A room to myself was assigned to me in this vast edifice. It was
prettily and fantastically arranged, but without any of the splendour
of metal-work or gems which was displayed in the more public apartments.
The walls were hung with a variegated matting made from the stalks and
fibers of plants, and the floor carpeted with the same.
The bed was without curtains, its supports of iron resting on balls of
crystal; the coverings, of a thin white substance resembling cotton.
There were sundry shelves containing books. A curtained recess
communicated with an aviary filled with singing-birds, of which I
did not recognise one resembling those I have seen on earth, except a
beautiful species of dove, though this was distinguished from our doves
by a tall crest of bluish plumes. All these birds had been trained
to sing in artful tunes, and greatly exceeded the skill of our piping
bullfinches, which can rarely achieve more than two tunes, and cannot, I
believe, sing those in concert. One might have supposed one’s self at
an opera in listening to the voices in my aviary. There were duets
and trios, and quartetts and choruses, all arranged as in one piece of
music. Did I want silence from the birds? I had but to draw a curtain
over the aviary, and their song hushed as they found themselves left in
the dark. Another opening formed a window, not glazed, but on touching a
spring, a shutter ascended from the floor, formed of some substance
less transparent than glass, but still sufficiently pellucid to allow
a softened view of the scene without. To this window was attached a
balcony, or rather hanging garden, wherein grew many graceful plants
and brilliant flowers. The apartment and its appurtenances had thus a
character, if strange in detail, still familiar, as a whole, to modern
notions of luxury, and would have excited admiration if found attached
to the apartments of an English duchess or a fashionable French author.
Before I arrived this was Zee’s chamber; she had hospitably assigned it
to me.
Some hours after the waking up which is described in my last chapter, I
was lying alone on my couch trying to fix my thoughts on conjecture as
to the nature and genus of the people amongst whom I was thrown, when my
host and his daughter Zee entered the room. My host, still speaking
my native language, inquired with much politeness, whether it would be
agreeable to me to converse, or if I preferred solitude. I replied, that
I should feel much honoured and obliged by the opportunity offered me to
express my gratitude for the hospitality and civilities I had received
in a country to which I was a stranger, and to learn enough of its
customs and manners not to offend through ignorance.
As I spoke, I had of course risen from my couch: but Zee, much to my
confusion, curtly ordered me to lie down again, and there was something
in her voice and eye, gentle as both were, that compelled my obedience.
She then seated herself unconcernedly at the foot of my bed, while her
father took his place on a divan a few feet distant.
“But what part of the world do you come from?” asked my host, “that we
should appear so strange to you and you to us? I have seen individual
specimens of nearly all the races differing from our own, except the
primeval savages who dwell in the most desolate and remote recesses of
uncultivated nature, unacquainted with other light than that they obtain
from volcanic fires, and contented to grope their way in the dark, as do
many creeping, crawling and flying things. But certainly you cannot be a
member of those barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do you seem to
belong to any civilised people.”
I was somewhat nettled at this last observation, and replied that I had
the honour to belong to one of the most civilised nations of the earth;
and that, so far as light was concerned, while I admired the ingenuity
and disregard of expense with which my host and his fellow-citizens had
contrived to illumine the regions unpenetrated by the rays of the sun,
yet I could not conceive how any who had once beheld the orbs of heaven
could compare to their lustre the artificial lights invented by the
necessities of man. But my host said he had seen specimens of most of
the races differing from his own, save the wretched barbarians he had
mentioned. Now, was it possible that he had never been on the surface
of the earth, or could he only be referring to communities buried within
its entrails?
My host was for some moments silent; his countenance showed a degree of
surprise which the people of that race very rarely manifest under any
circumstances, howsoever extraordinary. But Zee was more intelligent,
and exclaimed, “So you see, my father, that there is truth in the old
tradition; there always is truth in every tradition commonly believed in
all times and by all tribes.”
“Zee,” said my host mildly, “you belong to the College of Sages, and
ought to be wiser than I am; but, as chief of the Light-preserving
Council, it is my duty to take nothing for granted till it is proved to
the evidence of my own senses.” Then, turning to me, he asked me several
questions about the surface of the earth and the heavenly bodies; upon
which, though I answered him to the best of my knowledge, my answers
seemed not to satisfy nor convince him. He shook his head quietly, and,
changing the subject rather abruptly, asked how I had come down from
what he was pleased to call one world to the other. I answered, that
under the surface of the earth there were mines containing minerals,
or metals, essential to our wants and our progress in all arts and
industries; and I then briefly explained the manner in which, while
exploring one of those mines, I and my ill-fated friend had obtained a
glimpse of the regions into which we had descended, and how the descent
had cost him his life; appealing to the rope and grappling-hooks
that the child had brought to the house in which I had been at first
received, as a witness of the truthfulness of my story.
My host then proceeded to question me as to the habits and modes of
life among the races on the upper earth, more especially among those
considered to be the most advanced in that civilisation which he was
pleased to define “the art of diffusing throughout a community the
tranquil happiness which belongs to a virtuous and well-ordered
household.” Naturally desiring to represent in the most favourable
colours the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though
indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in
order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence
of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously seeks its
model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the
social life of the United States that city in which progress advances
at the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the moral
habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners, that
I did not make the favourable impression I had anticipated, I elevated
my theme; dwelling on the excellence of democratic institutions, their
promotion of tranquil happiness by the government of party, and the
mode in which they diffused such happiness throughout the community by
preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of honours,
the lowliest citizens in point of property, education, and character.
Fortunately recollecting the peroration of a speech, on the purifying
influences of American democracy and their destined spread over the
world, made by a certain eloquent senator (for whose vote in the Senate
a Railway Company, to which my two brothers belonged, had just paid
20,000 dollars), I wound up by repeating its glowing predictions of the
magnificent future that smiled upon mankind--when the flag of freedom
should float over an entire continent, and two hundred millions of
intelligent citizens, accustomed from infancy to the daily use of
revolvers, should apply to a cowering universe the doctrine of the
Patriot Monroe.
When I had concluded, my host gently shook his head, and fell into a
musing study, making a sign to me and his daughter to remain silent
while he reflected. And after a time he said, in a very earnest and
solemn tone, “If you think as you say, that you, though a stranger, have
received kindness at the hands of me and mine, I adjure you to reveal
nothing to any other of our people respecting the world from which you
came, unless, on consideration, I give you permission to do so. Do you
consent to this request?” “Of course I pledge my word, to it,” said
I, somewhat amazed; and I extended my right hand to grasp his. But
he placed my hand gently on his forehead and his own right hand on my
breast, which is the custom amongst this race in all matters of promise
or verbal obligations. Then turning to his daughter, he said, “And you,
Zee, will not repeat to any one what the stranger has said, or may say,
to me or to you, of a world other than our own.” Zee rose and kissed her
father on the temples, saying, with a smile, “A Gy’s tongue is wanton,
but love can fetter it fast. And if, my father, you fear lest a chance
word from me or yourself could expose our community to danger, by a
desire to explore a world beyond us, will not a wave of the ‘vril,’
properly impelled, wash even the memory of what we have heard the
stranger say out of the tablets of the brain?”
“What is the vril?” I asked.
Therewith Zee began to enter into an explanation of which I understood
very little, for there is no word in any language I know which is an
exact synonym for vril. I should call it electricity, except that it
comprehends in its manifold branches other forces of nature, to which,
in our scientific nomenclature, differing names are assigned, such as
magnetism, galvanism, &c. These people consider that in vril they have
arrived at the unity in natural energetic agencies, which has been
conjectured by many philosophers above ground, and which Faraday thus
intimates under the more cautious term of correlation:--
“I have long held an opinion,” says that illustrious experimentalist,
“almost amounting to a conviction, in common, I believe, with many other
lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the
forces of matter are made manifest, have one common origin; or, in other
words, are so directly related and mutually dependent that they are
convertible, as it were into one another, and possess equivalents of
power in their action.”
These subterranean philosophers assert that by one operation of vril,
which Faraday would perhaps call ‘atmospheric magnetism,’ they can
influence the variations of temperature--in plain words, the weather;
that by operations, akin to those ascribed to mesmerism, electro-
biology, odic force, &c., but applied scientifically, through vril
conductors, they can exercise influence over minds, and bodies animal
and vegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of our
mystics. To all such agencies they give the common name of vril.”
Zee asked me if, in my world, it was not known that all the faculties of
the mind could be quickened to a degree unknown in the waking state,
by trance or vision, in which the thoughts of one brain could be
transmitted to another, and knowledge be thus rapidly interchanged.
I replied, that there were amongst us stories told of such trance
or vision, and that I had heard much and seen something in mesmeric
clairvoyance; but that these practices had fallen much into disuse or
contempt, partly because of the gross impostures to which they had
been made subservient, and partly because, even where the effects upon
certain abnormal constitutions were genuinely produced, the effects when
fairly examined and analysed, were very unsatisfactory--not to be relied
upon for any systematic truthfulness or any practical purpose, and
rendered very mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitions
they tended to produce. Zee received my answers with much benignant
attention, and said that similar instances of abuse and credulity had
been familiar to their own scientific experience in the infancy of their
knowledge, and while the properties of vril were misapprehended, but
that she reserved further discussion on this subject till I was more
fitted to enter into it. She contented herself with adding, that it
was through the agency of vril, while I had been placed in the state
of trance, that I had been made acquainted with the rudiments of their
language; and that she and her father, who alone of the family, took
the pains to watch the experiment, had acquired a greater proportionate
knowledge of my language than I of their own; partly because my language
was much simpler than theirs, comprising far less of complex ideas; and
partly because their organisation was, by hereditary culture, much more
ductile and more readily capable of acquiring knowledge than mine. At
this I secretly demurred; and having had in the course of a practical
life, to sharpen my wits, whether at home or in travel, I could not
allow that my cerebral organisation could possibly be duller than that
of people who had lived all their lives by lamplight. However, while I
was thus thinking, Zee quietly pointed her forefinger at my forehead,
and sent me to sleep.