Correliana. “But your women, M. Hollydorf? Do they no longer feel within them the current affection bestowed for transmission with an increase from happy usage?”
M. Hollydorf. “Here, in besieged seclusion, you have had but little opportunity, even with Manatitlan teachings, to learn with a realizing impression the besetting temptations of envious vanity, which have beguiled our women from their natural inheritance of unselfish love; and if their more extended and practical experience has failed to open for understanding vision the vista of civilized woman’s folly, my efforts will prove a bewildering aggravation to your already puzzled perception. But if you persevere in your colonistic intention, and are able to sustain the shock imparted from the degradation of your sex from all the hopeful endearments that should render life desirable for transmission, you will, I fear, despondingly lament the hopeless nature of your undertaking. Then, you will, I doubt not, shed tears of bitterness more acute from baffled sympathy, than those bestowed in memorial tribute for your relatives when triply besieged by savage foes, famine, and pestilence.”
Correliana. “But you have ruined cities, like old Heraclea, scattered broadcast over the surface of your continents, which bespeak in as plain language the end of folly, envy, hate, and revenge?”
M. Hollydorf. “These are visited by pilgrims of curiosity, who in retailing their conjectural wares of relic origin, give no practical heed to cause and effect for the inauguration of an era of educated prevention. Yea more, on their return to the haunts of civilization jostle with indifference living memorials of a misery as abject in servile dependence upon drones, as the slaves who passed a laboring and starving existence in rearing these ruined fanes of delusion for the gratification of ambitious bigotry and despotism.”
Correliana. “But you, as men, represent the different nationalities considered to be the most and least susceptible to kindly intelligence; yet each of you, in your degree, have held yourselves, from choice, with few exceptions, amenable to our example. All of your adherents have acknowledged themselves better and happier than they ever expected to be in life. Still, you doubt our ability to enlist, with the simplicity and purity of our example, the affectionate reciprocations of your women? Surely you speak in riddles of enactment and theory, as perplexing as if in discourse you should say, empty barns full of grain. Are there not many others among your learned men equally able to distinguish that purity and goodness are in reality the source of happiness; and from their own experience, that evil results in misery and woe? Then why do your anticipations forbode for our kindly sympathies a distress so dire?”
M. Hollydorf. “There are undoubtedly many thousands, if not millions, who would hold themselves as gratefully amenable to your affectionate example as the members of the corps, if they could be subjected to the same experience. For we are in no way better than the well disposed commonalty, and were as heedless before we were attracted by your example, as the generality. Speaking honestly, in my own behalf, for my own disparagement, I rarely, if ever, became disengaged in thought from the instincts of selfishness while in association with the most exalted of our kind. In truth, I never felt in the remotest degree that there was a reality in the reputed second existence advocated by our mythology, and was in no way impressed with an assurance of immortality, until we were imperceptibly led to recognize its impression from the example of yourself and people. But you must recollect that our meeting was under peculiar auspices, which enlisted and absorbed our sympathies to the exclusion of self, as if in premonition of the eventful recompense following in train. No favoring circumstances like those transpiring for our introduction, will be likely to prepossess our people in your undertaking, for their own behoof, if we except the sensational announcement which will herald your origin, in connection with our Animalculan discovery. The impression that will be imparted from your exampled exposition of the effects of Heraclean education will prove as evanescent in the substitution of purity and goodness for the material excitements of instinctive gratification, as the opening imitations of the popular humorist, or lyceum lecturer, who attract the attention of their audiences for an hour with quips and snaffles of idiomatic license, or theories as valueless as shadows. If the proscriptor’s compilations should fail to awaken their thoughtful interest, in their own behalf, with a realizing desire for the inauguration of a system of education for the benefit of succeeding generations, then I fear that your treasured hopes will find in recognition a tardy requital.”
Correliana. “But are not the emotions expressed by your word friendship, the talismanic offshoots of affection; and will they not aid our example enlisted for the inauguration of a system of education that will bestow upon their children a living realization of immortal impressions?”
M. Hollydorf. “Better by far that you rely upon your own unaided example, and in no way venture your hopes upon the hazard of its trial! For there is not in the word catalogue of instinctive delusions, one so hypocritically heartless and treacherous. Friendship in demonstration with our race, is, as the Dosch has informed you, a ‘marketable commodity,’ as variable in expressed quality and price as the puff stocks founded upon the gambling exchange of gold. It extends its material aid upon like security in kind, and gold as the medium, is the equivalent of grateful reciprocation. In fact, gratitude and friendship in manifestation with us may be truthfully expressed as an ambuscade of expectation lying in wait for the surprise of future favors. It grieves me that I have no truthful resource from which to impart consolation and assurance, in solace for the encouragement of your proposed adventure; for, to our judgment, the sanction of the Manatitlan auramentors offers the only hopeful warrant of its feasibility. But for the better exposition of the instinctive heartlessness of our race, I will endeavor to give you a true representation of the result of our discovery, if the golden deposits of your mountains and rivers should be revealed to the students of our colleges. Abandoning their studies they would lead in the tide of adventurous emigration, and on reaching your city, heedless of your example, they would take advantage of weakness as a license, that in gratification would defy tears, pleadings, and expostulations advocating your rights of local option. The Englishman would hold it as his sovereign right to do as he pleased, with the certainty that his government would hold you responsible for any resistance to his acts, and with the pretext of an alleged affront, the ocean cormorant would plume her wings and sharpen her beak and talons for your engorgement, esteeming you and your city ‘lawful prey.’ Emigrants from my own, and nations of kindred habits, would claim the philosophical privilege of corrupting your fruits and grains, by brewing and distilling them into strong drinks; which Tacitus, a historian of your race, alleges was the practice of the Germans from the period of their earliest settlements. But a few days, or weeks, would pass, before your city’s present cleanly freedom from the evidences of detrition, would be changed into a sty reeking with filth and saintly odors, and your temple schools into progenic beer nurseries for the instinctive propagation of liberalism, and sogdonian classics, peculiar to the transition period of the incursive pot-pourri invasions of the northern, eastern, and western hordes, into Germany. In usurpation of the current flow of affection, that responds in grateful songs of praise to the Creator, the hoarse croaking of maudlin revellers would make night hideous with strepitant grunts of liberty and instinctive patriotism; while in vindication of hereditary privilege, they would exhibit their memorial ‘love and friendship’ by sword emblazonry tattooed upon each other’s cheeks, chorused in medley with oaths from English, Irish, French, and other idiomatic mouths as accompaniments to their manuals in the art of self defense. If your people should adventure affectionate expostulation in behalf of their children, they in reply would exhibit their bloated and bleared visages as the fatherly source of a new and regenerate race of freemen, delivered by the democratic efficacy of saving grace from the pulings of puritanism. Well aware of my inherited defects and unworthiness for the privileged enjoyment of your people’s purity, I shudder with the reflection that the current of your affection could be stayed, and forever turned backward, if by rumor the golden treasures in utensil use should be bruited in the civilized purlieus of our cities for the attraction of their troglodyte grovellers hitherward.”
Correliana (with clasped hands and tearful eyes.) “May goodness forefend us from a calamity so dire! Better by far the consummation so long urged by our savage foes! But we must still cling to our hopes founded upon your ready perception of an affection that enables us to live away from human bodies with habits such as you have so wofully described.”
As Correliana uttered in fervent appeal her invocation, the prætor called M. Hollydorf to indicate the selection he had made from the young maidens to fulfill the marriage intention with the verging graduates of the male department? In answer to this quizzical request, he acknowledged that the only maidens he had seen were Luocuratia and Correliana, but with his happy impressions would endeavor to make amends for his selfishness. All, with the exception of the padre, confirmed the censor’s choice, but he with his usual uncertitude of thought made such varied and liberal selections that in consummation they would have proved sadly polygamous. The Dosch had already explained that the education of the Heraclean children had been limited to the practical requirements for the supply of family wants, in conducive aid for the perfection of happy association. So that in the educational department of letters the variety had been of the most meagre description, the quota of information relative to the affairs of the world at large having been supplied by Manatitlan auramentors. Accomplishments and ritual formulistic ceremonies were unknown.