junk--sort of relics of the savage
Apemen. When our children were shown these things and informed that a
king of an Apeman nation would gladly sacrifice the lives of a hundred
thousand of his subjects in an attempt to gain possession of them, or
that his subjects would murder their friends, brothers, wives or
children in an effort to secure some for themselves, it was impossible
for their youthful minds to fully understand why the Apeman should
become so ferocious and idiotic over such trifles. They naturally looked
upon your species as you would view a tribe of monkeys fighting amongst
themselves for the possession of a string of glass beads. The Apeman
like the monkey is incapable of seeing his own absurdities."

"And what about gold?" I inquired. "We had a building constructed of
it," answered she. "One of the first things the Sagemen did after they
abolished the system of individual accumulation was to take all the gold
there was in the country, and mould it into a huge edifice to be used as
a national museum, and represent a sort of monument to a dead system."

"It must have been a magnificent structure," said I, in amazement. "On
the contrary," replied Arletta, "it was the most hideous building in our
land. As a curiosity it was worth seeing, but as an object of grandeur
it was a total failure. There is more real beauty in one of nature's
tiniest flowers than there would be in a mountain built of gold and
studded with diamonds, but the little Apeman who considers gold the
standard of value cannot understand this."

"When you mentioned the absurdity of wearing jewelry," said I, "it
brought to my attention the fact that you wear no shoes upon your feet,
and that your toes are much longer and far more shapely and supple than
is the case nowadays."

"Yes," answered she, "that is because we made use of our toes as well as
our fingers for useful purposes. It appears to me that the Apeman has
permitted his feet to grow into mere hoofs with which to stump along
upon, and from what I observed during my excursion around the world,
your people are even allowing their hoofs to become worthless," and here
she smiled as she recalled to mind some of the gouty, rheumatic and
over-fed mortals she had seen during that trip.

As Arletta smiled, her beautiful lips parted and for the first time I
noticed, much to my surprise, that she had no teeth. A woman of our own
kind without teeth generally presents a rather dilapidated appe