Having known in our lives several people who showed
the same delicate courtesy and were equally pleasant to live with,
at least when they wore their "company manners," we had assumed
that our companions were a carefully chosen few. Later we were
more and more impressed that all this gentle breeding was breeding;
that they were born to it, reared in it, that it was as natural
and universal with them as the gentleness of doves or the alleged
wisdom of serpents.
As for the intelligence, I confess that this was the most
impressive and, to me, most mortifying, of any single feature of
Herland. We soon ceased to comment on this or other matters
which to them were such obvious commonplaces as to call forth
embarrassing questions about our own conditions.
This was nowhere better shown than in that matter of food
supply, which I will now attempt to describe.
Having improved their agriculture to the highest point, and
carefully estimated the number of persons who could comfortably
live on their square miles; having then limited their population
to that number, one would think that was all there was to be done.
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