Arqtiq: A Study of the Marvels at the North PoleAdolph, Anna
Science
Arqtiq: A Study of the Marvels at the North Pole
Adolph, Anna
Adventure stories; Feminist fiction; North Pole -- Fiction; Science fiction; Utopian fiction
The rest now giving way to hunger, as our hosts duly regard us with
infantile solicitude, I put my hand in my mouth, as in the latter’s
fashion. Immediately wheels of itself into the room a table laden with
food. Staring at its wizard-like action, we are seated to it. No dish,
knife or fork, or board. Probably not in the land. An enameled lily
leaf. The food, light and solid, piled in little fruit cups. One is put
in each our mouths, cup and all. I taste and find it palatable. Our
appetites satisfied, out wheels the table, making Mae smile and become
merry. Seeing us still high perched, our jolly friends rally around us,
pull our toes and pinch our cheeks, until I wish I had refrained in
initiating this program. Soon in comes a hassock and wheeling to us,
gives us an opportunity to alight. Mae down last, remains seated on it,
when it starts around the room with her, pirouetting in mazy figures,
giving its occupant mazy face.
When stopped, the host whistles, to bring from a corner two great white
mice, kitten size. As he twirls his fingers, they fall to the floor, a
green sward; folding their four pink paws to their breasts, they become
round balls, thus roll about, greatly to our amusement.
This has suggested to the lady, who proposes to “go out in town to an
entertainment that is funny, oh, so funny.”
The host, in gleesome impulse, elects to take me. Raising me on his
hand, he asks my name. Charley, quite diverted, gives it, “Anna.”
“Ah, you are angel, Anna!” when Charley reads the puzzle, remarking, “He
means ‘English.’” Then he kisses me squarely in the mouth, to my
immediate struggle to get down, which I succeed in doing while he is
taking Charley in his other hand, who now, unlike other husbands,
proceeds to lecture me. “Do not be odd; you see it is all right. It is
evening hour in America (swallowing); we will enjoy this, our first
evening here.”
Mae, who has taken to the hand I have left, reaches and pinches him; at
which I laugh and spring into a pocket in front of the lady, upon whose
shoulder sits my father, his hand holding her feather cap. So utterly
without matronly dignity am I, I am glad for once that home friends
cannot see my position.
Getting into the center of the street, she stops, (I nearly fall) and
sits upon a chair, raised from the road-bed by the man, who takes
another. The object is plain, when we move swiftly along as on a track.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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