landlord'sinvestment will allow, the housing of the poor approaches in comfort thatof the rich. Their children are still more numerous, and the playgroundssupplied them in every open space and on every pier are visitedconstantly by the better-to-do children, who exchange with them lessonsof form and fashion for the scarcely less valuable instruction inpractical life which the poorer little ones are able to give. The rentsin the tenement houses are reduced even more notably than those in theapartment-houses, so that now, with the constant increase in wages, thetenants are able to pay their rents promptly. The evictions once socommon are very rare; it is doubtful whether a nightly or daily walk inthe poorer quarters of the town would develop, in the coldest weather,half a dozen cases of families set out on the sidewalk with theirhousehold goods about them.

  The Altrurian Emissary visited this country when it was on the verge ofthe period of great economic depression extending from 1894 to 1898, but,after the Spanish War,
Providence marked the divine approval of ourvictory in that contest by renewing in unexampled measure the prosperityof the Republic. With the downfall of the trusts, and the release of ourindustrial and commercial forces to unrestricted activity, the conditionof every form of labor has been immeasurably improved, and it is nowunited with capital in bonds of the closest affection. But in no phasehas its fate been so brightened as in that of domestic service. This hasoccurred not merely through the rise of wages, but through a greaterknowledge between the employing and employed. When, a few years since, itbecame practically impossible for mothers of families to get help fromthe intelligence-offices, and ladies were obliged through lack of cooksand chambermaids to do the work of the kitchen and the chamber andparlor, they learned to realize what such work was, how poorly paid, howbadly lodged, how meanly fed. From this practical knowledge it wasimpossible for them to retreat to their old supremacy and indifference asmistresses. The servant problem was solved, once for all, by humanity,and it is doubtful whether, if Mr. Homos returned to us now, he wouldgive offence by preaching the example of the Altrurian ladies, or wouldbe shocked by the contempt and ignorance of American women where otherwomen who did their household drudgery were concerned.

  As women from having no help have learned how to use their helpers,certain other hardships have been the means of good. The flattened wheelof the trolley, banging the track day and night, and tormenting thewaking and sleeping ear, was, oddly enough, the inspiration of reformswhich have made our city the quietest in the world. The trolleys now passunheard; the elevated train glides by overhead with only a modulatedmurmur; the subway is a retreat fit for meditation and prayer, where thepassenger can possess his soul in a peace to be found nowhere else; theautomobile, which was unknown in the day of the Altrurian Emissary, whirssoftly through the most crowded thoroughfare, far below the speed limit,with a sigh of gentle satisfaction in its own harmlessness, and, "likethe sweet South, taking and giving odor." The streets that he saw sofilthy and unkempt in 1893 are now at least as clean as they are quiet.Asphalt has universally replaced the cobble-stones and Belgian blocks ofhis day, and, though it is everywhere full of holes, it is still asphalt,and may some time be put in repair.

  There is a note of exaggeration in his characterization of our men whichthe reader must regret. They are not now the intellectual inferior of ourwomen, or at least not so much the inferiors. Since his day they havemade a vast advance in the knowledge and love of literature. With themultitude of our periodicals, and the swarm of our fictions selling froma hundred thousand to half a million each, even our business-men cannotwholly escape culture, and they have become more and more cultured, sothat now you frequently hear them asking what this or that book is allabout. With the mention of them, the reader will naturally recur to thework of their useful and devoted lives--the accumulation of money. It isthis accumulation, this heaping-up of riches, which the AltrurianEmissary accuses in the love-story closing his study of our conditions,but which he might not now so totally condemn.

  As we have intimated, he has more than once guarded against a rashconclusion, to which the logical habit of the Altrurian mind might havebetrayed him. If he could revisit us we are sure that he would have stillgreater reason to congratulate himself on his forbearance, and woulddoubtless profit by the lesson which events must teach all but the mosthopeless doctrinaires. The evil of even a small war (and soldiersthemselves do not deny that wars, large or small, are evil) has, as wehave noted, been overruled for good in the sort of Golden Age, or Age ona Gold Basis, which we have long been enjoying. If our good-fortuneshould be continued to us in reward of our public and private virtue,the fact would suggest to so candid an observer that in economics, as inother things, the rule proves the exception, and that as good times havehitherto always been succeeded by bad times, it stands to reason thatour present period of prosperity will never be followed by a period ofadversity.

  It would seem from the story continued by another hand in the second partof this work, that Altruria itself is not absolutely logical in itsevents, which are subject to some of the anomalies governing in our ownaffairs. A people living in conditions which some of our dreamers wouldconsider ideal, are forced to discourage foreign emigration, againsttheir rule of universal hospitality, and in at least one notable instanceare obliged to protect themselves against what they believe an evilexample by using compulsion with the wrongdoers, though the theory oftheir life is entirely opposed to anything of the kind. Perhaps, however,we are not to trust to this other hand at all times, since it is awoman's hand, and is not to be credited with the firm and unerring touchof a man's. The story, as she completes it, is the story of theAltrurian's love for an American woman, and will be primarily interestingfor that reason. Like the Altrurian's narrative, it is here compiled froma succession of letters, which in her case were written to a friend inAmerica, as his were written to a friend in Altruria. But it can by nomeans have the sociological value which the record of his observationsamong ourselves will have for the thoughtful reader. It is at best therecord of desultory and imperfect glimpses of a civilizationfundamentally alien to her own, such as would attract an enthusiasticnature, but would leave it finally in a sort of misgiving as to thereality of the things seen and heard. Some such misgiving attended theinquiries of those who met the Altrurian during his sojourn with us, butit is a pity that a more absolute conclusion should not have been theeffect of this lively lady's knowledge of the ideal country of heradoption. It is, however, an interesting psychological result, and itcontinues the tradition of all the observers of ideal conditions from SirThomas More down to William Morris. Either we have no terms forconditions so unlike our own that they cannot be reported to us withabsolute intelligence, or else there is in every experience of them anessential vagueness and uncertainty.

  PART FIRST

  THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE