THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: Short Stories, Novels, Poems & Essays. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
soon after my departure from this life father died, very suddenly. Nellie inherited the farm — and the farm turned out to be a mine, and the mine turned out to be worth a good deal of money.
So that poor child, having no natural guardian or protector, just set to work for herself — went to college to her heart’s content, to a foreign university, too. She studied medicine, practiced a while, then was offered a chair in a college and took it; then — I hate to write it — but she is now president of a college — a coeducational college!
“Don’t you mean ‘dean?’” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “There is a dean of the girl’s building — but I am the president.”
My little sister!
. . . . .
The worst of it is that my little sister is now forty-eight, and I— to all intents and purposes — am twenty-five! She is twenty-three years older than I am. She has had thirty years of world-life which I have missed entirely, and this thirty years, I begin to gather, has covered more changes than an ordinary century or two.
It is lucky about that mine.
“At least I shall not have to worry about money,” I said to her when she told me about our increased fortune.
She gave one of those queer little smiles, as if she had something up her sleeve, and said:
“No; you won’t have to worry in the about money.”
Having all that medical skill of hers in the background, she took excellent care of me up there on those dreary plains and hills, brought me back to the coast by easy stages, and home on one of those new steamers — but I mustn’t stop to describe the details of each new thing I notice!
I have sense enough myself, even if I’m not a doctor, to use my mind gradually, not to swallow too fast, as it were.
Nellie is a little inclined to manage me. I don’t know as I blame her. I do feel like a child, sometimes. It is so humiliating not to know little common things such as everybody else knows. Air ships I expected, of course; they had started before I left. They are common enough, all sizes. But water is still the cheaper route — as well as slower.
Nellie said she didn’t want me to get home too quick; she wanted time to explain things. So we spent long, quiet hours in our steamer chairs, talking things over.
It’s no use asking about the family; there is only a flock of young cousins and “once removed” now; the aunts and uncles are mostly gone. Uncle Jake is left. Nellie grins wickedly when she mentions him.
“If things get too hard on you, John, you can go down to Uncle Jake’s and rest up. He and Aunt Dorcas haven’t moved an inch. They fairly barricade their minds against a new idea — and he ploughs and she cooks up on that little mountain farm just as they always did. People go to see them ”
“Why shouldn’t they?” I asked. And she smiled that queer little smile again.
“I mean they go to see them as if they were the Pyramids.”
“I see,” said I. “I might as well prepare for some preposterous nightmare of a world, like — what was that book of Wells’, ‘The Sleeper Awakened?’ ”
“Oh, yes; I remember that book,” she answered, “and a lot of others. People were already guessing about things as they might be, weren’t they? But what never struck any of them was that the people themselves could change.”
“No,” I agreed. “You can’t alter human nature.”
Nellie laughed — laughed out loud. Then she squeezed my hand and patted it.
“You Dear! she said. “You precious old Long–Lost Brother! When you get too utterly upset I’ll wear my hair down, put on a short dress and let you boss me awhile — to keep your spirits up. That was just the phrase, wasn’t it? — ‘You can’t alter human nature!’ ” And she laughed again.
There is something queer about Nellie — very queer. It is not only that she is different from my little sister — that’s natural; but she is different from any woman of forty-eight I ever saw — from any woman of any age I ever saw.
In the first place, she doesn’t look old — not at all. Women of forty, in our region, were old women, and Nellie’s near fifty! Then she isn’t — what shall I call it — dependent; not the least in the world. As soon as I became really conscious, and strong enough to be of any use, and began to offer her those little services and attentions due to a woman, I noticed this difference.
She is brisk, firm, assured — not unpleasantly so; I don’t mean a thing of that sort; but somehow like — almost like a man! No, I certainly don’t mean that. She is not in the least mannish, nor in the least self-assertive; but she takes things so easily — as if she owned them.
I suppose it will be some time before my head is absolutely clear and strong as it used to be. I tire rather easily. Nellie is very reassuring about it. She says it will take about a year to re-establish connections and renew mental processes. She advises me to read and talk only a little every day, to sleep all I can, and not to worry.
“You’ll be all right soon, my dear,” she says, “and plenty of life before you. You seem to have led a very healthy out-door life. You’re really well and strong — and as good-looking as ever.”
At least she hasn’t forgotten that woman’s chief duty is to please.
“And the world is a much better place to be in than it was,” she assured me. “Things will surprise you, of course — things I have gotten used to and shall forget to tell you about. But the changes are all good ones, and you’ll soon get — acclimated. You’re young yet.”
That’s where Nellie slips up. She cannot help having me in mind as the brave young brother she knew. She forgets that I am an old man now. Finally I told her that.
“No, John Robertson,” she she, “that’s where you are utterly wrong. Of course, you don’t know what we’re doing about age — how differently we feel. As a matter of physiology we find that about one hundred and fifty ought to be our natural limit; and that with proper conditions we can easily get to be a hundred now. Ever so many do.”
“I don’t want to be a hundred,” I protested. “I saw a man of ninety-eight once, and never want to be one.”
“It’s not like that now,” she said. “I mean we live to be a hundred and enjoy life still — ‘keep our faculties,’ as they used to put it. Why, the ship’s doctor here is eighty-seven.”
This surprised me a good deal. I had talked a little with this man, and had thought him about sixty.
“Then a man of a hundred, according to your story, would look like — like —:— ”
“Like Grandpa Ely,” she offered.
I remembered my mother’s father — a tall, straight, hale old man of seventy-five. He had a clear eye, a firm step, a rosy color in his face. Well, that wasn’t so bad a prospect.
“I consent to be a hundred — on those terms,” I told her.
. . . . .
She talked to me a good bit, in small daily doses, of the more general changes in the world, showed me new maps, even let me read a little in the current magazines.
“I suppose you have a million of these now,” I said. “There were thousands when I left!”
“No,” she answered. “There are fewer, I believe; but much better.”
I turned over the one in my hand. It was pleasantly light and thin, it opened easily, the paper and presswork were of the best, the price was twenty-five cents.
“Is this a cheap one — at a higher price? or have the best ones come down?”
“It’s a cheap one,”