THE ONE HUNDRED ZANYS
(Dancing on before them and rattling their wind-bags.) The Anti-White-Slavers! The Anti-White-Slavers! Look! Behold!
THE FIFTY DIZZARDS
(Beating the Moonshees with feather-clubs and whistling between their teeth.) Awake! Awake! (The Moonshees stir feebly and call for souffle. By the aid of a dozen gallons of ice-water NOXUS PODUNKUS is once more aroused and now surveys the approaching procession, which marches about the arena and back to the Musnud.)
NOXUS PODUNKUS
(Scratching his left ear and surveying the assembled throng.) What—more? Oh! Well, welcome, noble citizens! Welcome! I see by your brows that you possess the unconquerable love of Liberty, Virtue, Truth, Justice, Beauty, etc., so necessary to the happy maintenance of our present Federated condition. (He collapses and more souffle is administered. Recovering.) Stick to it! What supreme comfort it must be to you and your exceedingly courageous ancestors to know that our very happy present condition is almost entirely due to them—their noble deeds of valor performed in order that we might become so—so—(he coughs). What supreme deeds would not you now, I am sure (they brandish their battleaxes) gladly perform were it not that fortunately all provocation had long since been done away with. (Loud cheering. All the Nizys, Zanys, Hoddy-Doddys, etc., walk on their hands.) Night after night in the wilds of the great cities of those far-off centuries, now so happily past, did your forefathers fearlessly and tirelessly seek out the enslavers of resisting and lovely womanhood and battle to the death with those who would have corrupted our worthy sires—I mean siresses—Souffle!—(he imbibes)—performing astounding and now almost unbelievable feats of valor, felling the vile and rapacious enslaver to the plain and chopping him to bits, leaving us, their humble descendants, little if anything to do save revere and historically represent the marvels which they then performed. (Immense and prolonged cheering. Eight thousand wireless messages are sent forth.) Literature, by their aid, as we all well know, has at last been completely done away with. (Riotous applause.) Profane art in all its forms and all its seductive wiles has long since ceased. (The audience shouts for one hour.) The vile newspapers of ancient days (innumerable swells of booing and cat-calling), wont to chronicle only the private and social vices of unregenerate man, now, thanks to the unremitting toil of those who had only the moral regeneration of the world in view, its true spiritual progress (prolonged and enduring applause), chronicle only the sweet messages of hope and cheer by which we sustain each other in our happy state—Souffle! Souffle! (He dips his head in a pannier. The audience cheers for one hour.) Now we are not troubled with politics, armies, or any vile evidences of commercial strife and contest. (More applause.) Nothing disturbs us in any way! Could we ask more? (Cries of “Hear! Hear!”) As I was saying to those dear creatures who just left, our beloved Eugenic citizens and citizenesses, we need now only concern ourselves with the simple arts of peace and pleasure as we here see manifest in this great assemblage. On you, therefore, more than on any other group which at this time could come before this august Court to testify to the Truth, Peace, Virtue, Sequacity and Docility of our present world-realm, devolves, as lineal descendants of these our great sires, the sweet task of keeping bright the memory of their great deeds. I am sure that you, my dears and dearesses, by maintaining so earnest a stand against all thought of any kind, by persisting in your aversion to moral heresies of all sorts and indeed learning and science in every form, and by your persistent and industrious mutilation and destruction of all profane facts, so long the curse of society (loud cries of “Down with all facts!”), will succeed—I know you will!—in keeping the world as fresh and pure and innocent as on the day it was made. (Cries of “Yes, yes,” and “we will, we will.” Applause for one hour.) Souffle! Souffle! (He is fed.)—Cruel, disturbing thought, that one great curse of humanity in its earlier ages must never be allowed to trouble us again. (Immense applause.) And since, by what processes of hardy non-thinking only our revered ancestors know, profound peace has at last been reached, I caution you, O my fellow-citizens, let not a single irritating disturbing fact ever again impinge upon the sweet idealism and mental slumber which now reigns. Behold our happy Dizzards! (They wiggle their stuffed clubs.) Could any of the so-called and boasted mental processes of former ages have produced them? (They walk on their hands.) And our dear Zanys! (They rattle their wind-bags.) What would our great peaceful Federation be without them? (They beat each other over the head.) Or our graceful Nizys! (They take up wash-boilers of souffle and ladle it right and left solemnly.) The gentility and wholeheartedness of their service! (They playfully pelt each other with cones filled with souffle.) Or our kindly Hoddy-Doddys! (They vault.) What more could humanity desire in the shape of perfect and helpful men? (They leap on each other’s backs and fall gracefully to the floor.) When I contemplate these, and this great audience (profound applause lasting seventeen minutes), and these our assembled cohorts of Virtue, Truth, Justice, Mercy (more applause, lasting one hour), come here from all parts of the known world to testify to the great fundamental truths which have made them so, I—(At this point the great audience rises en masse and cheers for one hour, seventeen and one-half minutes and thirteen seconds. Rival groups of Descendant Sons and Daughters of Ancient and Honorable Anti-White-Slavers, Anti-Vivisectionists, Anti-Contraceptionists, Billysundays, Eugenic Sires, Anti-Saloon Leaguers, Watch and Ward Guards, King’s Daughters, Free and Accepted Boy Scouts, etc., rush forward and seize upon the cages containing the only remaining specimens of Gambler, Saloon-keeper, Predatory Financier, Philosopher, Magdalen, Vivisectionist, Madam, Nietzschean and other early examples of now nearly or quite extinct miscreants or papier-maché representations of the same, and haul them before the Musnud amid the cheering, hee-hawing, cat-calling of the audience. The Zanys, Nizys, Dizzards, Loobies, Hoddy-Doddys, Gaberlunzies and Fuddys, forgetting their regular duties, spin, squeal, play at leap-frog, beat each other with feather-dusters and wind-bags. Various regiments of Descendant Sons and Daughters of Ancient and Honorable Feminists, Professors of Christian Economy, Prohibitionists, Socialists, etc., who have not yet had the privilege of parading and testifying before the Musnud, crowd the entryways, swarm the aisles and so obstruct the peaceful and orderly development of the proceedings of the Court that, in view of this and because ordinarily the proceedings consume from twenty to thirty days anyhow, so great is the anxiety of all to testify to the magnificent progress of the world since vice and crime have been done away with, NOXUS PODUNKUS, now thoroughly awake and after due counsel with the ninety-nine other Moonshees, Savants, Roctor-Proctors, Pundits, Theorists, Zadkiels, Seers, Oracles, Solons, Nestors, Gamaliels, Daniels, etc., also disturbed in their slumbers, decides that, all things considered, and notwithstanding, it were as well if the taking of testimony were to be discontinued for this day, and to this end, after various signs, grunts, squeals, motions to the Zanys, Dizzards, Nizys, Loobies, Hoddy-Doddys, Gaberlunzies, Fuddys, etc., the latter are brought to their senses and through them the audience calmed.)
(It was then that NOXUS PODUNKUS, speaking for the Musnud, announced that the proceedings for this day were hereby ended and that the Court stood adjourned until the following morning at ten o’clock; after which SHISHMASH HASH HASH, as Master of Ceremonies, Chairmaster, etc., led the outgoing throng with a magnificent example of rotary hand-spring motion. At this point, also, owing to lack of space and by reason of the fact that enough is as good as a feast, the humble recording Dramatist quits and the curtain is hereby drawn on this historic scene. For those, however, who desire a fuller report of the same, it may be found in Volumes MMCCCIII, MMMMMMMMCCCLLVI, Proceedings of the Federated Court of Progress [Moline-Emporia-Sedalia Sittings] for the years 3913-’14-’15, NOXUS PODUNKUS presiding; SHISHMASH HASH HASH, Secretary and Master of Ceremonies.)
Curtain.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] J. C. Vogt: “The Nature of Electricity and Magnetism on the Basis of a Simplified Conception of Substance.”