Three American young men discover a country inhabited solely by women, who were Parthenogenetic, and had borne only girl children for two thousand years; they marry three of the women. Two of the men and one woman leave the country of Herland to return to America; Jeff Margrave remaining with his wife, Celis, a willing citizen; Terry O. Nicholson being expelled for bad conduct; and Ellador electing to go with her husband, Vandyck Jennings.

THE three of us, all with set faces of high determination, sat close in the big biplane as we said goodbye to Herland and rose whirring from the level rock on that sheer edge. We went up first, and made a wide circuit, that my wife Ellador might have a view of her own beloved land to remember. How green and fair and flower-brightened it lay below us! The little cities, the thick dotted villages, the scattered hamlets and wide parks of grouped houses lay again beneath our eyes as when we three men had first set our astonished masculine gaze on this ultra-feminine land. 

Our long visit, the kind care, and judicious education given us, even though under restraint, and our months of freedom and travel among them, made it seem to me like leaving a second home. The beauty of the place was borne in upon me anew as I looked down on it. It was a garden, a great cultivated park, even to its wildest forested borders, and the cities were ornaments to the landscape, thinning out into delicate lace-like tracery of scattered buildings as they merged into the open country. 

Terry looked at it with set teeth. He was embittered through and through, and but for Ellador I could well imagine the kind of things he would have said. He only made this circuit at her request, as one who said: "Oh, well—an hour or two more or less—it's over, anyhow!" 

Then the long gliding swoop as we descended to our sealed motor-boat in the lake below. It was safe enough. Perhaps the savages had considered it some deadly witch-work and avoided it; at any rate, save for some dents and scratches on the metal cover, it was unhurt. 

With some careful labor, Terry working with a feverish joyful eagerness, we got the machine dissembled and packed away, pulled in the anchors, and with well-applied oiling started the long disused motor, and moved off toward the great river. 

Ellador's eyes were on the towering cliffs behind us. I gave her the glass, and as long as we were on the open water her eyes dwelt lovingly on the high rocky border of her home. But when we shot under the arching gloom of the forest she turned to me with a little sigh and a bright, steady smile. 

"That's good-bye," she said. "Now it's all looking forward to the Big New World—the Real World—with You!" 

Terry said very little. His heavy jaw was set, his eyes looked forward, eagerly, determinedly. He was polite to Ellador, and not impolite to me, but he was not conversational. 

We made the trip as fast as was consistent with safety; faster, sometimes; living on our canned food and bottled water, stopping for no fresh meat; shooting down the ever-widening river toward the coast. 

Ellador watched it all with eager, childlike interest. The freshness of mind of these Herland women concealed their intellectual power. I never quite got used to it. We are so used to seeing our learned men cold and solemn, holding themselves far above all the "enthusiasm of youth," that it is hard for us to associate a high degree of wisdom and intellectual power with vivid interest in immediate events. 

Here was my Wife from Wonderland, leaving all she had ever known,—a lifetime of peace and happiness and work she loved, and a whole nation of friends, as far as she knew them; and starting out with me for a world which I frankly told her was full of many kinds of pain and evil. She was not afraid. It was not sheer ignorance of danger, either. I had tried hard to make her understand the troubles she would meet. Neither was it a complete absorption in me—far from it. In our story books we read always of young wives giving up all they have known and enjoyed "for his sake." That was by no means Ellador's position. She loved me—that I knew, but by no means with that engrossing absorption so familiar to our novelists and their readers. Her attitude was that of some high ambassador sent on an important and dangerous mission. She represented her country, and that with a vital intensity we can hardly realize. She was to meet and learn a whole new world, and perhaps establish connections between it and her own dear land.

As Terry held to his steering, grim and silent, that feverish eagerness in his eyes, and a curb on his usually ready tongue, Ellador would sit in the bow, leaning forward, chin on her hand, her eyes ahead, far ahead, down the long reaches of the winding stream, with an expression such as one could imagine on Columbus. She was glad to have me near her. I was not only her own, in a degree she herself did not yet realize, but I was her one link with the homeland. So I sat close and we talked much of the things we saw and more of what we were going to see. Her short soft hair, curly in the moist air, and rippling back from her bright face as we rushed along, gave the broad forehead and clear eyes a more courageous look than ever. That finely cut mobile mouth was firmly set, though always ready to melt into a tender smile for me.

"Now Van, my dear," she said one day, as we neared the coast town where we hoped to find a steamer, "Please don't worry about how all this is going to affect me. You have been drawing very hard pictures of your own land, and of the evil behavior of men; so that I shall not be disappointed or shocked too much. I won't be, dear. I understand that men are different from women—must be, but I am convinced that it is better for the world to have both men and women than to have only one sex, like us. We have done the best we could, we women, all alone. We have made a nice little safe clean garden place and lived happily in it, but we have done nothing whatever for the rest of the world. We might as well not be there for all the good it does anyone else. The savages down below are just as savage, for all our civilization. Now you, even if you were, as you say, driven by greed and sheer love of adventure and fighting—you have gone all over the world and civilized it."

"Not all, dear," I hastily put in. "Not nearly all. There are ever so many savages left."

"Yes I know that, I remember the maps and all the history and geography you have taught me."

It was a never-ending source of surprise to me the way those Herland women understood and remembered. It must have been due to their entirely different system of education. There was very much less put into their minds, from infancy up, and what was there seemed to grow there—to stay in place without effort. All the new facts we gave them they had promptly hung up in the right places, like arranging things in a large well-planned, not over-filled closet, and they knew where to find them at once.

"I can readily see," she went on, "that our pleasant collective economy is like that of bees and ants and such co-mothers ; and that a world of fathers does not work as smoothly as that. We have observed, of course, among animals, that the instincts of the male are different from those of the female, and that he likes to fight. But think of all you have done!"

That was what delighted Ellador. She was never tired of my stories of invention and discovery, of the new lands we had found, the mountain ranges crossed, the great oceans turned into highways, and all the wonders of art and science. She loved it as did Desdemona the wild tales of her lover, but with more understanding.

"It must be nobler to have Two," she would say, her eyes shining. "We are only half a people. Of course we love each other, and have advanced our own little country, but it is such a little one— and you have The World !"

We reached the coast in due time, and the town. It was not much of a town, dirty and squalid enough, with lazy halfbreed inhabitants for the most part. But this I had carefully explained and Ellador did not mind it, examining everything with kind impartial eyes, as a teacher would examine the work of atypical children.

Terry loved it. He greeted that slovenly, ill-built, idle place with ardor, and promptly left us to ourselves for the most part.

There was no steamer. None had touched there for many months, they said; but there was a sailing vessel which undertook, for sufficient payment, to take us and our motor-boat with its contents, to a larger port.

Terry and I had our belts with gold and notes; he had letters of credit too, while Ellador had brought with her not only a supply of gold, but a little bag of rubies, which I assured her would take us several times around the world, and more. The money system in Herland was mainly paper, and their jewels, while valued for decoration, were not prized as ours are. They had some historic treasure chests, rivalling those of India, and she had been amply supplied.

After some delay we set sail.

Terry walked the deck, more eager as the days passed. Ellador, I am sorry to say, proved a poor sailor, as was indeed to be expected, but made no fuss about her disabilities. I told her it was almost unescapable, unpleasant but not dangerous, so she stayed in her berth, or sat wrapped mummy fashion on the deck, and suffered in patience.

Terry talked a little more when we were out of her hearing.

"Do you know they say there's a war in Europe ?" he told me.

"A war? A real one—or just the Balkans?"

"A real one, they say—Germany and Austria against the rest of Europe apparently. Began months ago—no news for a long time."

"Oh well—it will be over before we reach home, I guess. Lucky for us we are Americans."

But I was worried for Ellador. I wanted the world, my world, to look its best in her eyes. If those women, alone and unaided, had worked out that pleasant, peaceful, comfortable civilization of theirs, with its practical sisterliness and friendliness all over the land, I was very anxious to show her that men had done at least as well, and in some ways better —men and women, that is. And here we had gotten up a war—a most undesirable spectacle for an international guest.

There was a missionary on board, a thin, almost emaciated man, of the Presbyterian denomination. He was a most earnest person, and a great talker, naturally.

"Woe unto me," he would say, "if I preach not this gospel! And he preached it "in season and out of season."

Ellador was profoundly interested. I tried to explain to her that he was an enthusiast of a rather rigid type, and that she must not judge Christianity too harshly by him, but she quite re-assured me.

"Don't be afraid, my dear boy—I remember your outline of the various religions—all about how Christianity arose and spread; how it held together in one church for a long time, and then divided, and kept on dividing—naturally. And I remember about the religious wars, and persecutions, that you used to have in earlier ages. We had a good deal of trouble with religion in our first centuries too, and for a long time people kept appearing with some sort of new one they had had 'revealed' to them, just like yours. But we saw that all that was needed was a higher level of mentality and a clear understanding of the real Laws—so we worked toward that. And, as you know, we have been quite at peace as to our religion for some centuries. It's just part of us."

That was the clearest way of putting it she had yet thought of. The Herland religion was like the manners of a true aristocrat, a thing unborn and inbred. It was the way they lived. They had so clear and quick a connection between conviction and action that it was well nigh impossible for them to know a thing and not do it. I suppose that was why, when we had told them about the noble teachings of Christianity, they had been so charmed, taking it for granted that our behavior was equal to our belief.

The Reverend Alexander Murdock was more than pleased to talk with Ellador—any man would be, of course. He was immensely curious about her too, but even to impertinent questions she presented an amiable but absolute impermeability.

"From what country do you come, Mrs. Jennings;" he asked her one day, in my hearing. He did not know I was within earshot, however.

Ellador was never annoyed by questions, nor angry, nor confused. Where most people seem to think that there is no alternative but to answer correctly or to lie, she recognized an endless variety of things to say or not say. Sometimes she would look pleasantly at the inquirer, with those deep kind eyes of hers, and ask: "Why do you wish to know ?" Not sarcastically, not offensively at all, but as if she really wanted to know why they wanted to know. It was generally difficult for them to explain the cause of their curiosity, but if they did; if they said it was just interest, a kindly human interest in her, she would thank them for the interest, and ask if they felt it about every one. If they said they did, she would say, still with her quiet gentleness: "And is it customary, when one feels interested in a stranger, to ask them questions? I mean is it a —what you call a compliment? If so, I thank you heartily for the compliment."

If they drove her—some people never will take a hint—she would remain always quite courteous and gentle, even praise them for their perseverance, but never say one word she did not choose to. And she did not choose to give to anyone news of her beloved country until such time as that country decided it should be done.

The missionary was not difficult to handle.

"Did you not say that you were to preach the gospel to all nations—or all people—or something like that?" she asked him. "Do you find some nations easier to preach to than others? Or is it the same gospel to all?"

He assured her that it was the same, but that he was naturally interested in all his hearers, and that it was often important to know something of their antecedents. This she agreed might be an advantage, and left it at that, asking him if he would let her see his Bible. Once he was embarked on that subject, she had only to listen, and to steer the conversation, or rather the monologue.

I told her I had overheard this bit of conversation, begging her pardon for listening, but she said she would greatly enjoy having me with her while he talked. I told her I doubted if he would talk as freely if there were three of us, and she suggested in that case that if I was interested I was quite welcome to listen as far as she was concerned. Of course I wasn't going to be an eavesdropper, even on a missionary trying to convert my wife, but I heard a good bit of their talk as I strolled about, and sat with them sometimes.

He let her read his precious flexible Oxford Bible at times, giving her marked passages, and she read about a hundred times as much as he thought she could in a given time. It interested her immensely, and she questioned him eagerly about it:

"You call this 'The Word of God'?"

"Yes," he replied solemnly. "It is His Revealed Word."

"And every thing it says is true?"

"It is Truth itself, Divine Truth," he answered.

"You do not mean that God wrote it ?"

"Oh, no. He revealed it to His servants. It is an Inspired Book."

"It was written by many people, was it not?"

"Yes—many people, but the same Word."

"And at different times ?'

"Oh yes—the revelation was given at long intervals—the Old Testament to the Jews, the New Testament to us all."

Ellador turned the pages reverently. She had a great respect for religion, and for any sincere person.

"How old is the oldest part ?" she asked him.

He told her as best he could, but he was not versed in the latest scholarship and had a genuine horror of "the higher criticism." But I supplied a little information on the side, when we were alone, telling her of the patchwork group of ancient legends which made up the first part; of the very human councils of men who had finally decided which of the ancient writings were inspired and which were not; of how the Book of Job, the oldest of all, had only scraped in by one vote, and then, with rather a malicious relish, of that most colossal joke of all history—how the Song of Songs—that amorous, not to say salacious ancient love-lyric, had been embraced with the others and interpreted as a mystical lofty outburst of devotion with that "black but comely" light-o'-love figuring as The Church.

Ellador was quite shocked.

"But Van!—he ought to know that. You ought to tell him. Is it generally known?"

"It is known to scholars, not to the public as a whole."

"But they still have it bound in with the others—and think it is holy—when it isn't."

"Yes," I grinned, "the joke is still going on."

"What have the scholars done about it?" she asked.

"Oh, they have worked out their proof, shown up the thing—and let it go at that."

"Wasn't there any demand from the people who knew to have it taken out of the Bible?"

"There is one edition of the Bible now printed in all the separate books—a whole shelf full of little ones, instead of one big one."

"I should think that would be much better," she said, "but the other one is still printed—and sold?"

"Printed and sold and given away by hundreds of thousands—with The Joke going right on."

She was puzzled. It was not so much the real outside things we did which she found it hard to understand, but the different way our minds worked. In Herland, if a thing like that had been discovered, the first effort of all their wisest students would have been to establish the facts. When they were sure about it, they would then have taken the rather shameful old thing out of its proud position among the "sacred" books at once. They would have publicly acknowledged their mistake, rectified it, and gone on.

"You'll have to be very patient with me, Van dearest. It is going to take me a long time to get hold of your psychology. But I'll do my best."

Her best was something amazing. And she would have come to her final conclusions far earlier but for certain firm preconceptions that we were somehow better, nobler, than we were.

The Reverend Murdock kept at her pretty steadily. He started in at the beginning, giving her the full circumstantial account of The Temptation, The Fall, and The Curse.

She listened quietly, with no hint in her calm face of what she might be thinking. But when he came to the punishment of the serpent: "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life," she asked a question.

"Will you tell me please—how did the serpent 'go' before?"

Mr. Murdock looked at her. He was reading in a deep sorrowful voice, his mind full of the solemn purport of the Great Tragedy.

"What was his method of locomotion before he was cursed?" asked Ellador.

He laid down the book in some annoyance. "It is believed that the serpent walked erect, that he stood like a man, that he was Satan himself," he replied.

"But it says: "Now the serpent was more subtile than any of the beasts of the field," doesnt it? And the picture you showed me is of a snake, in the tree."

"The picture is, as it were, allegorical," he replied. "It is not reverent to question the divine account like this."

She did not mind this note of censure, but asked further: "As a matter of fact, do snakes eat dust?  Or is that allegorical too? How do you know which is allegorical and which is fact? Who decides?"

They had a rather stormy discussion on that point; at least the missionary was stormy. He was unable to reconcile Ellador's gentle courtesy with her singular lack of reverence for mere statements.

But our theological discussions were summarily ended, and Ellador reduced to clinging to her berth, by a severe storm. It was not a phenomenal hurricane by any means; but a steady lashing gale which drove us far out of our course, and so damaged the vessel that we could do little but drive before the wind.

"There's a steamer !" said Terry on the third day of heavy weather. And as we watched the drift of smoke on the horizon we found it was nearing us. And none too soon! By the time they were within hailing distance our small vessel ran up signals of distress, for we were leaking heavily, and we were thankful to be taken off, even though the steamer, a Swedish one, was bound for Europe instead of America.

They gave us better accommodations than we had had on the other, and eagerly took on board our big motor-boat and biplane—too eagerly, I thought.

Ellador was greatly interested in the larger ship, the big blond men, and in their talk. I prepared her as well as I could. They had good maps of Europe, and I filled in her outlines of history as far as I was able, and told her of the war. Her horror at this was natural enough.

"We have always had war," Terry explained. "Ever since the world began— at least as far as history goes, we have have had war. It is human nature."

"Human?" asked Ellador.

"Yes," he said, "human. Bad as it is, it is evidently human nature to do it. Nations advance, the race is improved by fighting. It is the law of nature."

Since our departure from Herland, Terry had rebounded like a rubber ball from all its influences. Even his love for Alima he was evidently striving to forget, with some success. As for the rest, he had never studied the country and its history as I had, nor accepted it like Jeff; and now he was treating it all as if it really was, what he had often called it to me, a bad dream. He would keep his word in regard to telling nothing about it; that virtue was his at any rate. But in his glad reaction, his delighted return, "a man in a world of men," he was now giving information to Ellador in his superior way, as if she was a totally ignorant stranger. And this war seemed almost to delight him.

"Yes," he repeated, "you will have to accept life as it is. To make war is human activity."

"Are some of the soldiers women?" she inquired.

"Women! Of course not! They are men; strong, brave men. Once in a while some abnormal woman becomes a soldier, I believe, and in Dahomey—that's in Africa—one of the black tribes have women soldiers. But speaking generally it is men—of course."

"Then why do you call it 'human' nature?" she persisted. "If it was human wouldn't they both do it?"

So he tried to explain that it was a human necessity, but it was done by the men because they could do it—and the women couldn't. "The women are just as indispensable —in their way. They give us the children—you know—men cannot do that."

To hear Terry talk you would think he had never left home.

Ellador listened to him with her grave gentle smile. She always seemed to understand not only what one said, but all the back-ground of sentiment and habit behind.

"Do you call bearing children 'human nature'?" she asked him.

"It's woman nature," he answered. "It's her work."

"Then why do you not call fighting 'man nature'—instead of human?"

Terry's conclusion of an argument with Ellador was the simple one of going somewhere else. So off he went, to enjoy himself in the society of those sturdy Scandinavians, and we two sat together discussing war.

 

 

FOR a long time my wife from Wonderland, as I love to call her, used to the utmost the high self-restraint taught by her religion, her education, the whole habit of her life. She knew that I should be grieved by her distresses, that I expected the new experiences would be painful to her and was watching to give what aid and comfort I could; and further she credited me with, a racial sensitiveness and pride far beyond the facts.

Here again was one of the differences between her exquisitely organized people and ours. With them the majority of their interests in life were communal; their love and pride and ambition was almost wholly for the group, even motherhood itself was viewed as social service, and so fulfilled. They were all of them intimately acquainted with their whole history, that was part of their beautiful and easy educational system; with their whole country, and with all its industries.

The children of Herland were taken to all parts of the country, shown all its arts and crafts, taught to honor its achievements and to appreciate its needs and difficulties. They grew up with a deep and vital social consciousness which not one in a thousand of us could approach.

This kind of thing does not show; we could not see it externally, any more than one could see a good housewife's intimate acquaintance with and pride in the last detail of her menage. Further, as our comments on their country had been almost wholly complimentary (they had not heard Terry's!), we had not hurt this national pride; or if we had they had never let us see it.

Now here was Ellador, daring traveler, leaving her world for mine, and finding herself, not as we three had been, exiled into a wisely ordered, peaceful and beautiful place, with the mothering care of that group of enlightened women; but as one alone in a world of which her first glimpse was of hideous war. As one who had never in her life seen worse evil than misunderstanding, or accident, and not much of these; one to whom universal comfort and beauty was the race habit of a thousand years, the sight of Europe in its present condition was far more of a shock than even I had supposed.

She thought that I felt as she did. I did feel badly, and ashamed, but not a thousandth part as she would have felt the exposure of some fault in Herland; not nearly as badly as she supposed.

I was constantly learning from her to notice things among us which I had never seen before, and one of the most conspicuous of my new impressions was the realization of how slightly socialized we are. We are quite indifferent to public evils, for the most part, unless they touch us personally; which is as though the housewife was quite indifferent to having grease on the chairs unless she happened to spoil her own dress with it. Even our "reformers" seem more like such a housewife who should show great excitement over the greasy chairs, but none over the dusty floor, the grimy windows, the empty coal-bin, the bad butter, or the lack of soap. Special evils rouse us, some of us, but as for a clean, sanitary, effortless housekeeping—we have not come to want it—most of us.

But Ellador, lovely, considerate soul that she was, had not only the incessant shock of these new impressions to meet and bear, but was doing her noble best to spare my feelings by not showing hers. She could not bear to blame my sex, to blame my country, or at least my civilization, my world; she did not wish to-cast reproach on me.

I was ashamed, to a considerable degree. If a man has been living in the pleasant atmosphere of perfect housekeeping, such as I have mentioned, and is then precipitated suddenly into foul slovenliness, with noise, confusion and ill-will, he feels it more than if he had remained in such surroundings from the first.

It was the ill-will that counted most. Here again comes the psychic difference between the women of Herland and us. People who grow up amid slang, profanity, obscenity, harsh contradiction and quarrelling, do not particularly note or mind it. But one reared in an atmosphere of the most subtle understanding, gracious courtesy, and a loving use of language as an art, is very sharply impressed if someone says: "Hold yer jaw, yer son of a !," or even by a glowering roomful of silent haters.

That's what was heavy on Ellador all the time,—the atmosphere, the social atmosphere of suspicion, distrust, hatred, of ruthless self-aggrandizement and harsh scorn.

There was a German officer on this ship. He tried to talk to Ellador at first, merely because she was a woman and beautiful. She tried to talk to him, merely because he was a human being a member of a great nation.

But I, watching, saw how soon the clear light of her mind brought out the salient characteristics -of his, and of how, in spite of all her exalted philosophy, she turned shuddering away from him.

We were overhauled by an English vessel before reaching our destination in Sweden, and all three of us were glad to be transferred because we could so reach home sooner. At least that was what we thought. The German officer was not glad, I might add.

Ellador hailed the change with joy. She knew more about England than about the Scandinavian countries, and could speak the language. I think she thought it would be—easier there.

We were unable to get away as soon as we expected. Terry indeed determined to enlist, or to join the service in some way, and they were glad to use him and his aeroplane. This was not to be wondered at. If Terry had the defects of his qualities he also had the qualities of his defects, and he did good work for the Allies.

Ellador, rather unexpectedly asked to stay awhile: "It is hard," she said, "but we may not come again perhaps, and I want to learn all I can."

So we stayed and Ellador learned. It did not take her long. She was a rapid reader, and soon found the right books. She was a marvellous listener, and many were glad to talk to her, and to show her things.

We investigated in London, Manchester, Birmingham; were entertained in beautiful country places; went motoring up into Scotland and in Ireland; visited Wales, and then, to my great surprise, she urged that we go to France.

"I want to see, to know," she said. "To really know ."

I was worried about her. She had a hard-set fixity of expression. Her unfailing gentleness was too firm of surface, and she talked less and less with me about social conditions.

We went to France.

She visited hospitals, looking at those broken men, those mained and blinded boys, and grew paler and harder daily. Day by day she gathered in the new language, till soon she could talk with the people.

Then we ran across Terry, scouting about with his machine; and Ellador asked to be taken up—she wanted to see a battlefield. I tried to dissuade her from this, fearing for her. Even her splendid health seemed shaken by all she had witnessed. But she said: "It is my duty to see and know all I can. This is not, they tell me—exceptional? This—war ?"

"Not at all," said Terry. "It's only bigger than usual, as most things are now. Why, in all our history there have only been about three hundred years without war."

She looked at him, her eyes widening, darkening. "When was that?" she said. "After Jesus came?"

Terry laughed. "Oh no," he said. "It wasn't any one time. It's three hundred years here and there, scattering. So you see war is really the normal condition of human life."

"So," she said. "Then I ought to see it. Take me up, please."

He didn't want to; said it was dangerous; but it was very hard to say no to Ellador, and she had her way. She saw the battle lines of trenches. She saw the dead men; she saw and heard the men not dead, where there had been recent fighting. She saw the ruins, ruins everywhere.

That night she was like a woman of marble, cold, dumb, sitting still by the window where she could rest her eyes on the far stars. She treated me with a great poignant tenderness, as one would treat a beloved friend whose whole family had become lepers.

We went back to England, and she spent the last weeks of our stay there finding out all she could about Belgium.

That was the breaking point. She locked the door of her room, but I heard her sobbing her heart out—Ellador, who had never in all her splendid young life had an experience of pain, and whose consciousness was mainly social. We feel these horrors as happening to other people; she felt them as happening to herself.

I broke the lock—I had to get to her. She would not speak, would not look at me, but buried her face in the pillow, shuddering away from me as if I, too, were a German. The great sobs tore her. It was, I suddenly felt, not like the facile tears of an ordinary woman, but like the utter breakdown of a strong man. And she was as ashamed of it.

Then I had enough enlightenment to see some little relief for her, not from the weight of horrible new knowledge, but from the added burden of her selfrestraint.

I knelt beside her and got her into my arms, her head hidden on my shoulder. "Dear," said I,

"Dear—I can't help the horror, but at least I can help you bear it—and you can let me try. You see you're all alone here—I'm all you've got. You'll have to let it out somehow— just say it all to me."

She held me very close then, with a tense, frightened grip. "I want—I want—my Mother!" she sobbed.

Ellador's mother was one of those wise women who sat in the Temples, and gave comfort and counsel when needed. They loved each other more than I, not seeing them always together, had understood. Yet her mother had counseled her going, had urged it, for the sake of their laud and its future.

"Mother! Mother! Mother!" she sobbed under her breath. "Oh— Mother! Help me bear it!"

There was no Mother and no Temple, only one man who loved her, and in that she seemed to find a little ease, and slowly grew quieter.

"There is one thing we know more about than you do," I suggested. "That is how to manage pain. You mustn't keep it to yourself—you must let it out—let the others help bear it. That's good psychology, dear."

"It seems so—unkind," she murmured.

"Oh, no, it's not unkind; it's just necessary. 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' you know. Also we have a nice proverb about marriage. 'It makes joy double and halveth trouble.' Just pile it on me, dearest—that's what a husband is for."

"But how can I say to you the things I feel? It seems so rude, so to reflect on your people—your civilization."

"I think you underrate two things," I suggested. "One is that I'm a human creature, even if male; the other that my visit to Herland, my life with you, has had a deep effect on me. I see the awfulness of war as I never did before, and I can even see a little of how it must affect you. What I want you to do now is to relieve the pressure of feeling which is hurting so, by putting it into words—letting it out. Say it all. Say the very worst. Say—'This world is not civilized, not human. It is worse than the humble savagery below our mountains.' Let out, dear—I can stand it. And you'll feel better."

She lifted her head and drew a long, shuddering breath.

"I think you are right—there must be some relief. And here are You!" Suddenly she threw her arms around me and held me close, close.

"You do love me—I can feel it! A little—a very little—like mother love! I am so grateful!"

She rested in my arms, till the fierce tempest of pain had passed somewhat, and then we sat down, close together, and she followed my advice, seeking to visualize, to put in words, to fully express, the anguish which was upon her.

"You see," she began slowly, "it is hard for me to do this because I hate to hurt you. You must care so—so horribly."

"Stop right there, dear," I told her. "You overestimate my sensitiveness. What I feel is nothing at all to what you feel—I can see that. Remember that in our race-traditions war is a fine thing, a splendid thing. We have idealized war and the warrior, through all our history. You have read a good deal of our history by now."

She had, I knew, and she nodded her head sadly. "Yes, it's practically all about war," she agreed. "But I didn't —I couldn't visualize it."

She closed her eyes and shrank back, but I went on steadily: "So you see this is not—to us—wholly a horror; it is just more horrible than other wars on account of the infamous behavior of some combatants, and because we really are beginning to be civilized. Now this pain that you see is no greater than the same pain all the way back in history—always. And you are not being miserable about that, surely?"

No, she admitted, she wasn't.

"Very well," I hurried on, "we, the human race, outside of Herland, have been fighting one another for all the ages, and we are here yet; some of these military enthusiasts say because of war —some of the pacifists say in spite of it, and I'm beginning to agree with them. With you, Ellador, through you, and because of you, and because of seeing what human life can be, in your blessed country, I see things as I never did before. I'm growing."

She smiled a little at that, and took my hand again.

"You are the most important ambassador that ever was," I continued. "You are sent from your upland island, your little hidden heaven, to see our poor blind bleeding world and carry news of it to your people. Perhaps that vast storehouse of mother-love can help to set us straight at last. And you can't afford to feel our sorrow—you'd die of it. You must think—and talk it off, remorselessly, to me."

"You Amazing Darling!" she answered at last, drawing a deep breath. "You are right—wholly right. I'm afraid I have—a little—underrated your wisdom. Forgive me!"

I forgave her fast enough, though I knew it was an impossible offence, and she began to free her mind.

"First as to Christianity," she said. "That gave me great hopes—at first. Not the mythology of course, but the spirit; and when that missionary man enlarged on the spread of Christianity and its countless benefits I began to feel that here was a lovely thing it would do us good to know about— something very close to Motherhood."

"Motherhood," always revently spoken, was the highest, holiest word they knew in Herland.

"But as I've read and talked and studied all these weeks, I do not find that Christianity has done one thing to stop war, or that Christian countries fight any less than heathen ones—rather more. Also they fight amoung themselves. Christianity has not brought peace on earth—not at all."

"No," I admitted, "it hasn't, but it tries to—ameliorate, to heal and save."

"That seems to me simply—foolish," she answered. "If there is a house on fire, the only true way to check the destruction is to put the fire out. To sit about trying to heal burned skin and repair burned furniture is—foolish."

"Especially when the repaired furniture serves as additional fuel for more fire," I added.

"You see it !" she exclaimed joyfully. "Then why don't you—but, I see—you are only one. You alone cannot change it."

"Oh no, I'm not alone in that," I answered cheerfully. "There are plenty more who see it."

"Then why—" she began, but checked herself, and paused a little, continuing slowly. "What I wish to get off my mind is this spectacle of measureless suffering which human beings are deliberately inflicting on one another. It would be hard enough to bear if the pain was unavoidable—that would be pure horror, and the eager rush to help. But here there is not only horror but a furious scorn—because they do not have to have it at all."

"You're qute right, my dear," I agreed. "But how are you going to make them stop?"

"That's what I have to find out," she answered gravely. "I wish Mother was here—and all the Over-Mothers. They would find a way. There must be a way. And you are right—I must not let myself be overcome by this—"

"Put it this way," I suggested. "Even if three quarters of the world should be killed there would be plenty left to refill, as promptly as would be wise. You remember how quickly your country filled up?"

"Yes," she said. "And I must remember that it is the race-progress that counts, not just being alive."

Then, wringing her hands in sudden bitterness, she added: "But this stops all progress! It is not merely that people are being killed. Half the world might die in an earthquake and not do this harm! It is the Hating I mind more than the killing—the perversion of human faculty. It's not humanity dying—it is humanity going mad!"

She was shivering again, that black horror growing in her eyes.

"Gently dear, gently," I told her. Humanity is a large proposition. You and I have a whole round world to visit—as soon as it is safe to travel. And in the meantime I want to get you to my country as soon as possible. We are not at war. Our people are goodnatured and friendly. I think you'll like us."

It was not unnatural for an American, in war-mad Europe, to think of his own land with warm approval, nor for a husband to want his wife to appreciate his people and his country.

"You must tell me more about it," she said eagerly. "I must read more too—study more. I do not do justice to the difference, I am sure. I am judging the world only by Europe. And see here, my darling—do you mind if we see the rest first? I want to know The World as far as I can, and as quickly as I can. I'm sure that if I study first for awhile, in England—they seem so familar with all the world—that we might then go east instead of west, and see the rest of it before we reach America— leave the best to the last."

Except for the danger of traveling there seemed no great objection to this plan. I would rather have her make her brief tour and then return with me to my own dear country at the end, than to have her uneasy there and planning to push on.

We went back to a quiet place in England, where we could temporarily close our minds to the Horror, and Ellador, with unerring judgment, found an encyclopedic young historian with the teaching gift, and engaged his services for a time.

They had a series of maps—from old blank "terra incognita" ones, with its bounding ocean of ancient times, to the spread of accurate surveying which now gives us the whole surface of the earth. She kissed the place where her little homeland lay hidden—but that was when he was not looking.

The rapid grasp she made at the whole framework of our history would have astonished anyone not acquainted with Herland brains and Herland methods of education. It did astonish the young historian. She by no means set herself to learn all that he wanted to teach her; on the contrary she continually checked his flow of information, receiving only what she wanted to know.

A very few good books on world evolution—geological, botanical, zoological, and ethnic, gave her the background she needed, and such a marvel of condensation as Winwood Reade's Martydom of Man supplied the outline of history.

Her own clear strong uncrowded and logical mind, with its child-fresh memory, saw, held and related the facts she learned, with no apparent effort. Presently she had a distinct view of what we people have been up to on earth for the few ages of our occupancy. She had her estimate of time taken and of the rate of our increased speed. I had never realized how long, how immeasurably long and slow, were the years "before progress," so to speak, or the value of each great push of new invention. But she got them all clearly in place, and, rigidly refusing to be again agonized by the ceaseless wars, she found eager joy in counting the upward steps of social evolution.

This joy increased as the ages came nearer to our own. She became fascinated with the record of inventions and discoveries and their interrelative effects. Each great religion as it entered, was noted, defined in its special power and weakness, and its consequences observed. She made certain map effects for herself, "washing in" the different areas with various colors, according to the different religions, and lapping them over where they had historically lapped, as for instance, where the "mafiana" of the Spaniard marks the influence following Oriental invasion, and where Buddhism produces such and such effects according to its reception by Hindu, Chinese, or Japanese.

"I could spend a lifetime in these details," she eagerly explained again, "but I'm only after enough to begin on. I must get them placed—so that I can understand what each nation is for, what they have done for one another, and for the world; which of them are going on, and how fast; which of them are stopping—or sinking back—and why. It is profoundly interesting."

Ellador's attitude vaguely nettled me, just a little, in that earlier consciousness I was really outgrowing so fast. She seemed like an enthusiastic young angel "slumming." I resented—a little—this cheerful and relentless classification—just as poor persons resent being treated as "cases."

But I knew she was right after all, and was more than delighted to have her so soon triumph over the terrible influence of the war. She did not, of course, wholly escape or forget it. Who could? But she successfully occupied her mind with other matters.

"It's so funny," she said to me. "Here in all your history books, the whole burden of information is as to who fought who—and when; and who 'reigned' and when—especially when. Why are your historians so morbidly anxious about the exact dat^?"

"Why it's important, isn't it?" I asked.

"From certain points of view, yes; but not in the least from that of the general student. The doctor wants to know at just what hour the fever rises, or declines; he has to have his 'chart' to study. But the public ought to know how fever is induced and how it is to be avoided. People in general ought to know the whole history of the of the world in general; and what were the most important things that happened. And here the poor things are required to note and remember that this king "came to the throne" at such a date and died at such another—facts of no historic importance whatever. And as to the wars and wars and wars '—and all these 'decisive battles of history'—" Ellador had the whole story so clearly envisaged now that she could speak of war without cringing—"why that isn't history at all !"

"Surely it's part of history, isn't it?" I urged.

"Not even part of it. Go back to your doctor's 'chart'—his 'history of the case.' That history treats of the inception, development, success or failure of the disease he is treating. To say that 'At four-fifteen p. m. the patient climbed into another patient's bed and bit him,' is no part of that record of tuberculosis or cancer."

"It would be if it proved him delirious, wouldn't it?" I suggested.

Ellador lifted her head from the chart she was filling in, and smiled enchantingly. "Van," she said, "I'm proud of you. That's splendid!

"It would then appear," she pursued, glancing over her papers, "as if the patent had a sort of intermittent fever— from the beginning; hot fits of rage and fury, when he is practically a lunatic, and cold fits, too," she cried eagerly, pursuing the illustration, "cold and weak, when he just lies helpless and cannot do anything."

We agreed that as a figure of speech this was pretty strong and clear, with its inevitable suggestion that we must study the origin of the disease, how to cure, and still better, prevent it.

"But there is a splendid record behind all that," she told me. I can't see that your historians have ever seen it clearly and consecutively. You evidently have not come to the place where all history has to be consciously revised for educational purposes."

"Ours is more complex than yours, isn't it?" I offered. "So many different nations and races, you know ?"

But she smiled wisely and shook her head, quoting after her instructor: "And history, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page.'

"They all tell about the same things," she said. "They all do the same things, and not one of them ever sees what really matters most—ever gives 'the history of the case' correctly. I truly think, dear, that we could help you with your history."

She had fully accepted the proposition I made that day when the Horror so overthrew her, and now talked to me as freely as if I were one of her sisters. She talked about men as if I wasn't one, and about the world as if it was no more mine than hers.

There was a strange exaltation, a wonderful companionship, in this. I grew to see life as she saw it, more and more, and it wasJike rising from some tangled thorny thicket to take a bird's eye view of city and farmland, of continent and ocean. Life itself grew infinitely more interesting. I thought of that benighted drummer's joke, that "Life is just one damn thing after another," so widely accepted as voicing a general opinion. I thought of our pathetic virtues of courage, cheerfulness, patience—all so ridiculously wasted in facing troubles which need not be there at all.

Ellador saw human life as a thing in the making, with human beings as the makers. We have always seemed to regard it as an affliction—or blessing— bestowed upon us by some exterior force. Studying, seeing, understanding, with her, I grew insensibly to adopt her point of view, her scale of measurements, and her eager and limitless interest. So when we did set forth on on our round-the-world trip to my home, we were both fairly well equipped for the rapid survey which was all we planned for.