a fencer's. She maintained a pleasant
relation with her charge, but I doubt if many, even in that country,
could have done as well.

He called her "Maud," amongst ourselves, and said she was "a good old
soul, but a little slow"; wherein he was quite wrong. Needless to
say, he called Jeff's teacher "Java," and sometimes "Mocha," or plain
"Coffee"; when specially mischievous, "Chicory," and even "Postum." But
Somel rather escaped this form of humor, save for a rather forced "Some
'ell."

"Don't you people have but one name?" he asked one day, after we
had been introduced to a whole group of them, all with pleasant,
few-syllabled strange names, like the ones we knew.

"Oh yes," Moadine told him. "A good many of us have another, as we get
on in life--a descriptive one. That is the name we earn. Sometimes even
that is changed, or added to, in an unusually rich life. Such as our
present Land Mother--what you call president or king, I believe. She
was called Mera, even as a child; that means 'thinker.' Later there
was added Du--Du-Mera--the wise thinker, and now we all know her as
O-du-mera--great and wise thinker. You shall meet her."

"No surnames at all then?" pursued Terry, with his somewhat patronizing
air. "No family name?"

"Why no," she said. "Why should we? We are all descended from a common
source--all one 'family' in reality. You see, our comparatively brief
and limited history gives us that advantage at least."

"But does not each mother want her own child to bear her name?" I asked.

"No--why should she? The child has its own."

"Why for--for identification--so people will know whose child she is."

"We keep the most careful records," said Somel. "Each one of us has our
exact line of descent all the way back to our dear First Mother. There
are many reasons for doing that. But as to everyone knowing which child
belongs to which mother--why should she?"

Here, as in so many other instances, we were led to feel the difference
between the purely maternal and the paternal attitude of mind. The
element of personal pride seemed strangely lacking.

"How about your other works?" asked Jeff. "Don't you sign your names to
them--books and statues and so on?"

"Yes, surely, we are all glad and proud to. Not only books and statues,
but all kinds of work. You will find little names on the houses, on the
furniture, on the dishes sometimes. Because otherwise one is likely to
forget, and we want to know to whom to be