“I beg your forgiveness. I have let the horror of war break in upon my devotion to you. We are making for the Southern Seas. If you prefer it you can retire to Bondon, though I must warn you that your luxurious hotel is now a hospital for the cure of astute business men.”
The little chambermaid replied:
“I did want to go to see the fun when peace was declared, having seen the fun in the streets when they declared war. But it’s come over me now that I love you and only you, and I want to be by your side to give you all the happiness you have brought into my heart.”
And Siebenhaar said:
“This is a mystery past the understanding of men, but the understanding is its servant.”
Gynecologia
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.