NOXUS PODUNKUS
(Leaning over the railing and eying them closely.) Really! This is the limit—I mean almost too much—too much! Sweet maids! Dear sweet maids! This spectacle of the perfect fruitage of Progress under the great moral care of our forefathers—blessed be the name of the ever-to-be-remembered Anthony!—(he bows, and the audience with him)—is all but too much! Progress can do no more! I would, if any service which the mere sight of you does not render—could render—ask you the Twelfth and final Question, but what would be the use? How well we know the import of your message, even before you speak! How well we know the import of you yourselves—wonderful creatures that you are! (They bow their heads.) This vast assemblage, which in itself is a testimony to the value of Eugenics, understands full well that by the practice of Eugenics alone all weakness, vice, crime, art, philosophy (except that which our dear Union Astronomers and Federated Philosophers instinctively know and proclaim), the need of white-slave laws, saloons, the theater—all, all have long since been done away with, so that we have now—the most of us, I am glad to say—not even so much as an historic memory of them. Indeed, as we all know, on this once most unsafe but now safest of planets (applause lasting seventeen minutes), men and women are now as safe and perfect and pure as ever our worthy forefathers could have dreamed of or desired. Why, to look at you alone is enough! (He sighs and rests.)
Dear Eugenic citizens and citizenesses, without taxing you further with these deep and brain-racking questions, so sacred to us all of course, the one message of this great Court to you is to go and do as you have always done: think no more than is absolutely necessary. Don’t tax your brains. This, our great Federation of Commission-Ruled Republics, is here to do all that for you (the Moonshees stir). The less we know the better, as we all know. (Long and loud applause lasting eighteen minutes.) In former and darker, and therefore sadder, times, there were many who thought differently. But they and all those who were a part of them have long since been disposed of. (Long and uproarious applause.) And is not, I now ask you, the world happier, fairer, sweeter to the eye and the mind? (Cries of “Hear! Hear!” and “Yea! Yea!” lasting two hours.) Now, dear Eugenic citizens, you need only consider how thoughtless you are and therefore how happy in these sweet exercises and games such as we see here to-day which contribute only to the sustenance, docility and fertility of man, to know how true all this is. Be thoughtless. Be happy. And by so being, as I always think, you contribute and testify to the efficiency of Truth, Virtue, Justice, Mercy, Sobriety, Love, Beauty, Simplicity, Peace—(he collapses from sheer exhaustion.)—Souffle! Souffle! (A bucket of souffle is brought and administered.)
THE ONE HUNDRED MAIDS
(Wishing not to tire their noble Referendunces, singing in chorus.)
O, sweet Eugenic thought—to know
That our dear Noxus loves us so!
(They fall back in the ranks.)
(Enter fifteen thousand Descendant Sons and Daughters of Ancient and Honorable Anti-White Slavers of the pre-Federated Period (A. D. 1870-1927), in green-and-white kilts and galligaskins, with perukes and billy-cocks on their heads. They march swiftly forward, an expression of grim determination—historically correct—on their faces, and pause before the Musnud. Over their left arms, after the fashion of the world’s great Anti-White-Slave Leaders and in accordance with historical descriptions of the same, hang immense mantles of dark green bed-ticking intended to shield naked fleeing white slaves. Over their shoulders are carried papier-maché broadaxes of the kind known to have been used by all Anti-White-Slavers, male and female, in felling the enemy. These they occasionally brandish as they walk. At their belts hang lanterns, files, skeleton keys, medicine kits containing concentrated food pills, digitalis and the like, all intended for the rescue and resuscitation of overcome white slaves. Their eyelids and mouths are painted a bright cerise to give a look of extra vigor and force, and as they walk, one hundred abreast, they peer to right and left in the most searching and secretive and yet detecting way from beneath their hands, and occasionally flash their dark lanterns on the surrounding spectators.)
SHISHMASH HASH HASH
(Leaping up and cracking his heels nine times before descending.) Your Referendunces! Your Referendunces! We have here the only living Descendant Sons and Daughters of Ancient and Honorable American Anti-White Slavers—the organization which in its day gave rise—laid the foundation, as it were, of our present great and perfect World Federation, over which at present your Referendunces are so ably presiding. It claims to be the only existing organization that preserves in all their purity the customs, manners and instincts of the original pre-Federated Anti-White-Slavers of seven and eight centuries since. I beg of your Referendunces—I beg of you!—on this very special occasion—I know you are tired—Will your Referendunces be pleased to receive them? (He runs swiftly around in a ring and falls over three extended feather-dusters. NOXUS PODUNKUS groans. The Moonshees moan.)