The Manatitlans: or, A record of recent scientific explorations in the Andean La Plata, S. A.Smile, R. Elton
Science
The Manatitlans: or, A record of recent scientific explorations in the Andean La Plata, S. A.
Smile, R. Elton
Science fiction, American
The padre’s smiling face, already known to the Kyronese children, soon
ingratiated him as a particular favorite with the Heracleans, and in
their charge he soon disappeared, and was afterwards found in the
workshop demonstrating the advantage of paneling for strengthening and
rendering doors less cumbersome, the parents of the children regarding
his handywork with curious admiration. In the neighborhood of twenty
acres of land on the southern slope of the hill enclosure were
cultivated by the children as a garden and orchard, as well as for the
field growth of cereals, with an emulous desire for parental
commendation. The distinctions in size being mainly dependent upon age,
the Manatitlan gradations were of course impracticable, but the smaller
children were constantly under the supervision of their nurses and
censors, although not from necessity, as there was an affectionate
disposition on the part of the elder and larger boys to offer their
backs as steps, and hands as aids to assist the young and weak whenever
an opportunity offered. Indeed, the effect of their example, after a few
weeks of arbitrary sway, effectually cured the Kyronese children of
their fagging dispositions.
Having witnessed the children’s proficiency in a variety of useful
pastimes, we were invited to visit the culinary department a second
time, to see the food in its prepared state ready to be served. The
prætor observing our admiring surprise at the ease with which the
various manipulations had been accomplished, without bewraying with dust
and adhesive mixtures the persons and clothing of the youthful
principals and aids, said that each, with intuitive perception, felt
that purity within themselves was necessary for the sanction of
confidence in associate reciprocation. To be not only cleanly, but pure,
without a questioning thought of subterfuge, was clearly the motor
influence of every enactment, with the special desire that their
personalities should reflect the refinements of reality. “In all the
departments the children are taught by example, that their personal
individuality may become responsible to itself for acceptable purity to
others in current association; so that in health all their wants of
instinct are self supplied, although rendered facile by household
coöperation, without unnatural exactions that would beget impressions of
mentality. From these exercises of self dependence, the spirit of
emulation has proved an incentive to invention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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