Mars (Planet) -- Fiction; Martians -- Fiction; Science fiction
When my friendly companion found I could not understand him, he looked
serious for a minute or two, then shortened his brilliant yellow toga,
as though he had arrived at some resolve, and knelt down directly in
front of me. He next took my face between his hands, and putting his
nose within an inch of mine, stared into my eyes with all his might.
At first I was inclined to laugh, but before long the most curious
sensations took hold of me. They commenced with a thrill which passed
all up my body, and next all feeling save the consciousness of the loud
beating of my heart ceased. Then it seemed that boy's eyes were inside
my head and not outside, while along with them an intangible something
pervaded my brain. The sensation at first was like the application of
ether to the skin--a cool, numbing emotion. It was followed by a
curious tingling feeling, as some dormant cells in my mind answered to
the thought-transfer, and were filled and fertilised! My other
brain-cells most distinctly felt the vitalising of their companions,
and for about a minute I experienced extreme nausea and a headache such
as comes from over-study, though both passed swiftly off. I presume
that in the future we shall all obtain knowledge in this way. The
Professors of a later day will perhaps keep shops for the sale of
miscellaneous information, and we shall drop in and be inflated with
learning just as the bicyclist gets his tire pumped up, or the motorist
is recharged with electricity at so much per unit. Examinations will
then become matters of capacity in the real meaning of that word, and
we shall be tempted to invest our pocket-money by advertisements of "A
cheap line in Astrology," "Try our double-strength, two-minute course
of Classics," "This is remnant day for Trigonometry and Metaphysics,"
and so on.
My friend did not get as far as that. With him the process did not
take more than a minute, but it was startling in its results, and
reduced me to an extraordinary state of hypnotic receptibility. When
it was over my instructor tapped with a finger on my lips, uttering
aloud as he did so the words--
"Know none; know some; know little; know morel" again and again; and
the strangest part of it is that as he spoke I did know at first a
little, then more, and still more, by swift accumulation, of his speech
and meaning. In fact, when presently he suddenly laid a hand over my
eyes and then let go of my head with a pleasantly put question as to
how I felt, I had no difficulty whatever in answering him in his own
tongue, and rose from the ground as one gets from a hair-dresser's
chair, with a vague idea of looking round for my hat and offering him
his fee.
"My word, sir!" I said, in lisping Martian, as I pulled down my cuffs
and put my cravat straight, "that was a quick process. I once heard of
a man who learnt a language in the moments he gave each day to having
his boots blacked; but this beats all. I trust I was a docile pupil?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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