I am quite disenchanted. Is this our brother earth man? So flat; more
wide than tall, who cannot lift his feet on account of his centrifugal
location; thorn artists; skewering hair, umbrella like. Nesting on trees
as high as Jack’s beanstalk. A shade outside draws us hastily there. How
came this emerald lawn with ruby roses, sapphire lilies, made of the gem
rock centers.
The shade increasing relieves my eyes to see distinctly. As the tiny
artists finish their work by sprinkling the sparkling dust over
themselves and resume their jubilee racket. Suddenly I get an odd sense
that they are different from ordinary human beings. Grace in every
motion. Fair flowing hair; deep-dell gray eyes are of plain human being
species. Still I notice strongly a difference as they gather now and
hurriedly consult. Children and adults. Are the latter all mothers or
fathers? I cannot tell.
Before solution dawns I look up and find the moon is approaching close
over. Is it whence the unique mites have their origin?
Still in the globe, my attention turns wholly to it, for the globe-lense
shows it distinctly enough to read its surface. Its mountains, valleys,
and—yes, certainly, human cities grow upon my vision. So interested am
I, I forget to look for appurtenances or attachment fixtures, in my new
custom of practical demonstration.
As I get an important discovery of inventive construction in a certain
locality straight in my mind, it is almost knocked out, as now, directly
over, I perceive a central light inside the satellite. It is a
taper-kind and in disturbance. A burst of blackness drops from it and
down toward me. Keenly alarmed, the tots are more so, as they, run and
fall down and dig faces and hands beneath the boulder debris.
As trembling thus they lay, I get another impress of them which suddenly
takes definite form. The solution is present. The father and mother,
before mysterious, are also present. What is quite astonishing, these
two are one human being. Uncanny sense gives way to delight at the
vision of strength and dignity, so masculine; enhanced by grace and
tenderness, so feminine.
I feel to clap my hands, but the inky blackness is coming down so fast I
look to it. Wavering white spots are on it; reflections of the white
cliffs below. The forks of the rod are plain and take on a familiar
contour. Contour of the Milky Way. Is _that_ a mirage of this rod on
night sky?
The cloud falls and fells Savant too, nearly breaking the globe, as it
splashes upon the nearest white cliff. The air now clears and cools as
the deposit whitens, emitting a familiar odor. What! wax dropped out of
the moon?
The tots arise and fly with gauzy robes to the cliffside and clamber
excitedly about. Savant arises and enters the globe, proceeding to steer
that way.
As the moon takes a smiling adieu I turn my attention again to it. I
hunt some before I find a faint line, far away attached to the
earth-rim, obviously its fixture. Simple but inexplicable in action.
Though an electric connection in the rim may turn the earth-crust it
would not also turn the moon, as the latter’s motion is monthly, not
daily.
Unable to solve this I complete my former broken discovery that the
constructions on it are telescopes. Mining, maybe. Informing its people
of the earth and how to get there.
Approaching the cliff a digging is heard inside. Then breaks out a waxen
aperture, (closed by the splash) and out peeps a tiny head. We follow
the rest, unseen, into the inner court of their mountain lodge.
Wax-carved alcoves, cloud styles, line a large area open in the center
thinly to the sky. In one a tiny table holds tiny plates of brittle
make. In them, what? A giant mosquito trapped in the outer wax, its
denuded wings wrapping the imp robbers. Another alcove in high cloud has
a choir, lace draped and seated. I recollect the mist people.
In the center of the sward plaza, or esplanade, is a circular fountain,
enclosing within its circular wall of water a dell or green glen.
Covering our top, we steer through the fountain side and to it.
Discovering ourselves to the others, who scurry angrily behind us, we
descend the dell, sloping down like a funnel, to find it shortly cut
off. But lower down—ground again. While gazing at the latter a sensation
strangely affects me, that it is moving——moving slowly by.
What is it? In the fixture—lubricated by the fountain in each white
cliff (cooling the wax), moving as does the earth-crust. We are both
lost in study.
The tiny fiends’ anger culminates, as altogether they give the globe a
sudden push. That taking Savant unawares, it is precipitated through the
funnel and to the moving ground below. Electric tremors shake us up,
but, insulated, our globe survives, and passes on the ground motor out
of sight of the enemies above. A signal from Savant, but e’er I look
ahead, a cake of wax drops upon my lap. I look up and see the wee gnomes
above, clinging like fireflies to the ceiling. Their fun is shortened,
though, as one accidentally, also drops, landing safely in the cake of
wax. Zip, down comes a gauze ribbon, up which goes the little gnome too
frightened to fly.
Breaking up the cake, I see in it a mould of the harlequin form, which I
proceed to restore and dress, to his consternation. My attention thus
diverted sideways is attracted by the width of the cavern. The cause
soon obvious. It contains other motor ground beds. The twin of this on
which we lazily ride is close by, but moving in an opposite direction,
like a band reaching out and returning. Does it contact with the
earth-crust, and turn it in daily curve? Then what do two others, on
each side of these, farther out, but opposite, also, and smaller in
size, turn—more slowly turn? Is it the band of the fixture of the moon,
_attached to the earth-crust rim_?