‘The Teachers shall shine like Stars in the Firmament.’ I have a propensity for teaching, but was puzzled to discover how I could give so practical an illustration of the text of Fichte.
“Believe me,” I said, “I am strangely ignorant. Explain yourself.”
He answered with a hollow voice:
“Murderers are shot up out of mortars into the sky, and stick there. Those white, glistening specks, they are their skeletons.”
Justice is prompt in Skitzland. I was tried incredibly fast by a jury of twelve men who had absolutely heads. The judges had nothing but brain, mouth, and ear. Three powerful tongues defended me, but as they were not suffered to talk nonsense, they had little to say. The whole case was too clear to be talked into cloudiness. Baron Terroro, in person, deposed, that he had sent his eyes to see a friend in Culmsey, and that they were returning on the Skitzton coach, when I, illegally, came with my whole bulk upon the box-seat, which he occupied. That one of his eyes was, in that manner, totally destroyed, but that the other eye, having escaped, identified me, and brought to his brain intelligence of the calamity which had befallen. He deposed further, that having received this information, he despatched his uncrushed eye with arms from the police-office, and accompanied with several members of the detective force, to capture the offender, and to procure the full proofs of my crime. A sub-inspector of Skitzton Police then deposed that he sent three of his faculties, with his mouth, eye, and ear, to meet the coach. That the driver, consisting only of a stomach and hands, had been unable to observe what passed. That the guard, on the contrary, had taxed me with my deed, that he had seen me rise from my seat upon the murdered eye, and that he had heard me make confession of my guilt. The guard was brought next into court, and told his tale. Then I was called upon for my defence. If a man wearing a cloth coat and trousers, and talking excellent English, were to plead at the Old Bailey that he had broken into some citizen’s premises accidentally by falling from the moon, his tale would be received in London as mine was in Skitzton. I was severely reprimanded for my levity, and ordered to be silent. The Judge summed up and the Jury found me Guilty. The Judge who had put on the black cap before the verdict was pronounced, held out no hope of mercy, and straightway sentenced me to Death, according to the laws and usage of the Realm.
The period which intervenes between the sentence and execution of a criminal in Skitzland, is not longer than three hours. In order to increase the terror of death by contrast, the condemned man is suffered to taste at the table of life from which he is banished, the most luscious viands. All the attainable enjoyment that his wit can ask for, he is allowed to have, during the three hours before he is shot, like rubbish, off the fields of Skitzland.
Under guard, of course, I was now to be led whithersoever I desired.
Several churches were open. They never are all shut in Skitzton. I was taken into one. A man with heart and life was preaching. People with hearts were in some pews; people with brains, in others; people with ears only, in some. In a neighboring church there was a popular preacher, a skeleton with life. His congregation was a crowd of ears, and nothing more.
There was a day-performance at the Opera. I went to that. Fine lungs and mouths possessed the stage, and afterwards there was a great bewilderment with legs. I was surprised to notice that many of the most beautiful ladies were carried in and out, and lifted about like dolls. My guides sneered at my pretence of ignorance, when I asked why this was. But they were bound to please me in all practicable ways, so they informed me, although somewhat pettishly. It seems that in Skitzland, ladies who possess and have cultivated only their good looks, lose at the age of twenty-one, all other endowments. So they become literally dolls, but dolls of a superior kind; for they can not only open and shut their eyes, but also sigh; wag slowly with their heads, and sometimes take a pocket-handkerchief out of a bag, and drop it. But as their limbs are powerless, they have to be lifted and dragged about after the fashion that excited my astonishment.