The padre’s smiling face, already known to the Kyronese children, soon ingratiated him as a particular favorite with the Heracleans, and in their charge he soon disappeared, and was afterwards found in the workshop demonstrating the advantage of paneling for strengthening and rendering doors less cumbersome, the parents of the children regarding his handywork with curious admiration. In the neighborhood of twenty acres of land on the southern slope of the hill enclosure were cultivated by the children as a garden and orchard, as well as for the field growth of cereals, with an emulous desire for parental commendation. The distinctions in size being mainly dependent upon age, the Manatitlan gradations were of course impracticable, but the smaller children were constantly under the supervision of their nurses and censors, although not from necessity, as there was an affectionate disposition on the part of the elder and larger boys to offer their backs as steps, and hands as aids to assist the young and weak whenever an opportunity offered. Indeed, the effect of their example, after a few weeks of arbitrary sway, effectually cured the Kyronese children of their fagging dispositions.
Having witnessed the children’s proficiency in a variety of useful pastimes, we were invited to visit the culinary department a second time, to see the food in its prepared state ready to be served. The prætor observing our admiring surprise at the ease with which the various manipulations had been accomplished, without bewraying with dust and adhesive mixtures the persons and clothing of the youthful principals and aids, said that each, with intuitive perception, felt that purity within themselves was necessary for the sanction of confidence in associate reciprocation. To be not only cleanly, but pure, without a questioning thought of subterfuge, was clearly the motor influence of every enactment, with the special desire that their personalities should reflect the refinements of reality. “In all the departments the children are taught by example, that their personal individuality may become responsible to itself for acceptable purity to others in current association; so that in health all their wants of instinct are self supplied, although rendered facile by household coöperation, without unnatural exactions that would beget impressions of mentality. From these exercises of self dependence, the spirit of emulation has proved an incentive to invention.
“So you will perceive, that instead of the classical renderings of murder and its congeneric inhumanities, which the Dosch informs me obtains the highest grade of your collegiate honors, our accomplishments and refinements all aim to an increase in affectionate purity, and confidence in association, for real perfection in living assurance of immortality. He also informs me, that this evidence of maturity in judgment would be looked upon with superstitious awe, as of supernal agency, indicating a moribund state of precocity, while with the Manatitlans and Heracleans it is esteemed as a necessary manifestation for the fulfillment of Creative indications. But withal, it has been hard for us to conceive how you have been able to avoid the impression of the absolute cause and tendency of your misery; with the extremes of want and superfluity in your midst, it should have warned your people that they were receding from happiness. In like manner we are puzzled to conceive upon what they found their present and future hopes of happiness, when they are constantly at variance with their own kind.”
We were spared the full sum of his wondering inquiries, by Plauto and Adestus, who came to announce the hour of refection. In mustering, the padre and Dr. Baāhar were missing. The padre was found surrounded by the children and their parents in the workshop, having just completed a drawing shave, from a copper alloyed pruning knife, he was in ecstasies from the keenness and permanency of its edge. Looking up, in questioning appeal, to learn the nature of its alloy, his eyes met the prætor’s, who answered that all their cutting instruments and tools were made from old Heraclean swords, spears, and other warlike arms. “But of the metals entering into their composition I cannot inform you, as all the armorer’s records were destroyed in the sack of the old city; but I am pleased if you have found them serviceable.”
“Serviceable!” exclaimed the padre, with astonished admiration, “why, man alive, if it will hold the edge and work like this, you can make your city the richest in the world, according to its size, by patenting the combination, and live like princes upon the royalty!”
“If it will prove serviceable in advancing the peaceful prosperity of the world, I will endeavor to learn the character of the metals and method of composition,” answered the prætor; “but in the mean time lay aside your implements, and join with us in partaking of the refection prepared by the children.”
Joining in the search for Dr. Baāhar, he was discovered in a natural grotto, engaged in sketching in outline a statue garlanded with fresh vines. When aroused from his penciling meditations, by Correliana, he accosted her archly in the apostrophic style. “Ah, ha! so, so, Mistress Correliana, I have caught you at last? I see that your young gentlemen still pay their garlanded respects to Sieba the Vendic goddess of love! Moreover, in the future I shall claim a sort of cousinship with you, for your Roman ancestors in borrowing the Arconan goddess of Rugen isle to associate with their Venus, accepted a German as well as a Slavonian deity. But where are the associate representatives of your borrowed Nemisa—Flyntz, Zernbog, Iphabog, and others of the fraternal godhead—which should be in company? I hope, for relation’s sake, your people have not enacted the part of iconoclastics? for they were wont to hold near association in Vendic mythology.”
The doctor’s illusive antiquarian nest was here robbed of its cuckold eggs by a laughing exclamation of the mayorong, who in apologizing explained, that the supposed garlands were vine disguised Kyronese mousetraps, which were woven with leaves and flowers to prevent detection from the instinctive caution of the little rodentian marauders. This revelation collapsed the doctor’s enthusiasm for his discovery, which he supposed to be a sure indication of the Heraclean’s surreptitious worship of Pagan deities. Upon questioning the lad who had fabricated them, he stated that they were made to capture the destructive pirates of the banana patch, and that he had selected the head of the grotto image to keep the leaves and flowers fresh until night.
His denouement was a bonne bouche for the padre, who was in feudal arrears with his Irish bulls begot from hybrid mythology. His mirthful thrusts caused in the doctor’s mood a show of testiness, until Correliana reminded the exultant padre that it was hardly generous to pursue his advantage before strangers. With all his reverence and submissive obedience to her will, he sottoriously muttered in thought, “Does he think that a turban will make a turk, or a wreath upon an image declare it to be an object of worship?” The mirthful flashes of the padre’s eyes from beneath the wreath of Kyronese and Heraclean children surmounting his shoulders, with the frequent checks he placed upon his tongue, enhanced the humorous infection, to the evident discomfiture of his snuborian foe. Naturally endowed with the elements of strong affection, his habits had stimulated misplaced confidence, which had placed him at the beck of imposition and negotiable friendships. Of genial warmth, when the object was present, but with absence, his remembrance would relapse into hibernating torpidity. These superficial traits had subjected him to impositions without lessening his susceptibility to repetition. The Dosch had recommended Correliana and the prætor to observe his peculiarities closely, as from his superficial range of impressions they would obtain an idea of the leading traits of representative democracy, peculiar to the civilized races. Although in the manifestations of innate goodness he was not only an exception to the majority, but a rarity with the minority, still the evanescent durability of his affectionate impressions, depending upon the superficial current of precedental routine, that delights in the sensational excitement of the senses, was a typical reflection of the masses. “You will find a majority of those who patronize the legendary motto, ‘What shall I do to be saved,’ like the padre’s original self, when first encountered by Correliana. With a quid of tobacco in their mouths, and a pipe projecting therefrom, and a glass of demonizing spirits in their right hands, while from the effect produced ‘they cry out in the anguish of spirit, What shall I do to be saved from the wrath to come?’”
The refection was dispensed by the children in the garden colonnade, who waited upon the requirements of their parents and guests with such joyful alacrity that affectionate reciprocation reduced the limits of food to an availing necessity, which caused the padre to exclaim with impulsive fervor, “I wish to goodness gracious Jimmy and all the rest were here!”