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
At an early hour of the day, succeeding the arrival of the Kyronese
detachment, Indian women brought fresh fish and fruits as presents, then
volunteered their service for clearing the houses, colonnades, and
patios of the accumulations consequent upon the sickness of the
Heracleans, and were made happy by the acceptance of their proffered
aid. Gradually the cheerless gloom which had held sway in the
depopulated portions of the city for ages, from the harassed anxiety of
its defenders, passed away under the active hands of the Kyronese and
their Indian aids. Fountains, whose conduits had become choked, were
opened and cleaned, causing the house gardens and latifundium to rejoice
in primal gladness from water distribution above and below the surface
of the ground. The loving sympathy of the Heracleans made manifest in
the tender care bestowed upon the reviving sick, brought forth the
latent gentleness of the corps, which had been suppressed from childhood
by the civilized decrees of fashionable folly and vanity, begot from the
precedental inoculation of habits and customs derived from the heroic
ages of classical brutality. Indeed the members of the corps were so
often moved to express genial emotions with glistening tears commingled
with smiles, they seemed to have developed a new inherent combination as
necessary for the joyful expression of happiness, as sun and showers for
the behests of fruitful vegetation. The padre, in his quaint emphatic
style, expressed the prevailing influence in an evening salutation
addressed to his compadre Dr. Baāhar after even song, in this wise:
“Well I declare, doctor, upon my soul, I have passed such a happy day in
useful labor that it seems as if I had just emerged from a life’s
nightmare of torpid inactivity. Really, upon my hopes of salvation, I
believe that I could live and thrive upon the joys of others, without
material food.”
But the doctor, who was impaling the insect game obtained from his day’s
hunting excursion, replied sneeringly. “So, so, h-m—I see, you are taken
in, with the others, by this humdrum life of these Heracleans, with
their puling, wishee-washy affectations of caring more for others than
they do for themselves. The long and short of the matter is, that you
are all subject to an unnatural influence, and if it is not thrown off
immediately, from whatever source derived, you will shortly forswear
manliness, and your hopes of heaven.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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