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I told her, truly enough, that there was much in our land which was open to criticism, but that I hated to dwell on our defects until they understood us and our conditions better. And, making a wide detour, I scrambled back to my question of how they limited the population. As for Somel, she seemed sorry, a little ashamed even, of her too clearly expressed amazement.
Somel said softly to me, while we watched the symbolic marches. "You see, it is the dawn of a new era. You don't know how much you mean to us. It is not only Fatherhood that marvelous dual parentage to which we are strangers the miracle of union in life-giving but it is Brotherhood. You are the rest of the world. You join us to our kind to all the strange lands and peoples we have never seen.
There is a great milk industry to collect and distribute it." Still they looked puzzled. I pointed to my outline of a cow. "The farmer milks the cow," I said, and sketched a milk pail, the stool, and in pantomime showed the man milking. "Then it is carried to the city and distributed by milkmen everybody has it at the door in the morning." "Has the cow no child?" asked Somel earnestly.
"We try most earnestly for two powers," Somel continued. "The two that seem to us basically necessary for all noble life: a clear, far-reaching judgment, and a strong well-used will. We spend our best efforts, all through childhood and youth, in developing these faculties, individual judgment and will." "As part of your system of education, you mean?" "Exactly. As the most valuable part.
Physically they were more alike than we, as they lacked all morbid or excessive types. They were tall, strong, healthy, and beautiful as a race, but differed individually in a wide range of feature, coloring, and expression. "But surely the most important growth is in mind and in the things we make," urged Somel.
Somel set her chin upon her hand, her elbow on the low wall beside her, and looked off over the fair land. "Of course we have faults all of us," she said. "In one way you might say that we have more than we used to that is, our standard of perfection seems to get farther and farther away. But we are not discouraged, because our records do show gain considerable gain.
"Certainly not," said Somel, "unless she was fit for that supreme task." This was rather a blow to my previous convictions. "But I thought motherhood was for each of you " "Motherhood yes, that is, maternity, to bear a child. But education is our highest art, only allowed to our highest artists." "Education?" I was puzzled again. "I don't mean education.
But if the fault was in a disproportionate egotism then the girl was sure she had the right to have children, even that hers would be better than others." "I can see that," I said. "And then she would be likely to rear them in the same spirit." "That we never allowed," answered Somel quietly. "Allowed?" I queried. "Allowed a mother to rear her own children?"
For instance we don't know yet what they do with their criminals their defectives their aged. You notice we haven't seen any! There's got to be something!" I was inclined to believe that there had to be something, so I took the bull by the horns the cow, I should say! and asked Somel. "I want to find some flaw in all this perfection," I told her flatly.
Needless to say, he called Jeff's teacher "Java," and sometimes "Mocha," or plain "Coffee"; when specially mischievous, "Chicory," and even "Postum." But Somel rather escaped this form of humor, save for a rather forced "Some 'ell."
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