CHAPTER VIII.
I closed the book which I had been perusing, with a sense of the liveliest amazement. Was it possible, I thought, that this wonderful people had really conquered disease, decay, death, and the elements?
The suggestion seemed so wild, and my surroundings altogether were so strange, that I pinched myself to make sure that I had not really left my earthly casing behindme, and emerged, Chrysalis-like, into another world, whereof the grovelling nature of my former existence had failed to give me any conception.
But no, I was as sensitive to pain as ever I had been; and, to make the situation once more one of active reality, Hilda presently made her re-appearance. It was well for me that she seemed to have taken a strong fancy to me, otherwise I should never have been able to feel so much at ease in her presence as I did.
True, she was not more than nineteen years of age, so she told me, and was still pursuing the studies which were to qualify her to become a full-blown Lecturer on Chemical Science, but her physique was so splendid, and her mental qualities of such surprising vigour for one so young as she, that it was impossible for me to regard myself other than as a very inferior being in her presence.
She was very pleased to find that I had been able to read the books she had placed at my disposal; but her powers of belief were severely taxed when I insisted that the retrospect, referring to the peculiar habits and customs of the Ancients, was a faithful picture of things as they still existed in my own country.
“To tell you the truth,” she said at last, “I think that you have been asleep for about six hundred years. You must have been taking Schlafstrank, though I had no idea it had been so long in existence.”
“And, pray, what is Schlafstrank, and what are its uses?” I asked, whereupon I was told that Schlafstrank was an essence, discovered in the year 2239, by Ada of Garretville, while Senior Lecturer in Chemistry for that year. The uses to which this essence was devoted was to put people to sleep for a longer or a shorter period of time, according to the quantity inhaled or swallowed. While under the influence of Schlafstrank any amount of paincould be borne without causing the subject of it any real inconvenience, since no sense of pain or bodily suffering was conveyed to the sleeping mind.
Thus if, in unusual exception to the rule of perfect health which prevailed here, some dangerous or painful disease overtook any of the children of the State, be they old or young, they were subject to the influence of Schlafstrank, and then dosed or operated upon until the disease was conquered. In this way did New Amazonians avoid suffering, and it struck me as marvellous to picture them as the subjects of an accident resulting in a few broken limbs, and being unconscious of any inconvenience arising therefrom during the processes of setting and recovery. I was told that Schlafstrank produced no deleterious effect upon the body, although repeated doses were given, if the patient’s mind threatened to awake before complete recovery of the body had set in.
One thing mystified me exceedingly. I was told that Schlafstrank was not invented until the year 2239, and naturally asked what year this was supposed to be. No doubt there was ample room for amusement on both sides when I positively averred that the year 1889 was not yet at an end, and Hilda insisted just as positively that this was the year 2472.
Not a little to my surprise, an attendant knocked at the door, and presented me with a parcel, with the words “From the Mother.”
“The Mother?”, I queried, and Hilda, pitying my ignorance, informed me that the State was the Mother of her people, and that no doubt the parcel contained a suitable outfit for me. On opening the parcel, I found the latter surmise to be correct, and I was eased of the last remnant of embarrassment I might have entertained at the idea of encroaching upon the hospitality of others, by beinginformed that it was considered a personal honour for any individual member of the State to be permitted to dispense the Mother’s hospitality to all comers.
No stranger was permitted to seek private hospitality, but was provided, at the behest and expense of the Mother, with everything necessary for comfort while in New Amazonia.
I suggested that if this were generally known, the country was in danger of being over-run by loafers and adventurers of all nations.
This argument was met by the information that no strangers were permitted to land except such as showed good reason for their advent. If, by any chance, a person obtained access to the country who was inclined to abuse its hospitality, she or he was subjected to a course of labour which more than sufficed to pay expenses, and was then promptly expelled, one of the numerous fleet of trading steamers which New Amazonia now possessed being used as a means of transport to the culprit’s own country.
Hilda’s duties were not quite completed, but she told me that if I would induct myself in my new garments during her absence, she would return to me as soon as possible, and that she was deputed to inform me that Principal Grey and Professor Wise were prepared to escort me on a tour round the city, if I cared to go.
Es geht ohne sagenthat I jumped at the offer, metaphorically speaking, and that I exerted myself to the utmost to transform my outward semblance by wasting no time ere I changed my own attire for the National costume a bountiful State had placed at my disposal. I availed myself of a marble bath which Hilda had shown me, and even half resolved to sacrifice my hair, in my desire to make myself as less like an oddity as possible.
The clothes proved a good fit, if the term could beapplied to garments whose chief beauty consisted in the absolute freedom from constraint which they exercised over the body. I noticed one omission, which I was inclined to regret. No graceful sash formed part of my outfit, and I learnt afterwards that none but natives of the soil, or formally adopted immigrants, were permitted to adorn themselves with this distinctive National badge.
I was very much relieved when, on the return of Hilda, she pronounced me to be so passable as to be sure to escape the annoyance of being conspicuously Ancient looking, my diminutive stature being now the only specially noticeable feature about me, provided my hair could be hidden. Upon trial, my new velvet cap proved too inadequate a means of securing the desired end, and, with something akin to a pang, I must confess, I empowered Hilda to deprive me of what I had hitherto been taught to regard as woman’s glory.
No sooner, however, was I bereft of all superabundant tresses, than I decided that the men who have from time to time so zealously exhorted women to wear their hair long, have done it from an innate conviction that the practice was debilitating and inconvenient, and therefore likely to prove an invaluable aid in the final subjugation of woman. Unlike Samson of old, I rejoiced in my newly acquired lack of hirsute adornment, and went on my way rejoicing.
I also found locomotion so much easier in my new attire, that the marble stairs had no terrors for me, and the interest I felt in all I saw proved a powerful incentive to exertion. I was not sorry to find that we were to be fortified with another meal before starting on our exploring expedition. As at the previous meal, there was no animal food, but the fare was scientifically perfect, and calculated to appeal powerfully to the senses by its appetising odourand appearance. Three meals per diem proved to be the rule here, and I observed that, compared to their physique, the appetites of the New Amazonians seemed to be very moderate. This was no doubt due to the fact that every item of food consumed was of such a nature that it at once supplied all the wants of the body, and that all indigestible or innutritive foods had long ago been banished from New Amazonian regimen as injurious on account of the useless waste of bodily force entailed in digesting or assimilating them.
I was, however, glad to find that tea was not condemned as entirely useless, and I thoroughly enjoyed this third and last meal of the day, after which I was taken out to explore posthumous Dublin, now called Andersonia. Once, when paying a flying visit to St. Petersburg, I was much struck by the large scale upon which all the principal streets and buildings were planned, and when I arrived in London, not very long after this, I felt positively relieved at the sight of the comparatively narrow and dingy London streets and buildings, and the sense of glare and unreality which made itself palpable in St. Petersburg promptly vanished in the atmosphere of London smoke.
Yellow-ochred palaces, lime-washed theatres, golden domes, and gaudy blue and white and gilt churches appealed less to my fancy than did the solid stone beauties of London architecture, grimy though they might be.
In looking upon Andersonia I was forcibly reminded of both the cities just mentioned. There were the same large, open squares, revealing broad, avenue-lined streets planned with mathematical exactitude, and the same huge buildings that I had noticed in St. Petersburg. But there was also the same solidity, freedom from glare, and honesty of composition, which roused my admiration when looking upon some of London’s magnificent stone buildings. Here,however, were examples of architecture such as I had never before seen the like of for magnificence, and it was no detriment to their beauty that they were unsullied by smoke or dirt.
This seemed a very large city, and must have contained a numerous population, yet not one smoking chimney did I see. The weather was delightfully mild, but of course heat was necessary for cooking. In my ideas, a fire was just as necessarily associated with smoke, and I expressed my surprise at its evident absence. Considerably to my astonishment, I had some difficulty in making myself understood, but, in the end, mutual enlightenment was the result of our confabulations.
Electricity was made so thoroughly subservient to human will that it supplied light, heat, and powers of volition, besides being made to perform nearly every conceivable domestic use. So well were the elements analysed and understood here that thunderstorms were unknown, and the force which yearly used to slay numbers of people was now attracted, cooped, and subjugated to human necessities.
The skies were unclouded, the air delightfully bracing, the atmosphere so clear and pure that I wondered if some strange change had not occurred to my eyesight, since I could see miles and miles of fair country, lovely villages, and populous towns, whichever way I looked.
Smoke was an imponderable quantity here, by virtue of the smoke-consuming apparati fixed in every dwelling, which permitted not even the destruction by fire of the household refuse which was daily committed to the furnace, to sully the purity of the atmosphere.
I enquired if fires were frequent here, and was told that in the manufacture or adaption of every material in use, either for building purposes, or for decorative and personalapplication, there was incorporated a substance which rendered it impervious to fire, and practically indestructible.
There was not the slightest noise of traffic in the streets, such as I had always been accustomed to hear in either large or small towns. On each side of every street there was a double means of locomotion provided. Water cars abounded, and by way of proving their comfort and efficiency to me, the two women who escorted me took their seats in one of them, and, somewhat nervously, I followed their example.
In another moment I noticed houses and streets fly past us with magical rapidity, but this phenomenon ceased almost immediately, and I looked through the glass sides of the car upon a totally new scene. Dublin Bay, in all its glorious beauty, lay unfolded to my vision. But I was hardly able to appreciate it at that moment, for I was possessed by the idea that I was under the influence of magic.
The magic subsequently resolved itself into a marvellous adaptation of hydraulic force. It was our car, not the houses, which had been flying with electric speed. Yet so noiseless, and so apparently motionless had we been that the illusion was perfect, and I seemed not to have moved. The pressure of an electric button stopped a car instantaneously, and at the same time prevented any succeeding car from passing a given point until all obstruction ahead was removed.
These stoppages lasted only an infinitesimally short time, for all the cars, whether for passenger or goods traffic, were pulled up to the inner barrier of the double roadway, leaving a clear course for all cars which were still pursuing their journey.
I could not see any water, but was told that the whole traffic of the country was run upon these electric hydraulicways, and that water had been found so noiseless, so frictionless, so economical, and so superior in every way to the locomotive railways formerly in use as to supersede the latter a few hundred years ago. “Puffing Billy” in fact was now only a memory. The first line of one of Dagonet’s ballads, “Billy’s dead and gone to glory,” came to my mind as applicable to the motive force which in my own days was considered impossible to beat.
His knell was sounded, when there appeared a rival on the scene who brought neither noise, dirt, vibration, nor smoke in her train. Accidents were of almost impossible occurrence on the hydraulic roads, I was told, and ordinary street traffic was not interfered with by these roads, as they were constructed upon elevated platforms.
All persons using them paid a certain sum for the privilege. The State had entire control of the waterways, and derived considerable revenues from them, after paying all expenses, and remunerating the thousands of people who were employed upon them. The remotest part of New Amazonia could, I was told, be reached in twenty minutes, at small cost, as the waterway system scarcely left a village untouched.
I was initiated in many wonders that night, being not the least interested by an inspection of the many strange objects to be seen in the shop windows, and by the universal good humour and happiness which seemed to illumine every face I met. My guides proved themselves to be admirable and patient cicerones. Fortunately for me, they recognised that my physical capabilities were greatly inferior to their own, and did not quite drag me about until I was tired to death.
So far, I was highly satisfied with my adventures in New Amazonia, and when I retired to rest in the luxurious bed provided for me, I slept soundly and healthily untilHilda awoke me, and told me that it was time to get a bath, and dress for breakfast.