“Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes” was written at Dublin, New Hampshire, between 20 May and 23 June 1905. During that time Mark Twain worked rapidly and exuberantly. On 11 June he wrote to his daughter Clara that he had reached page 240 of the manuscript and exulted, “It beats the record (—oh, all to smash!).”1 Five days later he reported to F. A. Duneka of Harper & Brothers, “I am deep in a new book which I enjoy more than I have enjoyed any other for twenty years and I hope it will take me the entire summer to write it.”2 But by 24 June he had apparently emptied the tank of his inspiration. He informed his friend Joseph H. Twichell, “I began a new book here in this enchanting solitude 35 days ago. I have done 33 full days' work on it. To-day I have not worked. There was another day in this present month wherein I did no work—you will know that date without my telling you.”3 The date was that of his wife's death, which had come on 5 June of the preceding year. This story, like other selections in this volume, was written with pleasure but written nevertheless under the shadow of disaster.
There is no evidence that Mark Twain took up work upon the manuscript again after the 24th; probably he had already written all of it that now exists. According to A. B. Paine, “He tired of it before it reached completion. . . . Its chief mission was to divert him mentally [begin page 431] that summer during those days and nights when he would otherwise have been alone and brooding upon his loneliness.”4 Paine called the work “a fantastic tale” and “a sort of scientific revel”; he also commented, “It was a satire, of course—Gulliver's Lilliput outdone—a sort of scientific, socialistic, mathematical jamboree.”5 The narrator, a cholera germ who in a previous existence has been a human being, comes to the world of the microbes to escape the tainted atmosphere of his former country, a land of get-rich-quick opportunism. But with irony Mark Twain then shows “Huck,” as the narrator comes to be called, elaborating a foolish dream of an imaginary fortune in gold and persuading even himself that it is a reality. “Huck” illustrates the author's gospel of selfishness as he schemes to keep all of the dream gold for himself rather than share it with his partners. Like other one-horse individuals, he is ready to lie and cheat and steal when tempted beyond his limit. The story breaks off after he has revealed his own corruption. Were it not for Mark Twain's statement in 1906 that he had left the manuscript half-finished, one might even say that at this point the narrative ends, for there is a sense of finality in “Huck's” moral disintegration. Although Mark Twain made many notes for the story, on sheets of small note-pad paper, they do not reveal any further intention for the plot; rather, they suggest that in any continuation he would have used this book as a vehicle for further satire on a variety of topics, including stock market manipulations, Tammany Hall, the Russo-Japanese War, and imperialism. Two brief fragments satirize, respectively, pension frauds and “Kitchen Science.” The latter fragment, which shows “Huck” cynically adopting a religion that will not, he believes, require of him any charities or sacrifices, logically follows the “ending” mentioned above. However, it was not included in a typescript that was prepared under Mark Twain's direction, and he probably did not intend to use it. The typescript was made by Jean Clemens, who followed the holograph but occasionally changed or omitted words or phrases. Since there is no evidence that these alterations were intended by Mark Twain, the holograph has in such cases been credited with primary authority. The typescript has, however, been considered reliable for its indication of the sections of the manuscript that Mark Twain meant to include and of his intended ordering of them, for in these [begin page 432] matters his daughter followed his directions, which appear as marginalia in the holograph.
The chapters have been numbered as he designated them; there are two runs of XI–XIV. However, the narration is continuous throughout the manuscript, and there seems to be no warrant for omitting or changing the order of either of the two sequences. His two prefaces have also been presented as he wrote them.
by a microbe
With Notes Added by the Same Hand 7,000 Years Later
Translated from the Original Microbic
By
mark twain
1905.
PREFACE.
Although this work is a History, I believe it to be true. There is internal evidence in every page of it that its Author was conscientiously trying to state bare facts, unembellished by fancy. While this insures irksome reading, it also insures useful reading; and I feel satisfied that this will be regarded as full compensation by an intelligent public which has long been suffering from a surfeit of pure History unrefreshed by fact. Among the thousands of statements put forth in this Work there are but two that have a doubtful look, and I think these divergences—if they are divergences—are forgivable for the reason that there are indications that the Author made them with regret and was afterward pursued by remorse for having made them at all. But for this pair of slight and indeed inconsequential blemishes, there had been no occasion for apologies from me.
The Translator.
[begin page 434]PREFACE.
I have translated the author's style and construction, as well as his matter. I began by reforming these, but gave it up. It amounted to putting evening dress on a stevedore and making him stand up in the college and lecture. He was trim, but he was stiff; he delivered strict English, polished English, but it seemed strained and artificial, coming from such a source, and was not pleasant, not satisfactory. Elegant, but cold and unsympathetic. In fact, corpsy. It seemed best to put him back into his shirt-sleeves and overalls, and let him flounder around after the fashion that he was used to.
His style is loose and wandering and garrulous and self-contented beyond anything I have ever encountered before, and his grammar breaks the heart. But there is no remedy: let it go.
The Translator.
His title-page is incorrect.
xxxxx. But really no one was to blame, it was an accident.
xxxx.
The magician's experiment miscarried, because of the impossibility of getting pure and honest drugs in those days, and the result was that he transformed me into a cholera-germ when he was trying to turn me into a bird.6
[begin page 435]* note, 7,000 years later. I had been a microbe 3,000 years (microbe-years) when I resolved to do this Narrative. At first I was minded to save time and labor by delivering it into the mechanical thought-recorder, but I gave up that idea because I might want to deal in some privacies—in fact I should have to do it—and a body might as well publish a secret and be done with it as put it into a machine which is ready to reveal its privacies to any thief that will turn the crank, let the thief's language and nationality be what they may. So I decided to write my book in my own tongue. Not many sooflaskies would be able to read it if they got hold of it; besides, I was beginning to forget my English, and this labor would presently bring it back to me as good as new, no doubt. B.b.B.
At first I was not pleased. But this feeling did not last. I was soon interested in my surroundings, and eager to study them and enjoy them. I was peculiarly well equipped for these pleasures, for certain reasons: to wit, I had become instantly naturalized, instantly endowed with a cholera germ's instincts, perceptions, opinions, ideals, ambitions, vanities, prides, affections and emotions; that is to say, I was become a real cholera germ, not an imitation one; I was become intensely, passionately, cholera-germanic; indeed, I out-natived the natives themselves, and felt and spoke and acted like those girls of ours who marry nobilities and lose their democracy the first week and their American accent the next; I loved all the germ-world—the Bacilli, the Bacteria, the Microbes, etc.,—and took them to my heart with all the zeal they would allow; my patriotism was hotter than their own, more aggressive, more uncompromising; I was the germiest of the germy. It will be perceived, now, that I could observe the germs from their own point of view. At the same time, I was able to observe them from a human being's point of view, and naturally this invested them with an added interest for me. Another thing: my human measurements of time and my human span of life remained to me, right alongside of my full appreciation of the germ-measurements of time and the germ span of life. That is to say, when I was thinking as a human, 10 minutes meant 10 minutes, but when I was thinking as a microbe, it meant a year; when I was thinking as a human, an hour meant an hour, but when I was thinking as a mircrobe it meant 6 years; when I was thinking as a human, a day meant a day, but when I was thinking as a microbe it meant 144 years; when I was thinking as a human, a week meant a week, but when I was thinking as a microbe it [begin page 436] meant 1,008 years; when I was thinking as a human, a year meant a year, but when I was thinking as a microbe it meant 52,416 years. When I was using microbe-time, I could start at the cradle with a tender young thing and grow old with her: follow her fortunes second by second, minute by minute, hour after hour; see her bud into sweet maidenhood, see her marry an idolized husband, see her develop into the matron's noble estate, see her lovingly watch over her millions of babes, see her rear them in honesty and honor, see her mourn the loss of millions of them by early death, see her rejoice over the happy nuptials of more fortunate millions of them, see old age and wrinkles and decrepitude descend gradually upon her, and finally see her released from the griefs and the burden of life and laid to rest in the hallowed peace of the grave, with my benediction and my tears for farewell—all this in 150 years by microbe-count, about 24 hours by human time.
The erring magician introduced me into the blood of a hoary and mouldering old bald-headed tramp. His name is Blitzowski—if that isn't an alias—and he was shipped to America by Hungary because Hungary was tired of him. He tramps in the summer and sleeps in the fields; in the winter he passes the hat in cities, and sleeps in the jails when the gutter is too cold; he was sober once, but does not remember when it was; he never shaves, never washes, never combs his tangled fringe of hair; he is wonderfully ragged, incredibly dirty; he is malicious, malignant, vengeful, treacherous, he was born a thief, and will die one; he is unspeakably profane, his body is a sewer, a reek of decay, a charnel house, and contains swarming nations of all the different kinds of germ-vermin that have been invented for the contentment of man. He is their world, their globe, lord of their universe, its jewel, its marvel, its miracle, its masterpiece. They are as proud of their world as is any earthling of his. When the soul of the cholera-germ [begin page 437] possesses me I am proud of him: I shout for him, I would die for him; but when the man-nature invades me I hold my nose. At such times it is impossible for me to respect this pulpy old sepulchre.
I have been a microbe about 3 weeks, now. By microbe-time it is 3 thousand years. What ages and ages of joy, prosperity, poverty, hope, despair, triumph, defeat, pain, grief, misery, I have seen, felt, experienced in this lagging and lingering slow drift of centuries! What billions of friends I have made, and loved, and clung to, only to see them pass from this fleeting life to return no more! What black days I have seen—but also what bright ones!
When i became a microbe, the transformation was so complete that I felt at home at once. This is not surprising, for men and germs are not widely different from each other. Of germs there are many nationalities, and there are many languages, just as it is with mankind. The germs think the man they are occupying is the only world there is. To them it is a vast and wonderful world, and they are as proud of it as if they had made it themselves. It seems a pity that this poor forlorn old tramp will never know that, for compliments are scarce with him.
Our world (the tramp) is as large and grand and awe-compelling to us microscopic creatures as is man's world to man. Our tramp is mountainous, there are vast oceans in him, and lakes that are sea-like for size, there are many rivers (veins and arteries) which are fifteen miles across, and of a length so stupendous as to make the Mississippi and the Amazon trifling little Rhode Island brooks by comparison. As for our minor rivers, they are multitu- [begin page 438] dinous , and the dutiable commerce of disease which they carry is rich beyond the dreams of the American custom-house.
Well, and why shouldn't our tramp seem imposing and majestic to us little creatures? Think what a wee little speck a man would be if you stood the American Continent up on end in front of him. Standing there with his back to the waves,—standing there on the arching roof of the continent's big toe, (Cape Horn), he would naturally lift his eyes skyward; and how far up that dimming huge frontage would his vision carry? Half way to the knees? No. Not a tenth of the distance! Evanishment would quickly supervene, the colossus would be swallowed up and lost in the sky! If you should stand one of us microscopic specks upon the roof of our tramp's big toe and say “look up”—well, you'd have the same result over again.
There are upwards of a thousand republics in our planet, and as many as thirty thousand monarchies. Several of these monarchies have a venerable history behind them. They do not date back to the actual moment of Blitzowski's birth, for a human child is born pure of disease-germs, and remains pure of them for a matter of three or four hours—say eighteen or twenty years, microbe-time—but they do date back to the earliest invasions, and have sturdily maintained and preserved their regal authority in full force through all vicissitudes from that remote period until now, a stretch approximating four and a half million years. In one case the same dynasty holds the throne to-day that established it twenty-five hundred thousand years ago. This is the Pus family,—Pus being the family name, just as Romanoff is the family name of the Czars; the official title is, His August Majesty Henry, D.G. Staphylococcus Pyogenes Aureus * CMX—that is to say, he is the One Hundred and
*Latin. “D.G.,” (Deus gratias,) means by the grace of God. The long word means pus-tank. The next word—when used in a scientific sense—means principal; politically it means imperial; in the slang of the common people it means brick, and is a term of admiration. Aureus means gold. Hence the title, when occurring in a State paper, could be translated Henry by the grace of God Imperial Pus-Tank, while in the endearing speech of the common people it would be shortened to Henry the Gold Brick.
The English monarchy—the real English monarchy—has been in existence about 840 years; its 36 reigns have averaged about 23 years each. Pretty nearly the same average obtains here. At least it is so with the great monarchy of which I have been speaking—the greatest, in population, and the most ambitious, in all Blitzowski. In my 3,000 years here I have walked, uncovered and sincerely sorrowing, at the end of the funeral pageants of 121 sovereigns of this venerable line, and have been permitted to assist in the rejoicings which followed the coronations of their successors. It is a stern and noble race, and by diplomacy and arms has pushed its frontiers far. Wherever it has deprived a conquered nation of its liberties and its religion it has replaced these with something better. It is justly claimed for this great House that it has carried the blessings of civilization further than has any other imperial power. In honor of this good work many of our microbe nations have come to speak of pus and civilization as being substantially the same thing.*
*Note: 5,000 Years Later. The microbe's name for himself is not Microbe, it is Sooflasky. It would bankrupt the Unabridged to furnish definitions enough to damage all its meanings and make you afraid of the word forever after. Oh, that worthless, worthless book, that timid book, that shifty book, that uncertain book, that time-serving book, that exasperating book, that unspeakable book, the Unlimited Dictionary! that book with but one object in life: to get in more words and shadings of the words than its competitors. With the result that nearly every time it gets done shading a good old useful word it means everything in general and nothing in particular. When, in my human life, we first borrowed the word unique, for instance, it was strong and direct, it meant sole, only, the one and only “joker”—not another one in the pack; the one and only existent example of whatever thing the user of the word was referring to: then the Dictionary took hold of it, and hitched to it every careless user's definition of it that it could hunt out—and look at that whilom virgin now! I am not as particular as I might be, perhaps, but I should not like to be caught going around in public with that trollop.
Now as to that word Sooflasky. Straitly translated, it means in Blitzowski what the word Man—as chief creature in the scheme of Creation—means in the human World: that is to say, The Pet, The Chosen One, The Wonderful One, The Grand Razzledazzle, The Whole Thing, The Lord of Creation, The Drum Major, The Head of the Procession. The word Sooflasky means all that, includes all those shades. To construct an English equivalent that would hold them all and not leak was exceedingly difficult, for me, but I believe [begin page 440] Bullyboywithaglasseye came nearest. I often applied it to my fellow-microbes, from the very first, and they liked it. Partly because it was long and fine-sounding and foreign, and partly because of the modified translation I furnished along with it. I told them it was the form employed by our best Major Molar poets, and meant “the Deity's Delight.” On these terms I worked it into universal use among the grateful clergy, the poets, the great orators, and the rest of our best people. Quaintly and prettily accented, and delivered lingeringly and lovingly and impressively in a sermon, or with fire and thunder and gush in a great oration, it is certainly one of the nobbiest things I know of. But the first time I heard it wafted from the pulpit it took me unprepared, and it was all I could do to keep from being over-affected by it.
I often used the term Microbe, applying it freely to myself and to the others; and this without offence. If I had explained its real meaning—its mean little patronizing microscopic meaning—there would have been trouble, but I did not do that. I saved myself early. I said it was Major Molar for “the Creature With The Moral Sense,” and was the cold scientific term employed to technically describe the Lord Paramount of Animated Nature. There are times when guff is better than fact, and you get more for the price.
“The Creature With The Moral Sense.” The the got them—the the captured them—the the took them into camp. You know, I thought it would. To be a “the” is something, to Man and Microbe; but to be the “the”—oh, well, that is a bait which they can't resist at all. I was always a daring person, I never could help it, and I played that 'ansome title on them for a compliment. They did the natural thing, the thing which the honestest of us does when he is on uncertain ground: they looked wise and unsurprised, and let on to know all about it. Without doubt they thought I had brought that jewel from some deep well of erudition in the Major Molar. If they thought that, one thing was sure: they wouldn't expose their ignorance by asking me. No, they would keep still; they wouldn't even risk asking if it was a custom there to keep such things in wells.
My instinct was right; that is to say, my knowledge was right—my knowledge of the furtive and cautious ways of Man and Microbe: they didn't ask any questions. Not public ones, at any rate. One inquirer did approach me, but he came privately. He wanted to talk frankly and freely, he said, but hoped I would let the conversation be and remain confidential. He said—
“I will be candid, for I am inviting candor. You supposed, of course, that your ‘the Creature With The Moral Sense’ was not new to us, but it was; our calm manner of receiving it was a deception; we had never heard of it before. It has gone into currency; it is accepted, and purred over, and I think it is safe to say that everybody is vain of it, the learned and the ignorant alike. So—”
“Dear sir,” I said, with some complacency, interrupting, “I was not altogether deceived—I was doing a little pretending on my own account; I perceived that the restricting of the Moral Sense to the Bullyboywithaglasseye was a new idea to them, and—”
“Oh, bless you, no!” cried he, “not that. That was not new.”
“Ah-h,” said I, a little squelched, “what was it that was new, then?”
“Why, the the—used as you used it. You see, that emphasis was the striking thing. I mean, the way you said it. It made it sound like a title of honor, a compliment. Making a compliment of it was a new idea, you see. We haven't ever doubted that the Moral Sense is restricted to the Higher Animals, but—look here, give me some help. Our idea of the Moral Sense is, that it teaches us how to distinguish right from wrong; isn't that your idea of it, the Major Molar idea of it?”
[begin page 441]“Yes.”
“Also, it enables us to find out what is right, and do it.”
“Correct.”
“Also, it enables us to find out what is wrong, and do that.”
“Correct.”
“Also, without it we couldn't find out what was wrong, and therefore couldn't do wrong. There wouldn't be any wrong; everything we did would be right. Just as it is with the Lower Animals.”
“Correct, again.”
“Rationally stated, then, the function of the Moral Sense is to create wrong—since without it all conduct would be right.”
“Correct.”
“It creates wrong, points it out, and so enables us to do it.”
“Yes.”
“Therefore the special and particular office of the Moral Sense is to suggest, instigate and propagate wrong-doing.”
“Also, right-doing, dear sir—admit it, please.”
“Excuse me, we could do that without it. But we couldn't do wrong without it.”
“Very true. But dear sir, to be able to do wrong is a high distinction—it lifts us far above the other animals. It is a good deal of a distinction, isn't it?”
“Yes: the distinction between a dial and a tin watch.”
x x x He went away pretty sour. All the same, the the was planted, and it stayed. Ever since then, these nations look complacently down upon the Lower Animals because they can't do wrong, and complacently up at themselves because they can. The Microbes are my own people, and I loyally and patriotically admire them and am proud of them; yet I know in my secret heart that when it comes to reasoning-power they are not really a shade less comical than Man. B.b.B.
P.S., 2,000 years still later. That note was an error. I had not given the matter sufficient thought at that time. I am aware now that the Moral Sense is a valuable possession, indeed inestimably valuable. Without it we could not be what we are. Life would be monotonous, it would consist of sleeping and feeding, only, it would have no lofty ambitions, no noble ideals, there would be no missionaries, no statesmen, no jails, no crime, no soldiers, no thrones, no slaves, no slaughter,—in a word, no Civilization. Without the Moral Sense, Civilization is impossible. B.b.B. 7
I have often been in the actual presence of our Emperors. More, I have been spoken to by them. This great honor has never been vouchsafed to any other foreigner of my degree in all the vast stretch of time during which the present Family has occupied the [begin page 442] throne. It was accorded only once before, in all history. That was nearly three million years ago. There is a monument, to preserve the memory of it. It is rebuilt every five hundred years, by voluntary contributions exacted by the State. This is in obedience to an edict promulgated by the emperor of that ancient day and dynasty, who was of a lofty nature and noted for his benevolence. It is a matter of pride to me to know that the subject of that distinction was of my own race—a cholera germ. Beyond this fact nothing is known of him except that he was a foreigner. From what part of Blitzowski he came, history does not say, nor what procured him the memorable honor which the emperor bestowed upon him.
Foreigners are not hated, here; I may say they are not even disliked—they are tolerated. The people treat them courteously, but are indifferent to them. They look down upon them, without being distinctly conscious of it. Foreigners are regarded as inferiors everywhere under the Blitzowski skies. Substantially that, though there are some exceptions. One at least—Getrichquick, the principal republic. There, a third-rate foreign microbic celebrity easily outranks a first-rate native one, and is received with a worshipful enthusiasm which astonishes him away down in his private soul, and he gets more champagne than he gets beer at home. In a Blitzowskan monarchy it is the other way: there, a Getrichquick first-rate ranks as a fifth-rate. But he is solaced: he is a shade prouder of being fifth-rate there than first-rate at home.
Everywhere throughout the planet of Blitzowski the foreigner ranks as an inferior, except—as I have just said—in the mighty Republic of Getrichquick, universally known as the greatest of all the democracies. It occupies a prodigious domain. Under its flag is the whole of Blitzowski's stomach, which is the richest country, the most fertile, the most productive and the most prodigally and variously endowed with material resources in all the microbic world. In that world it is one of the two or three conspicuously great centres of trade. Its commerce, both domestic and foreign, is colossal. Its transportation-facilities are quite extraordinary; these make it a distributing-centre of imposing importance. In manufactures it heads all the countries in Blitzowski. It imports raw [begin page 443] materials from the North and ships the manufactured product to all the great nations lying toward the South. For ages it was selfish; it cared for the prosperity and happiness of its own people only, and steadily refused to extend its dominions in the interest of remote and suffering little nations. Many of its best people were ashamed of this. They saw great Heartland sending the refreshing blood of her gracious Civilization to many a dark and neglected nation rotting in debasing indolence and oriental luxury upon the confines of Blitzowski and requiring nothing in return but subjection and revenue; they saw imperial Henryland, far away in the desolate North gradually and surely spreading its dominion down the planet's flat expanse from the Shoulder Range to the lofty land of the Far South—the “Majestic Dome” of the poet and the traveler—distributing happiness and pus all the way, and in return requiring nothing of the benefited peoples except what they had; they saw these things and were ashamed. They were ashamed, and they rose and fought that policy at the polls and replaced it with a higher and holier one, which they baptised with the noble name of Benevolent Assimilation. It was an epoch-making achievement. It lifted Getrichquick out of her obscure and selfish isolation, the moment she was worthy, and throned her in the august company of the Pirate Powers. This was in very recent times—hardly three hundred and fifty thousand years ago, indeed. Far away, in the midst of the shoreless solitudes of the Great Lone Sea8 was a collection of mud islets inhabited by those harmless bacilli which are the food of the fierce hispaniola sataniensis, whose excretions are the instrument appointed to propagate disease in the human trigonum. This archipelago was benevolently assimilated by the puissant Republic. It was first ingeniously wrested from its owners, by help of the unsuspicious owners themselves, then it was purchased from its routed and dispossessed foreign oppressors at a great price. This made the title perfect, even elegant. Also it added a Great Power to Blitzowski's riches and distinctions of that sort. The new Great Power was really no greater than it was before; the [begin page 444] addition of the mud-piles was about the equivalent of adding a prairie-dog village to a mountain range, but the artificial expansion produced by the addition was so vast that it may justly be likened to a case of “before and after”: the great Captive Balloon of Paris lying flat and observed of no passer-by, before filling, and the same balloon high in the air, rotund, prodigious, its belly full of gas, the wonder and admiration of a gazing world.
The native bacilli of the islets are of the kind called “benevolent” by the Blitzowski scientist. That is to say, they are not disease-producers. They are unusually little creatures. I have seen several of them. They were hardly more than five feet in diameter. I mean, as seen by my present eye—the eye of a microbe. Ordinary bacilli can be seen by a human being with a microscope magnifying ten or twelve hundred times; but he would not be able to see these little creatures without magnifying them considerably more than that. If you bunch a million ordinary bacilli together on a glass slide they will appear to the naked human eye like a minute stain, but I doubt if a similar crowd of these little Great Lone Sea islanders could be detected at all by the naked human eye. Yes, they are small, like their archipelago, but to hear the Republic talk about the combination, you would think she had been annexing four comets and a constellation.
The first of my imperial masters I was privileged to see was Henry the Great. Not the first one bearing that title—no, I do not mean that; mine was the 861st Henry the Great. By law and usage he was called Seiner Kaiserlichedurchlaustigstehochbegabtergot-tallmächtiger Eight-Sixty-One des Grossen. It sounds like German, but it isn't. Many of the 861 Greats earned the envied title by begetting heirs in a time of scarcity, several earned it by generalship in war and other forms of massacre, others earned it by illustrious achievements in the line of Benevolent Assimilation, still others by acting as the Church's harlot, others still by enriching the nobility with State lands and with large pensions and gratuities bilked from the public till; the rest earned it by sitting still, looking wise, accepting the credit of the great achievements of their ministers of State—and not meddling. These latter are held in imperishable honor by the grateful nation. They have their [begin page 445] monuments. Built by the people, by voluntary contributions—real voluntaries. And rebuilt by the people whenever time moulders them to ruin.
As I have already remarked, my own Henry the Great was No. 861. This was about 3,000 years ago—when I first came. That I should have the distinction of appearing before the emperor was a most extraordinary thing. Because I was a foreigner, and (at that time) not noble. My sept—the Cholera Microbes—is one of the Malignant Septs, therefore nobilities may be chosen from it, but I myself was neither noble nor received by persons of noble degree. So it naturally made a great sensation when I was commanded to the presence.
The event came about in this way. By some strange circumstance the egg of an American flea got into Blitzowski's blood and was hatched out and drowned. Then it became fossilized. This was about four million years ago, when the tramp was a boy. On earth I was a scientist by profession, and I remained one after I was transformed into a microbe. Paleontology was a passion with me. I was soon searching for fossils. I found several new ones, and this good fortune gave me the entré into scientific society. Local, I mean. It was humble and obscure, but in its heart burned the same passion for science that was consuming my own.
Note. Seven Thousand Years Later.9 Many things have gone from my memory in the 7,000 years that have passed since then, but I still remember little incidents connected with my introduction to that pleasant comradeship. We had a little banquet, a very modest one, of course, for we were all poor and earned our living by hard work in common handicrafts, but it was very good, what there was of it. Exceedingly good, I may say. The word is not too strong, for we were more used to fasting than feasting. We had both kinds of corpuscles, and they were served up in six different ways, from soup and raw down to pie. The red ones were a little high, but Tom Nash made us all laugh by wittily saying it wasn't any matter, because the bill was so low that—that—well, it has gone from me, but I still consider it one of the wittiest things I have ever heard in my life. And he said it offhand—he did not have to stop and think, just flirted it out without any study, and perfectly easy and composed, the same as if he might be saying any little thing; and he . . . but was it Tom? . . . Ah, well, it could have been Sam Bowen . . . or maybe John Garth or Ed. Stevens. . . . Anyway it was one of them, I remember it [begin page 446] perfectly. Yes, it was a quite memorable event, for young fellows like us. Ah, little did we suspect that we were making history! But we were. Little did we foresee that our poor little banquet was going to live forever in song and story, and in text-book and grave chronicle, and that my most careless words were destined to be remembered, and treasured and reverently repeated until the last germ shall fall silent and be gathered to his rest. I think the finest part of my speech was where I said, in concluding a lofty and impassioned tribute to the real nobility of Science and her devotees, “Ah, gentlemen,” I said, “in the—the . . . in the—.” I will look it up, in one of the Universal Histories. Here it is: “Ah, gentlemen, in the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!”
Of course the boys did not understand the references, and I did not explain at that time, but it was a grand peroration and the eloquence of it carried them clear off their feet. Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information. B.b.B.
I no longer regretted lost America, I was among friends, admirers, helpers, and was happy.
In all ways I was enviably situated in those days. I lived in the country, in a dozing village, an easy distance from the capital, and had for neighbors a kindly and innocent peasantry whose quaint habits and quainter speech I loved to study. There were some billions of them, in the village and around it, yet they seemed few and scattering, for billions count for nothing among germs. The region was healthful and attractive; on every hand a receding and diminishing perspective of fair fields and gardens and parks, threaded with limpid streams and musical with the songs of birds, stretched away to a stately mountain rampart which lifted its rugged and broken sky-line against the western horizon—a prospect ever serene, contenting and beautiful, and never curtained, never blotted out, for in Blitzowski there is no night. What would be the blackest darkness to a human eye is noonday—a noonday as of fairyland, soft and rich and delicate—to the microbe's. The microbe's mission is urgent, exacting, he seldom sleeps, until age tires him.
What would my rugged mountains be, to the human eye? Ah, they would hardly even rank as warts. And my limpid and sparkling streams? Cobweb threads, delicate blood-vessels which it could not detect without the aid of the microscope. And the soaring arch of my dream-haunted sky? For that coarse eye it would have [begin page 447] no existence. To my exquisite organ of vision all this spacious landscape is alive—alive and in energetic motion—unceasing motion—every detail of it! It is because I can see the individual molecules that compose it, and even the atoms which compose the molecules; but no microscope is powerful enough to reveal either of these things to the human eye. To the human mind they exist only in theory, not in demonstrated fact. The human mind—that wonderful machine—has measured the invisible molecule, and measured it accurately, without seeing it; also it has counted the multitudinous electrons that compose it, and counted them correctly, without having seen one of them; certainly a marvelous achievement.
Take a man like Sir Oliver Lodge, and what secret of Nature can be hidden from him? He says: “A billion, that is a million millions, of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting aggregate is still excessively minute. A portion of substance consisting of a billion atoms is only barely visible with the highest power of a microscope; and a speck or granule, in order to be visible to the naked eye, like a grain of lycopodium-dust, must be a million times bigger still.”
The human eye could see it then—that dainty little speck. But with my microbe-eye I could see every individual of the whirling billions of atoms that compose the speck. Nothing is ever at rest—wood, iron, water, everything is alive, everything is raging, whirling, whizzing, day and night and night and day, nothing is dead, there is no such thing as death, everything is full of bristling life, tremendous life, even the bones of the crusader that perished before Jerusalem eight centuries ago. There are no vegetables, all things are animal; each electron is an animal, each molecule is a collection of animals, and each has an appointed duty to perform and a soul to be saved. Heaven was not made for man alone, and oblivion and neglect reserved for the rest of His creatures. He gave them life, He gave them humble services to perform, they have performed them, and they will not be forgotten, they will have their reward. Man—always vain, windy, conceited—thinks he will be in the majority there. He will be disappointed. Let him humble himself. But for the despised microbe and the persecuted bacillus, [begin page 448] who needed a home and nourishment, he would not have been created. He has a mission, therefore—a reason for existing: let him do the service he was made for, and keep quiet.
Three weeks ago I was a man myself, and thought and felt as men think and feel; but I have lived 3,000 years since then, and I see the foolishness of it now. We live to learn; and fortunate are we when we are wise enough to profit by it.
In matters pertaining to microscopy we necessarily have an advantage, here, over the scientist of the earth, because, as I have just been indicating, we see with our naked eyes minutenesses which no man-made microscope can detect, and are therefore able to register as facts many things which exist for him as theories only. Indeed, we know as facts several things which he has not yet divined even by theory. For example he does not suspect that there is no life but animal life, and that all atoms are individual animals, each endowed with a certain degree of consciousness, great or small, each with likes and dislikes, predilections and aversions—that, in a word, each has a character, a character of its own. Yet such is the case. Some of the molecules of a stone have an aversion for some of those of a vegetable or any other creature, and will not associate with them—and would not be allowed to, if they tried. Nothing is more particular about society than a molecule. And so there are no end of castes; in this matter India is not a circumstance.
I often think of a talk I once had upon some of these things with a friend of mine, a renowned specialist by the name of Bblbgxw, a name which I have to modify to Benjamin Franklin because it is so difficult for me to pronounce that combination right; but that is near enough anyway, because when a foreigner pronounces it it always sounds a little like Franklin, when it doesn't sound like Smith. As I was saying, I was discussing those things with him, and [begin page 449] I still remember some of the remarks he made; others have faded out of my memory, but no matter, I wrote down the talk at the time, and will insert that record here:
the record.
Franklin is a Yellow-fever germ, but speaks a broken and fiendishly ungrammatical thyroid-diphthyritic which I am able to follow, and could follow better if his accent were less homicidal. I wish he knew Latin—however, he doesn't. It is curious, the way these bacilli stick to their own tongues and avoid foreign ones. And yet it is not so very curious, perhaps, seeing there is such a multitude of foreign tongues in Blitzowski that a learner hardly knows where to begin on them. As for me, I have a talent for languages, and I like to learn them. The time-cost is nothing to me. I can learn six in an hour, without difficulty. (Microbe-time, of course, confound these troublesome time-tables!)
I may well say that, for they make my head ache. I have no trouble with microbe-time, for I have used no other, nor had occasion to use any other, for several centuries; and so the familiarity with human time which I once possessed has ceased to be a familiarity, and I cannot now handle its forms with easy confidence and a sure touch when I want to translate them into microbe-equivalents. This is natural. Since ever so long ago, microbe time has been real to me, and human time a dream—the one present and vivid, the other far away and dim, very dim, wavering, spectral, the substantiality all gone out of it. Sometimes I shut my eyes and try to bring back the faces that were so dear to me in my human days in America. How immeasurably remote they are, and vague and shadowy, glimpsed across that gulf of time—mere dream-figures drifting formless through a haze! Indeed, all things are dim to me, I think, that lie beyond it. Why, when I first began to write this little statement a half a second ago, I had to keep stopping to dig down into my memory for old forgotten human measurements of time that I had not used nor thought of for lifetimes and lifetimes! My difficulties were so great and my mistakes so frequent and vexatious that for comfort's sake and accuracy's sake I stopped writing, and labored out a tabulated [begin page 450] translation of microbe time-divisions into human ones for my guidance and protection. Like this:
time—equivalents .
| Human. | Microbe. | |
| ¼ of a second is (roughly) | . . . . . . . . . . | 3 hours. |
| ½ “ “ “ “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 6 “ |
| 1 second “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 12 “ |
| 2 “ “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 24 “ |
| 15 “ “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 1 week. |
| 30 “ “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 1 fortnight. |
| 60 “ “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 1 month. |
| 10 minutes “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 1 year |
| 1 hour “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 6 years |
| 1 day “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 144 “ |
| 1 week “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 1,008 “ |
| 1 year “ “ | . . . . . . . . . . | 52,416 “ |
A Pause for Comment. Record Suspended, Meantime.
As far as the table deals in seconds and minutes it is inexact. The microbe month is more than 60 human seconds; it is 1 human minute, and 12 seconds over. But I use the rough measurement because it is handy, and near enough for all ordinary purposes. I wanted to translate a microbe hour into its human equivalent, but it kept shrinking and diminishing and wasting away, and finally disappeared from under my pen, leaving nothing behind that I could find again when I wanted it. As nearly as I could get at it, a microbe hour seemed to be the fiftieth part of human second. We will let it go at that. I used to be the best mathematician in Yale when I was in the class of '53, and to-day I am considered the best [begin page 451] one in Blitzowski—that is, in microbe mathematics—but I can do nothing with human mathematics now. I have tried lately to get back the art, but my memory refuses. In the Yale days I was perfect in it; indeed I was called wonderful. Justly, too, perhaps, for people used to come from great distances to see me do eclipses, and occultations of Venus, and such things. I could do twelve simultaneously, blindfold, and keep the run of them all, just in my head. It was in those days that I invented the logarhythyms, but I cannot even spell it without embarrassment now, let alone put up a hand in them that a soph can't beat. Great days—yes, they were great days. They will come no more. In this pathetic life all things pass, nothing abides. Even the human multiplication table has gone from me—almost utterly. It has been more than seven thousand years since I could say it beyond 4 times 9 is 42. But it is no matter, I shall never need it after I get done writing this. And besides, if I should need multiplications in this, it may be that I can use the local multiplication table and then translate it into human. No—that will hardly answer, everything is so small here, as compared with human dimensions. It is not likely that 4 times 9 in microbe would amount to enough in English to be worth while. It would not convey enough of the idea for the reader to get it.
Having clarified the atmosphere on the time-limit and removed the confusions and perplexities that were vexing it, I will now return to the conversation I had with Franklin.
The Record Resumed.
“franklin,” I asked, “is it certain that each and every existing thing is an individual and alive—every plant, for instance?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“And is each molecule that composes it an individual too, and alive?”
“Yes.”
“And is each atom that composes the molecule an individual also, and alive?”
[begin page 452]“Yes.”
“Now then, has the whole plant—a tree, for instance—feelings, sympathies and so on, as a tree?”
“Yes.”
“Whence do they come?”
“They are imparted by the combined feelings and sympathies that exist separately in the molecules that compose the tree. They are the tree's soul. They make the tree feel like a tree instead of like a rock or a horse.”
“Have rocks, trees and horses any feelings that are common to the three?”
“Yes. The feelings which are the product of oxygen are shared in greater or lesser degree by all three. If the chemical compounds of a rock were the same as those of a tree and in the same proportions, it wouldn't look like a rock, nor feel like a rock, and—”
“Well?”
“Well, it wouldn't be a rock. It would be a tree.”
“I do believe it. Tell me: Inasmuch as oxygen enters into the composition of pretty much everything that exists, it would interest me to know if it imparts a special and particular feeling—a feeling not imparted to a creature by any other kind of molecule?”
“Indeed it does. Oxygen is temper, and is the sole source of it. Where there is but little of it there is but little passion; where there is more of it, there is more temper; where there is more still, still more temper; add still more oxygen, degree by degree, keep on adding, and you warm that temper up and up, stage by stage, till by and by you reach the ultimate of fury. Some plants are very quiet and peaceable—you have noticed that?”
“I have.”
“It is because they contain but little oxygen. Others contain more, others more still. Some are more heavily charged with oxygen than with any other chemical. We know the result: the rose is sweet-tempered, the nettle is hasty, the horse-radish is violent. Observe the bacilli: Some are gentle—it means lack of oxygen. Then look at the tuberculosis-germ, and typhoid: loaded to the mandibles with oxygen! I have some temper myself, but I am thankful to say I do not act like those outlaws. When I am at my angriest, I am still able to remember that I am a gentleman.”
Well, we are curious creatures. Sometimes I wonder if there is anybody who is not a self-deceiver. He believed what he was saying, [begin page 453] he was perfectly sincere about it; yet everybody knows that when a yellow-fever germ's temper is up, there is no real difference between him and an insurrection. He evidently expected me to concede that he was a kind of a saint, and so I had discretion enough to do it, for I take no pleasure in mutilations, and I am going to be unusually anxious for trouble before ever I throw out any remark that is likely to stir up his oxygen. Presently, I said—
“Tell me, Franklin, is the ocean an individual, an animal, a creature?”
“Sure.”
“Then water—any water—is an individual?”
“Sure.”
“Suppose you remove a drop of it? Is what is left an individual?”
“Yes, and so is the drop.”
“Suppose you divide the drop?”
“Then you have two individuals.”
“Suppose you separate the hydrogen and the oxygen?”
“Again you have two individuals. But you haven't water, any more.”
“Of course. Certainly. Well, suppose you combine them again, but in a new way: Make the proportions equal—one part oxygen to one of hydrogen?”
“But you know you can't. They won't combine on equal terms.”
I was ashamed to have made that blunder. I was embarrassed; to cover it, I started to say we used to combine them like that where I came from, but thought better of it, and stood pat.
“Now then,” I said, “it amounts to this: water is an individual, an animal, and is alive; remove the hydrogen and it is an animal and is alive; the remaining oxygen is also an individual, an animal, and is alive. Recapitulation: the two individuals combined, constitute a third individual—and yet each continues to be an individual.”
I glanced at Franklin, but . . . upon reflection, held my peace. I could have pointed out to him that here was mute Nature explaining the sublime mystery of the Trinity so luminously that even the commonest understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a trained master of words had labored to do it with speech and failed. But he would not have known what I was talking about. After a moment, I resumed—
“Listen—and see if I have understood you rightly. To-wit—All the atoms that constitute each oxygen molecule are separate individuals, [begin page 454] and each one is a living animal; all the atoms that constitute each hydrogen molecule are separate individuals, and each one is a living animal; each drop of water consists of millions of living animals, the drop itself is an individual, a living animal, and the wide ocean is another. Is that it?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“By George, it beats the band!”
He liked the expression, and set it down in his tablets.
“Franklin, we've got it down fine. And to think—there are other animals that are still smaller than a hydrogen atom, and yet it is so small that it takes five thousand of them to make a molecule—a molecule so minute that it could get into a microbe's eye and he wouldn't know it was there!”
“Yes, the wee creatures that inhabit the bodies of us germs, and feed upon us, and rot us with disease. Ah, what could they have been created for? they give us pain, they make our lives miserable, they murder us—and where is the use of it all, where the wisdom? Ah, friend Bkshp, we live in a strange and unaccountable world; our birth is a mystery, our little life is a mystery and a trouble, we pass and are seen no more; all is mystery, mystery, mystery; we know not whence we came, nor why, we know not whither we go, nor why we go. We only know we were not made in vain, we only know we were made for a wise purpose, and that all is well! We shall not be cast aside in contumely and unblest, after all we have suffered. Let us be patient, let us not repine, let us trust. The humblest of us is cared for—oh, believe it!—and this fleeting stay is not the end!”
You notice that? He did not suspect that he, also, was engaged in gnawing, torturing, defiling, rotting, and murdering a fellow-creature—he and all the swarming billions of his race. None of them suspects it. That is significant. It is suggestive—irresistibly suggestive—insistently suggestive. It hints at the possibility that the procession of known and listed devourers and persecutors is not complete. It suggests the possibility, and substantially the certainty, that man is himself a microbe, and his globe a blood-corpuscle drifting with its shining brethren of the Milky Way down a vein of the Master and Maker of all things, Whose body, mayhap,—glimpsed partwise from the earth by night, and receding and lost to view in the measureless remotenesses of Space—is what men name the Universe.
[begin page 455]“Well, Franklin,” I said, “Carpe diem—quam minimum credula postero.” *
*Latin. It means, “Be thou wise: take a drink whilst the chance offers; none but the gods know when the jug will come around again.”
He was very much pleased when I translated it for him; and got me to write it down in his tablets, so that he could make an illuminated motto of it and stick it up in his parlor like a God-Bless-Our-Home and have its admonition ever under his eye, for he was profoundly struck by its wisdom. While I was complying, he took two drinks. I did not say anything, but it seemed to me that when it came to wisdom he already had enough for the practical purposes of this brief life.
I excused myself from going to the door with him—being shy, for I had long been intolerably renowned and sought after. He understood, for he could see, himself, that the usual multitude had massed itself, black and solid, for hundreds of yards around, hoping to get a glimpse of me. He took a snap with his instantaneous multograph, looked at the record, and called back to me that the number of persons present was 648,342,227,549,113. It interested him, and he put up his hand and flung back, with a flirt or two of his fingers, the sign-language remark, “This is the penalty for being illustrious, magister!”
Oh, dear, how many million times I have heard and seen that shop-worn remark since I became famous. Each person that utters it thinks he's the first that thought of it; thinks it's a cute phrase and felicitous, and is as vain of it as if he had cornered the fourth dimension. Whereas it is the obvious remark; any person who was alive and not in the asylum would think of it. It is of the grade of the puns which small wits make upon people's names. Every time they are introduced to a person named Terry they dazzle-up like the sun bursting out of a cloud and say, “I am not going to hurt you, don't look so terrified!” and then they almost perish with cackling over that poor little addled egg that they've laid. Why doesn't it occur to them [begin page 456] that in the very nature of things Terry has seen it laid every day since he was born? Twain . . . Twain . . . what was his other name? Mike? I think it was Mike, but it was long ago, centuries ago, that I used to hear of him in that almost forgotten world that I used to inhabit; and I read his books, too, but I do not remember what they were about, now . . . no, it wasn't books, it was pictures . . . pictures or agriculture . . . agri . . . yes, it was agriculture, I remember it perfectly, now. He was a Californian, and his middle name was Burbank; he did miracles in the invention and propagation of new and impossible breeds of flowers and fruits and timber, and became known all over the world, and was finally hanged, many thought unjustly. He was coming out of a saloon sometimes one day, and one of the times that he was coming out of it a stranger was introduced to him, and dazzled-up like the sun bursting out of a cloud, and shouted, “Aha! he-he! he-he! if a man require thee to go with him a mile, go with him, Twain!” and Twain shot him in five places and he crumpled up on the sidewalk and died, many people looking on, and some regretting it. The whole State joined in an effort to get the death-sentence commuted to a term in Congress or jail, I do not remember which it was, now, and the governor was quite willing if the agriculturist would say he was sorry, but he said he could not tell a lie, and some believed him, because he had once chopped down a cherry tree because he couldn't; and then it came out that he had already killed dozens of persons of every sex for making that remark and had concealed it for one reason or another, and so it was judged best, on the whole, to let the sentence stand, although everybody, even Grovenor Rossfelt, President of the United States, conceded that such people were not necessary.
Well, certainly memory is a curious machine and strangely capricious. It has no order, it has no system, it has no notion of values, it is always throwing away gold and hoarding rubbish. Out of that dim old time I have recalled that swarm of wholly trifling facts with ease and precision, yet to save my life I can't get back my mathematics. It vexes me, yet I am aware that everybody's memory is like that, and that therefore I have no right to complain. There was an odd instance of it the other day: Wzprgfski * the historian was
Pronounced Tolliver.
here, and was telling about ancient times, and all of a sudden the bottom fell out of the back end of his memory and spilt every proper [begin page 457] name he ever knew. During the interval that the infirmity lasted, he was short on generals, poets, patriarchs and all the rest of his venerated celebrities, and long on lies and legends and battles and revolutions and other incorporeate facts only. Presently he got his proper-name memory back, then another piece of bottom fell out and spilt a hatful of verbs. When it happened he was just starting to say, “And so, in the fulness of time Ggggmmmdw. * . . .” But there he
Pronounced nearly like the Welsh name Llthwbgww.
went aground; the word he wanted was gone. I had to supply it myself and start him along again. It was hfc$$numl$$zz. With that umlaut over the n it means “began to disintegrate;” without the umlaut, the word is an active transitive past participle, and means that the disintegration has been completed; thus it means—substantially—that the man is dead: but not exactly that, but not really, because in Blitzowski, as I have previously remarked, there is no such thing as death. The umlauted word is restricted to poetry; but even in poetry it does not mean that life has ceased; it has departed—that is all; we do not know its new habitat, but we know it is still with us, still near us. Of the molecules which constituted its late dwelling and gave it motion and feeling—that is to say, life—many have wandered away and joined themselves to new plasmic forms, and are continuing their careers in the bodies of plants, birds, fishes, flies, and other creatures; in time the rest will follow, till the last bone has crumbled to dust, in the far future, and dismissed its atoms, each to seek its kind and go on with its functions indefinitely. And so our people here have no word to signify that either a person or his spirit is dead, in our sense of that term; no, his oxygen molecules are gradually deserting and wandering away, in groups and companies, to furnish temper to the horse-radish, the tiger and the rabbit, each in the degree required; his hydrogen, (humor, hope, cheer) as fast as it is released, will carry its happy spirit whither it is needed, and will lift up the drooping flower and whatever other thing is despondent; his glucose, his acetic acid, his—well, everything he has got will go out and seek and find a new home, and each will continue its vocation. Nothing will be lost, nothing will perish.
Franklin realizes that no atom is destructible; that it has always existed and will exist forever; but he thinks all atoms will go out of this world some day and continue their life in a happier one. Old Tolliver thinks no atom's life will ever end, but he also thinks [begin page 458] Blitzowski is the only world it will ever see, and that at no time in its eternity will it be either worse off or better off than it is now and always has been. Of course he thinks the planet Blitzowski is itself eternal and indestructible—at any rate he says he thinks that. It could make me sad, only I know better. D. T. will fetch Blitzy yet, one of these days.
But these are alien thoughts, human thoughts, and they falsely indicate that I do not want this tramp to go on living. What would become of me if he should disintegrate? My molecules would scatter all around and take up new quarters in hundreds of plants and animals; each would carry its special feelings along with it, each would be content in its new estate, but where should I be? I should not have a rag of a feeling left, after my disintegration—with his—was complete. Nothing to think with, nothing to grieve or rejoice with, nothing to hope or despair with. There would be no more me. I should be musing and thinking and dreaming somewhere else—in some distant animal, maybe—perhaps a cat; by proxy of my oxygen I should be raging and fuming in some other creature—a rat, perhaps; I should be smiling and hoping in still another child of Nature—heir to my hydrogen—a weed, or a cabbage, or something; my carbonic acid (ambition) would be dreaming dreams in some lowly wood-violet that was longing for a showy career; thus my details would be doing as much feeling as ever, but I should not be aware of it, it would all be going on for the benefit of those others, and I not in it at all. I should be gradually wasting away, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, as the years went on, and at last I should be all distributed, and nothing left of what had once been Me. It is curious, and not without impressiveness: I should still be alive, intensely alive, but so scattered that I would not know it. I should not be dead,—no, one cannot call it that—but I should be the next thing to it. And to think what centuries and ages and aeons would drift over Me before the disintegration was finished, the last bone turned to gas and blown away! I wish I knew what it is going to feel like, to lie helpless such a weary, weary time, and see my faculties decay and depart, one by one, like lights which burn low, and flicker, and perish, until the ever-deepening gloom and darkness which—oh, away, away with these horrors, and let me think of something wholesomer!
My tramp is only 85; there is good hope that he will live ten years longer—500,000 of my microbe years. So may it be.
As soon as I was sure Franklin was out of sight I stepped out on the balcony: looked surprised to find that people were waiting in the hope of getting a glimpse of me—fell into an attitude of embarrassment and consternation which is very effective in Kodak-snaps and illustrations, and which I have perfected by practice before the glass—then I allowed the usual thunder-crash of salutation and welcome to astonish me into another and quite stunning attitude of surprise—surprise mixed with almost childish gratification—really a most fetching thing when it is done well—then I scudded away like a dear little shy maid who has been caught with nothing on but a blush, and vanished into my quarters, thus making the most taking and delightful effect of all, for it always leaves the mighty multitude rent with storms of happy and grateful laughter, and they shout “oh, isn't he too sweet for anything!”
Oh shocked and scornful reader, be gentle with me! Can't you see yourself in that disgraceful picture? For it is you. There has never been anybody who would not like to be in that place; there has never been any one who would throw away the chance to occupy it if he had it. The baby microbe shows off before company; the microbe lad shows off, with silly antics, before the little bacillus girls; also he plays pirate, soldier, clown—anything to be conspicuous. After that—well, after that, his appetite for notice and notoriety remains—remains always—but he lyingly and hypocritically lets on that he has lost it. He hasn't lost it, he has only lost his honesty.
Now then, be gentle with me, for that is all that I have lost; all that you and I have lost. Otherwise we are what we were when we were babies and used to crow and cackle and carry on in mommer's lap and glance at the company to collect the applause. The company were poignantly ashamed of the baby, and you have been as poignantly ashamed of me—that is, you thought you were ashamed of [begin page 460] me, but that was not so—you were ashamed of yourself, as exposed in me.
We can't help our nature, we didn't make it, it was made for us; and so we are not to blame for possessing it. Let us be kind and compassionate toward ourselves; let us not allow the fact to distress us and grieve us that from mommer's lap to the grave we are all shams and hypocrites and humbugs without an exception, seeing that we did not make the fact and are in no way responsible for it. If any teacher tries to persuade you that hypocrisy is not a part of your blood and bone and flesh, and can therefore be trained out of you by determined and watchful and ceaseless and diligent application to the job, do not you heed him; ask him to cure himself first, then call again. If he is an honorable person and is meaning well, he will give the medicine you have recommended to him an earnest and honest and sincere trial, but he will not call again.
For centuries I have held unchallenged the reputation of being a celebrity who is so shy and modest by nature that he shrinks from public notice and is pained by it. Very well, I have earned it. By thoughtful and deeply-reasoned arts. I have played my game every day for a lengthy procession of centuries, and played it well; I have my reward. I have copied the way of the kings; they do not make themselves common to the public eye. A king's most valued and valuable asset is public notice. Without it the chief charm of his difficult and burdensome office would be wanting, and he would mourn and sigh, and wish he could trade his post for one with more show to it and less work to do. Tradition puts this frank retort into the mouth of old Henry MMMMMDCXXII, surnamed The Untamed: “Yes, I am fond of praises, processions, notice, attentions, reverence, fuss and feathers! Vanities, are they? There was never a creature, particularly a god, that did not like them.”
I started to tell how I came to be celebrated, but I have wandered far from my course. It is partly because I have long been unused to writing, and thereby have lost the art and habit of concentration. And so I scatter too much. Then there was another difficulty: I wanted to write in English, but could not manage it to my satisfaction, because the words, the grammar, the forms, the spelling and everything else connected with the language had faded and become unfamiliar to me. And the phrasing! Phrasing is everything, almost. Oh, yes, phrasing is a kind of photography: out of focus, a blurred picture; in focus, a sharp one. One must get the focus right— [begin page 461] that is, frame the sentence with exactness and precision, in his mind—before he pulls the string.*
* Alas, alas! Well, I was certainly pretty young when I wrote that, away back yonder, ages ago; pretty young and self-satisfied. It makes me ashamed. Still, I believe I will let it stand. Why should I care? it is not giving me away, it is giving away a silly youth who was me, but is no more me now than is the once-sapling the present oak. B.b.B.
(End of Extract from the Ancient Record.)
It seemed best to fall back on the microbe tongue, and so I did it. I went back to the start and put this History into that language, then laboriously translated it into English, just as you see it now. It is very good, not many could do it better, yet in brilliancy and effectiveness it is but the lightning-bug to the lightning, when compared with the microbic original. Among microbe authors I hold the belt for phrasing, and I could hold it in English if I was a mind to take the trouble.
The way I came to be celebrated was this. When I first arrived in Blitzowski I was poor and a stranger; and as all could see that I was a foreigner, my society was not sought after. I took cheap board with a humble family * and by their kindly help I was enabled to
hire a hand-organ and a monkey. On credit. On a royalty. I was very industrious, performing all day and studying the family's language all night, with the children for teachers, for they never slept, there being no night for them; and indeed none for me except the conventional one invented by myself.
At first I gained but few pennies, but I soon struck a good idea. I began to sing. In English. It was not very good singing, and was avoided; but only for a little while; for when the germs noticed that [begin page 462] I was using a strange tongue, and one which they had never heard before, they were interested. I sang “Sally in Our Alley” and “I don't 'low no Coon to Fool roun' Me,” and other simple anthems, and then the crowds began to follow me around, and couldn't get enough.
I prospered. By the end of the first year I was past master in the family's language, then I went to work on a new one. I was still so American that that microbe year of ten minutes and twelve seconds seemed astonishingly brief; but after that, each year that went by seemed considerably longer than its immediate predecessor. This constantly lengthening process continued for ten years; after that, the microbe year was become fully as long to me as the half of any American year had ever been. The older crops of Taylor children had grown so, meantime, that several of the girls were 40 and marriageable. A microbe girl at 40 is about where an American girl is at 20 or 25, for the climate is wonderfully healthy and the food nutricious, and many a person lives to be 150, which is a shade more than an entire human day.
Yes, I had prospered. But Sally and the Coon-song were beginning to show wear and invite rocks; so, out of prudence I reorganized my program and pulled off another prosperous ten with “Bonny Doon” and “Buffalo Gals Can't You Come out To-night.” Microbes like sentimental music best.
Pretty early I had to explain what kind of a foreigner I was. This was a delicate business. I could have told inquirers the truth, of course, for I was in practice, but there would have been no takers. I could market a lie if I built it with judgment, but to say I was an American and came of a race of star-bumping colossi who couldn't even see an average microbe without a microscope, would have landed me in the asylum.
The local name of the cholera microbe is Bwilk—a word equivalent to the Latin word lextalionis, which means—well, I don't remember, now, what it means, but bwilk is a good name and much respected here. I found that there was no one in our neighborhood that had ever seen a native of the Major Molar, or knew what the language of that region sounded like. The Major [begin page 463] Molar is Blitzowski's furthest-aft tooth on the port side. In the dentine of that tooth there are some exceeding delicate nerve-threads that traverse it horizontally, crossing the cane-brake of perpendicular ones at right angles, and I pretended that I was a native of one of those—the north-west one. After I had said it and it was too late to mend the statement, I remembered that Blitzowski's Major Molar was at the dentist's—awaiting redemption and not likely to get it, for Blitzowski is not given to paying for services or redeeming undesirable securities so long as he can dodge. But no one noticed, and my statement passed. Some good-hearted people thought it a pity that a respectable race should be so straitened as to be obliged to live in such a remote and desolate country. This touched me deeply, and I took up a collection for them.
I was fond of the Taylor children, they had grown up under my eye, many crops of them had been dear little pets and housemates of mine from their cradle-days, and it caused me a pang when they began to leave the safe haven of their home and embark upon the uncertain sea of matrimony. In the case of the boy-microbes, I did not so much mind it, but it was very hard to lose the girls, indeed I could hardly bear to think of it. And to make it the harder, the first to give her heart away was my favorite. This was Maggie (my love-name for her, and used by none but her and me). I gave her that sacred name out of the secretest chamber of my heart, when she was a little thing; and in after-years when she came to have a budding sense of the sweetest and tenderest of all the passions and I told her why that name was the name of names to me, her eyes filled and she expressed with a kiss the pitying words her quivering lips could not frame. The marriage made a great gap in the family, for 981,642 of her sisters were married at the same time, and many brothers—over a million, I do not remember the exact number, but I think I am within 30 or 35 of it. None can know the desolation of a day like that who has not lived it. I had an honored place at the wedding solemnities, and assisted in deepening their impressiveness by singing one of the dear old early songs; but when I tried to sing the other one the strain upon my feelings was too great and I [begin page 464] broke down. Neither could Maggie bear it. From that day to this I have never been able to sing “I Don't 'Low No Coon” through to the end without my voice breaking.
That wedding carried my mind back to other scenes and other days, and filled it with images painfully sweet and unforgetable. Turning the pages of my mouldy diaries now, to refresh my memory for these chapters, I find this entry, whose pathos moves me still, after all these centuries:
May 25, Y. H. 2,501,007. Yesterday, Maggie's wedding. Last night I dreamed of that other Maggie, that human Maggie, whose dear face I shall look upon no more in this life. In that sweet vision I saw her as I had seen her last—oh, dream of loveliness, oh, radiant creature, oh, spirit of fire and dew, oh, fairy form, transfigured by the golden flood of the sinking sun! . . . God forgive me, I hurt her with a cruel speech! How could I commit that crime! And how had I the heart to note unmoved the reproach in those gentle eyes and go from that sweet presence unforgiven?
I wrote that passage 7,000 years ago. There is a very curious thing connected with it: I have had that same dream, its glory unfaded, its pain unsoftened, once in every century since that recorded date—and always on the 24th of May of the hundredth year. When this had recurred two or three times I took courage to hope it was a sign—a sign that it would continue to recur after the lapse of each century; when it had blessed me five times I felt sure it would continue; after that, I never had a doubt. So sure was I, that when the sixth century drew toward its close, I began to tally off the decades, then the years, the months, the days, with ever increasing impatience and longing, until the hallowed day came and again upon my slumbering mind the beautiful vision rose. I have always watched with confidence for the dream since, as each century waned toward the memorable date, and in no instance have I been disappointed. Always in the dream I hear distant music—distant and faint, but always sweet, always moving: “Bonny Doon.” It was Margaret's favorite, therefore it was mine too.
There is one very curious effect: in the dream the beautiful human girl is as beautiful to me as she was when I was of her own [begin page 465] race. This is quite unaccountable, there is no way to explain it. Do I become human again, in the dream, and re-acquire human notions of what is beautiful and what isn't? Really it has a plausible look, yet it is pretty fanciful, pretty far-fetched, not very persuasive, not very likely, when one examines it soberly. When I am awake, my standards of beauty and and loveliness are microbic, and microbic only, and this is natural. When I am awake and my memory calls up human faces and forms which were once beautiful to me, they are still beautiful, but not with the beauty that exists by grace of race-ship—no, it is merely the sort of beauty which I see in a flower, a bird, or other comely thing not of my own kind. To the young gentleman-caterpillar no human being nor any other creature approaches in charm and beauty and winsomeness the lissome and rounded young lady-caterpillar whom he loves. What is Cleopatra to him? Nothing. He would not go out of his way to look at her. To him she would seem fluffy, gross, unshapely, she could not fire his passions. To the vain and happy mother-octopus, the bunch of goggled and squirming fringes which she has given birth to is beautiful beyond imagination, she cannot take her eyes off it, whereas I would not give a damn for a ton of them. Indeed, to me any octopus is insufferable, and I would not live with one for anything a person could give me. This is not unreasoning prejudice, it is merely nature. We do not invent our tastes in this matter, they come to us with our birth, they are of the many mysteries of our being.
I am a microbe. A cholera microbe. For me there is comeliness, there is grace, there is beauty findable, some way or some where, in greater or lesser degree, in every one of the nationalities that make up the prodigious germ-world—but at the head I place the choleragerm. To me its beauty has no near competitor. I still remember that in the human world each of the nationalities had a beauty of its own: there was the Italian style, the German style, the French, the American, the Spanish, the English, the Egyptian, the Dahomian, the red Indian, the East Indian and a thousand other styles, civilized and savage, and I also remember that each thought its own style the finest and best—a condition which is repeated here in Blitzowski, from one end of him to the other. From the scrapings of [begin page 466] his teeth you can gather, oh, such an array of self-complacent tribes! and from the rotting dollar-bill in his pocket you can accumulate another swarm; and I give you my word that every naked savage in the lot would pass indifferently by Maggie Taylor, the germ-belle of Henryland, if she were still existent, and go into ecstasies over the imagined beauty of some frumpy squaw of his own particular breed who could no more stir me than a cow could. I speak from experience. With my own eyes I have seen a hebuccalis maximus lose his mind over a she-one, accidentally encountered, while right in sight were a dozen surpassingly lovely little cholera-germ witches, each and every of them more tantalizingly delicious to look at than her comrades, if possible. Of course, to my mind that spirilla was a fool; and of course, to his mind I was another one.
It is the way we are made, and we can't help it. I have never married, I shall never marry. Is it because I lost my heart irrecoverably when I lost it to Margaret Adams in America three thousand years ago? It must be so. I think it is so. Once in every century she comes to me in my dream, clothed in immortal youth and imperishable beauty; and in the dream she is as erst my idol, and I adore. But when the dream passes, I am myself again and she but a dim and fair unthrilling memory; I am myself again, and my worship of the budding and beautiful of my own loved microbic race comes back to me, and I know that for another century I shall have no homage for any charm but that which looks out from the blue eyes and plays in the winsome smile of the college-maid whose high privilege it is to carry in her veins the blood of the choleragerm—oldest and noblest and most puissant of all the race of germs, save only the Plague-Bacillus, at sound of whose mighty name the nations uncover!
I cannot be sure of my human dear one's age, for it was long ago, but I think she was eighteen or nineteen. I think I was three or four years older than she was, but I find myself unable to be exact about it, all such things are so dim in my memory now. I have an impression that the first Napoleon was reigning at the time, or that he had lately fallen at Marathon or Philippi, whichever it was, for I am clear that a world-convulsing event was filling all men's mouths [begin page 467] then, and I think it must have been that one. I remember that I had just graduated—class of '53 *—a vast event for me, and not
* Note. Seven thousand years later. This is the second time this statement has crept in, I do not know how. I wrote it, but I think it is untrue. I do not think I was ever at Yale, except to receive honorary degrees. B.b.B.
lightly to be misplaced in my memory I should think, and that was the year that General Washington went North to assume command of the Hessians, the only time I ever saw him, so far as I remember. I depend mainly on historical events to preserve my connection with my human life, because they stay with me better than minor happenings do, on account of their prominence and importance, and because I have a natural fondness for history and an aptness for mastering its details which Professor Tolliver regarded as quite remarkable, a verdict which greatly pleased me, since history was that learned and illustrious germ's specialty.
I must explain that that “Y.H.,” in the above diary-date stands for “year of the Henriad.” It was like this arrogant House to cancel and wipe out the preceding ages when it captured the throne, and second-stage history with a new Year One. Speaking as a microbe, and with a microbe's ideas of propriety, I think it was not seemly. Indeed I had felt the same way before I was ever a microbe, for I was among the dissenters when the American Revolution ended successfully and Sir John Franklin and his brother Benjamin got the Diet of Worms to establish a new Year One and name the months Germinal, and Fructidor, and all that nonsense. Such tremendous readjustments of time should be the prerogative of religions only, I think. Religions achieve real and permanent epochs, whereas no political epoch can be of that character, the very law of all political entities being change, change, unceasing change,—sometimes advancement, sometimes retrogression, but never rest, never repose, never fixity. Religions are of God, and they come from His hand perfect, therefore unimprovable, but policies are of men and microbes, and unstable, like their creators. Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on “The Survival of the Fittest.” These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: [begin page 468] nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.
Those taylor weddings are a land-mark in my career. It was there that I met a teacher of music whom I was permitted to call Thompson, his right name being too difficult for me. He was a cream-ripening bacullus of good character and considerable education, and was attracted by my singing, because it was so different. He came of his own accord and introduced himself. It made me happy beyond words, for I had long been starving for intellectual companionship. We soon became intimates. He was not a person of importance, therefore he could not advance my material interests, but he introduced me to educated friends of his, and that was service enough. Among these were some humble scientists. Was I happy now? Indeed I was, and most grateful. We were young, and full of enthusiasm; we lost no opportunity of being together. We foregathered as often as the bread-and-butter requirements of our several trades permitted, and in happy comradeship we searched after Nature's secrets.
Sometimes we stole a day from shop, counting-room, hand-organ, etc., and made excursions—botanical, insectivorous, mammiferous, piscatorial, paleontological, and the like, and every now and then, as the years danced by on joyous wing, we had the luck to make quite fortunate discoveries. This went on for ten years. Then all of a sudden came the discovery of discoveries—the fossil flea heretofore mentioned.10
[begin page 469]We boys had good times in those days. I say boys, because we still felt like boys, and because the term had stayed with us, from old habit, after we had crossed the strictly “young-chap” (boy-) frontier; and naturally enough, for we had crossed it without noticing it. We had been training together ten years. I was 78 (microbe-time), but looked just as I had looked 30 years earlier when I first arrived: that is to say I looked my human age of that date—about 26 or 27. Their age was about 50 when we first met, and they had then looked as humans of 25 to 28 look; the 10 years they had since added, showed: one could see that they had grown older. In my case no shade of change was detectible. My sojourn of 30 years had seemed a life-long stretch of time, to me, yet exteriorly it had not aged me by a day. My face, my figure, my strength, my young vivacity and animation—all these had kept their youth. The boys wondered, and so did I. I puzzled over it privately a good deal. Was there something human left in me? I had been a microbe a considerable part of a human day; could it be that my consciousness was keeping microbe time and my body keeping human time? I couldn't tell, I didn't know anything about it; and moreover, being happy,—and just a little frivolous by nature, perhaps—I didn't care. The mystery of my stuck-fast youth was a valued riddle for the boys: whenever they ran out of science-conundrums they could always fall back upon that and subject it to a new discussion.
Naturally they wanted me to help them do the theorizing, and naturally I dearly wanted to, for the echte11 scientist would rather theorize than eat; but I was reluctant. To be fair and honest I should have to do as the scientist always does—I should have to honorably contribute to the discussion every fact within my possession which could by any possibility be related to the matter; [begin page 470] and so I should be obliged to reveal the secret of my earlier existence, and frankly furnish all the particulars. It is not easy to exaggerate the embarrassment of the situation. I wanted to keep the respect of my comrades: to tell them a colossal lie would not be a good way to do that, and certainly the chances were a thousand to one, in my opinion, that they would put just that estimate upon my statement.
Well, we are mere creatures of Circumstance. Circumstance is master, we are his slaves. We cannot do as we desire, we have to be humbly obedient and do as Circumstances command. Command—that is the word; Circumstance never requests, he always commands: then we do the thing, and think we planned it. When our circumstances change, we have to change with them, we cannot help it. Very well, there came a time when mine changed. The boys began to get suspicious of me. Why did I always shirk, and fumble, and change the subject whenever they wanted me to help theorize upon the mystery of my persistent youthfulness? They took that up, and began to whisper apart. When I appeared among them no face lighted with a welcome for me, I got perfunctory greetings in place of the old hearty ones, the group soon broke up and went away and I was left solitary and depressed. I had been happy always, before; I was always miserable, now.
Circumstances had changed. They commanded a change on my part. Being their slave, I had to obey. There was but one course to pursue if I would get back the boys' confidence and affection: I must frankly empty my human history into the debated mystery and take the consequences. Very well, I shut myself to think out the best way to proceed in the matter. Ought I to make my statement to the comradeship assembled in a body, or would it be wisest to try my history on a couple of the boys, make converts of them, if possible, and get their help in converting the rest? After much thought I inclined toward the latter course.
There were twelve of us. I will remark here that we were all of “good stock,” to use the common phrase. We were nobodies, we were not noble, but by descent we were of the blood twelve of the great families or classes from which all the monarchies in Blitzowski drew their hereditary aristocracies. Not one of us had a [begin page 471] vowel in his name, but our blood entitled us to acquire vowels, whereas this was not the case with persons of meaner extraction. Mainly, vowels went by favor, of course,—among the high-up,—as in all aristocracies, but minor persons of the Blood could acquire them by merit, purchase, the arts of corruption, and so forth. There was a mighty hunger for these gauds and distinctions, but that was natural, and is one of the indications that the difference between microbes and men is more a matter of physical bulk than anything else.
There was hardly a name among us that I could pronounce, on account of the absence of vowels, and the boys had a deal of trouble in managing my microbe-name, for I used an alias, painstakingly invented by myself, to cover accidents; I had said I was a native of the Major Molar, and so, as that was a far-off and quite unknown country it was rather necessary to have a name that would inspire confidence in the hearer—that is to say a name strange enough to properly fit a strange country. I made it out of a Zulu name and a Tierra del Fuegan name combined, and it consisted of three clucks and a belch, and was one of the most trying names I have ever struck. I could not pronounce it twice the same way myself; and as for the boys they presently gave it up, and only used it, after that, to swear with. They asked me to give them an easier one, and I gave them “Huck,” an abbreviation of my American middle name, Huxley. On their side, and to show their thankfulness, they allowed me to change their names, too. I invoiced 45 literary ones, favorites of mine, and after considerable drill we selected the eleven which they could pull off with least danger to their jaws. I here append them; and with each name, the strain of great ancestral blood, or branch of it, that flowed in the veins of the owner; also, family crest:
lemuel gulliver. Dôt-Pyogenes. Head of the Pus-breeders. Crest, Single dot.
lurbrulgrud. Pair-Dot, Diplococcus, branch of Suppuration family. Crest, the printer's colon.
rip van winkle. Sarcina branch: cuboidal masses. Crest, a window-sash.
[begin page 472]guy mannering. Streptococcus. Erysipelas. Crest, a looped chain.
dogberry. Acute pneumonia branch. Crest, a lance.
sancho panza. Typhoid. Crest, jackstraws.
david copperfield.12 Branch—with cilia. Crest, a radish, with roots adhering.
colonel mulberry sellers. Branch—with spores. Lockjaw. Crest, a broken needle.
louis xiv. Consumption. Crest, a ruined spider-web.
king herod. Diphtheria. Crest, Morse alphabet, wrecked.
huck.13 Asiatic Cholera. Crest, Group of earth-worms.
don quixotte. Recurrent Fever. Crest, maze of hair-snakes.
Nobody knows the origin of these illustrious crests, there is no record of the great events which they were intended to commemorate and preserve from oblivion; the events occurred such ages and ages ago that history cannot remember them, and even legend itself has forgotten them. Now then, for an odd thing! I distinctly remember that under the microscope, in the earth, each of these families of microbes looks like its crest, whereas when you observe them here, with the microbe eye, they are strikingly beautiful in form and feature, and have not even a remote resemblance to their crests. This is certainly very odd, and to my mind it is most interesting. I think that as a coincidence it ranks away up. There was a time, long ago, when I came near to telling the boys about this curious thing, I was so anxious to examine it and discuss it with them, but I restrained myself. It would not have been prudent. They were a sensitive lot, and I doubt if they would have been pleased. Another thing: they—
But never mind that, for the present; I must get back to the real business of this chapter. In the end, I concluded to take a couple of the boys into my confidence, and let the others wait a while. I chose Gulliver and Louis XIV. I would have preferred Guy Mannering and David Copperfield, for certain reasons, but we were not living [begin page 473] in a republic, and I had to think a little about etiquette and precedence. In Gulliver's veins was a quarter of a molecule of the blood of the reigning House, the imperial Henries; and although the imperial Henries did not know it and would not have cared for it if they had, Gulliver cared for it and kept himself—and others—reminded of it. So I had to choose Gulliver, and choose him first. Louis XIV had to come next. This was imperative, on account of his great blood—what he had of it. Of course if we had had a Plague bacillus—but we hadn't, so there is no occasion to go into that. Gulliver was clerk in a feed-store, Louis XIV was a pill-constructor in the pharmacy.
I invited that pair to my poor quarters, and they came. It was the evening of the day of the splendid discovery of the monster flea—the discovery of the point of his prodigious claw, to be exact. It was a good time, for our enthusiasm over the discovery had drawn us together again, and we had been like our old selves once more. For days I had been on the point of calling Lem and Louis, but had lost courage every time I had tried to do it, but now I knew the conditions were favorable, and I struck while the iron was hot.
The boys came, and they came in good spirits. I gave them an old-time welcome which touched them, and even brought the moisture to their eyes. I chunked up the poor little cheap fire and made it look its cheerfulest, and we bunched ourselves in front of it with lighted pipes, and with hot punches thereto.
“Oh, come, this is great!” said Louis “this is like old times!”
“Here's to their resurrection!” cried Gulliver; and “drink hearty!” cried I, and we did accordingly.
Then we chatted along, and chatted along, stowing the liquor between paragraphs, for punctuation, until we were become properly mellow and receptive, then I broke ground.
“Boys,” I said, “I'm going to make a confession.” They glanced at me with interest, not to say apprehension. “You have all wanted me to take a hand and help unriddle the mystery of my arrested development in the matter of age-indications, and I have avoided that subject—not out of perversity, I give you my word, but for a better reason, which I mean to lay before you to-night, and try to convince you that my course was fair and justifiable.”
Their eyes beamed gratification, and their tongues put it into cordial words:
“Shake!” they said, and we shook.
“Without a doubt you have all suspected that I had invented an elixir of life, and was preserving my youth with it. Isn't it so?”
They hesitated, then said it was so. They said they had been forced to that conclusion because all their other theorizings had come to nothing. Then they quoted a remark of mine which I had long ago forgotten: a hint which I had thrown out to the effect that perhaps an elixir might be distilled from the chyle in the veins of a ram which—
“Well, you know,” continued Louis, who had instanced the remark, “you did throw that out. When you wouldn't talk any more, we took hold of that hint and tried to get at your secret for ourselves. We believed, for a time, that we had succeeded. We made the elixir, and tried it on a lot of decrepit and tottering bacilli, and at first the results were splendid. The poor old things brisked up in a surprising way, and began to go to balls, and do the trapeze, and win foot-races, and show off in all sorts of antic improprieties, and it was the most pathetic and ridiculous spectacle of the century. But all of a sudden every lunatic of them collapsed and went to rags and ruin.”
“I remember it! Was it you boys that got up the famous sheepelixir that made such an immense noise for a little while?”
“Yes,” said Lem Gulliver, “and we believed you could correct it and perfect it for us if you would, and it grieved us to think you were keeping such a sublime secret to yourself, when the honorable traditions of science required you to reveal it and confer it free of reward upon the public.”
“Boys,” I said, “I am going to ask you, for old friendship's sake, to believe two things, taking them from my lips without other evidence of their truth. First, that I invented no elixir of life; second, that if I had invented one I would have given it freely to the public. Do you believe?” They answered up promptly:
“By the beard and body of Henry the Great, 861, we do, Huck,14 and are glad to! Shake!”
[begin page 475]Which we did.
“Now then,” I said, “I will ask you to believe one more thing—which is this: I don't know the secret of my persistent youth myself.”
I saw the chill descend upon them. They gazed steadily at me, sorrowfully, reproachfully—until my eyes fell. I waited—and waited—hoping that in charity they would break the miserable silence, but they would not. At last I said—
“Friends, old comrades, hear me, and be kind. You do not believe me, yet upon my honor I have spoken the truth. And now I come to my confession—according to the promise which I made. Possibly it may throw light upon this mystery—I hope it may. I believe there is light in it, but I am not certain, and, as a scientist, I am not permitted to accept anything, howsoever plausible, which cannot meet and conquer the final test, the test of tests—demonstration. The first article of my confession is this: I was not always a cholera-germ.”
The surprise of it made them gasp—I had suspected it would. But it lifted the solemnities a bit, and that was a good thing.
Yes, it did that. That remark delivered a blast of ozone into the atmosphere. It was a remark that would fresh-up the curiosity of any person that ever lived. Naturally you couldn't throw it at a pair of trained scientists and not get attention. The new, the unheard-of, the uncanny, the mysterious—how the dullest head welcomes them! The old mystery was riches, here was the match of it, piled on top of it. The scientist is not permitted to exhibit surprise, eagerness, emotion, he must be careful of his trade-dignity—it is the law. Therefore the boys pulled themselves together and masked their eagerness the best they could. There was a studied scientific pause, then Louis, in a voice trembling with calm, opened the engagement—
“Huck, have you spoken figuratively, or are we to take that statement on a scientific rating?”
[begin page 476]“Scientific.”
“If you were not always a cholera-germ, what were you before?”
“An American.”
“A what?”
“American.”
“This seems—well, it seems vague. I do not understand. What is an American?”
“A man.”
“Er—that is vague, too. Lem, do you get it?”
“Search me!” He said it despairingly. Louis returned to the inquest:
“What is a man, Huck?”
“A creature you are not acquainted with. He does not inhabit this planet, but another one.”
“Another one!”
“Another one!” echoed Gulliver. “What do you mean by that, Huck?”
“Why, I mean what I said.”
He chuckled amusedly, and said—
“The Major Molar a planet! Well, that is good, upon my word. Here they've been trying for centuries to track-out and locate the original habitat of the modesty-germ, and . . . say, Huck, that's settled!”
It irritated me, but I kept the most of my temper down, and said:
“Lem, I never called it so. I wasn't referring to the Major Molar, at all.”
“Oh, is that so! Say, Huck—”
“I don't know anything about the Major Molar, and I don't care anything about it. I was never there in my life!”
“What! you were nev—”
“No! I never was. I—”
“Sho! where'd you get that heart-breaking name?”
“Invented it. My real name doesn't resemble it.”
“What is your real name?”
“B. b. Bkshp.”
[begin page 477]“Why, Huck,” said Louis, “what did you want to tell so many lies for? What was the good of it?”
“I had to.”
“Why?”
“Because if I had told the truth they would have put me in the asylum, thinking I was out of my head.”
“I don't see how that could happen. Why should the truth have such an effect?”
“Because it would not have been understood, and would have been considered a lie. And a crazy one, at that.”
“Come, Huck, you are straining your fancy. I guess you wouldn't have been misunderstood. You—”
“Oh, I like that! Only a minute ago I told you two or three truths and you didn't understand me. And when I said I came from another planet, Lem thought I was talking about the Major Molar, that humble little backwoods province! whereas I was referring to—to—hang it, I meant what I said—another planet. Not Blitzowski, but another one.”
Then Gulliver broke in:
“Why, you muggins, there isn't any other. Lots of germs like to play with the theory that there's others, but you know quite well it's only theory. Nobody takes it seriously. There's nothing to support it. Come, Huck, your attitude is distinctly unscientific. Be reasonable—throw that dream-stuff out of your system.”
“I tell you it isn't dream-stuff; there is another planet, and I was reared to maturity in it.”
“If that is so, you must know a good deal about it. And perhaps you'll enrich us with as much of it as—”
“You needn't mock! I can enrich your knowledge-treasury as it was never enriched before, if you will listen and reflect, instead of making fun of everything I say.”
Louis said—
“It isn't fair, Lem. Stop chaffing. How would you like to be treated so?”
“All right. Go on, Huck, tell us about the new planet. Is it as big as this one?”
I found I was going to laugh; so I pretended some smoke went [begin page 478] down the wrong way, and this enabled me to cough past the danger-point. Then I said—
“It is bigger.”
“Bigger, your granny! How much bigger?”
It was delicate ground, but I thought it wisest to go right on.
“It—well, it is so much bigger that if you were to mislay this planet in it and didn't tie a string to it or mark the place, it would take you a good four thousand years to find it again. In my opinion, more than that.”
They stared at me a while most thankfully, then Louis got down on the floor so that he could laugh with spacious enjoyment, and Gulliver went behind the door and took off his shirt and brought it and folded it up and laid it in my lap without saying anything. It is the microbe way of saying “that takes the chromo.” I threw the shirt on the floor, and told both of them they were as mean as they could be.
That sobered them, and Lem said, “Why, Huck, I didn't suppose you were in earnest,” and Louis sat up on the floor and began to wipe the tears away, and said, “I didn't either, Huck—I couldn't, you know—and it came so sudden, you see.”
Then they took their seats again, and tried to look repentant, and did look sorry, and Lem asked me to bite off another piece. If it had been almost any one else I would have struck him, but a prudent person doesn't hit one of those deadly pus-breeders when arbitration will do. Louis reproved Gulliver, then the pair set themselves to work to smooth my feathers down and get me in a good humor again; and the kind things they said soon had that effect, for one can't pout long when voices beloved for ten years are playing the old tunes on his heart—so to speak, for the metaphor is mixed. Soon the inquest was going along again, all right. I furnished several minor planetary facts, then Louis said—
“Huck, what is the actual size of that planet, in straight figures?”
“Figures! oh, I couldn't ever! There isn't room enough in this one to hold them!”
“Now there you go again, with your extrav—”
[begin page 479]“Here! Come to the window—both of you. Look. How far can you see, across that plain?”
“To the mountains. Sixty-five miles.”
“Come to this opposite side. Now how far do you see?”
“There being no mountain-barrier, we can't tell. The plain melts into the sky; there's no way to measure.”
I said—
“Substantially, it's limitless receding and fading spaciousness, isn't it?”
“Just so.”
“Very well. Let it represent that other planet; drop a single mustard seed in the middle of it, and—”
“O, fetch him a drink!” shouted Lem Gulliver; “and fetch it quick, his lie-mill's a-failing him!”
There spoke the practical mind, the unsentimental mind—the railroad mind, it may be called, perhaps. It has large abilities, but no imagination. It is always winter there. No, not just that—call it about the first week of November: no snow, only threats; cloudy, occasional drizzles, occasional wandering fogs drifting along; all aspects a little doubtful, suspicious, counseling wariness, watchfulness; temperature not vicious, not frosty, only chilly; average, about 45 F. It is the kind of mind that does not invent things itself, and does not risk money and worry on the development of another man's invention, and will not believe in its value until other people's money and labor have proved it; but it has been watching, all the time, and it steps promptly forward, then, and is the first to get in on the ground floor and help rake in the profits. It takes nothing on trust, you can't get it to invest in a dream at any discount, nor believe in it; but if you notice you will find that it is always present when the dream comes true—and has a mortgage on it, too.
To Lem Gulliver my planet was a dream, and would remain one, for the present. But to Louis, who had sentiment and imagination it was a poem, and I a poet. And he said that handsome thing, too. He said it was plain that I was endowed with a noble and beautiful gift, and that my planet was a majestic conception, a grand and [begin page 480] impressive foundation, so to speak, lying ready for the architect's hand; and he said he believed that the genius that could imagine such a foundation was competent to build upon it a very palace of enchantment—a tumult of airy domes and towers, without, a golden wilderness of wonders within, where the satisfied soul might wander and worship, unconscious of the flight of time, uncon—
“O, rats!” said Lem Gulliver, breaking in, “that's just your style, Louis XIV—always jumping in to build a cathedral out of a hatful of bricks. Because he has spread out a big foundation, that's enough for you, you can already see the summer-hotel he's going to put up on it. Now I am not made in that way; I'm ready and willing to take stock in that joint when it's built, but—finance it at this stage? oh, I think I see myself!”
“Oh, yes,” retorted Louis, “that is your style, Lem Gulliver, we all know it, and we know what comes of it, too. You are always keeping us back, with your doubts; you discourage everything. If Huck can go on as he has begun, it will be the sublimest poem in all the literatures; and anybody but you would believe that the mind that was able to imagine that mighty foundation is able to imagine the palace too, and furnish the rich materials and put them divinely together. Lie-mill, indeed! You may live to see the day when you will wish God had given you such a mill, Lem Gulliver!”
“Oh, go it! all down but nine, set 'em up on the other alley! I'm crushed—I'm routed; but all the same, I copper the hotel—at the present date. If you think he's got the materials for it, all right, it's your privilege; but as for me, I reason that when a person has laid down a foundation the size of that one, it isn't argument that it's a sample, it's argument that you've got his pile. He's empty, Louis—you'll see.”
“I don't believe it. You're not empty, are you, Huck?”
“Empty? No. I haven't begun, yet.”
“There, now, Lem Gulliver, what do you say to that?”
“I say his saying it is no proof. Let him start-up his mill again, that's all. Let him venture!”
Louis hesitated. Lem noticed it, and said, mockingly—
[begin page 481]“You're right, Louis, I wouldn't over-strain him.”
“I wasn't hesitating on account of fear, Lem Gulliver, and you needn't think it. I was recognizing that it wasn't fair. He is entitled to a recess, to recuperate in. Inspirations are not a mechanical affair, they do not come by command. It may well be—”
“Oh, don't apologize. It's all right; he's empty. I'm not wanting to crowd him. Give him a rest; let him recuperate. It's just as you say: inspirations are not mechanical things—no, they are spiritual. Pass him the jug.”
“I don't need it,” said I, recognizing that I ought to come to Louis' help. “I can get along without it.”
Louis brightened up at that, and said—
“Do you think you can go ahead, Huck? do you think you can?”
“I don't only think it, I know it!”
Lem chuckled derisively, and told me to fetch on my “emptyings.”
So the inquest began again. I was asked to describe my planet. I said—
“Well, as to shape, it is round, and—”
“Round?” said Gulliver, interrupting. “What a shape for a planet! Everybody would slide off—why, a cat couldn't stay on it! Round! Oh, cork the jug—he doesn't need any inspiration! Round! Say, Cholera—”
“Let him alone!” cried Louis, sharply. “There's neither right nor dignity in criticizing the fanciful creations of poesy by the standards of cold reason, Lem Gulliver, and you know it.”
“Well, that is so, Louis, and I take it back. You see, it sounded just as if he were throwing out a straight fact, and so—well, it caught me off my base.”
“I was throwing out a fact,” I said. “If it must pass as poetry I can't help that, but it's fact, just the same, and I stand by it [begin page 482] and stick to it. Louis, it is fact, I give you my word of honor it is.”
It dazed him. He looked a good deal jumbled up, for a while, then he said, resignedly—
“Well, I feel all adrift. I don't quite know what to do with a situation like this, it's clear out of my experience. I don't understand how there could be a round planet, but I believe you think there is such a thing, and that you honestly believe you have been in it. I can say that much, Huck, and say it sincerely.”
I was pleased, and touched, and said—
“Out of my heart I thank you for that, Louis. It cheers me, and I was needing it, for my task is not an easy one.”
This was too sentimental to suit the pus-germ, and he said—
“Dear girlies! Oh—oh—oh, it is too touching! Do it some more.”
I do not see how a person can act like that. To me it is a mark of coarseness. I coldly ignored it, I would not condescend to notice it. I reckon that that showed him what I thought about it. I now went calmly on with my work, just as if I was not aware that there had been any interruption. I judged it cut him, but I was cold and stern, and did not care. I remarked that my planet was called the World; that there were many countries and oceans spread over its vast surface—”
“O, hold on!” said Gulliver. “Oceans?”
“Yes—oceans.”
“And they are facts too, are they?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, then, perhaps you will be good enough to tell me how they stay on? What keeps them from spilling off?—those that are on the under side, I mean—in case there are any on the under side—and certainly there ought to be, to keep up the uniformity of insanity proper to such a crazy invention as that.”
“There isn't any under side,” I said. “The world keeps turning over in the air all the time.”
“Turning over—in the air! Come—is that introduced as a fact, too?”
“Yes—and it is a fact.”
“Turns over in the air, and doesn't fall! Is that it?”
[begin page 483]“Yes.”
“Doesn't rest on anything? Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“What's it made out of? Is it gas, in a soap bubble?”
“No. Rocks and dirt.”
“Turns over in the air, doesn't rest on anything, is made out of rocks and dirt, and doesn't fall! Seems too good to be true! What's the reason it doesn't fall?”
“It is kept in its place by the attraction of other worlds in the sky; and the sun.”
“Other worlds!”
“Yes.”
“Well! So there's more, then?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Nobody knows. Millions.”
“Millions! Oh, sweet Maria!”
“You can make as much fun as you want to, Lem Gulliver, but all the same it's true. There are millions of them.”
“Say—couldn't you knock off a few? just a few, you know, for cash?”
“I've told you—and you can believe it or not, just as you please.”
“Oh, I believe it—oh, yes indeedy! I could believe a little thing like that with both hands tied behind me. Are they big, Huck, or little?”
“Big. The world is a puny little thing compared to the most of them.”
“How handsome of you to allow it! Now that's what I call real magnanimity. It humbles me. I bow to it.”
He was going on with his mean sarcasms, but Louis was so ashamed of him, and so outraged to see me treated so ungenerously when I was evidently speaking the truth, or at least speaking what I believed to be the truth, that he cut in and shut Gulliver off in the midst of his small-arm gun-play.
“Huck,” he said, “what are the components of the World, and their proportions?”
[begin page 484]“Offer an amendment!”—this from the tiresome pustule—“call it the Bubble. If it flies, that's what it is; if it's solid, it's a lie; either a lie or supernatural. Supernatural lie, I think.”
I took no notice of his drivel, I would not stoop to it. I addressed my answer to Louis:
“Three-fifths of the World's surface is water. Seas and oceans. That is to say, salt water and undrinkable.”
Of course Lem broke in:
“Oh, my land, that won't do! it would take ten million mountain ranges of pure salt to keep it up to standard, and then it wouldn't. Come—what makes it salt? That's it. Out with it—don't stop to invent. What makes it salt?”
I simply answered—
“I don't know.”
“Don't know! The idea! Don't know!”
“No, I don't. What makes your Great Lone Sea rancid?”
I scored, that time! He couldn't say a word. It crumpled him up like sitting down on a plug hat. I was tickled to the pericardium; so was Louis, for it was a corker, now I tell you! You see, Science had been fussing for ages over the riddle of what supplies the waters of the Great Lone Sea; the riddle of whence they could come in such miraculous quantity was persistently and exasperatingly insolvable—just as was the case with earthscience in its effort to find the source of the sea's salt-supply.
After a little, Louis said—
“Three-fifths of the surface is a mighty quantity. If it should overflow its banks there would be a catastrophe that would be remembered.”
“It did it once,” I said. “There was a rain-storm which lasted forty days and forty nights, and buried the whole globe out of sight, mountains and all, for eleven months.”
I thought the pathos of the stupendous disaster to life would stir them; but no—with the true scientist, science always comes first, the humanities later. Louis said—
“Why didn't it stay buried? What reduced the water?”
“Evaporation.”
“How much of it did evaporation carry off?”
[begin page 485]“The water covered mountains six miles high, which overlooked ocean-valleys five miles deep. Evaporation carried off the upper six miles.”
“Why didn't it get the rest? What stopped it?”
I had not thought of that before, and the question embarrassed me. But I did not show it, beyond a catching of the breath, and maybe an anxious look in the face, and before these had time to rouse suspicion I had scraped up an emergency-answer:
“There,“—with a just-perceptible pressure on the word—”there the law of evaporation is restricted to the upper six miles. Below that line it can't work.”
The boys looked at me so sadly, and withal so reproachfully, that I was sorry for myself, and dropped my eyes. There was one of those oppressive silences, for a time,—the kind, you know, that start at a weight of 30 pounds to the square inch and add 30 per second—then Lem Gulliver fetched a deep sigh and said—
“Well, it certainly is the insanest country that ever I've struck. But I make no moan; I'm getting hardened to its freaks. Hand me another, Huck. Sock it to me! One—two—three—let her go, Gallagher! Say—three-fifths is salt water; what's the next detail?”
“Ice and desert. But there's only one-fifth of that.”
“Only! Only's good! Only one-fifth ice and desert! Oh, what a planet! Only one-f—”
The scorn of it was unendurable, it scorched me like fire. In a fury I threw up my hand—he stopped—and almost to my tongue's end leaped the words—
“Look at your planet! A third of it is—”15
But I caught myself in time. Slowly I closed my mouth, slowly I lowered my threatening hand. I was bred in an atmosphere of refinement, I was refined by nature and instinct, and I could not sully my lips with the word. We are strange beings, we seem to be free, but we go in chains—chains of training, custom, convention, association, disposition, environment—in a word, Circumstance—and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain. The proudest of us and the meanest meet upon a common level, the [begin page 486] rankless level of servitude. King, cobbler, bishop, tramp—all are slaves, and no slave in the lot is freer than another.
I was burning, I was blazing! I had been caring nothing for my lost World; at bottom I was even despising it, so loyal was I in my admiration for the planet which was become so dear to me by reason of my microbe blood; but this scorn of that lost home of mine turned me into its champion, and I jumped to my feet, white to the lips with anger, and burst out with—
“Silence, and listen! I have spoken the truth—and only the truth, so help me God! That World is, as compared with your planet, as is that horizonless plain yonder to a grain of sand! And yet it itself is nothing—less than nothing—when its littleness is brought into contrast with the vast bulk of the millions of suns that swim those seas of space wherein it paddles lonely and unnoticed, save by its own sun, its own moon. And what is a sun, and what is a moon? I will tell you. That sun is a hundred thousand times the bulk of that World; it is made of white fire, and flames in the far zenith 92,000,000 miles away, and pours its floods of light upon the World all the day; and when the black darkness of the night comes, then comes the moon, drifting through the distant blue, and clothes the World in mellow light. You know no night, and you know no day that is like the World's day. You know a light that is lovelier than these—be grateful! You live in an eternal day of soft and pearly light through which trembles and shimmers unceasingly the dainty and delicate fires of the opal—be grateful! it is your possession, and yours alone—no light that shines on any other land is like it; none possesses its charm, its witchery, none is so gentle, so dreamy, so charged with healing for the hurt mind and the broken spirit.
“There that little World—so unimaginably vast, compared with yours!—paddles about in a shoreless solitude of space; and where are those millions of others? Lost!—vanished! invisible, when the great sun rides in the sky; but at night—oh, there they are! colossal black bulks, lumbering by? No!—turned to mere glinting sparks by distance!—a distance not conceivable by such as you! The vault is sown thick with them, the vault is alive with them, trembles with them, quivers with them! And through their midst rises a broad [begin page 487] belt of their like, uncountable for number—rises and flows up into the sky, from the one horizon, and pours across and goes flooding down to the other—a stupendous arch, made all of glittering vast suns diminished to twinkling points by the awful distance—and where is that colossal planet of mine? It's in that Belt—somewhere, God knows where! It wanders there somewhere in that immeasurable ocean of twinkling fires, and takes up no more room and gets no more notice than would a firefly that was adrift in the deeps of the opal skies that bend over imperial Henryland!
“Now then, take it or leave it! I've told you the truth, and there's not a force in this planet that can make me take back a word of it!”
All aglow with enthusiasm, Louis burst out—
“By God, there stands the palace!—I believed he could build it!”
“And by God, there stands the supernatural lie!—I knew he could hatch it!”
By now it was two o'clock in the morning, and my little thought-recorder girl—always punctual to the minute—entered and broke up the sitting. The boys rose to go, but they said they didn't want to, and they said it with the most evident sincerity, too. Louis said it was inspiring and uplifting to listen to such a poem, and Lem Gulliver said with fervency, he wished he had my talent, so help him God he would never speak the truth again. I had never seen them so moved. Louis said my art was perfect, and Lem said the same. Louis said he was going to practice it himself, and Lem said he was, too; but both said they could never hope to get up to my plane. They both said they had had a wonderful evening. These great praises made me feel so happy that I seemed to be walking on air, and I had no words to thank the boys enough for them. What a change it was from that long season of aching [begin page 488] depression and disfavor! My atrophied nerves cast off their apathy, and along them raced and rioted fresh new life and pleasure; I was like one risen from the dead.
The boys wanted to rush away to the fossil-mine and tell the whole thing to the nine others—just what I was hoping for! My original scheme would succeed, now—these missionaries would convert the rest of the comradeship, and I should be in full favor again, I felt sure of it. And now they did me a parting honor: by their own invitation we stood up and clinked glasses, shouting—thus:
Louis. “To Old Times Come Again—to stay!”
Lem. “Bumpers! no heel-taps!”
Huck. “And God bless us all!”
Then they sallied out unsteadily, arm-locked, and singing a song I had taught them in those same Old Times—a song disused this many a heavy day—
“Goblskvet liikdwzan hooooclk!” *
* Trans. “We won't go home till mor-or-ning—
Till daylight doth appear!”
In the enthusiasm born of our great fossil-find, we had agreed to dig right along, twenty-four hours in the day, and day after day indefinitely, in order that we might get as far along as possible with the excavating before the news should get abroad and the interruptions begin; but I was deep in a History of the World which I was dictating, to the end that my knowledge in that matter might not fade out and be lost, and I was minded to finish it, now, and make good my share of the flea-mine agreement when it was done. The history of Japan would complete the formidable enterprise; I would put that together at the present sitting, then I should be free and could devote my energies to the fossil flea with a contented spirit and an undivided mind. Meantime the missionarying would be going on, out there at the mine, and might I not venture to hope that by the time I appeared there the conversions would have been accomplished—provided I strung out the story of Japan pretty elaborately? Seemed so to me.
By good luck the thought-recording machine was out of order; it would take a little time to fix it. It would take more if I taught [begin page 489] Catherine of Aragon how to do it herself—so I adopted that plan. She was a dear little thing, with a pretty good head, and quite teachable; for whereas she was a “benevolent” microbe—that is to say, a daughter of the people, the masses, the humble hard-workers, the ill-paid, the oppressed, the despised, the unthanked, the meek and docile bulwark of the Throne, without whose support it would tumble to ruin like the card-house it really was—whereas, as I say, she was of this breed and therefore an ass by right of birth, and by old heredity entitled to be profoundly stupid, she was not stupid at all. She wasn't, because, by reason of an ancestral adventure of ancient date, part of a drop of cancer-blood had trickled down to her which should have trickled down to somebody else, and that little stain was worth much to Catherine. It lifted her mentalities away above the average intellectual level of her caste, for the cancers are bright, and have always been so. The other aristocracies breed a bright specimen now and then, but with the cancers, and with the cancers only, brightness is the rule.
Catherine was a neighbor's child, and she and her Geschwister were contemporaries and comrades of our earliest Taylor-litter—I mean the one I first knew. Both of these litters had been my teachers in the local tongues, and in return I had confered English (pretending it was Major Molar) upon hundreds of kids belonging to the two batches—a sort of English, at any rate, and not really bad for “benevolents”—but Catherine learned it the quickest of them all, and was a daisy at it. Indeed, she spoke it like a native. I always used the English language when talking with her, in order to keep her in practice and keep myself from forgetting it.
I did not choose that name for her—Catherine of Aragon. I should not have thought of such a thing, for it was quite unsuitable, she was so little. In a World-microscope she would not have showed up at all until she was magnified eighteen hundred diameters. But when she did show up she would command exclamations of delight and admiration, for the Observer would have to grant that she was very very pretty—pretty as a diatom. No, she chose the name herself. She lit upon it one day when we were doing the History of England, and she was quite carried away by it and said it was the sweetest thing out of doors. She had to [begin page 490] have it, she couldn't do without it; so she took it. Her name, before that, was Kittie Daisybird Timpleton, and quite suited her petite and dainty figure and exquisite complexion and frivolousness, and made her look charming. In replacing unpronounceable native names with easy human ones I always tried to select such as would not invoke prejudice and uncharitable comment by being in violent contrast with the style of the persons decorated with them.
But she wanted to be Catherine of Aragon, and was ready to cry about it, so I had to let her have her way, though,—so applied,—it had no more fitness nor point than there was in Lem Gulliver's latest nick-name for me, which was Nancy. Lem Gulliver is vulgar, and resents refinement, and thinks any person who is refined is effeminate.
However, she wanted it, so I yielded and let her have it. It was just an accident that she ever heard of Catherine of Aragon. It happened one night when I was dictating historical thoughts into the Recorder. You do not dictate words, you understand, but only thoughts—impressions—and they are not articulated; that is to say, you do not frame the impressions into words, you deliver them in blocks, a whole chapter in one blast—in a single second, you know—and the machine seizes them and records them and perpetuates them for time and eternity in that form; and there they are, and there they glow and burn forever; and so luminous are they, and so clear and limpid and superbly radiant in expression that they make all articulated speech—even the most brilliant and the most perfect—seem dull and lifeless and confused by comparison. Ah, if a person wants to know what an intellectual aurora borealis is like, with the skies all one tumultuous conflagration and downpour of divine colors and blinding splendors, let him connect-up a Recorder and turn on one of those grand poems which the inspired Masters of a million years ago dreamed into these machines!
Yes, you sit silent and dictate to the machine with your soul, not with your mouth; but sometimes you utter a chance word without being aware of it, you are so absorbed. And so that was the way Cat got her new name. I was doing impressions of Henry VIII, and was so stirred by some of his cruelties toward his first queen that I unconsciously exclaimed, “Alas, poor Catherine of Aragon!”
[begin page 491]That I should break out in speech while dictating, was such a surprise to Kittie that it knocked the self-possession out of her and she stopped turning the crank to look at me and wonder. Then the stately flow and music of the name knocked it in again and she exclaimed with emotion—
“Oh, how sweet, oh, how recherché! Oh, I could die for such a name as that! Oh, I think it is so chahming!”
Do you notice? Just a dear little bundle of self-complacencies and affectations,—that was what she was. A single speech is enough to expose her. Even the word “die” is an affectation, for she couldn't think die; she was a microbe, and could only think “disintegrate.” But you would not catch her saying she could disintegrate for such a name as that; no, it would not be foreign enough, not affected enough.
Well, that was some time ago, when we were doing “England, From Brutus to Edward VII.” Now then, when she came in, that morning, and interrupted that nice time I was having with Lem and Louis, I noticed an astonishing change in her: she was grave, dignified, calm, reposeful—all her notice-begging fussy little airs and graces and simperings and smirkings were gone, her chewinggum corals were gone, her brass bracelets were gone, her glass aigrette was gone, the manufactured waves were gone from her hair, the spit-curl was gone from her forehead, her gown was dark and plain and neat, simplicities and sincerities sat upon her everywhere, and looked out of her eyes, and found unconscious utterance in her words and her tones when she spoke. I said to myself, “Here is a mystery, a miracle: lo, Kittie Daisybird Timpleton is no more, the bogus Catherine of Aragon is no more: this is that bogus Catherine transmuted into the true metal, and worthy to wear the name!”
While she tinkered at the machine, repairing it under my instructions, I inquired into the cause of the transformation, and she explained the matter at once—simply, frankly, unembarrassedly, even with a sort of glad and grateful eagerness, as it seemed to me. She said she had picked up the book called “Science and Wealth, With Key to the Fixtures,” with the idea of finding out, for herself, what there was about it to make the new sect, popularly [begin page 492] and ironically called the Giddyites, set so much store by it—with the unexpected result that within ten minutes a change began to take place in her—an etherealizing change—a change which was volatilizing her flesh and turning it to spirit. She read on and on, the transforming process continued; within the hour it was complete, and she was all spirit, the last vestige of flesh was gone. I said—
“Catherine, you don't look it; there must be some mistake.”
But she was quite sure there was not; and she was so earnest about it that I could not doubt, and did not doubt, that she believed what she was saying. To me it was a delusion; an hour or two earlier I would have said so, and risen superior to her, and looked down upon her compassionately from that high altitude, and would have advised her to put the foolish and manifest fraud out of her head and come back to common sense and reasonableness. But not now. No. An hour or two ago and now—those were two quite different dates. Within that brief space I had suffered a sea-change myself. I had seen a certainty of mine dubbed a delusion and laughed at by a couple of able minds—minds trained to searchingly and exhaustively examine the phenomena of Nature, and segregate fact from fancy, truth from illusion, and pronounce final judgment—and these competent minds had puffed my World away without a moment's hesitancy, and without the shadow of a misgiving. They thought they knew it was an illusion. I knew it wasn't.
The list of things which we absolutely know, is not a long one, and we have not the luck to add a fresh one to it often, but I recognized that I had added one to mine this day. I knew, now, that it isn't safe to sit in judgment upon another person's illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.
I was well satisfied in my mind that Catherine was the prey of an illusion, but I had no disposition to say so, and so I didn't say it. My wounds were too sore for that, as yet. But I talked her new condition over with her, and she made the matter very interesting. She said there was no such thing as substance—substance was a fiction of Mortal Mind, an illusion. It was amusing to hear it! [begin page 493] Whose illusion? Why, anybody's that didn't believe as she did. How simple—and how settling! Oh, dear, we are all like that. Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all—the rest, to a man, are fools and deluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one knows there isn't; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn't; one man knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn't; one age knows there are witches, the next one knows there aren't; one sect knows its religion is the only true one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that know it isn't so. There is not a mind present among this multitude of verdict-deliverers that is the superior of the minds that persuade and represent the rest of the divisions of the multitude. Yet this sarcastic fact does not humble the arrogance nor diminish the know-it-all bulk of a single verdict-maker of the lot, by so much as a shade. Mind is plainly an ass, but it will be many ages before it finds it out, no doubt. Why do we respect the opinions of any man or any microbe that ever lived? I swear I don't know. Why do I respect my own? Well—that is different.
Catherine said there was no such thing as pain, or hunger, or thirst, or care, or suffering of any kind: these were all fictions of the Mortal Mind; without the presence of substance they could not exist, save as illusions, therefore they had no existence in fact, there being no such thing as substance. She called these fictions “claims”; and said that whenever a claim applied, she could drive it away in a moment. If it was a pain, for instance, she had only to repeat the formula of “the Scientific Statement of Being,” as set down in the book, then add the words “there is no such thing as pain,” and the detected fiction vanished away. She said there was no so-called disease and no so-called pain in all the long roll of microbic ailment-fictions that could not be routed and dismissed by the method above described. Except teeth-claims. They were fictions like the rest, but it was safest to carry them to the dentist. This was not immoral, not irreligious, for it was permitted by the finder of the Giddyite religion, who took her own teeth to the painless-gas establishment, and in that way made the departure from principle holy.
[begin page 494]Catherine said cheerfulness was real, and depression of spirits a fiction. She said there was not a care, not a sorrow, not a worry left in her soul. She looked it; I had to confess it!
I asked her to put the principles of her sect into a few clear sentences, so that I could understand them and keep them in my head, and she did it, quite without effort:
“Mortal Mind, being the idea of Supreme Refraction exhibited and sanctified in the Bacterium in correspondence and co-ordination with Immortal Mind in suspension, which is Truth, All-Good follows, of necessity, precipitating and combining with the elements of the Good-Good, the More-Good and the Ultimate or Most-Good, sin being a fiction of Mortal Mind operating upon Absence of Mind, nothing can be otherwise, Law being Law and hence beyond jurisdiction, wherefore the result is paramount—and being paramount, our spirits are thus freed from Substance, which is an Error of Mortal Mind, and whosoever so desires, can. This is Salvation.”
She asked me if I believed it, and I said I did. I didn't really believe it, and I don't now, but it pleased her and was a little thing to say, so I said it. It would have been a sin to tell her the truth, and I think it is not right to commit a sin when there is no occasion for it. If we would observe this rule oftener our lives would be purer.
I was greatly pleased with this conversation, because it contained things which seemed to show that the microbe mind and the human mind were substantially alike and possessed reasoning powers which clearly placed them above the other animals. This was very interesting.
I had an opportunity, now, to look into a matter which had been in my mind a long time—the attitude of the microbe toward the lower animals. In my human state I had wanted to believe that our humble comrades and friends would be forgiven and permitted to be with us in the blessed Land of the Hereafter. I had had difficulty in acquiring this belief, because there was so much opposition to it. In fact I never did get it where it would stick. Still, whenever and wherever there was a friendly dog wagging his affectionate tail, and looking up at me with his kind eyes and asking me to swap love for love with him; or a silken cat that [begin page 495] climbed into my lap, uninvited, for a nap, thus flattering me with her trust; or a gracious horse that took me for a friend just by the look of me and pushed his nose into my pocket for possible sugar and made me wish he could impart his nature to my race and give it a lift up toward his own—whenever these things happened they always raised that hope in me again and set it struggling toward concrete belief once more.
When I talked with opposers about this, they said—
“If you admit those because they are innocent of wrong by the law of their make, as you say, what are you going to do about the mosquito, the fly, and those others? Where are you going to draw the line? They are all innocent alike; come—where are you going to draw the line?”
It was my custom to say I didn't draw it at all. I didn't want the fly and his friends, but no matter; what a man could stand here he could stand there, and moreover there was a high matter concerned—common justice. By even the elemental moralities, it would be unjust to let in any creature made honor-worthy by deriving its spirit and life from God's hand and shut any other out.
But it never settled it. The opposer was human, and knew he was right; I was human, and knew I was right. There isn't anybody that isn't right, I don't care what the subject is. It comes of our having reasoning powers.
Once I carried the matter to a good and wise man who. . . .
It was a clergyman. He said—
“Let us proceed logically; it is the law of my training, and is a good law. Helter-skeltering is bad: it starts in the middle and goes both ways, it jumbles the points instead of ranking them according to seniority or importance, it gets lost in the woods and doesn't arrive. It is best to start at the beginning. You are a Christian?”
“I am.”
[begin page 496]“What is a creature?”
“That which has been created.”
“That is broad; has it a restricted sense?”
“Yes. The dictionary adds, ‘especially a living being.’ ”
“Is that what we commonly mean when we use the word?”
“Yes.”
“Is it also what we always mean when we use it without a qualifying adjective?”
“Yes.”
“Used without qualification, then, a dog is a creature?”
“Certainly.”
“A cat?”
“Yes.”
“A horse, a rat, a fly, and all the rest?”
“Of course.”
“What verse is it which authorizes the missionary to carry the gospel to the pagans?—to the willing and to the unwilling alike.”
“ ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you—’ ”
“No! It is infinitely broader: ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.’ Is that language plain and clear, or is it foggy and doubtful?”
“Plain and clear, I should say. I cannot see anything doubtful about the meaning of it.”
“How would you go about doctoring the meaning of it so as to make it apply to man only, and shut out the other creatures? What art would you employ?”
“Well, the arts of shuffling and indirection, adroitly used, could accomplish it, but I like it best as it is. I would not wish to change it.”
“You are aware that the plain meaning stood at its full value, unchanged and unchallenged, during fifteen hundred years?”
“I am.”
[begin page 497]“You are aware that the intelligence of the Fathers of the Church ranks as high to-day as does the intelligence of any theologian that has followed them, and that they found no fault with that language and did not try to improve its meaning?”
“Yes.”
“You are aware that the change is a quite modern freshet of intelligence, and that up to so late a time as three centuries ago the Christian clergy were still including the dumb animals in the privileges of that great commandment, and that both Catholic priest and Protestant were still preaching the gospel to them, in honorable obedience to its uncompromising terms?”
“I am aware of it.”
“In commanding that the gospel be carried to all the World and preached to every creature, what was the object in view?”
“The salvation of the hearers.”
“Is there any question that that was the object?”
“None has been suggested. It has not been disputed.”
“Then not two, but only one inference is deducible from the language of that commandment when it is spared jugglery and is conscientiously examined: that all of God's creatures are included in His merciful scheme of salvation. Heaven will not look strange to us; the other animals will be there, and it will look like home, and be home.”
This was a rational view, at last, a just view, a fair and righteous view, a generous view, and one in accord with the merciful character of the Creator. It removed all my doubts, all my perplexities, it brought conviction to me, and planted my feet upon solid ground. The clergyman was right, I felt it to my marrow, and in the best words I could command I tried to make him understand how grateful I was to him. My feelings were revealed in my words, and they at least were eloquent I knew, whether the words were or not, for he was much moved. I wished he would say that pleasant sentence over again, and over again, and still again, it had been so contenting to my spirit; and really, he seemed to divine that thought of mine, for without my saying anything he uttered it at once, and with emphasis—
“Yes, all the creatures! Be at rest as to that—they will be there; no creature designed, created, and appointed to a duty in the earth will be barred out of that happy home; they have done the duty they were commissioned to do, they have earned their reward, they will all be there, even to the littlest and the humblest.”
“The littlest.” The words sent a subtle chill down my hot veins. [begin page 498] Something rose in me: was it a shadowy doubt? I looked up vacantly, muttering absently—
“The disease-germs? the microbes?”
He hesitated—some little time; then changed the subject.
Well, as I have said before, the matter of whether our humble friends go with us to our happy future home or not had never lost its interest with me, and so I thought I would introduce it, now, and talk it over with Catherine. I asked her if she thought the dogs and the horses and so on would go with us microbes and still be our pets and comrades. It raised her interest at once. She said I knew she had formerly belonged to the most widely spread of all the many religions of the planet—the Established Church of Henryland—and didn't I know that that question was always being privately discussed and fussed over by the membership whenever the authorities were not around? didn't I know that?
Yes, oh, yes, I said, certainly I knew it, but it had escaped my mind. It would have hurt her if I had told her I hadn't even heard of it before, but I think it is not right to hurt a person who is not doing any harm. Lem Gulliver would have told her, for he has no moral sense; it is nothing to him whether he does right or doesn't. It is the way he is made, and so it may be that he is not responsible for it. But I do not do right because I am responsible, and I do not do right because it is right to do right, I think it is a low motive; I do it because—because—well I have a lot of reasons, I do not recollect which ones are the main ones now, but it is of no consequence, anyway. She said she felt a strong interest in the subject, and had very decided notions about it—that is, she had had—and would gladly state them for me—that is, her present ones. But not in her own language, for that was not allowed; members of her sect must not exhibit religious matters in their own words, because they would be incompetently put together and would convey error. Then she began, and went along so trippingly that I saw she had her Book by heart:
“As concerns this question, our inspired Founder instructs us that the fealty due from the Ultimate in connection with and subjection to the intermediate and the inferential, these being of necessity subordinate to the Auto-Isothermal, and limited sublimi- [begin page 499] nally by this contact, which is in all cases sporadic and incandescent, those that ascend to the Abode of the Blest are assimilated in thought and action by the objective influence of the truth which sets us free, otherwise they could not.”
There she stopped. Apparently I had wandered, and missed a cog somewhere, so I apologised and got her to say it again. She said it the same way. It certainly sounded straightforward and simple, yet I couldn't seem to get it, quite. I said—
“Do you understand it, Catherine?”
She said she did.
“Well, I seem to, but I can't make sure. Which ones do you think it is that ascend to the Abode of the Blest?”
“We are not allowed to explain the text, it would confuse its meaning.”
“Well, then, don't do it. I do not pretend to revere it, still I would not like that to happen to it. But you can tell me this much, anyway, without doing any harm. (You needn't speak, you know, just nod your head; I'll understand.) Which ones is it that could not?—could not otherwise, I mean? It seems to be the sporadics, but it looks as if it might be the incandescents. Is it the sporadics? Don't speak, just nod. Nod, or shake, according to the facts.”
But she refrained. She said it would amount to explaining, and was not allowable.
“Well, are they animals? Surely you can tell me that, Catherine?”
But she couldn't. She was willing to say the formula over again, and as many times as I pleased, but the rules were strict, and would not allow her to add to the formula, or take from it, or change the place of a word, the whole being divinely conceived and divinely framed, and therefore sacred.
It seemed to me that it would have been a good idea to apply this sensible rule to the other Scriptures and paralyse the tinkers with it: the ones that squeezed the animals out of that good and merciful text.
“Well,” I said, “say it again, and say it slow. I'll tally-off as you unwind; that is, when I think you've let out as much of an instalment as I can handle without help, I'll give notice and you'll [begin page 500] shut down till I take up the slack and stow it, then you'll let out another one—and so on, and so on, till I've got it all. The instalment plan is the best, with this line of goods. Remember—don't rush—slow and careful is the thing. Now then—ready? Play ball!”
“Which?”
“Oh, that's a technicality. If means, Begin. Once more—ready? Unwind!”
She understood, this time, and performed perfectly. Pretty metalically, as to sound, pretty dead-level and expressionless, like a phonograph saying its prayers, but sharp and definite, and quite satisfactory:
“As concerns—this question—our inspired Founder—instructs us that—the fealty due from—the Ultimate in connection with—and subjection to the—intermediate and the inferential, these—being of necessity sub—”
“Halt! I do believe you've dealt me a sequence. Let me look at my hand.”
But it was a disappointment. Good cards, but no two of the same suit. Still, it was a hand that might be patched, perhaps. “Intermediate—Inferential”—that really looked like a pair. I felt encouraged, and said:
“Go on, Catherine, I'll draw to fill. Give me three.”
But she is not educated, and she did not understand. But I did not explain; I said the laws of the cult didn't allow it. This was a sarcasm, but it didn't penetrate. I often fired little things like that at her, but only because she was sarcasm-proof, and they wouldn't hurt. I have a good deal of natural wit, and when a person is that way, he enjoys to listen to himself do it. If such a person gets the right encouragement, there is no limit to how high up he can develop. I think it was owing almost entirely to Uncle Assfalt that I got mine developed so high. He loved to hear me, and that made me keep working at it. The time that I said that about the cow that—that—well, the rest of it has gone out of my memory, now, I can't recollect what it was she did, but it was that funny it seemed like Uncle Assfalt was never going to get done laughing over it. He fairly rolled on the floor in agonies. I said—
[begin page 501]“Never mind the three, Catty, it's another technicality. This instalment is a failure; let us try another. Go ahead.”
But it was another failure. It was just a snow-flurry on a warm day: every flake was distinct and perfect, but they melted before you could grab enough to make a ball out of them. So I said—
“We will try another way. Sometimes, you know, if you dart a swift glance over a tough foreign sentence you capture the general meaning of it, whereas if you stop to meddle with details you're gone. We'll try that method. Now then—no commas, no dashes, no pauses of any sort: start at the beginning and buzz the whole incantation through just in one solid whiz—swift, you know—Empire Express—no stop this side of Albany. One—two—three—let her go!”
My, it was a grand effect! Away off you could hear it coming—next it was in sight and raging down the line like a demon chasing a Christian—next second, by she plunges, roaring and thundering, and vomiting black smoke—next, round the corner and out of sight! Apparent dividend: scurrying leaves, whirling dust, a shower of cinders. Even these settle and quiet down, after a little, and then there isn't anything left at all.
When the furniture stopped whirling around and there was only one Catherine instead of a ring of Catherines, I said I was willing to surrender if I could march out with my side-arms. Then, being defeated, I felt malicious, and was going to say I believed the Founder had a “claim,” and that it was a mental one, but I didn't say it. It would only hurt Catherine, and she couldn't defend herself, because she wasn't built like some, and hadn't any wit; and so it would not be generous in me to say it. Put me in her place, and I would be back before you could wink, with a withering “Perhaps it's you that's got the claim!” But not many would think of that. They would think of it next day, but that is the difference between talent and the imitation of it. Talent thinks of it at the time.
I could see that Catherine was disappointed about the failure; she had a great affection for her new cult, and it grieved her to see it miss the triumph she had expected it was going to achieve—I thought I could read this in her face, poor thing—so I hadn't the [begin page 502] heart to confess I was permanently done trying to strike oil in that formation: I let on that by and by when I got leisure I was going to torpedo that well, and was feeling sure I should turn loose a gusher—a thousand barrels a day, I said; and when I saw how glad it made her, I raised it to four thousand, the expense being the same. I told her to empty the incantation into the recorder—which she did at once—and leave it there. I said I thought that what it needed was, to be disarticulated, and resolved into its original elements; that the way it was now, the words broke up the sense—interrupted the flow of meaning, you see—jumbled it all up, you understand, when there was no occasion; the machine would mash the words together into a pulp, and grind the pulp around the way an arastra does with pulverised ores from the mill, and when you come to clean up at the week-end, there you are! there's your virgin gold, caught tight and fast in the amalgam! there's your clean and clear four dollars' worth, a thousand carats fine, rescued! Every yellow grain captured, safe and sound, and nothing left behind but eleven tons of slush! It's four dollars, and every dollar worth a hundred cents on the scales; it's not coined, but that's nothing, you've got the full-par impression, and when you've got that you've got the whole thing: mint it if you want to, it's your privilege: coin it and stamp Henry's head on it, and it's worth par all over Henryland, but leave it as it is and it's worth par from one end of Blitzowski clean to the other!
Well, it pleased her so, that I wished I had made it nine dollars. For a moment I thought I would do it, but I had scruples about it and refrained. It would be 76 cents a ton, and I knew you couldn't get that out of that kind of rock—no, not even with the cyanide. Presently I sighed, and Catherine wanted to know, right away, what was troubling me; she was just that quick in her sympathies, now that her new religion was giving her a chance to stop thinking about her own troubles—in fact she hadn't any, any more, she said. I said—
“I was wishing I had somebody that would talk to me about whether the animals are going up there with us or not. You, see, Catty—”
She made a spring for the window, and cried out—
[begin page 503]“Countess! Yonder is Rev. Brother Pjorsky drowsing on the fireplug. Would you mind asking him to step in here a minute as you pass by him?” Then she returned to her seat, saying, “He'll love to talk with you about it. And he is very nice, too. You remember him, don't you—the time he came here once and took up a collection? No? It was years ago, I thought you would remember it. He is about the same as a priest, but he isn't that—they don't have priests in his sect, but only Brothers, as they call them. He used to be my spiritual father before I was orthodox; or maybe it was before that—or perhaps it was before that again; I remember it was somewhere along there; and so—”
“Why don't you keep a list?”
“List of what?”—proceeding toward the window.
“Salvation-trains. You ought to have a time-table.”
“Why?” Oh, that vacant Why! I did hear it so often! She could overlook more points than—oh, well she was absolutely immune to wit, it was wasted on her. “There—she's waking him—she's telling him, now. . . . He's nestling, again, but it's all right, he'll come when his nap's out; he won't forget.”
“Nap? I thought a microbe never slept. They don't in the Major Molar.”
“But he is different. We don't know how to account for it. Nobody knows. It beats the scientists. He is not a native; he comes from the jungles of Mbumbum—emphasis on the antepenultimate—it's a wee little isolated tribe, and almost unknown—its name is Flubbrzwak—”
“Land! what's the matter?” she exclaimed.
I said I was sorry I made her jump; then I explained that I had had a stitch in the side; and it was quite true, too; I did have one once—it was in America, I remember it quite well, though nothing came of it. But that name! It certainly gave me a start, for this is the rare and mysterious microbe that breeds the awful disease called the African Sleeping Sickness—drowses the victim into a dull and heavy lethargy that is steeped with death; he lies there week after week, month after month, his despairing dear ones weeping over him, shaking him, imploring him to wake, beseeching him to open his eyes, if only a moment, and look into theirs once more—just [begin page 504] once more—one little look of love and blessing and farewell. But let their hearts break!—it is what the malady was invented for; he will never wake any more.
Isn't it curious and interesting?—the fact that not a microbe in all this microbe-stuffed planet of Blitzowski ever suspects that he is a harmful creature! They would be astonished and cruelly hurt if you should tell them such a thing. The Nobles eat the Ignobles—that is all right, it was intended they should, and so there is no wrong in that, and they would tell you so; in turn, the Ignobles eat them, and neither is that objectionable; both races feed on Blitzowski's blood and tissue, and that also is proper, foreordained and void of sin; also, they rot him with disease, they poison him, but that they do not know, that they do not suspect. They don't know he is an animal, they take him for a planet; to them he is rocks and dirt and landscape and one thing and another, they think he has been provided for them, and they honestly admire him, enjoy him, and praise God for him. And why not? they would be ingrates and unworthy of the blessings and the bounties that have been lavished upon them if they did otherwise. Without being a microbe I could not feel this so deeply; before I was a microbe I do not believe I felt it at all. How alike we all are! all we think about is ourselves, we do not care whether others are happy or not. When I was a man, I would have turned a microbe from my door hungry, anytime. Now I see how selfish I was; now I should be ashamed to do such a thing. So would any person that had any religion. The very littleness of a microbe should appeal to a person, let alone his friendlessness. Yet in America you see scientists torturing them, and exposing them naked on microscope slides, before ladies, and culturing them, and harrying them, and hunting up every way they can think of to extirpate them—even doing it on the Sabbath. I have seen it myself. I have seen a doctor do it; and he not cold from church. It was murder. I did not realize it at the time, but that is what it was, it was murder. He conceded it himself, in light words, little dreaming how mighty they were: he called himself a germicide. Some day he will know to his sorrow that there is no moral difference between a germicide and a homicide. He will find that not even a germ falls to the ground unnoticed. There is a Record. It does not draw the line at feathers.
[begin page 505]She said he belonged to the sect of the Magnanimites, and that it was a very good sect, and this Brother as good as the best. She said he and she had always had a fondness for each other when she used to be a Magnanimite, and that that feeling still continued, she was glad to say. She said the countess was orthodox, because she was a kind of a sort of a Noble by marriage, and it would not be good form for her to travel the side-trails to the Abode of the Blest, but she was a good creature and liked the Brother, and he liked her. On she rattled:
“She's a foreigner—the countess. She's a GRQ, and—”
“What's a GRQ?”
“Getrichquick—and she was a lady there; though here, people of her family's condition, being SBE's would have to stick to their proper place, and so—”
“What's an SBE?”
“Soiled-Bread Eater.”
“Why soiled bread?”
“Because it's earned.”
“Because it's earned?”
“Yes.”
“Does the act of earning it soil it?”
It made her laugh—the idea that I, a grown-up, could be ignorant of an ABC fact like that!—but I detected a sudden happy hunger in her eye which we are all acquainted with, and which I was not sorry to see there: it comes when we think we have discovered that we know something the other person doesn't, and are going to have a chance to unload information into him and surprise him and make him admire us. It wasn't very often that Catherine dropped a fact that was new to me, but she often threw an interesting new light upon an old one if I kept shady and allowed her to think the fact itself was a valuable contribution to my treasury. So I generally kept shady. Sometimes I got a profit out of this policy, sometimes I didn't, but on the whole it paid.
My question made her laugh. She repeated it—apparently to taste again the refreshing ignorance of it:
“ ‘Does the act of earning it soil it?’ Why, don't you know—”
She stopped, and looked a little ashamed. I said—
“What's the trouble?”
[begin page 506]“You are joking with me.”
“Joking? Why should I be joking?”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“Ah, you know very well.”
“I don't. I give you my word.”
She looked straight in the eye, and said—
“If you are joking, I shall see it. Now I will ask you in earnest, and I think you ought to answer in earnest: Have you ever heard of a nation—a large nation—where earning the bread didn't soil it?”
It was my turn to laugh! I started to do it, but—Something moved me to wait a minute; something which suggested that maybe it was not so foolish a question as it seemed. I mused for a while. Great nations began to drift past my mind's eye—habitants of both the planets—and I soon reached a decision, and said—
“I thought it was a foolish question, Catherine, but really it isn't, when a body examines it. I reckon we are pretty full of notions which we got at second hand and haven't examined to see whether they are supported by the statistics or not. I know of a country—through talking with natives of it—where the dignity of labor is a phrase which is in everybody's mouth; where the reality of that dignity is never questioned; where everybody says it is an honor to a person that he works for the bread he eats; that earned bread is noble bread, and lifts the earner to the level of the highest in the land; that unearned bread, the bread of idleness, is tainted with discredit; a land where the sayers of these things say them with strong emotion, and think they believe what they say, and are proud of their land because it is the sole land where the breadearners are the only acknowledged aristocracy. And yet I do see, that when you come to examine into it—”
“I know the land you mean! It's GRQ! Honest—isn't it GRQ?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I recognised it in a minute! The countess is always talking about it. She used to love it when she lived there, but she despises it now, and says so, but I reckon she has to talk that way to keep people from doubting that she's been changed and is a real, actual [begin page 507] Henryling, now—and you know, she is a real one, realer than the born ones themselves, I know it by the way she talks. Well, she told me about the dignity-of-labor gospeling, and says it's all sham. She says a mechanic is the same there as anywhere. They don't ask him to dinner—plumber, carpenter, blacksmith, cobbler, butler, coachman, sailor, soldier, stevedore, it's all the same all around, they don't ask any of them. The professionals and merchants and preachers don't, and the idle rich don't invite them—not by a dam sight, she says, and—”
“H'sh! I'm astonished at you!”
“Well, she said it, anyway; and she said they don't give a dam whether—”
“Will you be quiet! You must stop this habit of picking up and fetching home every dreadful word you—”
“But she said it—I heard her say it! The way she said it was this: she fetched her fist down—so!—and said ‘By—’ ”
“Never mind how she said it! I don't want to hear it. You are certainly the most innocent animal that ever was. You don't seem to have any discrimination—everything that gets in front of your rake is treasure to you. I think there was never such a random scavenger since language was invented. Now then, let those words alone; just let them alone, and start over again where they side-tracked you.”
“Well, I will, and I'm sorry if I've done wrong, I wasn't meaning any harm. The rest that she said was, that if the banker's daughter married the plumber, and if the multimillionaire's daughter married the editor, and if the bishop's daughter married the horse-doctor, and if the governor's daughter married the coachman, there was hell to pay!”
“Now there you go, again! I—”
“Why, that's what she said.”
“Oh, I know it, but—”
“And she said there's families that are so awful high-up and swell, that they won't let their daughters marry any native at all, if they can help it. They save them up till a foreign bacillus with a title comes along; then if they can agree on the price they make the trade. But they don't have auctions, she says. Not public ones. She's as nice as she can be, and it's most interesting to hear her talk. [begin page 508] She's good-hearted and malicious and all that, and is never borous, and makes plenty of friends—and keeps them, too. She's got a heart of gold, and false teeth and a glass eye, and I think she's perfect.”
“Those are the marks. I should recognize them anywhere.”
“It's nice to have you say that. And I thought you would. There's a good deal to her. I think she's awfully interesting. She's morganatic.”
“Morganatic?”
“Yes. That's what she is—morganatic.”
“How do you make that out?”
“Well, it's what they say. Not she herself, but the others. Neighbors, you know. That's what they say. Morganatic.”
“Yes, but how?”
“Well, her mother was a vermiform appendix—”
“Oh, good land!”
“It's what they say, anyway. They don't know who her father was. Only just her mother. She was a vermiform appendix. That's what they say. Morganatic.”
“How in the nation is that morganatic?”
“Irregular, you know. They all say it's irregular for a vermiform appendix to have a family anyway, to begin with, for it's never happened before, and doctors didn't believe it could happen till it did happen; and then to go and have it irregular besides—well, it's morganatic, you see. That's what they all say. Morganatic. Some say it's more than morganatic, but I reckon it's not so much as that, do you think?”
“Why, hang it there's nothing morganatic about it—nothing that resembles it. The whole thing is insane—absolutely insane. Now how can these germs be cruel enough to ruin the countess's character in this wanton way?”
“Ruin her character? What makes you think it hurts her character?”
“But doesn't it?”
“Why no. How could it affect her character? She wasn't to blame. She hadn't anything to do with it. Why, she wasn't any more than just there, when it happened. I reckon another minute and she'd have been too late.”
[begin page 509]“What an idea! Hanged if you can't make the most unexpected turns, and pop out in the most unexpected places that ever I—and there's no such thing as understanding these mixed up and helter-skelter and involved statements of yours—why, they fuddle a person all up, they make him dizzy, he can't tell them from sacred passages out of Science and Wealth itself, the style is so astonishingly replicated!”
I was so sorry it escaped me! But for only half a second. Why, she was beaming with gratitude! It wasn't a sarcasm to her. It fell short—away short! She took it for a compliment. I hastened to get back on our course and said—
“I am very glad it didn't hurt her character; and very sincerely glad to come across one civilization which places shame where it belongs, instead of emptying its brutal scorn upon the innocent product of it. So these good and just people respect the countess, do they?”
“Oh yes, they do, as far as that incident is concerned. In fact it is a valuable thing to her, because it gives her distinction.”
“How?”
“Why, she's the only appendicitis there is. There's plenty inside of people, in the hospitals and around, but she's the only one that's outside; the only one that's been born, you know.—Irregular, and pretty morganatic, and all that, but never mind, when all's said and done, she's the only one in history, and it's a gigantic distinction. I wish I was it, myself.”
“Oh, Great Sc—”
She clattered right along, paying no attention to my attempt to invoke the Great Scott. Also she followed a slovenly fashion of hers, of throwing a back-handspring clear over thirty yards of general conversation and landing right-side-up in front of an unfinished remark of an hour before—then she would hitch-on to [begin page 510] it, and come lumbering along with it the same as if there hadn't been anything obstructing the line, and no interruption to its progress—
“So you see, there isn't any big nation, after all, where it doesn't soil the bread to earn it, notwithstanding you stood out so stubbornly that it wasn't so.” (I hadn't done anything of the kind, but I knew it would save time and wind to leave it so, and not argue it.) “The countess says it's all a sham, in GRQ, and of course if there was a big nation anywhere where it wasn't a sham, it would be there, which is a republic and a democracy, and the greatest one on the planet, and everybody letting on to be equal and some of them succeeding, God only knows which ones, she says! She says the sham starts at the top and runs straight to the bottom without a break, and there isn't a da—” (“Look out!” I said)—”isn't a person in the land that can see it. That's what she says—all blind-fuddled with bogus sentiment.
“Ranks—grades—castes—there's a million of them! that's what she says. Mesalliances! why, she says it's just the natural native home of them, on account of there being so many more ranks and aristocracies there than anywhere else. She says there's families that the very President isn't good enough to marry into—at least until he's President. They're nearly always SBE's—tanners, or rail-splitters, or tailors, or prohibitionists, or some other low trade, and they've got to climb away up above that before they can crowd into those families—and by that time, you know, it's too late, they're already coupled. They consider it climbing, she says, and everybody does. They admire him—admire him immensely—for what he is now, don't you know—admire him for the respectability he's climbed up to. They don't say, with swelling pride and noble emotion, ‘Look at him, the splendid SBE—he's a rail-splitter!’ No, they say, with swelling pride and noble emotion, ‘Look at him—away up there!—and just think, he used to wasn't anything but a rail-splitter!’ And she says he's not ashamed of what he was, and no occasion to, it's a distinction and a grand one, now that he's where he is; and you'd think he would make tailors and tanners and rail-splitters out of his boys. She says she thinks they do, but she don't remember any instances.
[begin page 511]“So there 'tis, and I reckon you've got to come down.”
“Come down?”
“Yes. Come down and acknowledge it.”
“Acknowledge what?”
“That earned bread is soiled bread—everywhere on the planet of Blitzowski, republics and all. It's the soiled bread that makes a nation; makes it great, makes it honored, makes it strong, props up its throne and saves it from the junk-shop, makes its waving flag a beautiful thing to see, and bring the proud tears to your eyes to look at it, keeps its da—keeps its Grand Dukes out of the hog-wallow, the jail and the alms-house—if you sh'd sweep the SBE's and their dirty bread away there wouldn't be a solitary valuable thing left in the land! and yet, by God—”
“Oh, for goodness sake!—”
“Well, that's what she said. She said, ‘By—’ ”
“Will you hush! I tell you—”
“But she said it—the countess did. She put up her hand—away up so, with her fist clinched and her eyes snapping, and rips out the doggondest, consoundedest, allfiredest, thunderblast of—”
Thank heaven there was a knock on the door! It was the good Brother, the impressive Sleeping-Sickness germ.
He had a gentle way with him, and a kind and winning face, for he was a Malignant; that is to say, a Noble of the loftiest rank and the deadliest, and the gentle bearing and the kind face are theirs by nature and old heredity. He was not aware that he was deadly; he was not aware that any Noble was deadly; he was far from suspecting the shocking truth that all Nobles are deadly. I was the only person in all Blitzowski that knew these terrible facts, and I knew it only because I had learned it in another World.
He and Catherine gave each other a pleased and affectionate greeting, she going on her knees to him, as etiquette required, she being an SBE and he of dizzily lofty blood, and he patting her bowed head lovingly, and telling her she might rise. Which she did, and waited so, until he told her she could sit. He and I exchanged stately bows, each repeatedly waving a reverent hand toward a chair and accompanying each wave with a courtly “After you, m'lord.”
[begin page 512]We got it settled presently, by the two of us chairing ourselves with carefully exact simultaneousness. He had a slender long box with him, which Catherine relieved him of—curtsying profoundly.
Ah, he knew things, the wise old gentleman! He knew that when you are in doubt it is safest to lead trumps. He could see that I was of a great blood; I might be a Noble, so he treated me as one, without asking any awkward questions. I followed his lead: I made him a Duke, without asking him anything about it.
He was munching an SBE which he had captured as he came along—eating it alive, which is our way—and its cries and struggles made my mouth water, for it was an infant of four weeks and quite fat and tender and juicy, and I hadn't tasted a bite since the boys left at 2 a.m. There was enough of it for a family, therefore no occasion for etiquetical declining and polite lying when he offered me a leg; I took it, and it seemed to me that I had never tasted anything better. It was a pectin—a spring pectin—and I think them quite choice when they are well nourished.
I knew Catherine was hungry, but this kind of game was not for her: SBE's eat Nobles when they get a chance—war-prisoners or battle-slain—but SBE's don't eat each other, and she was an SBE. It was a good meal, and we threw the remnants to the mother, who was crying outside. She was very grateful, poor thing, though it was but a trifling kindness, and we claimed no merit for it.
When the Brother learned that I longed to have our humble friends and helpers, the lower animals, accompany us to the Happy Land and partake of its joys with us, it went to his heart. He was deeply moved, and said it was a most noble and compassionate feeling, and that he shared it with me to the uttermost. That was good and strong and cheering language; and when he added that he not only longed for the translation of the animals but believed it would happen and had no shadow of a doubt that it would happen, my cup of happiness was full! I had never lacked anything but a support like this to clinch my own belief and make it solid and perfect, and now it was solid and perfect. I think there was not a happier microbe than I, at that moment, from Henryland to GRQ, and from the Major Molar to the Great Lone Sea. There was but one question left to ask, and I asked it without fear or misgiving—
[begin page 513]“Does your Grace include all the creatures, even the meanest and the smallest—mosquito, rat, fly, all and every?”
“Yes, all and every!—even the invisible and deadly microbe that feeds upon our bodies and rots them with disease!”
x x x x The stars represent the time it took me to get my breath back. Yes, yes, yes, how strangely we are made! I had always wanted somebody to say that, and round-out and perfect the scheme of justice, making all innocent and duty-doing life partakers of it, and I had long ago (unsuccessfully) offered an upright and kind-hearted clergyman an opportunity to do it, yet now that somebody had said it at last, it nearly paralysed me!
The Duke saw it. I couldn't help it—he saw it. I was ashamed, but there it was; so I didn't make any excuses, or venture any lies, I just stood pat. It's the best way, when you know you are caught and there isn't anything you can do. But the Duke was handsomely magnanimous about it; he dealt in no upbraidings, no sarcasms, he did a better thing—he dealt in reasonings: reasonings supported by facts. He said—
“You make a limit, you draw a line; do not let that trouble you, there was a time when I did it too. It was when I lacked knowledge—that is, full knowledge; it was incomplete—like yours. Yours is about to be amended, now—and completed—by me. Then you will see the right, I know you need have no doubts as to that. I will show you the facts. Arguments carry far, but nothing but facts carry home. There are plenty of evidences on view in this room that you are a student of science, m'lord, but you have revealed the fact—unintentionally—that there is one great field of science—bacteriology—which you have neglected—which, at any rate, you have not made yourself altogether familiar with. Is it so?”
Well, what was I to say? As to World-bacteriology, I was the expert of experts—I was a past master—I knew more about it in a week than Pasteur ever knew about it in a year. I couldn't tell the Duke that—he wouldn't know what I was talking about. As to bacteriology here in this planet—the infinitely microscopic microbes that infest microbes—land, I knew nothing about it! I had sometimes lazily wondered if they were minute duplicates of the World-microbes, and had the same habits and devoted themselves [begin page 514] to the same duties, but I had never felt interest enough in the matter to think examining into it worth the trouble. On the whole I thought I would tell the Duke I didn't know anything about germs and such things, and that is what I did.
It didn't surprise him any—I could see that—and it hurt my pride a little, but I stood it and made no moan. He got up and arranged one of my microscopes—remarking casually that he was a bacteriologist of some reputation—by which he meant that he was the bacteriologist of the planet—oh, I know that tune!—and I know how to dance to it to the singer's satisfaction, too—which I did, in the old shop-worn way: I said I should consider myself the most ignorant of scientists if I was not aware of that pretty well-known fact. Then he got a glass slide out of his grooved box—which I had recognized, early, as a slide-box—and put it under the microscope. He worked the screws and made the proper adjustment, then told me to take a look.
Oh, well, there's no use—I was astonished! It was one of those old familiar rascals which I had had under the microscope a thousand times in America, and here was his unspeakably littler twin exactly reproduced, to the last detail. He was a pectin—a spring pectin—a baby one, and most ridiculously like the mammoth one (by comparison) which we had just eaten! It was so funny that I wanted to make a joke about him; I wanted to say, let's get that little speck out on a needle-point and make a gnat eat him, then give his remnants to his mother! But I didn't say it. It might be that the Duke was not witty: well, you don't charm that kind by reminding them of their defect and making them ashamed and envious. So I held in, but it strained me some.17
[begin page 515]He made a sketchy little introductory layout in the professorial style, in which he generalized, as in an impressionist picture, the great lesson which he was going to particularize for my instruction; then he got down to his work. At this point he discarded the local vernacular, and thenceforth employed the highest and purest dialect of the black plague, which he spoke with a French accent— I mean, it sounded like it. It had long been the court language, all over Blitzowski, and was now becoming the language of science, because of its peculiar richness in several high qualities; among them, precision and flexibility. I will remark, in passing, that in this tongue, the scientific family-name for all germ-forms is swink. Every microbe is a swink, every bacterium is a swink, and so on; just as in the World every German, Indian, Irishman, and so on, is a man.
“Let us begin at the beginning,” he said. “This mighty planet which we inhabit, and in which we have set up our democracies, our republics, kingdoms, hierarchies, oligarchies, autocracies and other vanities, was created for a great and wise purpose. It was not chance-work, it proceeded, stage by stage, in accordance with an ordered and systematised plan.
“It was created for a purpose. What was that purpose? That We might have a home. That is the proper expression—a home, not a mere abiding place, stingy of comforts. No, the design was, a home rich in comforts, and in intelligent and hard-working subordinates to provide them for us. No microbe fails to realize this, no microbe forgets to be grateful for it”. If the microbe is also a little vain of his high position, a little vain of his august supremacy, it must be allowed that it is pardonable. If the microbe has by his own unanimous consent gilded himself with the large title of Lord of Creation, it must be allowed that that also was pardonable, seeing that it was safer to take the title than go before the country with the matter and possibly fail to get elected.
[begin page 516]“Very well. The planet was to be created—for a purpose. Was it created—and then the microbe put into possession of it at once? No, he would have starved. It had to be prepared for him. What was the process? Let us make a little planet—in fancy—and see.
“Thus. We make some soil, and spread it out. It is going to be a garden, presently. We make air, and put into it moisture; the air and the moisture contain life-nurturing foods in the form of gases—foods for the plants which we are going to raise. We put into the soil some other plant-foods—potassium, phosphorous, nitrates, and such.
“There is plenty of food; the plant eats, is energised, and springs from the soil and flourishes. Presently the garden is wealthy in grains, berries, melons, table-vegetables, and all manner of luscious fruits.
“There being food now for the Lord of Creation and for the horse, the cow and their kind, and for the locust, the weevil, and the countless other destructive insects, we create them and set them to the table. Also the tiger, the lion, the snake, the wolf, the cat, the dog, the buzzard, the vulture and their sort?
“Yes, we create them, but it is not a fortunate time for them, because they cannot live on garden-stuff. They have to sacrifice themselves in a great cause. They are martyrs. Though not by request. Being without food, they die.
“At this point we create the swinks, and they appear on the scene—with a stupendous mission. They come in countless multitudes, for much is required of them. What would happen if they did not come?
“Why, the catastrophe of catastrophes! The garden would use up and exhaust the supply of essential foods concealed in the soil—the nitrates and the rest of that nutritive menu; then it would have nothing left to live on but the slim menu furnished by the air—carbon dioxide and such—and so it would get hungrier and hungrier, and weaker and weaker, then it would gasp out its remnant of life and die. With it all the animals would perish, the Lord of Creation along with them, and the planet would be a desolate wilderness, without song of bird, or cry of predatory creature, or whir of wing, or any sign of life. The forests would [begin page 517] wither and pass away, nothing would be left of all the fair creation but limitless expanses of rocks and sand.
“Is the humble swink important in the scheme, then? Ah, yes—beyond question! What shall we call him? What shall be his title, since he is unmicrobically modest, and has not selected one himself? Let us name him in accordance with the plain facts. He is the Lord Protector of the Lord of Creation, and ex-officio Redeemer of his Planet. Let us now examine his procedure and his methods.
“He arrives on the scene in his due order and at the proper and appointed time. The microbe is well, and well fed; the same is the case with the cow, the horse and the other creatures that can live on vegetable products, but there is a wilderness of tigers, dogs, cats, lions, and other meat-eaters dying, because there isn't meat enough to go around. The swink attacks the carcases and their previous excretions, feeds upon them, decomposes them, and sets free a lot of oxygen, nitrogen and other things necessary to the plant-table; the plant-leaves seize upon these foods—with the exception of the nitrogen, which it must get later through the labors of other breeds of swinks.
“Very well, the country is saved. The plants get their foods back again, and thrive. They digest them, building them into albumins, starch, fats and so on; these go back to the animals, who feed upon them and thrive; in digesting them they build them into various food-forms; some of these pass to the air in their breath and are re-captured by the plant-leaves and devoured; some of them go from them in their excretions and are recovered by the swink and returned to the plants; when the animals die the swink rots him and sets free the rest of the plant-foods and they go back to the garden.
“So, the eternal round goes on: the foods fat-up the plants; they go from the plants to the animals and fat them up; the swink recovers them and sends them back to the plants' larder; the plants eat them again, and again forward them to the animals. Nothing is lost, nothing wasted; there's never a new dish, and never has been one; it's the same old sumptuous but unchanging bill of fare, and not only the same bill, but the very same old food which was set [begin page 518] upon the table at creation's first meal, and has been warmed over and chewed and re-chewed, and chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed again and again and still again and yet again at every single meal that life in any form, in land and water and air has ever sat down to, from that original first day to this.
“It is a marvelous machinery, an amazing machinery; the precision of it, the perfection of it, the wonder of it—put it into your own words, I have none that are sublime enough!
“Remove the swink from the scheme, and what have you? Rocks and sand! Rocks and sand, stripped bare; the forests gone and the flowers, the seas without a fish, the air without a wing, the temples without a worshiper, the thrones empty, the cities crumbled to dust and blown away. And the armies, and the banners, and the shouting—where are they? Do you hear a sound? It is only the wandering wind, the lamenting wind; and do you hear that other sound?—
“ ‘The old, old Sea, as one in tears,Comes murmuring with foamy lips,
And knocking at the vacant piers,
Calls for his long-lost multitude of ships!’
“x x x x We will look at this swink, this giant. Catherine, bring a tin cup. A pint tin cup. Now fill it with wheat—level full. There— it represents a pound, avoirdupois by immemorial tradition. There are 7,000 grains. Take 15 of them, crush them in the mortar. Now wet the pulp, and make a pill of it. It is a small pill, isn't it? You could swallow it without difficulty? Let us suppose it hollow—with a hole in it, pierced by the most delicate needle-point. Let us imagine it the house of the swink, and summon him and his to come forth. Go on with the fancy: behold, he comes—the procession moves! Can you see so minute a creature? No—you must imagine him. Count!
“One—two—three—Three what? Individuals? No! It would take a year. You must count him—how? By armies—only by armies—each a million strong. Count!”
“One—two—three.” I was counting. I went on counting— counting—counting—monotonously. I got to the forties.
[begin page 519]“Go on!”
I got to the seventies.
“Go on!”
I got to the nineties.
“Go on!”
I reached a hundred.
“Stop! There he stands, a hundred million strong—his mass, the mass of a calomel pill! Take off your hat—make reverence: you stand in the presence of his sublime Majesty the Swink, Lord Protector of the Lord of Creation, Redeemer of his Planet, Preserver of all Life!
“Will he be forgiven, and changed to a spirit, and allowed to ascend with us to the Land of Rest—to fold his tired hands and labor no more, his duty done, his mission finished? What do you think?”
At last my spirit had found perfect repose, perfect peace, perfect contentment—never again to be disturbed, never again to be tossed upon waves of doubt, I hoped and believed. The Lower Animals, big and little, would be spirits in the Blessed Land, as intangible as thought; airy, floating forms, wandering hither and thither, leagues apart, in the stupendous solitudes of space, seldom glimpsed, unremarked, inoffensive, intruding upon none—ah, why had not some one thought of this simple and rational solution before? In the human World even the most fastidious churchman would hail with joy and thankfulness the translation of my poor old tramp to the Blessed Land from a repentant deathbed, quite undisturbed by the certainty of having to associate with him there throughout eternity. In what condition? frowsy, drunk, driveling, malodorous?—proper comrade for a disease-germ? No: as a spirit— an airy, flitting form, as intangible as thought; in no one's way, offending none. Yet the same charitable churchman who could [begin page 520] forecast the tramp as a spirit and purified of offensiveness, could never in all his days happen to hit upon the logical idea of also forecasting the rest of the ruck of life as spirits. Plainly a thing not difficult to do after practising on Blitzowski and getting reconciled18 to the process.
Something roused me out of this reverie, and I found that the Duke was talking. Something like this:
“We have seen that the swink—and the swink alone—saved our planet from denudation and irremediable sterility in the beginning; saved Us and all subordinate life from extinction; is still standing between Us and extinction to-day; and that if ever he deserts Us, that day is Our Doomsday, that day marks the passing of Our Great Race and of Our Noble Planet to the grave of the Things That Were.
“Is that humble mite important, then? Let us confess it: he is in truth the only very important personage that exists. What is the suit of clothes which we call Henry the Great, and bow before, reverent and trembling? What are the tribe of kings, and their grandeurs? What are their armies and their navies? What are the multitudinous nations and their pride? Shadows—all shadows—nothing is real but the swink. And their showy might? It is a dream—there is no might but the might of the swink. And their glories? The swink gave them, the swink can take them away. And their riches, their prosperities—
“Let us look at that. There are some strange resemblances between Our Grand Race and those wee creatures. For instance, We have upper classes—so have they. That is a parallel, as far as it goes, but it is not a perfect one, for the reason that Our aristocracy is useful and not often harmful, whereas their aristocracy are disease-germs, and propagate deadly maladies in Our bodies.*
* Listen to that, now! He was a disease-germ himself, and didn't suspect it. The girly innocence of these poisonous Toughs is almost unthinkable.
“But the next parallel has no defect. I refer to their lower classes—their laboring poor. They are harmless. They work, they work intelligently, they work unceasingly. We have seen that they save [begin page 521] Us and Our planet; very well, they also create Our wealth for Us, they prepare it for Our hand, We take it and use it.
“For instance. No method of separating the linen fibres in the flax from the wood fibres has yet been devised which dispenses with the aid of the swink. He holds the patent upon that essential. He has always been boss of the whole rich linen industry of this planet; he is still boss of it; he keeps the mills going; he pays the wages, he attends to the dividends. He bosses the sacking industry, too; helps to get the jute ready. The same with other fibre-products of several kinds.
“Swinks of various breeds help in a multitude of Our commercial industries. The yeast-swink helps in every kitchen and every bakery on the planet. You get no good bread without him. He conducts Our wine-business, strong-liquor business, beer-business, vinegar-business, and so on, for Us, and does it on a mighty scale. It is by his grace that those generous floods are poured down the throats of the nations, and the dividends handed over by the train-load to the capitalist.
“He sees to it that your butter is good; and your cream, your cheese, and all sorts of boarding-house essentials.
“When the tobacco leaf sprouts, the swink is there—on duty, and faithful to his trust. He will never leave that leaf until he has helped it with his best strength and judgment through every one of its curing-processes; and when it reaches your mouth the flavor and the aroma that make it delicious to your taste and smell, and fill your spirit with contentment and thanks, are his work. He oversees, and superintends, and makes profitable beyond the dreams of the statistician the entire tobacco-industry of this great planet, and every day the smoke of the burnt offerings that go up in praise and worship of this unknown god, this god whose labors are not suspected and whose name is never uttered by these ignorant devotees, transcends in volume all the other altar-smokes that have gone skyward during the preceding thirty years. Pray correct me if I seem to fall into error at any time, for we are all prone to do this when stirred by feeling.
“These are great services which we have been tallying off to the credit of Our benefactor, the humble swink, the puissant swink, [begin page 522] the all-providing swink, the all-protecting swink. Is the tale finished? Is there yet another service? Yes—and a greater still. This:
“In their time, the trees and the plants fall, and lie. The swink takes hold. He decomposes them, turns them to dust, mingles them with the soil. Suppose he didn't do this work? The fallen vegetation would not rot, it would lie, and pile up, and up, and up, and by and by the soil would be buried fathoms deep; no food could be grown, all life would perish, the planet would be a lifeless desert. There is but one instrument that can keep this vast planet's soil free and usable—the swink.”
“Oh, dear me,” I muttered to myself, “the idea of ruling God's most valuable creatures out of heaven, and admitting the Blitzowskis!”
“There. Let us finish. We complain of his aristocracy—his disease-germs. All We can think about, when the swink is mentioned, is his aristocracy's evil doings. When do We ever speak of the laboring swink, Our benefactor, Our prosperity-maker? In effect, never. Our race does not even know that he is Our benefactor, none knows it but here and there a student, a scholar, a scientist. The public—why, the public thinks all swinks are disease-breeders, and so it has a horror of all the race of swinks. It is a pity, too, for the facts and the figures would modify its hostilities if it had them and would examine them.
“When the plague-swink starts upon a raid, the best he can do, while it lasts, is to kill 2½ per cent of the community attacked—not the nation, merely the few communities visited. Nowadays, I mean. He did a larger trade in bygone ages, before science took hold of his case. He kills 2½d per cent; then he has to lie still for years. The cholera-swink does even a slenderer business; then he also must postpone his next raid for years. Both of these are harshly talked about and dreaded. Why? I don't know. None but mere outlying corners of the planet ever see either of them during entire life-times. Meantime the laborer-swink is supporting all the nations, prospering all the nations—and getting neither thanks nor mention.”
He dropped into the vernacular:
[begin page 523]“Take all the other disease-germs in a mass, and what do they accomplish? They are responsible for ten graves out of a hundred, that is all. It takes them half a lifetime to bring down the average sooflasky try as hard as they may; and all that time his brother swink the laborer has been feeding him, protecting him, enriching him—and getting neither thanks nor notice for it. To use a figure, the swink gives the public a thousand barrels of apples; the public says nothing—not a word; then it finds a rotten apple in the cargo, and—what does it do then, Catherine?”
“Raises—”
“Shut up!” I shouted, just in time.
“It's what the countess says, I heard her say it myself. She said—”
“Never mind what she said; we don't want to hear it!”
I was charmed with the Duke's lecture. Its wonders were new to me, and astonishing. At the same time, they were old to me, and not astonishing. In the World, when I was studying micrology under Prof. H. W. Conn, we knew all these facts, because they were all true of the microbes that infest the human being; but it was new to me to find them exactly duplicated in the life of the microbes that infest the human being's microbes. We knew that the human race was saved from destruction in the beginning by the microbe; that the microbe had been saving it from destruction ever since; that the microbe was the protector and preserver and ablest propagator of many of the mightiest industries in the Earth; that he was the personage most heavily interested in the corporations which exploited them, and that his expert service was the most valuable asset such corporations possessed; we knew that he kept the Earth's soil from being covered up and buried out of sight and made unusable; in a word, we knew that the most valuable citizen of the Earth was the microbe, and that the human race could no more do without him than it could do without the sun and the air. [begin page 524] We also knew that the human race took no notice of these benefactions, and only remembered the disease-germ's ten per cent contribution to the death-rate; and didn't even stop with that unfairness, but charged all microbes with being disease-germs, and violently abused the entire stock, benefactors and all!
Yes, that was all old to me, but to find that our little old familiar microbes were themselves loaded up with microbes that fed them, enriched them, and persistently and faithfully preserved them and their poor old tramp-planet from destruction—oh, that was new, and too delicious!
I wanted to see them! I was in a fever to see them! I had lenses of two-million power, but of course the field was no bigger than a person's finger-nail, and so it wasn't possible to do a considerable spectacle or a landscape with them; whereas what I had been craving was a thirty-foot field, which would represent a spread of several miles of country and show up things in a way to make them worth looking at. The boys and I had often tried to contrive this improvement, but had failed.
I mentioned the matter to the Duke, and it made him smile. He said it was a quite simple thing—he had it at home. I was eager to bargain for the secret, but he said it was a trifle and not worth bargaining for. He said—
“Hasn't it occurred to you that all you have to do is to bend an X-ray to an angle-value of 8.4, and refract it with a parabolism, and there you are?”
Upon my word, I had never thought of that simple thing! You could have knocked me down with a feather.
We rigged a microscope for an exhibition at once, and put a drop of my blood under it, which got mashed flat when the lense got shut down upon it. The result was beyond my dreams. The field stretched miles away, green and undulating, threaded with streams and roads, and bordered all down the mellowing distances with picturesque hills. And there was a great white city of tents; and everywhere were parks of artillery, and divisions of cavalry and infantry—waiting. We had hit a lucky moment; evidently there was going to be a march-past, or something like that. At the front where the chief banner flew, there was a large and showy tent, [begin page 525] with showy guards on duty, and about it were some other tents of a swell kind.
The warriors—particularly the officers—were lovely to look at, they were so trim-built and so graceful and so handsomely uniformed. They were quite distinct, vividly distinct, for it was a fine day, and they were so immensely magnified that they looked to be fully finger-nail high.*
* My own expression, and a quite happy one. I said to the Duke—
“Your grace, they're just about finger-nailers!”
“How do you mean, m'lord?”
“This. You notice the stately General standing there with his hand resting upon the muzzle of a cannon? Well, if you could stick your little finger down against the ground alongside of him, his plumes would just reach up to where your nail joins the flesh.”
The Duke said “finger-nailers was good”—good and exact; and he afterward used it several times himself. In about a minute a mounted General rode up alongside of the other one and saluted, and the Duke said—
“There, now—with the horse to help, this one's nearly a nail and a third high.”
Everywhere you could see officers moving smartly about, and they looked gay, but the common soldiers looked sad. Many wife-swinks and daughter-swinks and sweetheart-swinks were about—crying, mainly. It seemed to indicate that this was a case of war, not a summer-camp for exercise, and that the poor labor-swinks were being torn from their planet-saving industries to go and distribute civilization and other forms of suffering among the feeble benighted, somewhere; else why should the swinkesses cry?
The cavalry was very fine; shiny black horses, shapely and spirited; and presently when a flash of light struck a lifted bugle (delivering a command which we couldn't hear) and a division came tearing down on a gallop it was a stirring and gallant sight, until the dust rose an inch—the Duke thought more—and swallowed it up in a rolling and tumbling long gray cloud, with bright weapons glinting and sparking in it.
Before long the real business of the occasion began. A battalion of priests arrived, carrying sacred pictures. That settled it: this was war; these far-stretching masses of troops were bound for the front. Their little monarch came out now, the sweetest little thing that ever travestied the human shape, I think; and he lifted up his hands and blessed the passing armies, and they looked as grateful as [begin page 526] they could, and made signs of humble and real reverence as they drifted by the holy pictures.
It was beautiful—the whole thing; and wonderful, too, when those serried masses swung into line and went marching down the valley under the long array of fluttering flags.
Evidently they were going somewhere to fight for their country, which was the little manny that blessed them; and to preserve him and his brethren that occupied the other swell tents; and to civilize and grab a valuable little unwatched country for them somewhere. But the little fellow and his brethren didn't fall in—that was a noticeable particular. But the Duke said it was without doubt a case of Henry and Family on a minute scale—they didn't fight; they stayed at home, where it was safe, and waited for the swag.
Very well, then—what ought we to do? Had we no moral duty to perform? Ought we to allow this war to begin? Was it not our duty to stop it, in the name of right and righteousness? Was it not our duty to administer a rebuke to this selfish and heartless Family?
The Duke was struck by that, and greatly moved. He felt as I did about it, and was ready to do whatever was right, and thought we ought to pour boiling water on the Family and extinguish it, which we did.
It extinguished the armies, too, which was not intended. We both regretted this, but the Duke said that these people were nothing to us, and deserved extinction anyway for being so poor-spirited as to serve such a Family. He was loyally doing the like himself, and so was I, but I don't think we thought of that. And it wasn't just the same, anyway, because we were sooflaskies, and they were only swinks.
The duke presently went away, and left my latest thought simmering in my mind—simmering along in the form of reverie: “it wasn't just the same, anyway, because we were sooflaskies, and they were only swinks.” There it is: it doesn't make any difference who [begin page 527] we are or what we are, there's always somebody to look down on! somebody to hold in light esteem or no esteem, somebody to be indifferent about. When I was a human being, and recognized with complacency that I was of the Set-Aparts, the Chosen, a Grand Razzledazzle, The Whole Thing, the Deity's Delight, I looked down upon the microbe; he wasn't of any consequence, he wasn't worth a passing thought; his life was nothing, I took it if I wanted to, it ranked with a mark on a slate—rub it out, if you like. Now that I was a microbe myself I looked back upon that insolence, that pert human indifference, with indignation—and imitated it to the letter, dull-witted unconsciousness and all. I was once more looking down; I was once more finding a life that wasn't of any importance, and sponging it out when I was done with it. Once more I was of the Set-Aparts, the Chosen, a Grand Razzledazzle, and all that, and had something to look down upon, be indifferent about. I was a sooflasky; oh, yes, I was The Whole Thing, and away down below me was the insignificant swink—extinguishable at my pleasure—why not? what of it? who's to find fault?
Then the inexorable logic of the situation arrived, and announced itself. The inexorable logic of the situation was this: there being a Man, with a Microbe to infest him, and for him to be indifferent about; and there being a Sooflasky, with a Swink to infest him and for the said Sooflasky to be indifferent about: then it follows, for a certainty, that the Swink is similarly infested, too, and has something to look down upon and be indifferent to and sponge out upon occasion; and it also follows, of a certainty, that below that infester there is yet another infester that infests him—and so on down and down and down till you strike the bottomest bottom of created life—if there is one, which is extremely doubtful.
However, I had reached down to comfort, at any rate, and an easy conscience. We had boiled the swinks, poor things, but never mind, it's all right, let them pass it along; let them take it out of their infesters—and those out of theirs—and those again out of theirs—and so on down and down till there has been an indemnifying boiling all the way down to the bottomest bottom, and everybody satisfied; and glad it happened, on the whole.
[begin page 528]Well, it's a picture of life. Life everywhere; life under any and all conditions: the king looks down upon the noble, the noble looks down upon the commoner, the commoner at the top looks down upon the next commoner below, and he upon the next, and that one upon the next one; and so on down the fifty castes that constitute the commonalty—the fifty aristocracies that constitute it, to state it with precision, for each commonalty-caste is a little aristocracy by itself, and each has a caste to look down upon, plum all the way down to the bottom, where you find the burglar looking down upon the house-renting landlord, and the landlord looking down upon his oily brown-wigged pal the real estate agent—which is the bottom, so far as ascertained.
I glanced over my paper on the currency, and found it lucid, interesting, and accurate.19 It had been written long before. In those early days in Blitzowski I made it a point to put upon paper the new things I learned, lay the thing away, then take it out from time to time in after years and examine it. There was generally something to correct—always, I may say; but in the course of time I got all errors weeded out. This paper on the currency had been through that mill. I found it satisfactory, and gave it to Catherine to put away again.
[begin page 529]That was 3,000 years ago. Ah, Catherine, poor child, where art thou now? Where art thou, thou pretty creature, thou quaint sprite! Where is thy young bloom, thy tumultuous good heart, thy capricious ways, thine unexpectednesses, oh thou uncatchable globule of frisky quicksilver, thou summer-flurry of shower and sun-shine! You were an allegory! you were Life! just joyous, careless, sparkling, gracious, winning, worshipful Life! and now—thou art dust and ashes these thirty centuries!
This faded old paper brings her back. Her hand was the last that rested upon it. She was a dear child; and just a child—it is what she was; if I knew the place her fingers touched, I would kiss it.
There was a time when a pair of young adventurers, exploring a solitude, found a spot which pleased them, and there they began a village, and it was Rome. The village grew, and was the capital of kings for some centuries; and made a stir in the world, and came to be known far and wide; and became a republic, and produced illustrious men; and produced emperors, next, some of them tolerably tough; and when Rome was seven or eight hundred years old, Jesus was born in one of her20 provinces; by and by came the Age of Faith, and the Dark Ages, and the Middle Ages, extending through a procession of centuries, Rome looking on and superintending; and when she was eighteen hundred years old, William the Conqueror visited the British isles on business; and by and by came the Crusades, and lasted two centuries, and filled the world with a splendid noise, then the romantic show faded out and disappeared, with its banners and its noise, and it was as if the whole thing had been a dream; by and by came Dante and Boccacio and Petrarch; and after another by and by came the Hundred Years' War; and after a while Joan of Arc; and soon the Printing Press, that prodigious event; and after another while the Wars of the Roses, with forty years of blood and tears; and straight after it Columbus and a New World; and in the same year Rome decreed the extirpation of the witches, for she was more than twenty-two hundred years old, now, and tired of witches this good while; after that, during two centuries not a lantern was sold in [begin page 530] Europe and the art of making them was lost, the tourist traveling at night by the light of roasting old mothers and grandmothers tied to stakes 32 yards apart all over the Christian world, which was gradually getting itself purified and would eventually have accomplished it if some one had not chanced to find out that there wasn't any such thing as a witch, and gone and told; two centuries have dragged by since; Rome, that was once a fresh little village in a solitude, is more than twenty-six hundred years old, now, and is named the Eternal City, and what were her palaces in Christ's time are mouldering humps of weed-grown bricks and masonry in ours, and even Columbus's lonesome continent has put on some age, and acquired some population, and would be a surprise to him if he could come back and see the cities and the railroads and the multitudes.
Musing over these things made it seem a long, long time since the two adventurers had started that village and called it Rome; and yet, I said to myself, “it isn't as long a stretch of centuries as has passed over my head since that girl took this old manuscript from me and put it away; I wish I knew the place her fingers touched.”
It is a good chapter, and I will insert it here. Its facts about the money of that day will be valuable in this book.
the currency .
In one matter of high importance civilization in Blitzowski can claim a distinct superiority over the civilizations of the World. Blitzowski has, by ancient Bund, a uniform currency. You don't have to buy a supply of foreign pocket-change when you are preparing for a voyage, nor get your letter of credit made out in currencies you are not familiar with. The money of all the countries goes at par in all the other countries.
When the idea was first suggested it was received with great doubt, for it proposed the simplifying and sanitation of a most crazy and [begin page 531] intricate puzzle. Every nation had its own currency, and so had every little tuppenny principality, and the same deplorable condition of things prevailed which must necessarily prevail wherever that kind of a chaos exists. It is illustrated by the experiences of a great-great-grandfather of mine who found himself traveling in Germany, one time.
There were 364 sovereign princes doing business in that State in those days—one per farm. Each had a mint of his own; each coined five or six hundred dollars' worth of money every year and stamped his picture on it; there were 3,230 different breeds of coin in circulation; each had a home-value of its own, each had a name of its own. No man in the country could name all the names, nor spell the half of them; every coin began to lose value when it crossed its own frontier, and the further it went the faster it melted.
My ancestor was an Assfalt, and he was a General, because he had been on the governor's staff when he was young, to fill a vacancy that had three weeks to run. He was in Germany for his health, and by the doctor's orders he had to walk five miles and back every day. Upon inquiry, he found that the cheapest course was nothe-east-and by-nothe, nothe-east-half-east, because it took him across only five frontiers; whereas if he got careless and fell off a point to starboard it took him across seven, and a point to port was worse still, because it took him across nine. These latter were much the best roads, but he was not able to afford them, and had to stick to the muddy one, although it was bad for his health, which he had been sent there on purpose to improve. Any other person would have perceived that the cheap road was really bad economy, but you couldn't ever beat a simple proposition like that into an Assfalt.
He was summering in the capital village of the Grand Duchy of Donnerklapperfeld at the time, and he used to load up with twenty dollars' worth of the local coin every morning, and start, right after breakfast—every alternate day, with a new suit of clothes on, costing about twenty dollars and worth eight and a half. It was an outrage, that price, but he had to buy of the Duke, who was able to have everything his own way, and didn't allow any other tailor to keep shop there.
At the local frontier, 300 yards from the inn, the General had to pay export duty on his clothes, 5 per cent ad valorem. Then they let him through the gate and a uniformed foreigner on the other side of it halted him and collected 5 per cent import duty on the same, and [begin page 532] charged him an exchange-discount on his foreign money—another 5 per cent.
The game went right along, like that. He paid export and import duty at every gate, and one discount for exchange-tax each time: two dollars per gate, 5 times repeated. The same, coming back; twenty dollars for the trip. Not a copper left; and yet he hadn't bought a thing on the road. Except just privileges and protection. He could have gotten along without the privileges, and he didn't really get any protection—not from the government, anyway.
Every day ten dollars went for exchange, you see. The General was reconciled to that, but he considered that the daily ten that went for duties was a pure extravagance, a sheer waste; because it ate up the clothes every two days and he had to buy another suit.
Assfalt was there 90 days. Forty-five suits of clothes. But I am a protectionist—which he wasn't—and I think that that was all right; but when you start out with a fat and honest dollar and have it melt entirely away to the last grease-spot just in shaves on exchange, I think it's time to call a halt and establish an international currency, with dollars worth a hundred cents apiece from the North Pole to the South, and from Greenwich straight around, both ways, to 180. Such is Blitzowski style, and nobody can better it, I reckon.
The coin unit of the planet is the bash, and is worth one-tenth of a cent, American.
There are six other coins. I will name them, and add their (closely approximate) American values:
Basher—10 bash. Value, 1 cent.
Gash—50 bash. Value, our nickel.
Gasher—100 bash. Value, our dime.
Mash—250 bash. Value, our quarter.
Masher—500 bash. Value, our half dollar.
Hash—1,000 bash. Value, our dollar.
Then comes the paper. It begins with the dollar bill, and runs along up: 1 hash, 2 hash, 5 hash, 10 hash, 20 hash, 50 hash.
Then the name changes, and we have the
Clasher—100,000 hash. Value, 100 dollars.
Flasher—1,000,000 hash. Value, 1,000 dollars.
Slasher—100,000,000 hash. Value, 100,000 dollars.
The purchasing power of a bash, in Henryland, equals the purchasing power of a dollar in America.
In the beginning there was a good deal of trouble over selecting [begin page 533] the names for the money. It was the poets that made the difficulty. None but business men had been put upon the commission appointed to suggest the names. They put a great deal of time and labor upon the matter, and when they published their proposed list everybody was pleased with it except the poets. They fell foul of it in a solid body, and made remorseless fun of it. They said it would forever mash all sentiment, all pathos, all poetic feeling out of finance, because there wasn't a name in the lot that any language, living or dead, could find a rhyme for. And they proved it. They flooded the land with impassioned couplets whose first lines ended with those coin-names, and went all right and rich and mellow all down the second till they struck the home-stretch, then they pulled a blank, every time, and nobody won out.
The commission was convinced. They decided to sublet the contract to the poets, and that was wisdom; the poets selected the names bash, mash, and so on, after a good deal of wrangling among themselves. The names were accepted by the commission and ratified by a referendum, and there they stand, to this day, and will abide. They are excellent for poesy, the best in existence, I think. Compare them with other financial nomenclature, and see:
| sovereign, | piastre, | florin, |
| gulden, | nickel, | groschen, |
| centime, | obolus, | ruble, |
| eagle, | shekel, | shinplaster, |
| doubloon, | bob, | pfennig, |
and so on. On a financial epic for a chromo—impromptu, mile heat, single dash—a single sooflaski poet could take the field all by himself against the combined talent of Christendom, and walk over the course in an awful solitude, warbling his gashes and mashes and hashes and ashes just as easy!—and annex that chromo—and where would the others be, I ask you? Still back in the first quarter somewhere, trying to blast rhymes out of that obstinate list, and not the least chance in the living world!
At this point Catherine reminded me that my Advanced Class in Theological Arithmetic would be arriving right after breakfast, and that breakfast was already on the fire. There was no time to spare; so she set herself to the crank and I ground the History of Japan Down to Date into the recorder, and was not sorry to see my [begin page 534] gigantic History of the World complete at last. It began with an impressionist cloud which I could make nothing of when I reversed the machine to see how Japan had panned out. The rest was clear, but that was a fog. Then Catherine took the receiver, and recognized that it was that passage from Science and Wealth—boned. Boned of its words and compressed into unarticulated thought. It was a good kind of a nut, in its way, and I left it there for the future history-student to whet his teeth on.
I was impatient to get out to the fossil-field, now, and see what sort of luck my “poem” was having with the boys in full congress assembled; so I thought I would turn my class in Theological Arithmetic over to my assistant and start for the field at once. I had to stay, however; the assistant disappointed me. He was out at the field himself, as it turned out; he was out there listening to the wonderful tale and getting quite carried away by it. He had the soul of a poet, he was born for enthusiasms, and he had an imagination like that microscope I have just been talking about. He was good and true and fine, and by nature all his leanings were toward lofty ideals. It will be perceived by this that he was no twin of his brother, Lem Gulliver. The name I had given him was a pretty large compliment, but it was the right one—Sir Galahad. He didn't know what it stood for, any more than Lem knew what his name stood for, but I knew, and was satisfied with my work as a god-father.
Sir Galahad had been my favorite pupil from the beginning, and my brightest. He had risen by his own merit to his high place as my right hand in my little college—if I may call my modest school by so large a name. He was as fond of morals as I was, and as fond of teaching them. I found it safest to be present when he was leading certain of the classes—not because I doubted his honesty, for I didn't, but because it was necessary to put a shrinker upon his imagination from time to time. He never said anything he did not believe to be true, but he could imagine any extravagant thing to be true that came into his head; then he immediately believed it was true, and straightway he would come out flat-footed and say it was true. But for this infirmity he would have been great—absolutely great—in his class-expositions of certain of our high specialties. It [begin page 535] was a charm and a wonder to hear him discourse upon Applied Theology, Theological Arithmetic, Metaphysical Dilutions, and kindred vastnesses, but I could listen with all the more comfort if I had my hand on the air-brake.
When at last I got out to the fossil-mine that afternoon I found the work at a stand-still. All interest was centred in the romance which Louis and Lem had brought from me: the lie, as Lem called it, the poem, as Louis called it. It had made a rousing stir. For hours, now, the boys had been discussing it, some taking Lem's view, some taking Louis', but nobody taking mine. But everybody wanted to hear me tell the rest, and so I was pretty well satisfied with the situation. I began by explaining that in the World, Man was the Great Inhabitant, enjoying there the same supremacy enjoyed in the planet Blitzowski by the Sooflasky. I added—
“The individuals are called Human Beings, the aggregate is called the Human Race. It is a mighty aggregate; it numbers fifteen hundred millions of souls.”
“Do you mean that that is all there are—in the entire planet?”
The question burst in about that form from the whole clan in one sarcastic voice. I was expecting it, and was not disturbed by it.
“Yes,” I said, “it's all there are—fifteen hundred millions.”
There was a general explosion of laughter, of course, and Lem Gulliver said—
“Why, my land, it doesn't even amount to a family—I've got more blood-kin than that, myself! Fetch the jug, his factory's running dry!”
Louis was troubled—disappointed—my poem wasn't keeping up to standard, in the matter of grandeur; I could see it in his face. I was sorry for him, but I wasn't worrying. Louis said, reluctantly—
“Think, Huck. There's a discrepancy. It is careless art, and no occasion for it. You see, yourself, that so trifling a group is quite out of proportion to the vastness of its habitat; here it would be swallowed up and lost in our meanest village.”
“I guess not, Louis. I'm not careless—it's you. You are premature with your conclusion. The returns are not all in yet—there's a detail lacking.”
“What detail?”
[begin page 536]“The size of those Men.”
“Ah—their size. Aren't they like us?”
“Why, yes, they look like us, but only as to shape and countenance, but when it comes to bulk—well, that is a different matter. You wouldn't be able to hide that Human Race in our village.”
“No? How much of it, then?”
“Well, to be exact, not any of it.”
“Now that's something like! You are working up to standard, Huck. But don't go too far the other way, now. I—”
“Let him alone, Louis!” said Lem; “he's got his old works going again, don't discourage him, give him full swing. Go it, Huck, pull her wide open! Your reputation's a suffering: you might as well die for a sheep as a lamb—tell us we couldn't even hide one of those bullies in our village!”
“Sho,” I said, “you make me smile! his mere umbrella would spread from your North Pole far and away below your Equator, and hide two-thirds of your wee Planet entirely from sight!”
There was an immense excitement.
“Shirts! shirts!” the gang shouted, springing to their feet, and the shirts began to sail about me and fall upon me like a snow-flurry.
Louis was beside himself with joy and admiration, and flung his arms about me, murmuring, half-choked with emotion—
“Oh, it's a triumph, a triumph, the poem is redeemed, it is superb, it is unapproachable, its sublime head strikes the very zenith—I knew it was in you!”
The others carried on like mad for a while screaming with care-free fun and delight, electing me by acclamation Imperial Hereditary High Chief Liar of Henryland, With Remainder to Heirs Male in Perpetuity, then they began to shout—
“Dimensions! dimensions! hooray for His Nibs, give us his particulars!”
“All right,” I said, “any you want. To start with,—supposing this planet of yours wore clothes, I give you my word I've seen more than one Man who couldn't crowd into them without bursting them—yes, sirs, a man who could lie down on Blitzowski and spread over both sides and stick over at both ends.”
[begin page 537]They were perfectly charmed, and said that this kind of lying was something like, and they could listen to it by the week; and said there wasn't a liar in all history that could come up to my knee; and why did I go and hide this splendid talent, this gorgeous talent all this time? and now “go ahead—tell some more!”
I was nothing loath. I entertained them an hour or two with details of the Monster and of his World, naming nations and countries, systems of government, chief religions, and so on—watching Lurbrulgrud out of the corner of my eye all the time, and expecting to hear from him by and by. He was one of your natural doubters, you know. We all knew he was taking notes privately—it was his way. He was always trying to ambush somebody and catch him in contradictions and inveracities. I could see that the boys didn't like it this time. They were plainly annoyed. You see, they thought it very handsome of me to make up all those variegated and intricate lies for their amusement, and it wasn't fair to expect me to remember them, and get called to book for them. By and by, sure enough, Grud fetched out his notes, set his eye upon them, and opened his mouth to begin. But at a sign from the others, Davy Copperfield covered it with his hand and said—
“Never you mind; you hold your yawp. Huck doesn't have to make good. He has given us a wonderful exhibition of what imagination can do when there is genius behind it, and he did it to let us have a good time, and we've had it—is that the straight word, boys?”
“It is that—every time!”
“Very well then—hold your yawp, I say it again—you can't spring any traps here, you can't fetch him to book.”
“And that's the word with the bark on it!” said the boys. “Take a walk, Grud!”
But I interposed, and said—
“No, let him ask his questions—I don't mind. I'm ready to answer.”
They were quite willing, in that case. They wanted to see how I would come out.
“Hold on!” said Lem Gulliver. “There's going to be some bets on this game. Ask your first question, Grud, then stop.”
[begin page 538]Grud said—
“Huck, along in the beginning you threw out a good deal of brag about the Cuban War, as you called it. You furnished some amusing statistics of that skirmish; will you be kind enough to repeat them?”
“Stop,” said Lem. “Two to one on each separate statistic; two bash to one he fails on each. Come—who puts up?”
The boys looked unhappy and didn't say anything. Of course Lem jeered; that was the way he was made. It angered Louis, and he sung out—
“I take you!”
“Hanged if I don't, too!” piped up Sir Galahad.
“Good! Any more?” No answer. Lem rubbed his hands together in malicious glee, and said, “Here—the same odds that he doesn't answer any question right, in the entire list! Come—what do I hear?”
I waited a moment, then said—
“I take you.”
The boys broke out in a rousing shout and kept it up till Lem's temper was pretty thoroughly tried, but he knew better than to let it slip—oh, no, that would have been nuts for the boys—any boys. He allowed the noise to quiet down, then he said—
“You take it! You do! I like your discretion. Go ahead with your answer.”
The boys bunched their heads together over Grud's notes, and waited eagerly. I said—
“We sent 70,000 men to Cuba—”
“Score one!—for Huck!”
That was from the boys.
“We lost of them, killed and wounded together, 268.”
“Score two—for Huck!”
“We lost 11 by disease—”
“Score three—for Huck!”
“—and 3,849 by the doctors.”
“Score four—for Huck!”
“We mustered-in 130,000 men besides the 70,000 we sent to Cuba—kept them in camp in Florida.”
[begin page 539]“Score five—for Huck!”
“We added the entire 200,000 to the pension roll.”
“Score six—for Huck!”
“We made a major general out of a doctor for gallantry at the great battle of San Juan—”
“Score seven—for Huck!”
“—in sending his pills to the rear and saving life with the bullet.”
“Score eight—for Huck!”
“Huck, you furnished some medical statistics of what you called the Jap-Russian War—whatever that may be. Please repeat them.”
“Of 9,781 sick Jap soldiers brought from the front in one batch to Japan for military hospital treatment, only 34 died.”
“Score nine—for Huck!”
“Of a single batch of 1106 wounded Jap soldiers brought to Japan for military hospital treatment because their wounds were too serious for treatment in the field hospitals, none died. All got well, and the majority of them were able to return to the front and did so. Of the 1106, three had been shot through the abdomen, three through the head, and six through the chest.”
“Score ten for Huck! And ten thousand for the Japanese military medical service!”
“Huck, in speaking of the American Medical Service—”
“Wait—I did not speak of it. We haven't any. We have never had any, at any time. What I said was, that the people call it the Medical Service sometimes, sometimes they call it The Angels of Death, but they are not in earnest when they use either of the terms. We have a Surgical Service, and there is none better; but the other industry is in two divisions, and has no general name covering both. Each is independent, performs a special service, and has a name of its own—an official name, furnished by the War Department. The War Department calls one of them the Typhoid Service, the other the Dysentery Service. The one provides typhoid for the Reserves-Camps, the other provides dysentery for the armies in the field. At another place in my informations I also told you that the lessons of the Cuban War were not lost upon the Government. Immediately after that conflict it reorganized its [begin page 540] military system and greatly improved it. It discarded soldiers, and enlisted doctors only. These it sends against the enemy, unencumbered by muskets and artillery, and carrying 30 days' ammunition in their saddlebags. No other impedimenta. The saving in expense is quite extraordinary. Where whole armies were required before, a single regiment is sufficient now. In the Cuban War it took 142,000 Spanish soldiers five months to kill 268 of our defenders, whereas in the same five months our 141 doctors killed 3,849 of our said defenders, and could have killed the rest but they ran out of ammunition. Under our new system we replace 70,000 soldiers with 69 doctors. As a result we have the smallest army on our planet, and quite the most effective. I wanted to lay these particulars before you because, while they are not required by your list of questions, they throw a valuable general light upon the whole body of interrogatories. Pardon me for interrupting the game with this excursion. Now go on with your questions.”
But by this time a decided change had come over the boys, and they burst into an excited chorus of—
“Wait! wait, we're coming in!”
And very eager they were, too, and began to get out their money and push it under Lem's nose, boldly offering to take the whole of the 182 remaining questions on Lem's original proposition. But he declined. He had already lost 20 bash to Louis and 20 to Galahad, and matters were getting pretty serious for him. Yes, he declined. He said—without any considerable sugar in it—
“You had your chance, you didn't take it, you're out, and you'll stay out.”
Then they got yet more excited, and offered him two to one. No—he wouldn't. They raised it. Raised it to 3 to 1; 4 to 1; 5 to 1; 6—7—8 to one! He refused. They gave it up, and quieted down. Then I said—
“I'll give you 50 to 1, Lem.”
By George, that raised a shout! Lem hesitated. He was tempted. The boys held their breath. He studied as much as a minute. Then he said—
“No-o. I decline.”
It fetched another shout. I said—
[begin page 541]“Lem, I'll do this: two to one I miss on no detail of the 182. Come—if I miss on a single detail, you take the whole pot; isn't that a fat enough thing for you?—a seasoned old sport like you? Come!”
The taunt fetched him! I was sure it would. He took me up. Then he set his teeth, and held his grip, till I had scored 33 without a miss—the boys breathing hard, and occasionally breaking out into a hasty burst of applause—then he let fly in a rage and swore there was chicane here, and frothed at the mouth, and shook his fist in my face and shouted—
“This whole thing's a swindle—a put-up swindle! I'll pay the others, but not you. You got those lies by heart and laid for me, and I was too dull to see it. You knew I'd offer bets, and you laid for me. But you'll get nothing by it, I can tell you that. Betting on a sure thing cancels the bet, in this country!”
It was a handsome triumph for me, and I was exceedingly comfortable over it. The boys cried—
“Shame, shame, you shirk!” and were going to force him to hand over my winnings, but I saw my chance to do some good by setting a moral example. To do it might be worth more to me, in the way of trade, if it got talked about among families interested in morals, than the money; so I made the boys let him alone, and said—
“I can't take the money, boys, I can't indeed. My position does not permit me to gamble; indeed it requires me to set my face against gambling. Particularly in public, and I regard this occasion as in a sense public. No, I cannot accept the pot; to me, situated as I am, it would be tainted money. I could not conscientiously use it, except in the missionary cause. And not even in that cause, except under certain restrictions. In my discourse upon the World I spoke of the long and bitter war of words which was waged in America over tainted money and the uses which it might be legitimately put to. In the end it was decided that no restriction at all could properly be put upon its use. For that reason I left the country, and came here. I said these parting words; said them in public: ‘I go,’ I said—‘to return no more; I renounce my country; I will go where it is clean, I cannot live in a tainted atmosphere.’ I departed—I came hither. My first breath of the atmosphere of Blitzowski convinced [begin page 542] me that I had made a signal change, my friends and dear comrades!”
The boys took it for a compliment—I had judged they would—and they gave me three times three with enthusiasm, and followed it with a rousing chckk (tiger). Then I proceeded.
“Where I disagreed with that verdict of my then-countrymen was upon a detail which persons less inflexibly, less inveterately moral than myself might regard as a quibble. I took the stand that all tainted money lost its taint when it left the hand that tainted it, except when employed abroad to damage a civilization superior to our own. I said, do not send it to China, send it to the other missionary fields, then it will go clean and stay so. I mentioned to you the country called China this afternoon, you may remember.
“No, I cannot take these tainted stakes, because now I am out of reach of China. I never intended to take then anyway; I was only betting for amusement—yours and mine. And I did not win them; I knew, all the time, I wasn't winning them, and wouldn't be entitled to them.”
“Hel-lo! how do you make that out?” the boys exclaimed.
“Because it's as Lem said—I was betting on a sure thing. Those were merely facts, not creations of fancy—merely common historical facts, known to me this long time; I couldn't make a mistake in them, if I tried.”
That was a sly and well-considered attempt to undermine and weaken the boys' obstinate conviction that my World and all my details were smart inventions—lies. I glanced at their faces—hopefully; then my spirits went down—I hadn't scored; I could see it. Lem was feeling happier and more respectable than had been his case a little while before, but it was observable that he had his doubts as to my having come into our contest with honest cards unstacked. He said—
“Huck, honor bright. Didn't you cram? Didn't you get that raft of details by heart for this occasion?”
“Honor bright, I didn't, Lem.”
“All right, I believe you. Moreover I admire you; and that is honest. It shows that you have a splendid memory and—what is [begin page 543] just as valuable—a recollection that answers up promptly when required to produce a thing,—a recollecting-faculty which always instantly knows just which pigeon-hole to find it in. In many a case the professional liar lacks the latter gift, and it beats him in the end, to a certainty; his reputation begins to dwindle, it fades gradually out, and you cease to hear of him.”
He stopped there, and began to put on his shirt. I waited for his head to come through, supposing he would finish then. But apparently he had already finished, for he did not say anything more. It took me several seconds to realize that there was a connection between his random remarks about professional liars and me. Yes, there was a connection, I could perceive it now. And he had been paying me a compliment. At least that was his idea of it. I turned to the boys, intending to let them help me enjoy the joke, but—ah, well, they hadn't seen any. They were admiring, too—on the same basis. It was certainly a discouraging lot! The laugh I was arranging turned into a sigh.
Presently Sir Galahad took me aside, and said—trying to suppress his excitement—
“Tell me confidentially, master, I will keep it honorably to myself: was it lies, or was it really facts—those wonders, those marvels?”
I replied sadly—
“Why tell you, my poor boy? you would not believe me; none believes me.”
“But I will! Whatever you tell me, I will believe. It is a promise—and sacred!”
I hugged him to my breast, and wept upon him, saying—
“No language can tell how grateful I am for this! for I have been so depressed, so discouraged, and I was hoping for so different a result. I swear to you, my Galahad, I have not made one statement that was not true!”
“Enough!” he said, with fervor, “it is enough; I believe it, every word. And I long to hear more. I long to hear all about that stupendous World and the Humming Race, those sky-scraping monsters that can step from one end of this planet to the other in [begin page 544] two strides. They have a history—I know it, I feel it—an old and great and stirring history—would Grak * I knew it, master!”
“You shall, my precious boy—and at once. Go to Catherine of Aragon, tell her to reverse the recorder, and turn the crank. The entire history of the World is in it. Go—and Grak bless you!”
Straightway he was gone. It was his way, when he was excited.
When I got back to the boys, Lem Gulliver was already busy with a scheme. I sat down and listened. His idea was to get up a company and put my Lie on the market. He called it that. He said there wasn't anything on the planet that could compete with it for a moment. It could absorb all the little concerns in the business, on its own terms, and take the entire trade. It would be a giant monopoly, and you wouldn't have any trouble about the stock, indeed you wouldn't. No trouble about it, and no uncertainties; just get up a little inexpensive syndicate among ourselves, and water the stock, and—
“Water your granny!” said Grud, “it's all water, now; you can't find a solid place in a million tons of it. How—”
“Never you mind,” said Lem, “you wait—you'll see. All we want is to start right, and she'll go like a hurricane. First, we want a name for her—a grand name; an impressive name—come, make a suggestion, somebody.”
“Standard Oil.”
I offered that.
“What's Standard Oil?”
“The most colossal corporation in the World, and the richest.”
“Good—that's settled. Standard Oil she is! Now then—”
“Huck,” said Grud, “you can't market a lie like that, all in one hunk. There isn't any nation that can swallow it whole.”
“Who said they could? They don't have to. They'll take it on the instalment plan—there don't any of them have to take any more of it than they can believe at a time. Between rests.”
“Well, I reckon that'll do—it looks all right, anyway. Who'll work the flotation?”
[begin page 545]“Butters.”
“What—that bucket-shop dysentery-germ?”
“Plenty good enough, all the same. He knows the game.”
“So he does,” said Davy Copperfield; “but would you let him keep our capital in his safe?”
“No. Keep it in the stove, and have two firemen, in two watches, four hours off and four on.”
“Well, I reckon that'll answer. But wouldn't Butters feel humiliated?”
“The Butterses ain't that kind.”
Hang them, they were actually getting ready to chip in! I never saw such a volatile lot; you could persuade them to anything in five minutes. Their scheme would absolutely destroy me! Parents would not send their young sons to my Institute to be taught morals by an incorporated liar.21 If the Standard Oil should fail of success, my ease and comfort would be gone, there would be nothing left but the organ, the monkey, and bitter hard toil with little rest.
I was in a sort of panic, and well I might be. I must stop this disastrous scheme at once.
How? by persuasion? Not on your life! Golden dreams are not blown out of frenzied heads by that process. No—there is a way—one way, and only one, not two: you must see that golden dream and raise it—raise it to the limit!
[begin page 546]My mind was working with a rush, by now—working full head—you could hear it rumble. Swiftly I turned over this, that and the other project—no good! . . . Time was flying! But at last, just in the nick of time I struck it, and knew I was saved! My anxiety, my worry, my terror, vanished; and I was calm.
“Boys,” I said,
Then i stopped.
That is the way to get the attention of a fussy and excited young crowd. Start to say something; then pause; they notice that, though they hadn't noticed your words—nor cared for them, either. Their clack ceases; they set their eyes upon you, intently, expectantly. You let them do that for about eight seconds, or maybe nine, you meantime putting on the expression of a person whose mind has wandered off and gotten lost in a reverie. You wake up, now, give a little start,—that whets them up! you can see their mouths water. Then you say, quite indifferently, “Well, shall we be starting along?—what time is it?” and the game is in your hands.
It's a disappointment. They are sure you came within an ace of saying something important, and are trying to keep it back, now—out of prudence, maybe. Naturally, then, they are eager to know what it was. You say, oh, it wasn't anything. Of course, then, they are just bound to find out; so they insist and insist, and say they won't stir a step until you've told them what it was. Everything is safe, now. You've got their whole attention; also their curiosity; also their sympathy; they've got an appetite. You can begin. Which I did. I said—
“It's really of no consequence, but if you want to hear it, you shall; but don't blame me if it isn't interesting; I've already indicated that it isn't. That is, now.”
“What do you mean by now?” said Davy Copperfield.
“Well, I mean it would have been interesting if—well, it was a [begin page 547] scheme I happened on when I was on my way out here this afternoon, and I was rather full of it for a while, for I thought maybe we could scrape together a little capital among us, and—and—I confess it looked pretty promising, but—well, it isn't any matter now, and there's no hurry, there isn't a person that knows how to find it but me—I'd give him ten years and he couldn't find it!—so it's perfectly safe; it'll keep, and in a year or two or three when we've got the Standard Oil on its legs and going, we—gee, but that's a good name! It'll make it go—you'll see. If we hadn't anything but just that name it would be enough. I feel just as certain that three years from now—or maybe four,—the Standard Oil—”
“Hang the Standard Oil—stick to the scheme!” cried Lem Gulliver, with peppery impatience; “what is the scheme?”
“That's it!” they all chimed in together, “fetch it out, Huck, tell us!”
“Oh, I've no objection to telling you, for it'll keep, years and years; nobody knows where it is but me, and as for keeping, the best thing about gold is—”
“Gold!”
It took their breath, it made them gasp.
“Gold!” they shouted, hot-eyed, dry-throated, “Where is it? tell us where! stop fooling around and get to the point!”
“Boys, be calm, do not get excited, I beg of you. We must be prudent; one thing at a time is best. This will keep, I assure you it will. Let it wait—that is wisest; then, in six or seven years, just as soon as the Standard Oil—”
“Thunder and blazes, let the Standard Oil do the waiting!” they cried. “Out with it, Huck. Where is it?”
“Ah, well,” I said, “of course if it is your unanimous desire and decision to postpone the Standard Oil utterly until after we—”
“It is! it is!—utterly, entirely, never to be touched until we've made that scoop, and you give the word. Go ahead now and tell us—tell us everything!”
I recognized that the Institute of Applied Morals was saved.
“Very well, then, I will place the thing before you, and I think you will like it.”
[begin page 548]I bound them to secrecy, with proper solemnities, then I told them a tale that crisped their hair, it was of such a heating nature. The interest was intense. Sometimes they breathed, but generally they forgot to. I said the Major Molar was a section of a curving range of stupendous brown cliffs which stretched away, no one knew how far—thousands of miles. The rock was a conglomerate of granite, sandstone, feldspar, pitchblend, lapis lazuli, 'dobies, verde antique, freestone, soapstone, grindstone, basalt, rock salt, epsom salts, and every other ore that contains gold, either free or in a matrix. The country was exceedingly rough and forbidding and desolate, and it had taken me several months to explore a hundred miles of it, but what I had seen of it had satisfied me. I had marked one place, in particular, where I would sink a shaft some day if I lived and ever got hold of capital enough for the job. And now, in my belief, that happy day was come. Were the boys content with the scheme?
Were they! Oh, well!
So that was settled. The enthusiasm was away up—away high up—up to the topmost top. Standard Oil was flat. We went home gay.
The truth was, I couldn't really tell whether the scheme was worth anything or not. Still, I had pretty fair hopes. I got them from putting this and that together and drawing an inference. Blitzowski had almost certainly seen better days, at some time or other, for he had the dentist-habit. Among the poor and defeated, none but people who have been well off, and well up, have that expensive habit.
I was satisfied with the way I had played that game. People who are on fire with a splendid new scheme are cynical and chilly toward a new one if you spring it on them suddenly and beseech them to look at it. It is best to be indifferent, and disinclined, then they get an appetite, and do the begging themselves.
[begin page 549]Catherine said she had turned the crank a while for Sir Galahad and he went wild with delight and astonishment over my History of the World, then he rushed away with the Recorder and said he was going to shut himself up with it at home and master its entire contents before ever he rested.
I had saved my College of Morals, by interposing a gold mine between it and the dangerous Standard Oil; it was only an emergency-gold mine, I only invented it to stop that gap; but now that it was invented, and the boys joyfully insane about it, I must stand by it or invent something still richer and better, to take its place. I thought over a lot of substitutes, such as emerald mines and opal mines, and diamond mines, but I had to give them up, Blitzowski would turn out to be quite barren of those things, for sure. I fell back on the gold. I got to working up a hope. The more I worked at it, and coaxed it, and reasoned with it, the less and less chimerical it seemed. It is the right way to do with a hope; it is like any other agriculture: if you hoe it and harrow it and water it enough, you can make three blades of it grow where none grew before. If you've got nothing to plant, the process is slow and difficult, but if you've got a seed of some kind or other—any kind will answer—you get along a good deal faster. I had one. It was a dream. I planted the dream. It turned up in my memory just at the right time. I believe something in dreams. Sometimes. I had not believed in this one when it happened, but that was because I hadn't any use for it then. It was different, now. A dream that comes only once is oftenest only an idle accident, and hasn't any message, but the recurrent dream is quite another matter—oftener than not it has come on business. This one was that kind. I wondered, now, that I hadn't had this thought at the time. It was a good dream, and well put together.
First I dreamed that I was patiently chewing my way through a [begin page 550] very long and delicate nerve in one of Blitzowski's back teeth—lower jaw—and feeling him rock and sway mountainously in response to the pain; this went on for some weeks, and at last I fetched out into a vast cavity, a cavity of imposing grandeur, with walls that stretched up and up and up through an ever-dimming twilight until lost in the ultimate thick darkness, for his mouth was shut at the time.
By and by the dream came again. But this time I found the stupendous Cave filled; Blitzowski had been to the dream-dentist.
After an interval it came a third time. In my dream the plug was transparent. It was disposed in three vast strata, each about a third of a mile thick, (microbe measure). The top one was dove-colored, the next one had the tint of oxydized silver, the bottom one was yellow.
I called up those dreams, now, and studied them; a little doubtfully at first, but under painstaking and intelligent cultivation they improved. In the end, the crop arrived at puberty, and was satisfactory. I was in a condition of mind bordering on enthusiasm. The mine was there, sure—pretty dreamy, yes, pretty dreamy, but there, anyway; I could see it! just as if it were before my eyes: top stratum, a third of a mile deep—cement; next stratum, amalgam; bottom stratum, gold! good, straight, honest dentist's gold, 23 carats fine!
And as for the quantity. I fell to measuring it—for fun. Very soon the towering figures began to take hold of my imagination! How natural that was! It is the way we are made. I began in fun; in fifteen minutes I was sobering down to earnest. And how natural that was, too! In the alembic of my fancy—without my noticing it, so absorbed was I in my ciphering—my dream-gold was turning into the real metal, and my dream was turning into a fact. At least into a persuasion. Very well, it didn't take the persuasion long to harden into a conviction. So there is where I had presently arrived: I was convinced that the dream was a straight and honorable and perfectly trustworthy photograph of an existent actuality. Which is to say, all doubts and questionings had sifted out of my mind, by now, and disappeared, and I was believing, up to the hilt, that that [begin page 551] mighty treasure was really yonder and waiting for us in the sub-cellar of Blitzowski's tooth. Between believing a thing and thinking you know it is only a small step and quickly taken. I soon took it, and was prepared to say to all comers, “It isn't a mere probability, I know the gold is there.” It's the way we are made. We could be better made, but we wouldn't be interesting, then.
By my stingiest and most conservative and exacting measurement, I was obliged to admit that that wad of gold was not a shade less than half the bigness of a human buckshot! It was titanic—colossal—unthinkable—it was absolutely breath-taking! Yet there it was—there were the figures—there was no getting around them.
What might I compare this astonishing deposit with? Klondike? It made me smile. Klondike was but a peanut-pedlar's till, alongside of it. The Big Bonanza, then? Let us consider. The Big Bonanza was discovered in Nevada seven years before I was born—a stupendous body of rich silver ore, the like of which had never been heard of in the world before. Two day-laborers discovered it, and took into partnership in the secret a saloon keeper and a broker; they bought the ground for a song, and in two weeks they were hundred-millionaires. But the Big Bonanza was nothing—you might say, less than nothing—compared with the measureless mass of wealth packed away in the deeps of Blitzowski's tush. A speck of gold worth 2,000 slasher would not be detectible under a human microscope until magnified seventeen hundred and fifty-six diameters. Let some one else go on now, and cipher out the whole value of that tooth, if desired, it makes me tired.
The spectacle of this incredible wealth dazed me, I was like one drunk—drunk with delight, with exultation! I had never had any money before, to speak of, and I didn't know what to do with it, it was a positive embarrassment—for some minutes. I had never cared for money before, but now I cared for it. So suddenly as this I was changed like that! We are strangely made!
What would the boys say when I told them! How would they feel, what would they say, when they pulled their stampeded wits together and realized how limitlessly rich they were! Oh, how [begin page 552] would they feel when they realized that they couldn't possibly spend their yearly income, even though they should hire the imperial Henryland Family to help!
I was impatient to summon them and tell them the great news. I reached out my hand to touch the bell—
Wait! Something in me seemed to say, don't be precipitate—reflect!
I obeyed the mysterious impulse, and reflected.
x x x x
I reflected hard, for an hour. Then I sighed, and said to myself “It is only fair; it is I that discovered the mine; if it had not been for me it would never have been discovered at all; it would not be just for them to have a twelfth apiece, and I no more.”
I reflected further, and decided to keep half, and let them have the other half among them. It seemed to me that that was right and fair, and I felt quite satisfied.
I was going to ring, now—
That warning stopped me again.
x x x x
I reflected another hour. Then I saw that they could never use so much money—it would be impossible. A third of the property would be quite sufficient for them, modest as were their needs, unfamiliar as they were with m—
I reached for the bell.
x x x x
After a season of deep reflection I recognized that they would never be able to spend judiciously any more than a fourth of that mass of riches—
x x x perhaps not even a tenth. Indeed, with so much as a tenth, would not the poisonous spirit of speculation enter insidiously into them? would it not undermine their morals? had I a right to place such a temptation before such young and inex—
[begin page 553]x x x ah, no, no, I must not betray them, I must do my duty by them, I should never be able to sleep again if I should be the instrument of their moral ruin. Oh, the bare thought of it is more than I—
x x x Yes, it would be best for them that I keep the gold. No harm would come to them then, and the reflection that I had saved them pure would always be my sufficient reward—I could ask no other, no sweeter, no nobler.
x x x But I would not allow them to go wholly shareless in this good fortune that was come to me; no, they should have part of the amalgam mine. They should do the work on both mines, and have part of the amalgam for their labor. I would determine what part, upon further reflection. And they could have all the cement.
I then went to bed.