The prætor and his family, including Cleorita and Oviata Arcos, with the
Four, awaited, on the morning succeeding the eventful day of Manito’s
animalculan introduction, the coming of the Dosch of Manatitla in the
audience chamber of the house, dedicated by Correliana in aptitude to
the developing powers of the tympano-microscope, “the auriculum.” After
a short delay of expectation, the courier falcon appeared at poise, from
which in swift descent it came in downward incline direct to its perch
on Correliana’s wrist. But a second elapsed before the tympanum reëchoed
in cheery tones of salutation the voice of our expected visitor. Our
attention attracted to the field of magnifying reflection, discovered a
coterie of animalculans, of nearly the same size, grouped about the
speaker. With the salutation, “Afferens scientiam errantes gigantes,” he
addressed us as follows:—
* * * * *
For ages untold, our race have waited in patient expectation for the
morning’s dawn when they could salute yours face to face, and impart to
you a source of happiness that in life realizes communion with
immortality. To us has been vouchsafed this coveted privilege, and it
shall be our study to improve it to your advantage. Notwithstanding the
malapropos accident—casting upon Correliana an arch glance that wrought
for her face a scarlet veil—of yesterday, which detracted from the
dignity of an introduction so important to the regenerative welfare of
your race, we were glad that auspicious mirth was the trophy of the
occasion, rather than tears of grief, of which we shall be mindful in
adjudging our censure to the cause. Joyous mirth we have esteemed an
evidence of goodness, for it declares itself beyond the reach of selfish
impediment that breeds evil intention; even when the foibles of our kind
become the subjects of humorous provocation. Mirth is ill timed, when
preconcerted with a knowledge that a portion of those present will be
unable to appreciate the humorous incentive; as it opens wide the door
of suspicion with your peoples, who have been educated under the partial
sway of national habits and customs. Dissimilarity in habits and
customs, under national patronage, begets from seeming incongruity a
disposition to gibe with missile retorts, fledged and tipped with
ironical sarcasms, as rankling in effect as the pointed weapons in the
mouth of Mr. Welson’s knighted chief. To be frank, if the ludicrous
scene of yesterday had occurred with matured acquaintance, I should not
have spared the demure, but conscious blushes of the fair medium. Our
first acquaintance with you, although not mutual in personal
recognition, is of older date than yesterday, and upon it has been
founded our predilections, which in train have led to the many
concurrent circumstances favoring the happy issue of our more direct
scheme, devised for the liberation of your race from the pampering
trammels of instinct. It would have been quite easy for our first
giantescoes to have obtained an introduction to your race, if they had
emulated the desire of being exhibited as an iotian monstrosity for the
gratification of giga greed and curiosity. But fortunately for our
present hoped-for issue, our system of education, devised for the
development of affectionate confidence, encouraged the past generations
of our race to wait for an opening free from the entailment of
experimental disadvantage. A knowledge of our race for the gratification
of your scientific savants curiosity, would have been as profitless for
good, as their sight-seeing acquaintance with the moon and stars. Our
Manatitlan sages have from the earliest period recommended extreme
caution to prevent the premature introduction of our race to yours. The
favorable indications to be watched for in premonition of a successful
issue were those of extreme folly, heralding a closing cycle; for the
contrast afforded by the result of our happy example would attract
kindly imitation of those inclined to affectionate goodness.
Desideratus, one of our most approved prognosticators, deposed that the
affections of woman afford the best test of a closing giga cycle. When
frivolity and the gossiping comparisons of vanity gain the ascendency
over natural affection, inherent as the birthright of woman, then you
may know that the symbolic serpent’s tail has received its final circle
inclination for union with the mouth. This inclination was foreshadowed
in the eighteenth century, with invention of power looms; which with the
largely increased acceleration of steam, fabricated in excess of the
world’s actual requirements for healthy protection and comely adornment.
With steam as an inductive aid to civilized progression, the Eugenic era
was ushered in, when the frail mortal tenements of women became subject
to empirical vanity, and in rivalry, the standard-bearers for cumbersome
mechanical products, to the utter perversion of healthy elasticity,
comfort, and their special vocation of fostering for immortality
affectionate goodness. This dereliction of giga women from their
manifest duty, has brought in train domestic and dynastic miseries,
while from dreary self conviction their hopeless prospect closes with
the grave. As we have now adventured the only opportunity that has ever
occurred, with a prospect of success, for extending the influence of our
happy experience to your race, we will with our introduction premise a
description of _Our Country_.
Manatitla is situated in the Andean district of La Plata, with a
southern aspect. It occupies a space between the parallels of 20° 40˝
and 30° south latitude and 40° 50° west longitude, embracing an area of
forty square furlongs, of Manatitlan measurement. Its surface is
diversified, combining in well-defined variety mountains, hills, and
vales, with their concomitant streams, lakes, and brooks; affording with
arable advantages, prospects unrivaled in beauty, which have been
enhanced by the grateful labor of its inhabitants in acknowledgment for
the benefits bestowed. The climate is salubrious and free from the
extremes of heat and cold, having a valley altitude varying but little
from six thousand feet above the estuary of the La Plata. The adjacent
country is occupied by the giga and animalculan wild hordes. The Minim
is the largest river. Its source is derived from Lake Areta, located in
the Andean spur of Ultisimma; flowing in a northeasterly direction it
finally becomes tributary to the Vermejo. On the northwestern bank is
situated our chief city, Maniculæ. Forty of our miles below, on the same
bank, is situated the City of Iota, containing twenty thousand
inhabitants. Nearly opposite the last named city, is the town of Speck,
its inhabitants, in transition, being chiefly occupied in the
manufacture of auro-silicate for edificial construction and textile
fabrics, rendering them indestructible and repulsive to cumulative
adhesion. The entire population of Manatitla is estimated at eighteen
millions, with a healthy tendency to a continued rapid decrease in
number, from causes which will be described hereafter.
_The Traditional History of Manatitla_, is coeval with the imaginary
date of Mauna Che’s advent as a deity from the La Plata into Alta Peru,
reaching in your time measurement to eleven thousand years, which
probably embraces relics of truth, among others a like origin with the
Heracleans; as we are without doubt descended from castaway parasites of
gigas from the eastern continent. But as it is a constant repetition of
acts of oppression, in kind with your classical written history, we will
not shock you with their rehearsal.
_The Actual, or Written History of Manatitla_, was commenced in the
latter portion of the reign of King Primus, from which dates our
transition period, or emancipation of our people from the instinctive
rule of the stomach and its engendered lusts. But from its resemblance
in factional disruptions to your own, culminating in a parallel to their
cycle condition, we will only allude to the causes that immediately
preceded, and in tendency wrought the changes that finally effected
partition from old habits, and the reverenced usages of instinct.
Arbitrary, religious, and civil exactions, seconded by compulsory
persuasion against all nonconformists, signalized the tendencies of the
period, and gave birth to an ultra instinctive race, styled liberal
democrats, who claimed the inalienable right of suffragian equality
bestowed upon the lower orders of the animal creation, in the exercise
of their untrammeled state of field and forest freedom. The regular
national church, and king, persecuted the nonconformists and schismatics
with dire vengeance, under the patronage of godhead personification,
translating the living heretics with tortures, burnings, and repetitions
of drowning suffocations by resuscitations from a moribund state, and
like admonitory chastenings in transition for the final judgment of
their long enduring and merciful godhead. The persecuted schismatics
emigrated to distant lands, in order that they might worship their God
of reformation in freedom from invidious restriction of rites. When
located, they in turn used the same strenuous arguments to subvert the
tribal forms of worship. Gaining the ascendency, with destructive
agents, they deprived the aboriginals of local option, forcing them to
conform, with death and displacement, until they had obliged the remnant
descendants of their benefactors to accept a conditional exile on the
outskirts of progressive civilization, in transit for a grave ultimatum.
The notable invention of letters signalized the latter portion of the
reign of Primus, and to it he laid claim as king rief discoverer; which
in the law of entail declares the subject a utensil to be used for the
exaltation of kingly prerogative; being identified with everything that
pertains to the glory of the throne and its legitimate scionry, his
assumptive appropriation was sustained with ministerial affidavits and
legal opinions, in attestation of King Primus’s great literary and
inventive capacity, allied to clemency, justice, and generosity. But
after his death, there was found concealed in the hut of a bard, who had
disappeared just anterior to the announcement of the king’s invention,
parchments inscribed with the newly introduced characters, which set
forth the bard’s adverse claims in these terms:—
With symbolic signs, I have found,
The art of representing sound.
On distant business one can send,
Or with them greet a distant friend.
From this scrap of post circumstantial testimony, it is evident that he
either intended to filch from the king, or that the king did obtain his
reputation for literary invention from the fior’s or bard’s genius. The
latter presumption receives probable confirmation from our aura-mention
of similar pretentions to authorship advanced by giga potentates of the
past and present age.
The rule of King Primus was of the most despotic description ever
enforced by an arbitrary will over the weak subserviency of plodding
human instinct, which in kindred affinity with the dogs, is content to
give vent to a growling yelp when the freedom of its tail is ground by
the heel of the oppressor. Whenever these constitutional growls
foreboded an insurrectionary show of teeth, the gregarious spirit of
commune revolt was allayed by the grant of a new charter of rights, but
if this precedental sop failed to lay the retaliative spirit engendered
by oppression, the current of their wrath was turned against their
neighbors, with arbitrary conjurations as the provocations, of war. As
an infallible test of his infallibility death displaced him to make room
for a successor. The people put on sackcloth, and rolled in the dust of
humiliation, in mournful semblance of grief for the loss of their demi-
god, whose dealings had been grievous and past finding out.
After public eulogistic exaltations, funereal orations and lamentations
had subsided, his only son was proclaimed successor with jubilant
rejoicings. But Justinatus, the son, resolutely announced his
determination to reject the succession, recommending the people to
select from the wise men of the nation a council to decide upon a form
of government best suited in adaptation for the requirements of the
people; but they with their faces and thoughts turned to the rear, in
reverence for past usage, clamored for a king. But they found in
Justinatus a man as determined for the enforcement of right, as his
father had been for wrong. He commanded them to turn their faces to the
future, and act according to his direction, not for themselves or their
generation alone, but for those who were to succeed them. Submissive to
the letter of his direction, but in conformity with precedental creed,
they elected eight men by ballot, and instructed them to proclaim
Justinatus king. With this evidence of their precedental stupidity he
assumed the power of directing them for their own good, selecting four
men of as well approved wisdom as his judgment could discover, he placed
at their head his early instructor as chief advisor, with the titled
designation of Dosch. After this inauguration of an advisorial system,
Justinatus, as a pupil, received from them instruction; combining, with
his advance in knowledge, his aid in promoting the practical development
of means for insuring equality in thought and judgment, necessary for
the promotion of the common welfare.
In consideration of the fluctuating variations incident to common usage,
their first endeavors were directed for the devisement of a method that
would insure exampled conformity in act. The difficulty of effecting
uniform compatibility, in the then present habits of the people, soon
became apparent. As a dernier of preparation, a division of labor was
enforced, according with the personal healthy capacity of each
individual. Under this system of equalized industry for community
support, the drones were soon discovered, and subjected to the
taskmaster supervision of those capable of exercising self control for
the common good. Of course the outcry of slavery and oppression became
rampant with the ill disposed and vicious; but compelled association
with the good soon wrought a happy change; but not before many
revolutionary schemes of revolt had been planned by the democratic
majority, and nipped in the bud. The great bar to the full success of
the renovating process, was the all absorbing lust for selfish
gratification, procured from the sacrifice of others’ welfare.
Exhortations and demonstrations of the evil effects and instability of
pleasures having a material dependency upon the appetites and passions
of the body were of no avail. Stimulating provocations, for the
production of inordinate appetites, had held an increasing sway from
time immemorial, and the infatuation still continued to subvert the
efforts of the Doschate of advisors for the establishment of a rational
source of happiness, that should extend its blessings for the reciprocal
appreciation of all. Laws and penal restrictions proved of easy evasion,
and the local option of individuals native to Manatitla, having a desire
to establish in perpetuity the happiness of their people, as a beacon
light of example, were openly defied by aliens. To restrict emigration,
which was claimed as a privileged right ordained as an inherent instinct
of animality, they did not dare! as it was declared by the majority an
assumption that would directly controvert the rights of septs and
nationalities guaranteed by deity. The civilized progenitors of the
races represented by tribes and small nationalities occupying the
country adjacent to Manatitla, had undoubtedly been parasitical attaches
to giga castaways like those of the Manatitlans. This stumbling block of
perversion, continued from generation to generation for centuries; until
the advent of the Dosch Desiderata, who with the aid of his advisors,
turned the tide anarchy by the adoption of foreigners as guests,
withholding the privilege of citizenship for bestowal upon their
children’s children of the third generation. This inaugurated an era
memorable for the change of precedental precept, based upon warlike
achievements, into a source of abhorrence with the increasing minority.
Thoughtful consideration bestowed upon example for the transmitted
improvement of future generations in goodness, produced a wonderful
effect upon the actors of the then present generation by the induction
of harmony from reciprocal goodwill. Through his wise deductions, that
clearly demonstrated the necessity of self government in association
with others, woman threw off her shroud of vanity, and labored earnestly
for the renewal of her lost prestige of trust, bestowed for the
transmission of purity and goodness. The incipient struggles of the
minority, under the direction of Desiderata, were short and decisive;
but for the time being evoked with groveling bitterness fierce invective
from the majority. A memorial address of remonstrance, from the
democratic majority, against the abrogation of the rights of
citizenship, in the first and second degree of alien residence, set
forth, that God had created all men free and equal without respect to
color or habits, with the command that they should work out their own
way of salvation, and that each individual was guaranteed an inalienable
right to participate in the government of his fellow man. “And that,
whereas, as hereinafter stated,” the citizens of Manatitla represent
different nationalities, it was but just and right that they should have
a voice in the council of advisors, in order that they might guard and
protect their own liberties and safety. With this preamble, imitated
from giga precept, the contest can be realized without repeating the
stale platitudes of democratic subterfuge. The promulgated reply was as
follows:——
“The Dosch of Manatitla and his advisors, to the alien guests
(heretofore, in acceptation, adopted citizens) of their people and
country, greeting! We have received your petition, and have reviewed
with care the requests you have proffered. Our answer is set forth in
the subjoined proclamation.
“‘To the residents of Manatitla of foreign birth! As it is our matured
desire to emancipate the people native to our country from their own
degrading habits, and the deleterious example of those derived from
extraneous source, we herewith announce the corrective enactments we
have devised for the collective well being and happiness of all within
our advisorial control. As it is manifest, from the conclusive evidence
of creative design, that mankind are in bodily and functional alliance
with all the different grades of animality, through the representative
agency of omnivorous instinct; it is also as clearly evident that his
endowed superiority resides in his privileged capacity for self control,
with an ultimate intention equally apparent. For a rational realization
of this saving clause, an easy estimate can be made of all the tangible
sources of happiness held by human kind independent of the body’s
instincts. As upon these depend our hopes of happiness in life, in
premonition of immortality, it is imperative with all to hold them in
reciprocal cultivation for the confluent control—in subjection—of the
passions inherent with the vital functions of animality. As woman, the
endowed source and mother of our race, when free from the attaint of
man’s selfish invention, expresses a natural repugnance to everything
opposed to purity and goodness, and in the full fruition of her
endowment is reverenced as the germ ideal of immortality; we have
through her a direct indication of the immortal source of happiness
bestowed with creative intention for the local option of mankind. In
negative assurance, that purity and goodness is the endowed source of
happiness; woman when lost to their sustenance, becomes hopelessly
degraded, sinking with loathsome taint below the vilest brute, and
utterly lost to the instinctive ties of affection, will not hesitate to
sacrifice mother, husband, sister, and child to the poisonous lust of
her reptile selfishness.
“‘That the cause of this ferocious degeneration, which has the power of
transforming woman from the glorious ideal of immortality, into an
object too repulsive for her destroyer to find in his vocabulary words
of beastly vulgarity sufficiently strong in the odor of putrefactive
designation for expressing in comparison the foulness of his scorn, is
derived from man’s insatiate devisement, cannot be denied! For the
exampled amendment of this woful cause of degeneration, we have provided
family censors, and nurses, in sufficient number for present
requirement, whose duty it will be to hold in check parental
indiscretions, and mutations incited from the instinctive variations of
fondness and petulance. With the close of the second year, the
provisorial charge of the family censor and nurse will be transferred
with the infant to the national school of the department in which they
reside, their guardian duties continuing until the seventh year, at the
commencement of which the child is matriculated as a pupil, with full
scholastic adoption by the censors and teachers. For the additional
furtherance of our system, subserving for the vindication of creative
indications for the elimination of our immortal endowment, we have
separated the sexes that in the process of educational attainment they
may remain free from the natural temptations inherent with instinct.
“‘The benefits conferred by our national system of education you have
realized in the peaceful confidence and unity imparted in after
association; also the sequent inseparable unity of our marriage
conjunctions. In truth, they are happily too apparent to be gainsaid. So
that in accepting our hospitality as guests, you cannot avoid, in
courtesy, a willing recognition of our rights of freehold preëmption,
for preserving our habits and customs of purity and goodness, intact
from the infringements of foreign attaint; or question the justice of
our privilege of enforcing their observance; or in default, question our
corrective enactments devised for the culprit’s realization of practical
liabilities incurred by the transgressor. These will be strictly
enforced. But that there may be no cavilings, with the hue and cry of
barbarous excess in punishment, we have provided accommodations adapted
to the specie degradation of the lower orders of animal instinct, of
sufficient capacity for associate occupation by human emulators of
bestiality in kind; through all the gradations from the _omnium
gatherum_ ‘swine,’ blood thirsty ‘tiger,’ down to the reptile
conservators of poison. For the correction of women who have lapsed from
their vocation of conservators of purity and goodness, into the
incipient stages of gadding and gossiping detraction, we have provided
cage apartments for their mutual accommodation with birds representing
their kind, in the hopping vent of thoughtless words. We have provided
for initiatory correction pavonias (animalculan peacocks) for the
exemplar admonition of the vain-glorious; and jab-boracidas (jackdaws
and magpies) for the likeness of gossipping repeaters; for the loud
mouthed and strepitant clackitas (parrots and cockatoos), and for the
‘fashionable’ imitators, simia curios (female monkeys). These, as
occasion may require, will extend invitations to their ‘likes’ of the
human sex to attend their levées, which will be subject to the
auditorial outside inspection of the public, if morbid curiosity should
prompt witnesses to the ordeal of misery. These provisos and corrective
conceptions have been devised for, and proved to be of universal
benefit, with the evidence of well attested experience; and we desire
your coöperation, as guests, for the perfection of our system designed
for the advancement of purity and goodness. But shall strenuously insist
that your children shall become participants in the privileges conferred
by our system of education.’”
As you will readily conceive, this proclamation of Desiderata and his
associates caused the fulmination of bitter invectives and threats of
vengeance, which served to vindicate the wisdom of the predicated
precautions. But the writers of the period state that in a few
generations the influence for good extended to savage tribes, who
petitioned for admission of their children into our national schools.
The improvement was so marked in its demonstration of a realizing source
of happiness, that but three centuries elapsed from the period of
organization, before the foreign nationalities were peacefully absorbed,
their subjects becoming educated citizens of Manatitla.
With the illustrative sketch that I have given of Manatitla’s transition
period of extension, you, and the readers of the historiographer’s
transcript, will readily understand the inceptive source and stages that
premised the establishment of our practical system of education. But
owing to the limited number of words and terms for the expression of
purity and goodness, with their practical variations, in your languages,
we are of necessity obliged to use them in frequent repetition.