Over the Teacups Part 4

Why, said I,--The Dictator,--what is there to prevent beings of another order from being as cheerful, as social, as good companions, as the very liveliest of G.o.d's creatures whom we have known in the flesh? Is it impossible for an archangel to smile? Is such a phenomenon as a laugh never heard except in our little sinful corner of the universe? Do you suppose, that when the disciples heard from the lips of their Master the play of words on the name of Peter, there was no smile of appreciation on the bearded faces of those holy men? From any other lips we should have called this pleasantry a--

Number Five shook her head very slightly, and gave me a look that seemed to say, "Don't frighten the other Teacups. We don't call things by the names that belong to them when we deal with celestial subjects."

We tied up, as my attendant playfully called our resting, so near the planet that I could know--I will not say see and hear, but apprehend--all that was going on in that remote sphere; remote, as we who live in what we have been used to consider the centre of the rational universe regard it. What struck me at once was the deadness of everything I looked upon. Dead, uniform color of surface and surrounding atmosphere. Dead complexion of all the inhabitants. Dead-looking trees, dead-looking gra.s.s, no flowers to be seen anywhere.

"What is the meaning of all this?" I said to my guide.

She smiled good-naturedly, and replied, "It is a forlorn home for anything above a lichen or a toadstool; but that is no wonder, when you know what the air is which they breathe. It is pure nitrogen."

The Professor spoke up. "That can't be, madam," he said. "The spectroscope shows the atmosphere of Saturn to be--no matter, I have forgotten what; but it was not pure nitrogen, at any rate."

Number Five is never disconcerted. "Will you tell me," she said, "where you have found any account of the bands and lines in the spectrum of dream-nitrogen? I should be so pleased to become acquainted with them."

The Professor winced a little, and asked Delilah, the handmaiden, to pa.s.s a plate of m.u.f.fins to him. The dream had carried him away, and he thought for the moment that he was listening to a scientific paper.

Of course, my companion went on to say, the bodily const.i.tution of the Saturnians is wholly different from that of air-breathing, that is oxygen-breathing, human beings. They are the dullest, slowest, most torpid of mortal creatures.

All this is not to be wondered at when you remember the inert characteristics of nitrogen. There are in some localities natural springs which give out slender streams of oxygen. You will learn by and by what use the Saturnians make of this dangerous gas, which, as you recollect, const.i.tutes about one fifth of your own atmosphere. Saturn has large lead mines, but no other metal is found on this planet.

The inhabitants have nothing else to make tools of, except stones and sh.e.l.ls. The mechanical arts have therefore made no great progress among them. Chopping down a tree with a leaden axe is necessarily a slow process.

So far as the Saturnians can be said to have any pride in anything, it is in the absolute level which characterizes their political and social order. They profess to be the only true republicans in the solar system.

The fundamental articles of their Const.i.tution are these:

All Saturnians are born equal, live equal, and die equal.

All Saturnians are born free,--free, that is, to obey the rules laid down for the regulation of their conduct, pursuits, and opinions, free to be married to the person selected for them by the physiological section of the government, and free to die at such proper period of life as may best suit the convenience and general welfare of the community.

The one great industrial product of Saturn is the bread-root. The Saturnians find this wholesome and palatable enough; and it is well they do, as they have no other vegetable. It is what I should call a most uninteresting kind of eatable, but it serves as food and drink, having juice enough, so that they get along without water. They have a tough, dry gra.s.s, which, matted together, furnishes them with clothes sufficiently warm for their cold-blooded const.i.tutions, and more than sufficiently ugly.

A piece of ground large enough to furnish bread-root for ten persons is allotted to each head of a household, allowance being made for the possible increase of families. This, however, is not a very important consideration, as the Saturnians are not a prolific race. The great object of life being the product of the largest possible quant.i.ty of bread-roots, and women not being so capable in the fields as the stronger s.e.x, females are considered an undesirable addition to society.

The one thing the Saturnians dread and abhor is inequality. The whole object of their laws and customs is to maintain the strictest equality in everything,--social relations, property, so far as they can be said to have anything which can be so called, mode of living, dress, and all other matters. It is their boast that n.o.body ever starved under their government. n.o.body goes in rags, for the coa.r.s.e-fibred gra.s.s from which they fabricate their clothes is very durable. (I confess I wondered how a woman could live in Saturn. They have no looking-gla.s.ses. There is no such article as a ribbon known among them. All their clothes are of one pattern. I noticed that there were no pockets in any of their garments, and learned that a pocket would be considered prima facie evidence of theft, as no honest person would have use for such a secret receptacle.) Before the revolution which established the great law of absolute and lifelong equality, the inhabitants used to feed at their own private tables. Since the regeneration of society all meals are taken in common.

The last relic of barbarism was the use of plates,--one or even more to each individual. This "odious relic of an effete civilization," as they called it, has long been superseded by oblong hollow receptacles, one of which is allotted to each twelve persons. A great riot took place when an attempt was made by some fastidious and exclusive egotists to introduce part.i.tions which should partially divide one portion of these receptacles into individual compartments. The Saturnians boast that they have no paupers, no thieves, none of those fict.i.tious values called money,--all which things, they hear, are known in that small Saturn nearer the sun than the great planet which is their dwelling-place.

"I suppose that now they have levelled everything they are quiet and contented. Have they any of those uneasy people called reformers?"

"Indeed they have," said my attendant. "There are the Orthobrachians, who declaim against the shameful abuse of the left arm and hand, and insist on restoring their perfect equality with the right. Then there are Isopodic societies, which insist on bringing back the original equality of the upper and lower limbs. If you can believe it, they actually practise going on all fours,--generally in a private way, a few of them together, but hoping to bring the world round to them in the near future."

Here I had to stop and laugh.

"I should think life might be a little dull in Saturn," I said.

"It is liable to that accusation," she answered. "Do you notice how many people you meet with their mouths stretched wide open?"

"Yes," I said, "and I do not know what to make of it. I should think every fourth or fifth person had his mouth open in that way."

"They are suffering from the endemic disease of their planet, prolonged and inveterate gaping or yawning, which has ended in dislocation of the lower jaw. After a time this becomes fixed, and requires a difficult surgical operation to restore it to its place."

It struck me that, in spite of their boast that they have no paupers, no thieves, no money, they were a melancholy-looking set of beings.

"What are their amus.e.m.e.nts?" I asked.

"Intoxication and suicide are their chief recreations. They have a way of mixing the oxygen which issues in small jets from certain natural springs with their atmospheric nitrogen in the proportion of about twenty per cent, which makes very nearly the same thing as the air of your planet. But to the Saturnians the mixture is highly intoxicating, and is therefore a relief to the monotony of their every-day life. This mixture is greatly sought after, but hard to obtain, as the sources of oxygen are few and scanty. It shortens the lives of those who have recourse to it; but if it takes too long, they have other ways of escaping from a life which cuts and dries everything for its miserable subjects, defeats all the natural instincts, confounds all individual characteristics, and makes existence such a colossal bore, as your worldly people say, that self-destruction becomes a luxury."

Number Five stopped here.

Your imaginary wholesale Shakerdom is all very fine, said I. Your Utopia, your New Atlantis, and the rest are pretty to look at. But your philosophers are treating the world of living souls as if they were, each of them, playing a game of solitaire,--all the pegs and all the holes alike. Life is a very different sort of game. It is a game of chess, and not of solitaire, nor even of checkers. The men are not all p.a.w.ns, but you have your knights, bishops, rooks,--yes, your king and queen,--to be provided for. Not with these names, of course, but all looking for their proper places, and having their own laws and modes of action. You can play solitaire with the members of your own family for pegs, if you like, and if none of them rebel. You can play checkers with a little community of meek, like-minded people. But when it comes to the handling of a great state, you will find that nature has emptied a box of chessmen before you, and you must play with them so as to give each its proper move, or sweep them off the board, and come back to the homely game such as I used to see played with beans and kernels of corn on squares marked upon the back of the kitchen bellows.

It was curious to see how differently Number Five's narrative was received by the different listeners in our circle. Number Five herself said she supposed she ought to be ashamed of its absurdities, but she did not know that it was much sillier than dreams often are, and she thought it might amuse the company. She was herself always interested by these ideal pictures of society. But it seemed to her that life must be dull in any of them, and with that idea in her head her dreaming fancy had drawn these pictures.

The Professor was interested in her conception of the existence of the Lunites without waste, and the death in life of the nitrogen-breathing Saturnians. Dream-chemistry was a new subject to him. Perhaps Number Five would give him some lessons in it.

At this she smiled, and said she was afraid she could not teach him anything, but if he would answer a few questions in matter-of-fact chemistry which had puzzled her she would be vastly obliged to him.

"You must come to my laboratory," said the Professor.

"I will come to-morrow," said Number Five.

Oh, yes! Much laboratory work they will do! Play of mutual affinities.

Amalgamates. No freezing mixtures, I'll warrant!

Why shouldn't we get a romance out of all this, hey?

But Number Five looks as innocent as a lamb, and as brave as a lion. She does not care a copper for the looks that are going round The Teacups.

Our Doctor was curious about those cases of anchylosis, as he called it, of the lower jaw. He thought it a quite possible occurrence. Both the young girls thought the dream gave a very hard view of the optimists, who look forward to a reorganization of society which shall rid mankind of the terrible evils of over-crowding and compet.i.tion.

Number Seven was quite excited about the matter. He had himself drawn up a plan for a new social arrangement. He had shown it to the legal gentleman who has lately joined us. This gentleman thought it well-intended, but that it would take one constable to every three inhabitants to enforce its provisions.

I said the dream could do no harm; it was too outrageously improbable to come home to anybody's feelings. Dreams were like broken mosaics,--the separated stones might here and there make parts of pictures. If one found a caricature of himself made out of the pieces which had accidentally come together, he would smile at it, knowing that it was an accidental effect with no malice in it. If any of you really believe in a working Utopia, why not join the Shakers, and convert the world to this mode of life? Celibacy alone would cure a great many of the evils you complain of.

I thought this suggestion seemed to act rather unfavorably upon the ladies of our circle. The two Annexes looked inquiringly at each other.

Number Five looked smilingly at them. She evidently thought it was time to change the subject of conversation, for she turned to me and said, "You promised to read us the poem you read before your old cla.s.smates the other evening."

I will fulfill my promise, I said. We felt that this might probably be our last meeting as a Cla.s.s. The personal reference is to our greatly beloved and honored cla.s.smate, James Freeman Clarke.

AFTER THE CURFEW.

The Play is over. While the light Yet lingers in the darkening hall,

I come to say a last Good-night Before the final Exeunt all.

We gathered once, a joyous throng: The jovial toasts went gayly round; With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song we made the floors and walls resound.

We come with feeble steps and slow, A little band of four or five, Left from the wrecks of long ago, Still pleased to find ourselves alive.

Alive! How living, too, are they whose memories it is ours to share!

Spread the long table's full array, There sits a ghost in every chair!

One breathing form no more, alas!