“In homeward flight the bees were allowed to take their own course, which, from the accelerated rapidity in the motion of their wings, declared a nostalgic haste to enjoy the hospitalities of their sweet home. After the morning’s labor of the bees was completed on the succeeding day, I directed their flight over Maniculæ to discover whether you were over anxious on my account, but as my family appeared to be free from disquiet I again turned my bees westward for new explorations. Alighting at midday on an island in a lake, south of the valley discoveries of the previous day, I found it unsettled with an animalculan race of tits, whose sole occupation seemed to be devoted to sociable potations of a fluid that excited amicable quarrels, in which the families engaged with wild enthusiasm, without respect to age or infirmities. The domestic amusements were varied with cockroach racings, worshiping, drinking, dancing, fighting, and hunting pediculas, in the latter sport the women and children engaged with peculiar zest. In verification of our sages demonstrations of instinctive cause and effect, when subject to gregarious association in folds, in freedom from the directing intelligence of Creative endowment, their bodies gave sure indication of reactive bestiality. Disgusted with the extremes they exhibited of wailings and vociferous jabberings, as the product of instinct bewrayed with madness, I was glad with grateful relief when my cleanly transport bore me again into the pure atmosphere beyond the sound reach of the reviling pretexts of these ape libels upon Creative intention. Assuming the privilege of a sub-lunary discoverer, I named the island Greenpat, from the emerald beauty of its tints, and the inhabitants Mouthpats, from their unthinking volubility, bespeaking the unkempt scragginess of their natures.
“Having tested the ready sagacity of my transport acquisition, and applicability for quick conveyance, I now propose to make use of it to obtain others of its kind, with a view to propagation, as I feel certain that it can be domesticated for mutual advantage, as both male and female evince an increasing confidence in the controlling influence of my presence; and of the enduring longevity of the species I feel equally certain.”
The assemblage, at the conclusion of the narration, enthusiastically congratulated Buzzee upon the result of his successful perseverance, saluting him as a public benefactor, with the title of apiamaster. In the course of a century there was not a family in Manatitla without a pair or more of the apis isolatas, which became known in common usage as the bee phaeton. Their introduction as locomotive facilitations contributed greatly to extended sociability, as they were able to bear with ease twenty giantescoes, forty mediums, or their equivalents in tits, and we have evident reason to believe that they instinctively enjoy their domestication with us better than in a wild state, for in our pleasure parties they harmonize the voice vibrations of their wings with our songs. To Buzzee’s inventive skill we are also indebted for the imperishable combination used in building, and the preparation of our textile fabrics.
After the discovery of the Heraclean cities, with the increase of our people’s means of communication, they were visited daily for the purpose of influencing the citizens to bestow more kindly treatment upon their aboriginal benefactors. Evoce (quick perception), a giantesco, had gained the ear of a cruel taskmaster, for the purpose of using his voice in expostulation, when to his surprise, he distinctly heard vengeful denunciations without the utterance of words of speech from the mouth of the brutal auramentee. Satisfied after frequent experimental repetitions that the enunciations were vocalized impressions heralding audited words of speech that could be suppressed or spoken, he made known the nature of his discovery to the Dosch and his advisers. The coincident impression of their own thought enunciations, confirmed Evoce’s suggestion that thought enunciation, and also instinctive mental impressions, were vocalized by an enunciator in proximity with the ear, and in communication with the combined organs of sense. Upon these suggestive conclusions was founded an experimental course of investigation, which resulted, not only in the full verification of their deductive anticipations, but with the development of the power of substituting extraneous impressions for adoption by the giga auramentee, through the modulated induction of the giantesco voice to an accord with the mood of the subject. Great care was required in the ventriloquial modulations of the auramentor’s voice for exact correspondence with the characteristic peculiarities of the auramentee’s; for any remarkable deviation was sure to alarm their superstitious fears. For the acquirement of facility in the substitution of ideas and thoughts, it was necessary to obtain humoristic ease in the detail expression of idiomatic phrase peculiar to the auramentee’s use of language. With the naturally good, we were soon able, with the mutual incitement of novelty, to evoke and cultivate the germ of pity, while with the instinctively bad our efforts served to arouse superstitious fears for the negative advancement of our object, through retributive apprehensions of vengeance in return for their cruelties. These, with strange inconsistency, caused sacrificial oblations, with deputized prayers, to be offered in commutation for the continued gratification of their evil habits and passions. Yet, with all the perversity of ruling instinct we have been able to accomplish much good through the means of thought substitution with your race.
CHAPTER XIV.
Having given you, by quotation from our chroniclers, a synoptical view of two important discoveries which facilitated our communication with your race, I will now, continued the Dosch, refer you to your own impressions, and the eccentricities of the uninitiated from thought substitution, for the clear demonstration of our auramental powers. Or if, in review, you can recall examples of instinctive spiritual manifestations, you will be able to judge of our method in dealing with the instinctively stupid, partly with hopes of reflecting the extremes of absurdity, and in sub-part for our humorous gratification in tracing the commotional hubbub of selfish instinct in its search for the means of saving grace to rescue folly from its own attaint. You will soon be able to judge of the limits that we are confined to in auramentation. With the instinctively evil, our efforts excite fear and ritualistic prayers for propitiation, and exorcism of supposed inimical agencies foreign to self. But with the good we are able to impart happy encouragement. Selfish excess, in all of its forms, bespeaks a material agency and end, and as this is the god of realization with the gregarious democracy of the gigas, the influence of our auramental efforts—if their source was known—would be denounced with bell and book, as heretically pedantic and puritanical. But goodness imparts an animus joy that affords in life tangible impressions of immortality.
We now will pass to our fourth important epoch, noted for the personal introduction of the Dosch Giganteo to Indegatus, Prætor of the present City of the Falls. In the process of rehearsal we shall allude to the third or falcon era.
Indegatus, Prætor of New Heraclea or more properly Heraclea of the Falls, was a man of indefatigable energy, and at the period of Giganteo’s introduction had just rescued the city from great peril. The peril from the besiegers was in fact less dangerous than the factious dissensions of the populace within the city walls. Aware that idleness was the mother of envy and turmoil, he had caused the latifundium to be divided into garden plots apportioned to the size of each family, for the cultivation of edible roots and cereals. While engaged with his two sons, Unipho and Gnipho, in the cultivation of their land, a bee alighted on the father’s shoulder, attracting his attention from the singularity of its appearance and fearless confidence. Apparently satisfied with the attention it had received it flew to a neighboring flower occupied by a companion. Shortly after he felt a sharp sting on the back of his hand; a quick glance discovered a speck variegated with dark and shining particles, which he was about to brush away, supposing it to be an insect; when something peculiar in its movements attracted a more minute inspection, this resulted in the recognition of a little body possessing the dressed outline of the human form. Startled with superstitious fear from an apparition so manifestly supernal, he called his sons that their stronger eyes might confirm or dispel the impression of his more attenuated sight. After an inspection of a few seconds they burst into a merry peal of laughter, exclaiming in a breath, “It’s a little man in Heraclean armor and sagum, flourishing his sword and spear as if he wished us to understand his signs!”
“My sons,” urged the father with anxious fears, “give more reverend heed! He appears in a guise that betokens admonition from the regions of the nether world. Give earnest attention to his direction that the import of his visit may be revealed.”
Gnipho. “The little stranger points to one of my ears as if he wished to be admitted to a hearing?”