In the Wrong Paradise, and Other StoriesLang, Andrew
Science
In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories
Lang, Andrew
Paranormal fiction; Science fiction, English; Short stories; Slavery -- Fiction
Instantly all was confusion. The infant, his mother and the other non-
combatants of the tribe, were bundled into canoes and paddled, through a
tempestuous sea, to the site of the modern Bordighiera. The men who were
not with the canoes fled into the depths of the Gorge Saint Louis, which
now severs France from Italy. The hill tribe came down at the double,
and in a twinkling had "made hay" (to borrow a modern agricultural
expression) of all the personal property of the cave dwellers. They tore
the nets (the use of which they did not understand), they broke the shell
razors, they pouched the opulent store of flint arrowheads and bone
daggers, and they tortured to death the pigs, which the cave people had
just begun to try to domesticate. After performing these rites, which
were perfectly legal--indeed, it would have been gross rudeness to
neglect them--the hill people withdrew to their wind-swept home on the
Tete du Chien.
Philosophers who believe in the force of early impressions will be
tempted to maintain that Why-Why's invincible hatred of established
institutions may be traced to these hours of discomfort in which his life
began.
The very earliest years of Why-Why, unlike those of Mr. John Stuart Mill,
whom in many respects he resembled, were not distinguished by proofs of
extraordinary intelligence. He rather promptly, however, showed signs of
a sceptical character. Like other sharp children, Why-Why was always
asking metaphysical conundrums. Who made men? Who made the sun? Why
has the cave-bear such a hoarse voice? Why don't lobsters grow on
trees?--he would incessantly demand. In answer to these and similar
questions, the mother of Why-Why would tell him stories out of the simple
mythology of the tribe. There was quite a store of traditional replies
to inquisitive children, replies sanctioned by antiquity and by the
authority of the medicine-men, and in this lore Why-Why's mother was
deeply versed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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