I have taken more than my usual quota of this pleasant stuff. Why
not? Why not? It helps me to get away from this world of conventions
and mortal routine. I like to watch the rays of fire-light glistening
through the glass and liquor. I am loggerheaded. I can see my eyelashes.
Here comes one with a birch canoe. I get in. A tanned figure bare to
the loins, without a sign of passion in his face, holds a paddle aloft
as if awaiting my orders, a paddle curiously carved like a totem pole.
“Row to that floating bed of water lilies yonder that I may see their
upturned faces of gold.”
The paddle dips noiselessly, the ripples make rings on the glimmering
surface of the lake. I hear the water slush the bottom of the canoe.
It sways until I can see over the sides and down into the green
undergrowth of the lake where sun-fish and rainbow trout flash about
in the slender thread-like leaves, as though they were swimming in the
delicate, green foliage of a sunken tamarack forest or virgin growth of
wild asparagus. What a cooling sensation it is to let the water trickle
through the fingers as the canoe is paddled along. A little herd of
four deer are coming down a woodland path to the border of the lake
on the opposite shore. There are three does and a buck. He courts one
of them, rubbing the underpart of his downy neck across her back. She
shows her little teeth and leaps nimbly from under him, frisking her
little cotton tail to and fro. I wonder for how many centuries that
path has been trodden down by the light patter of their forefathers’
feet? I hear squirrels chattering, and I see them pursuing one another.
A pair of wild ducks are diving in a little bay beyond, and another
pair are mating near them on the land.
“What is the name of this northern swamp?” I ask. But the figure
answers nothing at all. I take it that he, too, is one of its
aboriginal inhabitants. What a ceaseless propagation has gone on
here--when did it begin, when will it end? Life is to give life. “And
you, you dumb being, are you happier without words and gibberish?
With you there is no vice, for you mate as naturally as the wild
ducks yonder. You have no slander or back-biting, then. No boring
conversations about social nothings. No nasty words or thoughts! Your
mind is as pure as the roebuck’s on the water’s edge.” But the figure
answers nothing at all, deftly paddling on and on, until I hear the
roar of rapids ahead. It must be the outlet of the swamp. The waters
grow disturbed, rocks peer through the surface, foam eddies round
them. I can see the rush of the current by the leaves and twigs
hurrying by. We are shooting the rapids. The figure backs water, the
foam rushing up his bare arms. But he can not stop us, the canoe will
strike that rock ahead instantly! He jumped and disappeared with his
paddle. The next I know I am thrown forward--
Here I awoke, striking my head in some inexplicable manner against the
leg of my centre table, yet for a moment I seemed to feel the closing
in of waters around me. Ah, why couldn’t it have lasted a little
longer and then I should have been asleep. My tumbler, half full of
sangaree, is spilled on the carpet about me. Sandy has brought me some
witch-hazel to rub on my head. It is very sore from the blow against
the table.
V
How one warms the blood: how two taste bitter and sweet: and the third
glass--that’s the end of me. Let us take a trip, Sandy, and escape from
the bores. Be sure that you bolt the door.
I have received this minute another invitation to that distant land
which lies far out from the beaten track, neither is it found on any
map. I travel thither in the same fashion that the Arabian princes
used to travel with their genii, and the pointed tops of trees and
sooty chimney pots sweep under me, roads and rivers flying beneath look
like threads in a motley loom, everything is going and whirling....
Aha, here I am once more on my fourth visit to this land of the
Inconsequentials. I am a friend of their ruler, who is the soul of
ingenuity, and to whom they give the unique title of Excelsior, if I
may translate the word literally, meaning more lofty. Usually I find it
bitter cold here.
My chief design at this moment is to describe one of the luxurious
diversions of this potentate. I had His Majesty’s permission to be
shown over his magnificent demesne. The sieges of extreme cold weather
caused him to have built a curious structure, built entirely of glass,
and covering an area of eighteen acres. There were three divisions of
six acres each, used to represent the three seasons other than winter;
so that His Majesty, rolled in an upholstered chair along tan-bark
walks from one section to another, could experience respectively the
sensations of spring, summer and autumn.
In the first park, the grass was kept young and green by constant
irrigation; cherry and crab trees were forced to blossom, and as soon
as they began to wither, they were replaced by others; birds were
mating and singing at such close proximity that one screeching varlet
passed his dung on my bonnet. At the end of the enclosure depicting
summer, I saw His Grace stretched out in a cushioned hammock before a
fountain. He had one eunuch sprinkling perfume about him, while another
kept flies off his bald pate, and a third was squeezing drops from the
petals of clover blossoms into his open lips.
Upon approaching the royal presence, I bared my arms which is the
custom in this country.
“Here I am, O Excelsior, on a relief expedition from the land of the
Yankee bores, as your Supreme Armpit chose to call them on my previous
visits, judging me as a sample of my countrymen.”
I translate the word “Armpit” literally which is used by the natives
in addressing their ruler, wishing, as I suppose, to signify either
that his arms are more beautifully rounded and developed than those of
his subjects, or that the shoulders are more lofty and are on a higher
plane than the rest of the body. His Grace motioned to the eunuch to
cease the spraying of perfume and the dropping of clover juice that he
might acknowledge my salutation.
“You speak of being here on a relief expedition,” quoth he; “whom,
pray, are you to relieve?”
“Myself,” said I, for I had found on previous visits that the surest
means of flattering His Royal Axilla was by depreciating my own
countrymen. But this time it seems I was mistaken.
“I take it that you are a failure in your native land,” quoth the
ruler, “for those who are failures are usually ‘bored’, to use your
tongue. Is it not so, thou parasite of the warm ocean land?”
“True it is, O Excelsior,” I replied, “but my failure is due not to me;
it is the fault of----” Here he cut me short with an interruption:
“Those who are failures,” quoth he, “ever place the cause of their
failure upon others, while those who attain success always accredit it
to themselves.”
I thanked His Majesty for these kind words of wisdom, and was about to
take my departure when he asked me if I had seen the new instrument
of punishment which he had just had erected. Upon my replying in the
negative, he said that I could obtain a good view of it from one of
the windows in the royal bed-chamber, and that as he himself was going
thither to take his two o’clock siesta, he would gladly show it to me
in person. I thanked him with many encomiums upon his hospitality, and
we proceeded to his sleeping apartments.
Upon our arrival at the entrance to his bed-chamber, I noticed that
the windows were screened by a series of reflectors, making a curious
olio of lights, and there were strips of tapestry in many gradations of
color and tone effects. To my query as to the purpose of these massive
reflectors of light, the Excelsior replied that he deemed it to be very
bad for the nervous system to awake suddenly, saying that this theory
is supported by the fact that in a true state of nature one is awakened
gradually from sleep by the slow transition from darkness to light.
Accordingly, he produced by the arrangement of these reflectors an
effect similar to that of dawn, and he could thus be awakened gradually
at any hour of the day or night.
“The old-fashioned method of letting up blinds or throwing open
shutters,” quoth he, “and thereby admitting a sudden influx of bright
light is most injurious to the optic nerves and leaves the mind in a
drowsy and dazed condition. My optician, whom I have had with me for
two decades, agrees with me in this theory. And my invention overcomes
these deleterious effects of a sudden awakening.”
Hereupon he ordered the eunuchs to slide back the reflectors that he
might show me the aforementioned instrument of punishment. We stepped
out upon a balcony, and I saw in the courtyard below an immense
bladder, supported upon two uprights of timber, like the sweep of
an old-fashioned well. This bladder is operated as a whip, only it
belabors the victim upon the head. It was thus explained to me by His
Majesty.
“For what crime is this used as a punishment?” I asked.
“For those who are unduly given to self-praise,” replied the potentate,
“and there are two degrees of penalty, first for those who praise
themselves directly, and secondly for those who praise themselves
indirectly.”
“From what class of your subjects do most of these victims come?”
“From all classes,” he continued, “but those who praise themselves
frankly and openly are chiefly made up of successful business men,
actors and patent medicine doctors; whereas those who are given to
praising themselves indirectly, mostly consist of politicians, authors,
artists, professors and clergymen; and to this latter class is accorded
the most severe punishment.”
I observed now that the Excelsior was yawning profusely, and I began to
bare my arms and to bow myself out from his presence and to excuse my
long visit.
“Wait a moment,” he said, “now that you are here, take a look at
another invention of mine. There it is in the corner by the hearth.”
I turned and saw a large oblong table with three layers of shelves,
upon which were rows of bottles with automatic stoppers attached to
them. These stoppers or flat corks were manipulated by finger stops
and pedals, much the same as an ordinary organ. I should surely have
noticed this unique instrument upon my entrance, had it not been for
those colored reflectors which cut off the light.
“What does your Royal Axilla call that?” I asked, looking at the labels
on the bottles.
“That,” quoth he, “is my smelling piano. Did it never occur to you that
civilized man has been cultivating his ear with musical sounds ever
since he was in the stage of savagery, while he has utterly neglected
that much more sensitive member, the nose?”
This subject seemed to rouse great animation in His Majesty, and he
spoke about it with much fluency, as follows:
“Take for instance the fact that one never forgets an odor,” he
continued, “while a musical sound is scarcely remembered over night. It
is a matter of common observation that an odor will recall the scenes
or incidents or persons with which it was first perceived. Indeed my
chief chemist, whom I have had at my court several decades, is of the
belief that the memory of a smell, be it pleasant or disagreeable, is
the last thing that the mind retains. I have him compress into those
bottles the essences of the principal odors. There now, you have the
idea of this invention in a nutshell.”
“And can you compose upon this smelling piano?” I asked.
“Why, certainly,” he replied; “there is as much a symphony of smells
as of sounds; and the harmony of odors depends in like manner upon
discords. As, for example, in a sonata that I was producing last night,
the delicate fragrance of mignonette and of lilies of the valley was
offset by an odor of Edam cheese.”
It was with difficulty that I maintained the composure of my
countenance, but His Royal Armpit was in earnest, and I dared not laugh.
“Then you have scales for the smells?”
“Exactly,” continued His Majesty, glowing with satisfaction at my
appreciation of the subject, “there are minor odors, such as the
essences of beeswax, of tan-bark, of most kinds of flowers and the
various mixtures of tobacco, and so forth; and then there are major
odors in which are included the rank smell of the poppy and of the
milk-weed, of the sap of the pungent ailanthus tree, and of most of
the concentrated acids, and what-not, and especially those odors of
a high pitch, such as of molten soap and burning rubber. And this
last bottle,” said he sharply, and at the same time giving vent to an
unconcealed yawn, “this last bottle I open whenever visitors overstay
their welcome.” Whereupon he pulled out one of the finger stops and
pushed the base pedal. Instantly the chamber was filled with the
vile stench of burning gutta-percha. At this strong hint I bade the
Excelsior adieu, thanking him for his cordial reception of me, and then
I repeated the custom of baring my arms before leaving his presence.
A moment later Sandy came running into my room crying, “Lor’ maarstar,
the house am on fire!”
This information startled me, though I doubted its truth. “No, Sandy,”
said I, “it is only the smell of burning rubber.” And upon making an
investigation, Sandy discovered that I had for some inexplicable reason
thrown my fountain pen into the fire. Probably in an absent-minded
moment I mistook it for my half-burned segar. Such was the cause of the
stench. Sandy reports that it is four o’clock in the morning. My lamp
is just flickering. Perhaps I shall now be able to get a little sleep.