Of course the wagons could not ascend the steps, and the governors softly alighted—it was quite delightful to see their noiseless flitting to and fro—purring into each other’s ears as they came together, and then separating with mimic gestures of expostulation or disgust or approval. They looked, so we thought, almost as they had when we first met them, and I began to wonder whether they did not harbor in their light, frameless and bobbing little anatomies, extraordinary powers of resistance, abnormal energies perhaps.
There was a little decorous shifting to and fro, and ceremonious bowing and scraping, which had the most incalculably ludicrous appearance, as if, after all, they were nothing but vaudeville puppets. Hopkins of course appreciated all that uproariously. Finally they started up the stairs, led by the benignant little gentleman who had told the Professor to “speak,” and afterwards most effectively had gone through the dumb show of telling him to “shut up,” and who, by the way, was Ziliah’s father. They rose towards us with a mincing dignity that was really pleasing. We noticed again their whiteness, their thinness, their long arms, their thin fingers, their senile-like agitation, their pointed beards, and the singular splendor of their eyes. The latter were now uncovered, the disfiguring goggles hung from their necks by the most delicate filaments of gold.
There were quite a number of them, perhaps thirty in all, and as they slowly drew near to us we realized that while they belonged to the racial configuration of the little people, they were probably immensely removed from them, too, by an intellectual gap that bore some reference to training or descent. The Semitic character of these little people was irrefragable.
Hardly had the President—it turned out that such an appellation might describe him—reached the middle of the ascent than we were treated to a charming show of filial affection. Ziliah, ravishingly fixed up in close fitting attire, and distinguished by some gold trinkets that became her extremely well, ran down the steps and—fell into her father’s arms? No—not that—exactly. There were some insurmountable difficulties, related to the comparative sizes of the principals, that made that commonplace impossible. Ziliah took her father up, hugged him, kissed and—set him down again.
I heard Hopkins groan, and the query came in an undertone: “Where’s my mother-in-law?”
ZILIAH AND HER FATHER
After that there was a great deal of confusion. Mothers and daughters, wives and sons, the magistrates from the city and innumerable friends poured over the steps to meet the dignitaries, and, for all the world, it just then resembled, allowing for the difference in latitude and other things, the homecoming of a western deputation to your congress; their arrival at the town hall, and their admiring reception by the neighbors. And the democratic expression of things increased. The snake sharps on the steps, so Hopkins designated them, disappeared with their charges, depositing them in the enclosures in the “snake pasture,” the gold-polemen scrambled up the steps and entered the Capitol, the rams, jaunting cars, and the grinning throne-horror left too, but where I could not see. We encountered the latter again under pretty startling circumstances. Then when all this had happened the crowds from the city jammed everything, with a shrilling of voices ascending to us that sounded like a magnification, a megaphoning, of countless crickets. The bigger people, the Eskimos, were scarcely visible. We felt relieved—I did. We had been quite forgotten, and that spoke volumes for our safety. We discussed the situation.
Hopkins: “Suppose we get down and join the house warming. It’s just possible that they have something better to eat than usual on occasions like this. I’d welcome a change of diet.”
I: “As this was a huge snake picnic, it may be they wind it up by eating snakes.”