Fut

a large sign on the back of the door. It read as follows:

IMPERIAL EDICT NO. 313 WITHIN THE TERRITORIES OF THE ARISTOKIAN EMPIRE TIPPING (The voluntary donation of a gratuity to a servitor) IS CUSTOMARY AND OBLIGATORY. IT WILL BE INCUMBENT UPON ALL PERSONS ACCEPTING AND ENJOYING THE HOSPITALITY OF THE REALM TO COMPLY WITH ALL THE RULES AND REGULATIONS CONCERNING TIPPING WHICH CONSTITUTE THE SPIRIT AND LETTER OF THIS EDICT. FAILURE SO TO DO WILL SUBJECT THEM TO ARREST AND PROSECUTION ACCORDING TO THE BY-LAW HERE APPENDED. OTTO, REX IMPERATOR.

BY-LAW NO. 175b:

5

I turned

.....

tenth floor same

*(From first to the

rate as to the tenth floor.) Guests sojourning in the hotel one week or more will pay the following weekly:

This is an extra and does not exempt from regular 10 per cent. charge for meals.

2.00 1.00

away from the sign,

abashed; I was blushing furiously. I fumbled in my pockets.

"Are you bell-boys?" I asked. "Yes, sir," they replied in unison. What sensitive little fellows they were! How tactfully they had called my attention to the edict! I gave them each double the legal minimum in compensation for my stupidity. I had still much to learn. They said, “Thank you, sir," and bowed themselves out.

I was about to unpack when a knock at the door arrested me. I opened it. A person entered, bowing obsequiously. He was in civilian dress, but of an odd cut. I remembered that I had seen persons in illustrations in old novels wearing similar clothes. The thing he had on was called a cutaway.

He informed me that he was the valet and insisted on unpacking my bags for me. I let him do it, a bit frightened and apologetic. He took all my suits away with him,—they needed tailoring he explained. I thanked him and over-tipped him. He, too, called me, "Sir." I thrilled to the base of my democratic spine.

The valet had imparted to me the valuable information that eight o'clock P. M. (Twenty o'clock, our time. The Aristokians still reckoned time in the

old way) was the fashionable hour at which to dine.

As it was then only half-past seven, I sat down near a window to think. So many impressions had struck my consciousness in pell-mell confusion that I felt the urgent need of a quiet moment alone in which to coördinate, classify, and stow away in the proper pigeonholes of my brain the totally new and, to me, extraordinarily fascinating data of experience.

I thought of the bell-boys, and the valet. How strange it must be to earn a living by serving others! Yet they seemed perfectly happy. But why should n't they be? They must make a fortune in tips.

My mind drifted to the room clerk. What an odd person! How unnecessarily rude he had seemed! And yet was it rudeness? As the weeks passed, and I became a fixture at the hotel, I came to know that clerk

esthetically starved world had been concentrated here. When I thought of what the proletariat had done I shivered.

Dinner I found to be a fascinating ceremony, a rite both artistic and religious. It was not what it is fast becoming among us, an act of bodily hygiene, such as washing one's teeth or gargling. God forgive me for having

well, and his manner to me was subsequently delightfully cordial. At the time of my meditation I had not grasped the fact that persons who deal with humanity in bulk have to adopt some forms of protective armor. The clerk's manner reminded me of anecdotes told by my grandmother of the two weeks she had once spent in New York.

My gaze wandered out of the window and over the great city. Its white palaces were bathed in the warm glow of an evening sun. The green lace-work of foliage intervened everywhere, softening the outlines of buildings. In no matter what direction one looked, a picture perfect in composition unfolded to the eye. There was not one discordant note in all that symphony of line and curve, marble and stone. seemed to me as if all the beauty in our

It

ic contrivance.

helped to make it that by discovering the capsule!

I sat at a table on which there were flowers, silverware, fine china, and glass. The room was carpeted, softly lighted, and beautiful. And oh, the joy I experienced at being waited on by a real servant, one who was human enough to forget part of my order! My order! Ah, the bliss of it, to eat food, and not be obliged to swallow one of my own capsules in a glass of water, jerked at me by an automatic, hygien

After a delicious meal, washed down by wine, the first I had ever tasted, I sipped my coffee, looking about me and smoking an excellent cigar. It was a source of great satisfaction to be able to smoke without fear of arrest. The constitutional amendment prohibiting the use of tobacco in all forms in the United States had just been ratified and made effective, and during the preceding months I had been very miserable. On one occasion, when some friends were smoking with me in my apartment, some one had reported smoke issuing from my windows. Rather than confess the truth and risk imprisonment, it being my second offense, we had let ourselves be deluged by the fire department.

At that time, too, the agitation for

the suppression of tea and coffee as drugs had just begun. I wondered as I sat in the dining-room, watching the proletariate doing all the things they were not allowed to do in their democratic paradise, how long these repressions of the individual will would last. The frightful reaction now setting in was plainly forecast then.

I observed the table manners of my compatriots. Νό

wonder there were faddists who claimed that all public eating was indecent.

When I paid my bill, I over-tipped the waiter grandly, and then I strolled out to the Kaiser Wilhelm II Platz and turned down the Boulevard Romanoff in the direction of the Imperial Opera-House.

I heard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde." How beautiful, melodic, and tuneful it seemed to me! What a relief after the noisy disharmonies of the Chinaman, Wu Swang Chang, then so much the rage in other parts of the world.

bosom resplendent with decorations. He had a black mustache, and eyes that burned with the deep glow of banked. fires. His manner was graceful and courtly to an extraordinary degree. The crowd seemed tremendously impressed. I wondered if it could be the emperor.

The other occupants of the box were a middle-aged man with a monocle, a stout woman buried in jewels, which seemed to hang about her like a parasitic growth of vines on a tropical tree, and a young woman who sat with her back to the audience. She had rather lovely arms and shoulders. The effulgent military gentleman bowed low, kissed her hand, and departed.

I was seated in an orchestra chair toward the left of the auditorium, at the foot of one of the grand-tier boxes. During the first intermission I looked about me curiously. The greater part of the audience was composed of tourists. Aristokians did not attend the opera much during the open season; only a few of the private boxes were occupied.

Suddenly I became aware of a perceptible stir, a murmur and buzz of voices such as is caused in a crowd by its concentration on a common object. I turned, moved by the general impulse, in the direction of the nearest box to my left.

There stood a dapper creature in gorgeous uniform of blue and gold, his

She turned, and I became acutely aware of brown eyes and reddishgolden hair. She looked at me steadily, unflinchingly, but in a somewhat impersonal manner that was new to me, and which made me willing, even anxious, to re

turn her gaze, which had impressed me.

Ordinarily I would have turned away. I was rather fed up on that sort of thing. In America I had received many offers of mating; in fact, I had been pursued by females most annoyingly.

Now that I am an old man and can speak with aloofness of myself as I was in those days, I feel no hesitation in saying that I was cursed, or blessed, as you will, with good looks. I stood six feet unshod. I was the perfect Nordic type portrayed with such persistence in the popular novels of Robert W. Chambers and other writers for the bourgeoisie of the early-twentieth century. One of the principal reasons for my visit to Aristokia had been to find surcease

from the importunities to which I had been subjected.

During the immortal love duet I found myself listening to Wagner with my ears while I scanned her very beautiful face with my eyes.

When the curtain fell for the second intermission, she rose and left the box. I suddenly realized that I must take a stroll in the foyer to see the crowd to advantage. But the crowd did not interest me much. Such a mob of tourists, all gaping at one another in their avid quest for Aristokians!

Then she passed me, and I wheeled and followed her. What carriage! What a stride! She was an Anglo-Saxon; I felt sure of it. Something about her easy, swinging gait suggested New York to me.

At the end of the foyer she turned, and passed me again. As she did, something small and white rustled to the floor, a little piece of paper. I picked it up and read:

MR. SMITH: Stop flirting with me. Do you ever walk in the Bois Bourbon, along the path that leads to the statue of Marie Antoinette? It is very nice there sometimes, at about half-past nine in the morning.

The note filled me with dread and delight. Perhaps that paradox needs explaining. She had addressed me by name; evidently she knew that I was Smith, the Smith of capsule fame. This was pleasantly disconcerting; I had thought myself safely incognito in Aristokia. But she had not asked me to mate with her or marry her. She had accused me of flirting! What did I know of that subtle art, I who had always run away?

When I returned to my seat for the third act I sought her eyes eagerly. She looked through me and beyond me without the faintest flicker of interest in my existence. At the end of the opera she swept by me haughtily, stepped into her waiting airplane, and flew away skyward without so much as a glance in my direction. This was a new experience.

In my room at the Hohenzollern I reread her note. My dread vanished, and

my delight increased by leaps and bounds. She was different. She was not like any of the women I had known

-women from whom one fled in instinctive dread of losing one's sacred liberty. She had been brought up and educated in the prerevolutionary ambient of Aristokia.

Her note promised, and yet it did not promise. Here at last was the flavor of the past. Here at last were romance and adventure come into my life. Here was a woman with whom I could take the initiative, one who had maidenly reserve and a sense of modesty, one who was not forward or aggressive. A visit to the Bois Bourbon at half-past nine the next morning would prove delectable, I felt sure.

I undressed slowly, thinking of that prerevolutionary period before the world had become safe for democracy and unsafe for males. The civilized period, they had called it. What a simple age it had been! Then the sex problem had been almost unknown to the world.

How different is this complex age! Man's position to-day has become wellnigh intolerable. I feel confident in asserting that half of the unrest and unhappiness to-day is the direct result of the inequality of the sexual relations. In theory men and women are equal, and either may be the aggressor; but in practice what happens? No man has the slightest chance to be the aggressor. Woman always usurps the initiative. Man is terribly handicapped. Through centuries of cultivation of the art of chivalry by our forefathers it has become an instinct in present-day man. Few men are able to say "No" to a woman. When marriage existed, a man could at least let his wife divorce him and be rid of her in a courteous manner. But now that a mating can be legally terminated by the mere public expression of the will to do so on the part of either contracting party, no man with decent feelings can ever rid himself of a woman. The result is bondage, lifelong bondage.

The more I saw of Aristokia, the more I realized that those were without doubt the good old days for those of us who were males.

CHAPTER II

It was a glorious morning of early summer. The view from my windows sent the blood throbbing through my veins with the promise of unknown delights. Adventure was in the air, and romance in my heart. I had intended walking, but when told at the information bureau that the Bois Bourbon was in the western extremity of the city, my impatience obliged me to don my auto-peds and roll away more speedily.

I arrived at the appointed spot and thought myself in the heaven of the ancients. Beneath the statue of Marie Antoinette was a curved marble bench on which I sat. Before me unfolded an illimitable vista of exquisite landscape gardening, paths, shrubs, trees, fountains, statues, and flowers in beautiful arrangement. Birds twittered, and the cool, soft air was heavy with the scent of a million blossoms.

I was alone. Not a soul was in sight. God forgive me for uttering the heresy, but how one of our crowds would have spoilt it all! The brotherhood of man, all our precious theories, how silly they seemed to me then!

From musing I passed to rehearsing my forthcoming meeting with her, and then back to musing. I must have kept this up for nearly half an hour. Suddenly she appeared before me more radiant than I had dreamed her.

But I had over-rehearsed the scene. No woman had ever kept me waiting before, and the novelty of the thing upset my well-laid plans. I rose speechless, and stood gaping inanely.

"Good morning, Mr. Smith," she said. "Good morning, Miss-er-LadyPrincess," I stammered, mentally registering, "Not Miss, you fool! Of course she has a title."

"Gwendolyn," she said. "Silly name, is n't it? What 's yours?"

"John."

"I'll call you Jack. But what's your surname?"

"My surname?"

"Yes, your real name."

"My real name?" I was stupefied. "You know it," I asserted.

"Not Smith, not John Smith?" She looked at me incredulously.

"Yes." Why did she pretend not to know me now, I wondered.

She was laughing deliciously.

"That's really very funny," she said at last. "You know, it's our nickname for you. We call all the Nobodies, the outsiders, John Smith in Aristokia.

I was utterly crushed. My pride lay at my feet in a million pieces.

"I had thought you might have heard of me," I said plaintively. "I am the inventor John Smith Capsule John Smith," I added, trying to piece the remnants of my shattered vanity.

"Not the inventor of the detestable food capsule!"

"Digestible, not detestable," I interposed.

"It's all the same. It's a beastly invention. You have destroyed one of the fine arts, and reduced an esthetic pleasure to a vulgar necessity. We never use the thing here. We eat food."

"I like food myself, Gwendolyn." She smiled her approval. "Shall we walk? If you know how," she added, with a disdainful glance at my auto-peds.

"I wore them so that I could come to you quickly, Gwendolyn," I said as I removed the objectionable machines and slung them over my shoulder.

As we turned into a shady pathway I became awkwardly aware of the presence of a third person, an unprepossessing, scrawny little female dressed hideously in black. She walked at our heels like a dog. She made me horribly uncomfortable and silent.

"Have n't you anything nice to say to me, Jack?"

"A million things," I answered.

"Then you'd better begin. You know, I am risking everything to talk to you. It is expulsion from paradise to your capsule world if we are caught, and poor mama and papa will be ostracized for months, and you'll have to pay an enormous fine, Mr. Smith."

"Then why did you bring her along," I tried to whisper.

"Who?"

I tactfully and, I think, nonchalantly indicated the annoying female behind

us.

"That 's Fräulein, my chaperon." "Yes, but "