In the final book, Aristides Homos, Howells's Altrurian protagonist, writes a series of letters home to his friend Cyril.

Homos is now located in the densely urban environment of New York City, where he confronts the contrasts between America c. 1900 and his own pastoral and agrarian Utopianism in their most extreme forms.

The dramatic center of the book is the love affair between Homos and Evelith Strange, a wealthy widow of the American plutocracy.

Evelith has chosen the life of a socialite because she is frustrated by the limited effects of "good works" — though her routine of idleness conflicts with her Christian values and her conscience.

Curiously, the mother-in-law finds the adjustment relatively easy, since she realizes that she has returned to the simpler life she knew in her youth.