I: HISTORY
I, Conrad P. Lewis, of Crown Imperial, Pa., U.S.A., do hereby declare that the following narrative of my adventures is a plain truthful tale with nothing added or taken away. At the end of a long life I am able to remember unmoved things that for many years I could not call to mind without horror and disgust. Even now I cannot see the charming person of my daughter without some faint discomfort, to be rid of which (for I would die in peace) I have determined to write my story.
The whole civilised world will remember how, during the years when Europe was sunk under the vileness of a scientific barbarism, there was suddenly an end of news from Fatland. Our ships that sailed for her ports did not return. Her flag had disappeared from the high seas. Her trade had entirely ceased. She exported neither coal nor those manufactured goods which had carried her language, customs, and religion to the ends of the earth. Her colonies (we learned) had received only a message to say that they must in future look after themselves, as, indeed, they were as capable of doing as any other collection of people. In one night Fatland ceased to be.
It was at first assumed that her enemies the Fatters had invaded and captured her, but, clearly, they would not destroy her commerce. Moreover, the Fatters were at that time and for many years afterwards living in a state of siege, keeping nine hostile nations at bay upon their frontiers. This was the last of the great wars, leading, as we now know, to the abolition of the idea of nationality, which endowed a nation with the attributes of a vain and insolent human being, so that its actions were childish and could only be made effective by force. When that idea died in the apathy and suffering and bitterness of the years following the great wars then the glorious civilisation which we now enjoy became possible.
The disappearance of Fatland took place shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, which, from the practice which the Europeans had in those days, was always accomplished with great expedition. Every four years or so, when the exhausted nations once more had enough young men over eighteen, there would be some little quarrel, or an arranged assassination, or an ambassador would be indiscreet. One war, I remember, broke out over a scuffle between two bakers in the streets of Bondon: they were a Fattishman and a Fatter, and they had been arguing over the merits of the Fattish loaf and the continental bâton. The Press of both countries took it up: their governments had a good class of troops that year and they did not hesitate to use them. We, in the Western world, were accustomed to it by then and knew how to keep our trade alive through neutral countries. Also, I regret to say, we had engaged upon the dreadful traffic in war material. In those days we were still bounded by the primitive civilisation of Europe. We had not been wakened to manhood and the way of life and eternity, we had not been taught to be elemental in our own elemental continent by the sublime masterpiece of Junius F. Hohlenheim.
When it became clear that Fatland could not be in the hands of the Fatters: when, moreover, we were told that she was taking no part in the last and bloodiest of the wars, and when, after many months, there came no news of any kind, then our merchant-monarchs (now happily extinct) fitted out an expedition, with credentials to the Fattish Government, if any. Wild rumors had spread that the Gulf Stream was diverted, making the Skitish islands uninhabitable, but I had just then returned from a voyage to Norroway and knew that it was not so. I had gazed at the coasts of the mysterious islands with pity, with curiosity, with sad and, I must own it, sentimental longing. Were they not our home? We were still colonists in those days, always looking to other lands than that in which we lived. “O Fatland,” I cried. “O mother inviolate!” But we had the captain’s wife on board and she laughed and said that was not the adjective to apply to a mother.