The Coming Race Read online

  Chapter VII.

  A room to myself was assigned to me in this vast edifice. It wasprettily and fantastically arranged, but without any of the splendourof metal-work or gems which was displayed in the more public apartments.The walls were hung with a variegated matting made from the stalks andfibers of plants, and the floor carpeted with the same.

  The bed was without curtains, its supports of iron resting on balls ofcrystal; the coverings, of a thin white substance resembling cotton.There were sundry shelves containing books. A curtained recesscommunicated with an aviary filled with singing-birds, of which Idid not recognise one resembling those I have seen on earth, except abeautiful species of dove, though this was distinguished from our dovesby a tall crest of bluish plumes. All these birds had been trainedto sing in artful tunes, and greatly exceeded the skill of our pipingbullfinches, which can rarely achieve more than two tunes, and cannot, Ibelieve, sing those in concert. One might have supposed one's self atan opera in listening to the voices in my aviary. There were duetsand trios, and quartetts and choruses, all arranged as in one piece ofmusic. Did I want silence from the birds? I had but to draw a curtainover the aviary, and their song hushed as they found themselves left inthe dark. Another opening formed a window, not glazed, but on touching aspring, a shutter ascended from the floor, formed of some substanceless transparent than glass, but still sufficiently pellucid to allowa softened view of the scene without. To this window was attached abalcony, or rather hanging garden, wherein grew many graceful plantsand brilliant flowers. The apartment and its appurtenances had thus acharacter, if strange in detail, still familiar, as a whole, to modernnotions of luxury, and would have excited admiration if found attachedto the apartments of an English duchess or a fashionable French author.Before I arrived this was Zee's chamber; she had hospitably assigned itto me.

  Some hours after the waking up which is described in my last chapter, Iwas lying alone on my couch trying to fix my thoughts on conjecture asto the nature and genus of the people amongst whom I was thrown, when myhost and his daughter Zee entered the room. My host, still speakingmy native language, inquired with much politeness, whether it would beagreeable to me to converse, or if I preferred solitude. I replied, thatI should feel much honoured and obliged by the opportunity offered me toexpress my gratitude for the hospitality and civilities I had receivedin a country to which I was a stranger, and to learn enough of itscustoms and manners not to offend through ignorance.

  As I spoke, I had of course risen from my couch: but Zee, much to myconfusion, curtly ordered me to lie down again, and there was somethingin her voice and eye, gentle as both were, that compelled my obedience.She then seated herself unconcernedly at the foot of my bed, while herfather took his place on a divan a few feet distant.

  "But what part of the world do you come from?" asked my host, "that weshould appear so strange to you and you to us? I have seen individualspecimens of nearly all the races differing from our own, except theprimeval savages who dwell in the most desolate and remote recesses ofuncultivated nature, unacquainted with other light than that they obtainfrom volcanic fires, and contented to grope their way in the dark, as domany creeping, crawling and flying things. But certainly you cannot be amember of those barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do you seem tobelong to any civilised people."

  I was somewhat nettled at this last observation, and replied that I hadthe 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 ingenuityand disregard of expense with which my host and his fellow-citizens hadcontrived 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 heavencould compare to their lustre the artificial lights invented by thenecessities of man. But my host said he had seen specimens of most ofthe races differing from his own, save the wretched barbarians he hadmentioned. Now, was it possible that he had never been on the surfaceof the earth, or could he only be referring to communities buried withinits entrails?

  My host was for some moments silent; his countenance showed a degree ofsurprise which the people of that race very rarely manifest under anycircumstances, howsoever extraordinary. But Zee was more intelligent,and exclaimed, "So you see, my father, that there is truth in the oldtradition; there always is truth in every tradition commonly believed inall times and by all tribes."

  "Zee," said my host mildly, "you belong to the College of Sages, andought to be wiser than I am; but, as chief of the Light-preservingCouncil, it is my duty to take nothing for granted till it is proved tothe evidence of my own senses." Then, turning to me, he asked me severalquestions about the surface of the earth and the heavenly bodies; uponwhich, though I answered him to the best of my knowledge, my answersseemed not to satisfy nor convince him. He shook his head quietly, and,changing the subject rather abruptly, asked how I had come down fromwhat he was pleased to call one world to the other. I answered, thatunder the surface of the earth there were mines containing minerals,or metals, essential to our wants and our progress in all arts andindustries; and I then briefly explained the manner in which, whileexploring one of those mines, I and my ill-fated friend had obtained aglimpse of the regions into which we had descended, and how the descenthad cost him his life; appealing to the rope and grappling-hooksthat the child had brought to the house in which I had been at firstreceived, as a witness of the truthfulness of my story.

  My host then proceeded to question me as to the habits and modes oflife among the races on the upper earth, more especially among thoseconsidered to be the most advanced in that civilisation which he waspleased to define "the art of diffusing throughout a community thetranquil happiness which belongs to a virtuous and well-orderedhousehold." Naturally desiring to represent in the most favourablecolours the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, thoughindulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, inorder to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminenceof that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously seeks itsmodel and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of thesocial life of the United States that city in which progress advancesat the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the moralhabits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners, thatI did not make the favourable impression I had anticipated, I elevatedmy theme; dwelling on the excellence of democratic institutions, theirpromotion of tranquil happiness by the government of party, and themode in which they diffused such happiness throughout the community bypreferring, 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 purifyinginfluences of American democracy and their destined spread over theworld, made by a certain eloquent senator (for whose vote in the Senatea Railway Company, to which my two brothers belonged, had just paid20,000 dollars), I wound up by repeating its glowing predictions of themagnificent future that smiled upon mankind--when the flag of freedomshould float over an entire continent, and two hundred millions ofintelligent citizens, accustomed from infancy to the daily use ofrevolvers, should apply to a cowering universe the doctrine of thePatriot Monroe.

  When I had concluded, my host gently shook his head, and fell into amusing study, making a sign to me and his daughter to remain silentwhile he reflected. And after a time he said, in a very earnest andsolemn tone, "If you think as you say, that you, though a stranger, havereceived kindness at the hands of me and mine, I adjure you to revealnothing to any other of our people respecting the world from which youcame, unless, on consideration, I give you permission to do so. Do youconsent to this request?" "Of course I pledge my word, to it," saidI, somewhat amazed; and I extended my right hand to grasp his. Buthe placed my hand gently on his forehead and his own right hand on mybreast, which is the custom amongst this race in all matters of promiseor 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 herfather 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 chanceword from me or yourself could expose our community to danger, by adesire to explore a world beyond us, will not a wave of the 'vril,'properly impelled, wash even the memory of what we have heard thestranger 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 understoodvery little, for there is no word in any language I know which is anexact synonym for vril. I should call it electricity, except that itcomprehends in its manifold branches other forces of nature, to which,in our scientific nomenclature, differing names are assigned, such asmagnetism, galvanism, &c. These people consider that in vril they havearrived at the unity in natural energetic agencies, which has beenconjectured by many philosophers above ground, and which Faraday thusintimates 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 otherlovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which theforces of matter are made manifest, have one common origin; or, in otherwords, are so directly related and mutually dependent that they areconvertible, as it were into one another, and possess equivalents ofpower in their action."

  These subterranean philosophers assert that by one operation of vril,which Faraday would perhaps call 'atmospheric magnetism,' they caninfluence 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 vrilconductors, they can exercise influence over minds, and bodies animaland vegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of ourmystics. 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 ofthe mind could be quickened to a degree unknown in the waking state,by trance or vision, in which the thoughts of one brain could betransmitted to another, and knowledge be thus rapidly interchanged.I replied, that there were amongst us stories told of such tranceor vision, and that I had heard much and seen something in mesmericclairvoyance; but that these practices had fallen much into disuse orcontempt, partly because of the gross impostures to which they hadbeen made subservient, and partly because, even where the effects uponcertain abnormal constitutions were genuinely produced, the effects whenfairly examined and analysed, were very unsatisfactory--not to be reliedupon for any systematic truthfulness or any practical purpose, andrendered very mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitionsthey tended to produce. Zee received my answers with much benignantattention, and said that similar instances of abuse and credulity hadbeen familiar to their own scientific experience in the infancy of theirknowledge, and while the properties of vril were misapprehended, butthat she reserved further discussion on this subject till I was morefitted to enter into it. She contented herself with adding, that itwas through the agency of vril, while I had been placed in the stateof trance, that I had been made acquainted with the rudiments of theirlanguage; and that she and her father, who alone of the family, tookthe pains to watch the experiment, had acquired a greater proportionateknowledge of my language than I of their own; partly because my languagewas much simpler than theirs, comprising far less of complex ideas; andpartly because their organisation was, by hereditary culture, much moreductile and more readily capable of acquiring knowledge than mine. Atthis I secretly demurred; and having had in the course of a practicallife, to sharpen my wits, whether at home or in travel, I could notallow that my cerebral organisation could possibly be duller than thatof people who had lived all their lives by lamplight. However, while Iwas thus thinking, Zee quietly pointed her forefinger at my forehead,and sent me to sleep.