V
How one warms the blood: how two taste bitter and sweet: and the third glass—that’s the end of me. Let us take a trip, Sandy, and escape from the bores. Be sure that you bolt the door.
I have received this minute another invitation to that distant land which lies far out from the beaten track, neither is it found on any map. I travel thither in the same fashion that the Arabian princes used to travel with their genii, and the pointed tops of trees and sooty chimney pots sweep under me, roads and rivers flying beneath look like threads in a motley loom, everything is going and whirling.... Aha, here I am once more on my fourth visit to this land of the Inconsequentials. I am a friend of their ruler, who is the soul of ingenuity, and to whom they give the unique title of Excelsior, if I may translate the word literally, meaning more lofty. Usually I find it bitter cold here.
My chief design at this moment is to describe one of the luxurious diversions of this potentate. I had His Majesty’s permission to be shown over his magnificent demesne. The sieges of extreme cold weather caused him to have built a curious structure, built entirely of glass, and covering an area of eighteen acres. There were three divisions of six acres each, used to represent the three seasons other than winter; so that His Majesty, rolled in an upholstered chair along tan-bark walks from one section to another, could experience respectively the sensations of spring, summer and autumn.
In the first park, the grass was kept young and green by constant irrigation; cherry and crab trees were forced to blossom, and as soon as they began to wither, they were replaced by others; birds were mating and singing at such close proximity that one screeching varlet passed his dung on my bonnet. At the end of the enclosure depicting summer, I saw His Grace stretched out in a cushioned hammock before a fountain. He had one eunuch sprinkling perfume about him, while another kept flies off his bald pate, and a third was squeezing drops from the petals of clover blossoms into his open lips.
Upon approaching the royal presence, I bared my arms which is the custom in this country.
“Here I am, O Excelsior, on a relief expedition from the land of the Yankee bores, as your Supreme Armpit chose to call them on my previous visits, judging me as a sample of my countrymen.”
I translate the word “Armpit” literally which is used by the natives in addressing their ruler, wishing, as I suppose, to signify either that his arms are more beautifully rounded and developed than those of his subjects, or that the shoulders are more lofty and are on a higher plane than the rest of the body. His Grace motioned to the eunuch to cease the spraying of perfume and the dropping of clover juice that he might acknowledge my salutation.
“You speak of being here on a relief expedition,” quoth he; “whom, pray, are you to relieve?”
“Myself,” said I, for I had found on previous visits that the surest means of flattering His Royal Axilla was by depreciating my own countrymen. But this time it seems I was mistaken.
“I take it that you are a failure in your native land,” quoth the ruler, “for those who are failures are usually ‘bored’, to use your tongue. Is it not so, thou parasite of the warm ocean land?”
“True it is, O Excelsior,” I replied, “but my failure is due not to me; it is the fault of——” Here he cut me short with an interruption:
“Those who are failures,” quoth he, “ever place the cause of their failure upon others, while those who attain success always accredit it to themselves.”
I thanked His Majesty for these kind words of wisdom, and was about to take my departure when he asked me if I had seen the new instrument of punishment which he had just had erected. Upon my replying in the negative, he said that I could obtain a good view of it from one of the windows in the royal bed-chamber, and that as he himself was going thither to take his two o’clock siesta, he would gladly show it to me in person. I thanked him with many encomiums upon his hospitality, and we proceeded to his sleeping apartments.
Upon our arrival at the entrance to his bed-chamber, I noticed that the windows were screened by a series of reflectors, making a curious olio of lights, and there were strips of tapestry in many gradations of color and tone effects. To my query as to the purpose of these massive reflectors of light, the Excelsior replied that he deemed it to be very bad for the nervous system to awake suddenly, saying that this theory is supported by the fact that in a true state of nature one is awakened gradually from sleep by the slow transition from darkness to light. Accordingly, he produced by the arrangement of these reflectors an effect similar to that of dawn, and he could thus be awakened gradually at any hour of the day or night.
“The old-fashioned method of letting up blinds or throwing open shutters,” quoth he, “and thereby admitting a sudden influx of bright light is most injurious to the optic nerves and leaves the mind in a drowsy and dazed condition. My optician, whom I have had with me for two decades, agrees with me in this theory. And my invention overcomes these deleterious effects of a sudden awakening.”
Hereupon he ordered the eunuchs to slide back the reflectors that he might show me the aforementioned instrument of punishment. We stepped out upon a balcony, and I saw in the courtyard below an immense bladder, supported upon two uprights of timber, like the sweep of an old-fashioned well. This bladder is operated as a whip, only it belabors the victim upon the head. It was thus explained to me by His Majesty.
“For what crime is this used as a punishment?” I asked.
“For those who are unduly given to self-praise,” replied the potentate, “and there are two degrees of penalty, first for those who praise themselves directly, and secondly for those who praise themselves indirectly.”
“From what class of your subjects do most of these victims come?”
“From all classes,” he continued, “but those who praise themselves frankly and openly are chiefly made up of successful business men, actors and patent medicine doctors; whereas those who are given to praising themselves indirectly, mostly consist of politicians, authors, artists, professors and clergymen; and to this latter class is accorded the most severe punishment.”
I observed now that the Excelsior was yawning profusely, and I began to bare my arms and to bow myself out from his presence and to excuse my long visit.
“Wait a moment,” he said, “now that you are here, take a look at another invention of mine. There it is in the corner by the hearth.”
I turned and saw a large oblong table with three layers of shelves, upon which were rows of bottles with automatic stoppers attached to them. These stoppers or flat corks were manipulated by finger stops and pedals, much the same as an ordinary organ. I should surely have noticed this unique instrument upon my entrance, had it not been for those colored reflectors which cut off the light.
“What does your Royal Axilla call that?” I asked, looking at the labels on the bottles.
“That,” quoth he, “is my smelling piano. Did it never occur to you that civilized man has been cultivating his ear with musical sounds ever since he was in the stage of savagery, while he has utterly neglected that much more sensitive member, the nose?”
This subject seemed to rouse great animation in His Majesty, and he spoke about it with much fluency, as follows:
“Take for instance the fact that one never forgets an odor,” he continued, “while a musical sound is scarcely remembered over night. It is a matter of common observation that an odor will recall the scenes or incidents or persons with which it was first perceived. Indeed my chief chemist, whom I have had at my court several decades, is of the belief that the memory of a smell, be it pleasant or disagreeable, is the last thing that the mind retains. I have him compress into those bottles the essences of the principal odors. There now, you have the idea of this invention in a nutshell.”
“And can you compose upon this smelling piano?” I asked.
“Why, certainly,” he replied; “there is as much a symphony of smells as of sounds; and the harmony of odors depends in like manner upon discords. As, for example, in a sonata that I was producing last night, the delicate fragrance of mignonette and of lilies of the valley was offset by an odor of Edam cheese.”
It was with difficulty that I maintained the composure of my countenance, but His Royal Armpit was in earnest, and I dared not laugh.
“Then you have scales for the smells?”
“Exactly,” continued His Majesty, glowing with satisfaction at my appreciation of the subject, “there are minor odors, such as the essences of beeswax, of tan-bark, of most kinds of flowers and the various mixtures of tobacco, and so forth; and then there are major odors in which are included the rank smell of the poppy and of the milk-weed, of the sap of the pungent ailanthus tree, and of most of the concentrated acids, and what-not, and especially those odors of a high pitch, such as of molten soap and burning rubber. And this last bottle,” said he sharply, and at the same time giving vent to an unconcealed yawn, “this last bottle I open whenever visitors overstay their welcome.” Whereupon he pulled out one of the finger stops and pushed the base pedal. Instantly the chamber was filled with the vile stench of burning gutta-percha. At this strong hint I bade the Excelsior adieu, thanking him for his cordial reception of me, and then I repeated the custom of baring my arms before leaving his presence.
A moment later Sandy came running into my room crying, “Lor’ maarstar, the house am on fire!”
This information startled me, though I doubted its truth. “No, Sandy,” said I, “it is only the smell of burning rubber.” And upon making an investigation, Sandy discovered that I had for some inexplicable reason thrown my fountain pen into the fire. Probably in an absent-minded moment I mistook it for my half-burned segar. Such was the cause of the stench. Sandy reports that it is four o’clock in the morning. My lamp is just flickering. Perhaps I shall now be able to get a little sleep.