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Later, as we were going back to our quarters in the village, we saw him working on the road with a party of Altrurians who were repairing a washout from an overnight rain. They were having all kinds of a time, except a bad time, trying to understand each other in their want of a common language.
The Altrurians listened in silence, and I hoped they could not realize the facts, though the story was every word true; but what seemed to make them the most indignant was the treatment of the families of the prisoners in what we call our penitentiaries and reformatories.
The administration used parts of them in the construction of the villages in which the Altrurians now mostly live; but generally these towns were built of materials so fraudulent, in form so vile, that it was judged best to burn them. In this way their sites were at once purified and obliterated.
There are often humorous passages, for the Altrurians are inextinguishably amused by our illogicality, and what they call the perpetual non sequiturs of our lives and laws. In the discussions they frequently burlesque these, but as they present them they seem really beyond the wildest burlesque.
His victim was a messenger from the Commune, who had been sent to inquire whether Anatole had a preference as to the employment which should be assigned to him, and I had to reply for him that he was a man of science; that he would be happy to serve the republic in whatever capacity his concitizens chose, but that he thought he could be most useful in studying the comestible vegetation of the neighborhood, and the substitution of the more succulent herbs for the flesh-meats to the use of which, he understood from me, the Altrurians were opposed.
"Yes," I said, "but I do not think you would like it." "Now, I assure you, Mr. Homos, you were never more mistaken in your life. I perfectly delight in your naivete. I know that the Altrurians don't think as we do about some things, and I don't expect it. What is it you would like to ask?" "Well, why should you require your servants to go down on a different elevator from yourselves?"
The Altrurians tried to make him understand that here people must not work against time, but must always work with it, so as to have enough work to do each day; otherwise they must remain idle during the Obligatoires and tend to demoralize the workers.
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