What other answer than “Yes” could I give to such a wonderful proposal as this? A certain very nice, but rather gushing, young lady whom I know would have at once exclaimed, “Oh! it’s too lovely.” I did not do that, but I managed to express my thanks and my acquiescence with such a mixture of enthusiasm and dignity as did justice alike to my desire to show my gratitude and to my sense of my own importance.
Let not the reader imagine that I had no legitimate room for the latter feeling, for I was undoubtedly a very prominent and important personage in New Amazonia. Circumstances over which I had had no control had placed me in a position of publicity which was none the less real because it was none of my seeking. The probabilities were in favour of my popularity dying out as soon as I became less of a novelty. Meanwhile it was advisable that I should take the goods with which the gods had provided me, and make the most of the opportunities thrown in my way.
It did not take long to arrange my subsequent programme. I was to commence writing on the following day, and to submit my work weekly to the Bureau, which would make such arrangements as its heads might think fit for bringing my work under the notice of the public.
Still, in spite of the interesting nature of our conversation, I could not repress my melancholy, and was so depressed that my companion offered the consolatory remark, “That though I was parted from my beloved ones so long as I remained in my own probationary state, they were not deprived of the power of knowing my whereabouts, and were probably rejoicing at the fact that I had been placed in a sphere of action which could not fail to assist my attempts to perfect myself for the higher life.”
I was conscious of finding a little consolation in the Principal’s arguments, and remarked that it would have been some additional comfort to me if I could have known where my dear ones were buried, so that, though deprived of their society, I might at least do honour to them by visiting and adorning their last resting place.
The Principal did not exactly grasp my meaning at first. When she did, she was horrified.
“Is it possible,” she cried in amaze, “that you can contemplate with equanimity the prospect of being laid in the ground to rot in repulsive putrefaction? to be the prey of vermin; to pollute the earth, air, and water around you; and to be the source of death and disease to those whom you have left behind? It is too horrible to think of!”
“Why, what would you have us do?” I enquired blankly. “You wouldn’t have us kept above ground, would you?”
“I would have you decently cremated, as we all are when we die. How can you expect to be healthy in mind and body, surrounded by the miasmatic emanations of putrifying corpses? It was demonstrated to New Amazonian satisfaction centuries ago that it would be impossible to rid the land of fever and pestilential diseases until this principal source of water pollution was removed. We still have pictures of ancient graveyards, and I can very well imagine what they were like. The hoary, venerable looking church; the funny upright slabs of stone or marble marking the place where several bodies were undergoing the putrefactive process; the pretty flowers and the picturesque trees; the little brooklet, which winds its rippling way through or past the churchyard; its water, looking pure and limpid because it has percolated its way through the dead and decaying remains of your ancestors, and bearing no easily discernible evidence of the deadly impurities of which it is the conveying medium; I see them all, and can even follow the little brooklet as it feeds the waters of a larger stream, and finally becomes a component part of some great river, from which the water supply of one of your immense manufacturing towns is obtained. Very interesting as a picture, no doubt, but when you quietly contemplate the calm endurance of such a horrible state of things—Faugh!”
Certainly, as presented by the Principal, the picture was not a nice one. But one does not relinquish all one’s most sentimental customs without a struggle, and a warm discussion ensued between us, from which, however, I emerged the loser, as I might have expected. When I came to think of it, it was not pleasant to reflect that every drink of water I had ever had had possibly meandered its way through the dissolving tissues of some recently departed victim of cholera or fever. Even the idea of past near relationship to the too generously diffusive corpse was not consolatory, for it had a sort of cannibalistic aspect about it which did not argue true affection for the departed.