During the time that intervened before the arrival of the Caskians, to make their proposed visit, I gleaned many more interesting hints from Severnius relative to their life and conduct, which greatly whetted my curiosity to meet them. For instance, we were one day engaged in a conversation, he, Elodia, and myself, upon the subject of the province of poetry in history,—but that does not matter,—when dinner was announced in the usual way; that is, the way which assumes without doubt that nothing else in the world is so important as dinner. It may be a bell, or a gong, or a verbal call, but it is as imperative as the command of an autocrat. It brings to the ground, with the suddenness of a mental shock, the finest flights of the imagination. It wakes the soul from transcendent dreams, cools the fervor of burning eloquence, breaks the spell of music. More than this: it destroys the delicate combination of mental states and forces sometimes induced when several highly trained minds have fallen into an attitude of acute sympathy toward one another,—a rare and ineffable thing!—and are borne aloft through mutual helpfulness to regions of thought and emotion infinitely exalted, which can never be reproduced.
I have often had this experience myself, and have wished that the cook was a creature of supernatural intuitions, so that he could divine the right moment in which to proclaim that the soup was served! There is a right moment, a happy moment, when the flock of intellectual birds, let loose to whirl and circle and soar in the upper air, descend gracefully and of their own accord to the agreeable level of soup.
On the occasion to which I have referred, I tried to ignore, and to make my companions ignore, the discordant summons—by a kind of dominant action of my mind upon theirs—in order that we might continue the talk a little longer. We three had never before shown ourselves off to each other to such striking advantage; we traveled miles in moments, we expanded, we unrolled reams of intelligence which were apprehended in a flash, as a whole landscape is apprehended in a glare of lightning. It was as if our words were tipped with flame and carried their illumination along with them. I knew that there never would, never could, come another such time, but Elodia thwarted my effort to hold it a moment longer.
“Come!” she cried gayly, rising to her feet and breaking off in the middle of a beautiful sentence, the conclusion of which I was waiting for with tremors of delight,—for her views, as it happened, accorded with mine,—“the ideal may rule in art, but not in life; it is very unideal to eat, but the stomach is the dial of the world.”
“We make it so,” said Severnius.
“Of course, we make all our sovereigns,” she returned. “We set the dial to point at certain hours, and it simply holds us to our agreement,—it and the chef.”
“That reminds me of our Caskian friends,” said Severnius. “They have exceedingly well-ordered homes, but occasionally one of the three Natures waits upon another; the Mind may yield to some contingency connected with the Body, or the Body waive its right in favor of the Spirit.”
“I had supposed they were more machine-like,” commented Elodia, with her usual air of not being able to take a great interest in the Caskians.
“They are the farthest from that of any people I know,” he answered. “They have great moments, now and then, when a few people are gathered together, and their thought becomes electrical and their minds mingle as you have seen the glances of eyes mingle in a language more eloquent than speech,—and, to tell the truth, we ourselves have such moments, I’ll not deny that; but the difference is, that they appreciate the value of them and hold them fast, while we open our hands and let them fly away like uncoveted birds, or worthless butterflies. I have actually known a meal to be dropped out entirely in Calypso’s house, forgotten in the felicity of an intellectual or spiritual delectation!”
“Thank heaven, that we live in Thursia!” cried Elodia, “where such lapses are impossible.”