Dr. Baāhar, acting in accordance with the suggestion of the Dosch, given
a few months previous, had devoted his attention to the cultivation of
fruit-bearing plants, shrubs, and trees, but his success from a lack of
objective constancy and discriminative judgment, was inclined to be
enigmatical in practical results. Instead of studying the practical
adaptation of productive vegetation for the requirements of healthful
subsistence, he was quite content with transplanting rare growths,
obtained from the surrounding country in the latifundium, without
anxious regard for the development of fruitful utility, often
introducing those that it had required the labor of years to
exterminate, when sowed upon the wind from the brink of the precipice by
the Indian besiegers. Fortunately his democratic ideas, which reverenced
the rights of naturalization in freedom from adaptability, and rapid
succession in office, gave his citizen plants but little time to take
root, except those of the most worthless description that live upon the
blight of the fruitfully good. Yet with all his inadvertencies, accident
occasionally favored a useful result, as many of the fugitive growths
which had in seed-flight adapted themselves to congenial soil proclaimed
their transatlantic origin and capability for life sustaining
reproduction with provident forethought in cultivation. His botanical
ambition found ample satisfaction in tracing their genealogical
relationship without testing their fruitful capacity, except in
chimerical conjecture, founded upon precedental arguments advanced by
the most ancient writers.
Under the affectionate tuition of necessity, Isolita’s instincts had
been trained for the consistent conservation and advancement of
vitality, and her knowledge, despite the disadvantages of siege, had
extended with a wide reach beyond the cinctus walls. With cultivated
attainments for the discernment of cause and effect, she had with the
dependent emergency of her people upon a continued supply of vegetable
products become a practical botanist, capable of tracing at sight the
natural life-sustaining affinities of fruits and roots, although
ignorant of their technical classification into generas, orders, and
species. Visiting the embryotic garden of the doctor, shortly after
their espousal, she was surprised to find the only thriving plant the
noxious venoseminata, the evil genius of fruitful vegetation, which when
once allowed to take root, in new soil, offered hydra resistance to the
efforts bestowed for its eradication. With her quick perception she
discovered the danger incurred from its heedless cultivation, not only
to the plot of her adopted Socius, but to the neighboring plantations,
which with full exampled growth would become subject to its contagious
encroachments. Quick in preservative action she seized a dibble, and
before the technical precedentalist could arrest her practical
intention, the malignant parasite was uprooted, and hung dependent from
the branch of a tree exposed to the full rays of the sun. Too late for
expostulation, the theorist stood aghast at her audacity, but kept
silence lest from her skillful use of the dibble she should trace the
noxious thrift of the plant to his jesuitical cultivation, despite the
warnings of his neighbors. Recovering, when he saw her raise plant after
plant, consigning them to the same fate, and in process exposing others
to remove from their roots the fatal tentacles, he remonstrated; but she
still continued her labor, the while congratulating him when she
discovered that none of the diffusia had trespassed beyond his limits.
At length convinced that no stray fibre remained, she carefully gathered
every leaf, branch, and tendril to be united in the fate of the parent
stalk. Completing her search for the garroting quirls of the
venoseminata, that strangulated above the surface with an effect as
deadly as the wide spreading roots beneath the surface, she silently
replaced those promising fruition worthy of cultivation, then standing
in a smilingly questioning attitude of graceful solicitation, she waited
to learn the measure of her Socius’ approval. To which he answered in
words, with eyes fitfully glancing askance, half with shame, inwrought
with furtive displeasure, “To be sure I understood the nature of the
plant, but I wished for the others to grow in company with it, that they
might improve upon its evil example, in vindication of our theatrical
enactments which portray sensational evil, that they may show the shadow
of a surviving moral, for it is the duty of the good to shame the evil;
for what says one of your old Roman poets?
“‘In evil company you should ever show,
That purity can protect itself, and ever grow.’”
_Isolita._ “But did you not see that it was destroying all within its
reach?”
_Socius._ “But as in war, evil eventually exhausts itself; and by
furnishing more hardy growths I should have overcome it in time.”
_Isolita._ “But it would have soon extended itself beyond your limits.
Besides, of what avail the cultivation of your ground if your useful
plants were condemned to be constantly devoured by this parasite without
reaching fruition. In permitting evil to grow and expand under your hand
for neighborly infliction, when in the beginning you have the power of
suppressing it at ease, to perfect extinction, would make you miserably
culpable as an abettor.”
_Socius._ “But your Manatitlan advisers advocate the practical good of
their school of hypocrisy, that their scholars may be fore-armed by
being forewarned.”
_Isolita._ “Yes, but the professors are as harmless for evil and injury
as those that I have hung in the sun to endure the scorching noon-day
heat, with the fruitful soil beyond their reach. Besides the human
venoseminatas serve as a warning to their kind, and in their
professorial speciality of ingratitude are detained from propagating
their deadly example.”
_Socius._ “But your Manatitlan advisers advocate the practical good that
comes from exposing hypocrisy; and their arguments sustained by example,
are equivalent to preaching, and our theatrical entertainments founded
upon precedental enactments, which appears to be a distinction without a
difference in reality.”
_Isolita._ “As you are aware, the Manatitlan school of hypocrisy was an
ulterior resort, forced upon them by the ritualistic duplicity of their
Mouthpat neighbors; which, aside from the beneficial result derived from
exposing the deceptive incongruities that entailed constantly increasing
misery upon the races of mankind, afforded thoughtful stimulus to the
graduating novices for suggesting the means of auramental direction, in
their aural correspondence with the civilized Giga races.”
_Socius._ “You are speaking as a Manatitlan, under direction. Is it well
for you to submit to the prompting of third parties in your intercourse
with me? I have been taught that the marriage alliance should be held
sacred as a body corporate united in its parts for communion with self.”
_Isolita._ “If we consult our mutual advantage, it is not from extending
injury but help to others, and with the flow of recurrent reciprocation,
we in turn are filled to overflowing with grateful emotions of joy. We
certainly should not disdain good instruction from any source, which
offers experienced advantage for aiding our endeavors in perfecting the
attainment of a happy union. As with us of Heraclean lineage, you have
acknowledged the near approach of the Manatitlans to happy perfection,
and should unite with us in grateful expressions of joy that they are
pleased to devote their experience for our advancement in happiness.
Their exampled experience in goodly purity, revived in current
reciprocation from disembodied affection, affords us a more perfect
realization of Creative intention, through the indications of perceptive
endowment. If we live dependent upon the vitality of others, without
reciprocation, to the exclusion of confidence imparted from the joyous
trust of unselfish goodness, we should in fact enact the part of the
venoseminata that destroys useful vegetation with the growth of its own
grasping evil propensities, which yields to itself a destructive
existence in compensation for the injury it inflicts upon the fruitful
beneficence of its neighbors.”
_Socius._ “Your language betrays the Manatitlan philosopher, rather than
the wife; who according to our creed should obey her husband in all
things. We have a proverb in Germany, that says ‘Two literary
philosophers can never agree in a common household;’ and another that
reads, ‘It is better to have a wife submissively weak in intellect, than
strong in mind.’ So you will perceive that in sequence it logically
follows that children born from united strength will become heterodox to
ancestral faith, unless left early to the example and correction of a
surviving parent.”
_Isolita._ “With the indwelling sanction of purity and goodness, we
accord to the Manatitlans a better interpretation of Creative
indications from practical knowledge, and are grateful for their aid
prompted by well tested experience devoted to an enduring perception of
our immortal privilege of living in life away from the gross control of
instinctive desires, which in confluence with united parental example
lives ever with us proof to bereavement.”
_Socius._ “I certainly wish to understand you, and better still, I would
have you comprehend me without other aid than I am able to impart. For
as I have been taught, it is esteemed absolutely necessary for a wife to
reverence her husband as a director from acknowledged superiority, with
a submissive affection contentfully obedient in affording a guarantee
for the peaceful assurance of the household. Law and order, under the
ruling control of the husband, are as essential for the preservation of
domestic discipline as public.”
_Isolita_ (smiling sadly). “Can union abide with the superiority of one
part above another, that with assumption dictates subserviency in the
place of equality? To love, with us, is to be loved; and, as you have
experienced, we have no jarring discords from selfish indulgence, for in
recognition of the unprivileged specialities of brute instinct, in
contradistinction we are enabled to consult the body’s requirements for
healthy support, in appropriate degree for the healthy manifestation of
affectionate equality, in check of the cravings for excessive
gratification that with material clog is the pampering source of all the
woes of the Giga race.”
_Socius._ “So, so, I see that a Heraclean wife includes the dictation of
a Manatitlan bride.”
_Isolita._ “It is not our wish to ‘dictate or argue,’ for we have been
well informed of the dissentious meaning of the words in exampled use
with the Gigas. But you must be well aware, that unless confidingly
united in sympathy our union is void, and our example would impart evil
rather than good. It is from the consciousness of grateful appreciation
derived from imparted affection that we obtain our impressions of
happiness, and in extension of immortality.”
_Socius_ (abashed). “You make me feel from your affectionate
solicitation, in self-reproof, for my repellance, like a father who has
dictated to his children, by recommendation and example, politic
hypocrisy, sword exercise, and dancing, as passports for the enjoyment
of life, with the expectation of affectionate reciprocation; but will
honestly acknowledge that the prepossessions of my instinct oppose
concessions; still will try to make myself subservient to your
affectionate direction in all things, for I am fully impressed with the
fallacious follies incubated from my conceptions.”
_Isolita._ “It is not my desire’s wish to have you subservient in any
respect, but affectionate in the reciprocation of purity and goodness,
so that our companionship may never admit of selfish deviation, but
experience in daily appraisement the novelty of new ardor in loving
returns.”
The voice of the padre, tremulous with mirthful enjoyment, interrupted
the doctor’s grateful reply to Isolita, by calling upon him to act as
umpire in deciding a question that had arisen between him and Madonnasta
with regard to the germination of the bean. In answer to his call the
doctor and Isolita advanced to his plot, where they joined in the
voiceful mirth of Madonnasta, who had surprised her espoused while
engaged in reversing the supposed resurrection of some Indian beans he
had planted, which in germination had been forced in division above the
surface. The first salutation of Madonnasta, when she discovered his
unnatural occupation, was a look of startled inquiry directed to his
face, to detect whether his employment was prompted by humorous
suggestion from the delusive effects of his Christian education, which
inculcated a material resurrection of the interred body, or simplicity.
His pantomimic expression of disgust, at the supposed trifling of
vegetation in returning to him his labors in material bifurcation, put
to flight her first impressions that he was facetiously endeavoring to
show his willingness to uproot old prejudices founded upon precedental
habits and customs. His ludicrously despiteful gesticulations, evoked
from nature’s supposed practical joke, quickly dispelled her shudder of
dread by making apparent the real cause of the reversion. The simplicity
of his ignorance caused a depreciating flow of mirth, as she stayed his
hands from farther sacrilege. Readily understanding from her movements
and facial indications, the cause of her remonstrance, he expostulated
with her by signs and words to respect his judgment. But unable to stem
the current of her mirthful resistance to his labors, he appealed to Dr.
Baāhar for judgment upon the cause of the bean’s bodily resurrection.
Upon learning the cause of the doctor’s summons, Isolita was unable to
resist her inclination to join in the mirthful peals of Madonnasta. But
her socius with dignified seriousness, natural to the scientific
professor, proceeded to give an elaborate opinion from authenticated
authority founded upon the technicalities of order, genera, and species,
in conjunction with a supposititious analysis of the soil; which caused
the padre to interrupt him with the exclamation, “My goodness gracious,
doctor, I called for light, and you give me darkness! The fact is we
might as well acknowledge our ignorance at once, and submit gracefully
to our betrothed’s Heraclean direction; for even your maiden aunt, upon
whom you was mainly dependent for your theoretical ideas, illustrated
the virtue of necessity in like emergency, by an example of celibacy,
and the value of our opinions tend to the same end.”
To which the doctor replied, “If you are to be made the pons asinorum
for the passage of Manatitlan wit, we had better adjourn to the
auriculum where we can have a more direct rendering.”
In response to an implied allusion to his brogue, the padre, in retort,
urged that the doctor’s name gave indication of an instinctive alliance
equally remote with his own, although more simple and less prolonged in
vocalization. These repartees, although civilized in evolution, were
void in chivalrous results, as each party held themselves amenable to
kindly goodwill in the revival of their ancient badinage in the presence
of their betrothed.
CONCLUSION.
Having, with advisorial aid, completed the historical part of my
delegated labor, designed for the initial elaboration of Manatitlan
habits and customs in design for Giga adoption, I am directed to urge
for any lack of perspicuity, in addition to my own defects, the limited
variety of words and terms embodied in the languages and idioms of
civilized races, for the expression of affectionate purity and goodness,
with the impress of reality, independent of the selfish distinctions
imposed by the arbitrary rule of meum and tuum. As a reflecting pharos
for the Manatitlan rays of affection, I have endeavored to render from
their dictation with truthful impartiality, rarely offering comments or
suggestions of my own. Still, I am fully aware, that, as the medium, I
shall subject myself, as a target, to the defilements of instinctive
stigmas, which so abundantly replenish in Giga vocabularies the lack of
words endowed with affectionate expression; but feel myself so well
protected by the initiatory silicoth-garment of Manatitlan adoption,
that the omniscentiferous capacity of humanity for the ejection of odors
from mouth and pen, will prove as harmless in effect as if in aim
directed to my dictators.
With the assurance of affectionate reciprocation from the good of septs
and nationalities, I shall, with the grateful solace of their sympathy,
rest content in freedom from annoyance, although assailed with odors,
grunts, and growls vented from mouthpat instinct. If, peradventure, the
future of Giga races may be withheld by the adoption of the Manatitlan
system of education, in devisement for the attainment of legislative
self-control, from thoughtless submission to the mouthed and written
precedentalisms, which have served to render misery the chief object of
life rather than happiness, it will prove an ample source of recompense
for the untoward contributions bestowed in opposition to creative
indications by progressive instinct.
Yet with all the hoped for joy anticipated from the grateful confluent
reciprocations of goodness, we acknowledge a selfish grief foreboded in
our exile from Heraclea into the civilized world of instinctive strife,
although consoled with the auramental presence of our Manatitlan
familiars.
R. ELTON SMILE, _Proscriptor_.
In testimony of joyful authenticity, we the undersigned members of the
Teutonic corps of the R. H. B. Society subscribe our names in
verification of the Historiographer’s correct interpretation of the
events transpiring under our observation.
GIGANTEO XL., ADESTUS,
_Dosch of Manatitla_. _Prætor of Heraclea of the Falls_.
M. HOLLYDORF,
_Director of the Corps_.
LEPIDOPTERUS BAĀHAR,
_Entomologist_.
OCTAVE PETTYNOSE,
_Buzz Curator of Sound_.
FALSETTO LINDENHOFF,
_Stridential Curator and Recorder of
Genealogical Sounds_.
Honorary Addendas: GUILLERMO WELSON,
_Mentor_.
DIEGO DOW,
_Naturalist_.
TRULY RURAL GREENWOOD,
_Expeditionary Aid_.
PADRE SIMON,
(_Under protest_) _Mythological
Curator of Souls_.
JACK AND BILL SMITH OR JONES,
_Sons of Neptune, and volunteer Aids_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Added CONTENTS.
2. There was no CHAPTER numbered IV in the book. Renumbered remaining
chapters accordingly.
3. Changed ‘of recent’ to ‘of a recent’ on p. 187.
4. French paragraph beginning at the bottom of p. 256 was sans accents.
5. Changed ‘throughly dried’ to ‘thoroughly dried’ on p. 273.
6. Changed ‘you was’ to ‘you were’ on p. 298.
7. Silently corrected typographical errors.
8. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
9. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.