The leader of the diminutive apparitions at length leaped lightly, as if propelled by a sneeze, upon the stage within the reflecting compass of the tympano-microscope. Then, after a few ineffectual attempts to regain his composure, he finally succeeded in obtaining sufficient control to offer the following apologetic address, which gradually recalled us to our senses; but not in sufficient degree for a realization of their actual existence as human beings, free from the magic attaint of fears conjured from superstitious instinct. He thrice repeated to attract our attention from the stupor of amazement: “Men of science, and deliverers of the Heracleans, our protogean affinities!” Our partial attention secured, he continued. “If through the disability of our Dosch, or chief advisor, our selection as Manatitlan ambassadors to welcome you, in our people’s behalf as the preservers of our co-affinities in affection, should prove a source of discredit from our undignified appearance on presentment, it would prove a source of lasting sorrow. But we feel certain that you will extend to us the favor of believing that we are not inclined to untimely mirth, notwithstanding the example we have given to the contrary. With the concerted desire to impress you at a suitable moment with the reality of our existence as a race, Mistress Correliana probably forgot the keen sensitiveness of our schneiderian membranes to pungent odors, and with the intention of giving as much eclat as possible to our introduction, selected from her garden the most beautiful and fragrant flower of its parterres. The novelty of our emprise withheld our attention from the flower until it was placed in your hand for examination, then too late to effect an exchange, we braced ourselves to resist its effects. Hence our humiliating condition when exposed to your view and hearing! Thrown off our guard by the transformation effected in our size and sound of our voices, and above all by the consternation manifested in the expression of your faces, we could not resist the impulse of our naturally mirthful dispositions. That the infection should reach and overpower the more staid humor of our cousins, you will not wonder, when you recall your own and our disordered extremes. If you will control your perturbed emotions for a moment’s reflection you will be able to realize the irresistible nature of our impressions under these combined effects. Withal, when our existence and presence in auramentation becomes familiar as a recognized reality, you will find in our joyous dispositions a ready explanation for these ante phases of our first personal introduction.”
Upon this hint, Correliana conquered sufficient composure to introduce the speaker as Manito, the Prætor of Maniculæ, the chief city of Manatitla. Then with the accompaniment of a spasmodic inclination to sneeze, as they leaned over the serrated edges of the petals, the tribunes were introduced individually by name. This process was lengthened by occasional suppressed tendencies to mirthful outbreaks, which gave M. Hollydorf and his companions an opportunity for partial recovery from their dazed state of amazement. When sufficiently restored for intelligent comprehension, the flower was changed for one of less pungent odor, and Manito from the rostrum point of a petal continued his address.
“From our diminutive size we willingly subscribe to the designation your nomenclature bestows upon insect animalities which are but partially visible to your unaided eyes. Still we do not disdain our size, for with the Manatitlans it has received the compensating privilege of a perception that enabled them to distinguish the evident object of mankind’s intelligent endowment above the instincts of associate animality.
“Like individuals of your race, ours vary in size. Some among the Manatitlans have reached in stature a height approximating in a remote degree to your well formed dwarfs of a standard monstrosity in the diminutive extreme sufficient for the excitement of wondering surprise. Our own divisions are expressed in terms rating from the smallest in stature, which are called tits; these form the masses, but with a sensible diminution in numbers from an upward tendency to the second degree of elevation from the majority. The middle class are styled mediums. With every generation this grade has been increased in proportion with the decrease of the tits, and ranks in status with your “well to do” money grade of merchants and speculators. The giantesco enjoys the highest statutory standing in the ranks of size, representing your titled duke commanders, and subalterns of lordly and knightly degree. But these distinctions are only perceptible to the eye, and in no way arbitrary in the assumption of prerogative stature rights above those below. As our scholastic term of education commences with the infant at the age of two years: the first stage that directs and controls the infantile perceptions and cravings of instinct is styled pupillage, and is under the supervision of the censor and nurse, who hold the instinctive exaggerations of parental fondness in check from birth. This habilitative stage of matriculation is the most trying for direction, as upon it depends the matriculant’s after power of self-control. The second stage of nonage commences at seven, when the self-devising perceptions begin to expand into individuality, that require educated direction, and leading encouragement. At fourteen, or the pubertal stage, the first indications appear for the premonitory inauguration of status rank established for the distinctions of size. The initiatory discipline of the scholar entering upon his senior term, induces the tractor disposition of the censorial advisor, in association with his juniors; in place of your form system of “bullying” the nether “fag,” whose weakness makes submission a virtue, when subject to the classical distinctions of arbitrary power. The seniors become assistant tutors to the censors and teachers from the age of fourteen until the close of their twenty-third year, when they graduate; and after a probationary term of three months’ “courtship,” with the connubial censors’ selection of affiances, are married. This cursory glance will serve for an introductory insight into our natural system of education designed for the direction of our immortal endowment in perceptive flight above the body’s ephemeral gratification of instinctive desire.
“Of other matters, pertaining to our actual realization of an enduring happiness, you will be advised by our advisors; as our interview was designed solely for your recognition and realization of our existence as a race in diminuendo alliance with your own. Our associations with your race are of a privileged description, which from the concentrated acuteness of our sensitive perceptions, enables us to divine your thoughts by auramental espionage. If you will give a moment’s investigation to the impressions of thought, when free from the turmoil of suspicious doubts, which now assail and render your efforts for reasonable perception void, you will find that they are all distinctly enunciated in the thalmus auditorium, which is the focal centre for maturing sensorial observations. Our size, and practical knowledge of the sensitive departments of your ears, enables our giantescoes to gain the aural sinus without provoking titillation, and its proximity to the vibrating portal, or vellum auditorium, permits our sensitive perceptions of sound to realize your thought articulations before they are matured for retentive comparison, or the vocalized utterances of speech communication. So that in reality, we hold the gigas (the name word we use for the designation of your race in contradistinction to our own) subject to our direction, when free from the ruling habits of instinctive indulgence, which defy control. As the previous knowledge of our advisers has preferred you to their confidence, I will state that our means of direction are through thought substitution, which the giantesco is able to modulate with ventriloquial variations of voice for the receptive nullification of those derived from their own sensoriums. Of course, the effects vary with the intensity of the subject’s command over his own sensorium, and the absorbing influence of educated impressions imparted from habits and customs. As an example, I will now state that M. Hollydorf, in his turmoil of doubts, feels that Mistress Correliana has in some way imposed upon his confidence; but my informer says that his impressions are in no wise capable of assuming the power of self control, so that upon our own responsibility we will exonerate Correliana from all deceptive intentions; as she was subject to our control in withholding from you a knowledge of our presence, as the mysterious source of her guiding premonitions, and means of obtaining information of human affairs in the world beyond the inclosing walls of their isolated city. Now, in turn, we ask you to withhold from your companions the result of your day’s explorations, that you may observe the influence we are able to exert for their mystification, and the development of the intangible resources of instinct, which subserve for the delusive beguilement of reason from the intelligent direction of creative indications. This much, will prove sufficient for your night’s cogitations, but to-morrow the Dosch and his advisors will instruct you in the weightier matters pertaining to our educating system devised for self control. As you are still hovering in the clouds of doubt, we will regale your senses, for composure, with a musical olio. M. Hollydorf, at the period of our first introduction, was considered an excellent judge of music, and at times amused himself with amateur compositions, one of which pleased me, and on my return to Manatitla I presented it to our musical censor, who adopted and incorporated it with our salutations. We will now render it, that you may pass censure or commendation upon the accuracy of our version; for of all the selfish kleptomanias, that of stealing musical compositions, and mutilating them in transposition for an author’s reputation founded upon a lie, is the most contemptible within the range of barren instinct. Fortunately, only the younger branches of the Mouthpat tribes of our species have ever been guilty of a witless invention base enough to seek gratification from so mean a subterfuge.”
With this apologetic prelude Manito marshaled his choristers along the borders of the dependent curves of the petals facing his bewildered auditors and rendered the following stanzas with an effect that revived them from their superstitious fears:—
“From darkness dread, the dawn appears!
Mother of day, whose dewy tears,
Distilled from the labors of the night,
Greet with joy, the sun birth of light.