Mizora: A Prophecy Page 18

  CHAPTER V.

  I had long contemplated a trip to the extreme southern boundary ofMizora. I had often inquired about it, and had always been answered thatit was defined by an impassable ocean. I had asked them to describe itto me, for the Mizora people have a happy faculty of employing terselyexpressive language when necessary; but I was always met with thesurprising answer that no tongue in Mizora was eloquent enough toportray the wonders that bounded Mizora on the south. So I requested thePreceptress to permit Wauna to accompany me as a guide and companion; arequest she readily complied with.

  "Will you be afraid or uneasy about trusting her on so long a journeywith no companion or protector but me?" I asked.

  The Preceptress smiled at my question.

  "Why should I be afraid, when in all the length and breadth of our landthere is no evil to befall her, or you either. Strangers are friends inMizora, in one sense of the word, when they meet. You will both travelas though among time endeared associates. You will receive everyattention, courtesy and kindness that would be bestowed upon near andintimate acquaintances. No, in this land, mothers do not fear to sendtheir daughters alone and unrecommended among strangers."

  When speed was required, the people of Mizora traveled altogether by airships. But when the pleasure of landscape viewing, and the delight andexhilaration of easy progress is desired, they use either railroad carsor carriages.

  Wauna and I selected an easy and commodious carriage. It was propelledby compressed air, which Wauna said could be obtained whenever we neededa new supply at any village or country seat.

  Throughout the length and breadth of Mizora the roads were artificiallymade. Cities, towns, and villages were provided with paved streets,which the public authorities kept in a condition of perfect cleanliness.The absence of all kinds of animals rendered this comparatively easy. Inalluding to this once in the presence of the Preceptress, she startledme by the request that I should suggest to my people the advantage to bederived from substituting machinery for animal labor.

  "The association of animals is degrading," she asserted. "And you, whostill live by tilling the soil, will find a marked change economicallyin dispensing with your beasts of burden. Fully four-fifths that youraise on your farms is required to feed your domestic animals. If youragriculture was devoted entirely to human food, it would make it moreplentiful for the poor."

  I did not like to tell her that I knew many wealthy people who housedand fed their domestic animals better than they did their tenants. Shewould have been disgusted with such a state of barbarism.

  Country roads in Mizora were usually covered with a cement that wasprepared from pulverized granite. They were very durable and very hard.Owing to their solidity, they were not as agreeable for driving asanother kind of cement they manufactured. I have previously spoken ofthe peculiar style of wheel that was used on all kinds of lightconveyances in Mizora, and rendered their progress over any road thevery luxury of motion.

  In our journey, Wauna took me to a number of factories, where thewonderful progress they had made in science continually surprised anddelighted me. The spider and the silkworm had yielded their secret tothese indefatigable searchers into nature's mysteries. They could spin athread of gossamer, or of silk from their chemicals, of any width andlength, and with a rapidity that was magical. Like everything else ofthat nature in Mizora, these discoveries had been purchased by theGovernment, and then made known to all.

  They also manufactured ivory that I could not tell from the realarticle. I have previously spoken of their success in producing variouskinds of marble and stone. A beautiful table that I saw made out ofartificial ivory, had a painting upon the top of it. A deep border,composed of delicate, convoluted shells, extended round the top of thetable and formed the shores of a mimic ocean, with coral reefs and tinyislands, and tangled sea-weeds and shining fishes sporting about in thepellucid water. The surface was of highly polished smoothness, and I wasinformed that the picture was _not_ a painting but was formed ofcolored particles of ivory that had been worked in before the drying orsolidifying process had been applied. In the same way they formed mainbeautiful combinations of marbles. The magnificent marble columns thatsupported the portico of my friend's house were all of artificial make.The delicate green leaves and creeping vines of ivy, rose, andeglantine, with their spray-like blossoms, were colored in themanufacturing process and chiseled out of the solid marble by theskillful hand of the artist.

  It would be difficult for me to even enumerate all the beautiful artsand productions of arts that I saw in Mizora. Our journey was full ofincidents of this kind.

  Every city and town that we visited was like the introduction of a newpicture. There was no sameness between any of them. Each had aimed atpicturesqueness or stately magnificence, and neither had failed toobtain it. Looking back as I now do upon Mizora, it presents itself tome as a vast and almost limitless landscape, variegated with grandcities, lovely towns and villages, majestic hills and mountains crownedwith glittering snows, or deep, delightful valleys veiled in scentedvines.

  Kindness, cordiality and courtesy met us on every side. It was at firstquite novel for me to mingle among previously unheard-of people withsuch sociability, but I did as Wauna did, and I found it not onlyconvenient but quite agreeable.

  "I am the daughter of the Preceptress of the National College," saidWauna; and that was the way she introduced herself.

  I noticed with what honor and high esteem the name of the Preceptresswas regarded. As soon as it was known that the daughter of thePreceptress had arrived, the citizens of whatever city we had stopped inhastened to extend to her every courtesy and favor possible for them tobestow. She was the daughter of the woman who held the highest and mostenviable position in the Nation. A position that only great intellectcould secure in that country.

  As we neared the goal of our journey, I noticed an increasing warmth ofthe atmosphere, and my ears were soon greeted with a deep, reverberatingroar like continuous thunder. I have seen and heard Niagara, but athousand Niagaras could not equal that deafening sound. The heat becameoppressive. The light also from a cause of which I shall soon speak.

  We ascended a promontory that jutted out from the main land a quarter ofa mile, perhaps more. Wauna conducted me to the edge of the cliff andtold me to look down. An ocean of whirlpools was before us. Themaddened dashing and thundering of the mighty waters, and the awe theyinspired no words can paint. Across such an abyss of terrors it wascertain no vessel could sail. We took our glasses and scanned theopposite shore, which appeared to be a vast cataract as though the oceanwas pouring over a precipice of rock. Wauna informed me that where theshore was visible it was a perpendicular wall of smooth rock.

  Over head an arc of fire spanned the zenith from which depended curtainsof rainbows waving and fluttering, folding and floating out again with arapid and incessant motion. I asked Wauna why they had not crossed inair-ships, and she said they had tried it often but had always failed.

  "In former times," she said, "when air-ships first came into use it wasfrequently attempted, but no voyager ever returned. We have long sinceabandoned the attempt, for now we know it to be impossible."

  I looked again at that display of uncontrollable power. As I gazed itseemed to me I would be drawn down by the resistless fascination ofterror. I grasped Wauna and she gently turned my face to the smilinglandscape behind us. Hills and valleys, and sparkling cities veiled infoliage, with their numberless parks and fountains and statues sleepingin the soft light, gleaming lakes and wandering rivers that glitteredand danced in the glorious atmosphere like prisoned sunbeams, greeted uslike the alluring smile of love, and yet, for the first time sinceentering this lovely land, I felt myself a prisoner. Behind me was animpassable barrier. Before me, far beyond this gleaming vision ofenchantment, lay another road whose privations and dangers I dreaded toattempt.

  I felt as a bird might feel who has been brought from the free expanseof its wild forest-home, and placed in a golden cage where it d
rinksfrom a jeweled cup and eats daintier food than it could obtain in itsown rude haunts. It pines for that precarious life; its very dangers andprivations fill its breast with desire. I began to long with unutterableimpatience to see once more the wild, rough scenes of my own nativity.Memory began to recall them with softening touches. My heart yearned formy own; debased as compared with Mizora though they be, there was thecongeniality of blood between us. I longed to see my own little onewhose dimpled hands I had unclasped from my neck in that agonizedparting. Whenever I saw a Mizora mother fondling her babe, my heartleapt with quick desire to once more hold my own in such loving embrace.The mothers of Mizora have a devotional love for their children. Theirsmiles and prattle and baby wishes are listened to with lovingtenderness, and treated as matters of importance.

  I was sitting beside a Mizora mother one evening, listening to somesinging that I truly thought no earthly melody could surpass. I askedthe lady if ever she had heard anything sweeter, and she answered,earnestly:

  "Yes, the voices of my own children."

  On our homeward journey, Wauna took me to a lake from the center ofwhich we could see, with our glasses, a green island rising high abovethe water like an emerald in a silver setting.

  "That," said Wauna, directing my attention to it, "is the last vestigeof a prison left in Mizora. Would you like to visit it?"

  I expressed an eager willingness to behold so curious a sight, andgetting into a small pleasure boat, we started toward it. Boats arepropelled in Mizora either by electricity or compressed air, and glidethrough the water with soundless swiftness.

  As we neared the island I could perceive the mingling of natural andartificial attractions. We moored our boat at the foot of a flight ofsteps, hewn from the solid rock. On reaching the top, the scene spreadout like a beautiful painting. Grottos, fountains, and cascades, windingwalks and vine-covered bowers charmed us as we wandered about. In thecenter stood a medium-sized residence of white marble. We enteredthrough a door opening on a wide piazza. Art and wealth and taste hadadorned the interior with a generous hand. A library studded with booksclosely shut behind glass doors had a wide window that commanded anenchanting view of the lake, with its rippling waters sparkling anddimpling in the light. On one side of the mantelpiece hung a full lengthportrait of a lady, painted with startling naturalness.

  "That," said Wauna, solemnly, "was the last prisoner in Mizora."

  I looked with interested curiosity at a relic so curious in this land.It was a blonde woman with lighter colored eyes than is at all common inMizora. Her long, blonde hair hung straight and unconfined over a dressof thick, white material. Her attitude and expression were dejected andsorrowful. I had visited prisons in my own land where red-handed murdersat smiling with indifference. I had read in newspapers, laboredeloquence that described the stoicism of some hardened criminal as atrait of character to be admired. I had read descriptions where mistakeneloquence exerted itself to waken sympathy for a criminal who had neverfelt sympathy for his helpless and innocent victims, and I had feltnothing but creeping horror for it all. But gazing at this picture ofundeniable repentance, tears of sympathy started to my eyes. Had shebeen guilty of taking a fellow-creature's life?

  "Is she still living?" I asked by way of a preface.

  "Oh, no, she has been dead for more than a century," answered Wauna.

  "Was she confined here very long?"

  "For life," was the reply.

  "I should not believe," I said, "that a nature capable of so deep arepentance could be capable of so dark a crime as murder."

  "Murder!" exclaimed Wauna in horror. "There has not been a murdercommitted in this land for three thousand years."

  It was my turn to be astonished.

  "Then tell me what dreadful crime she committed."

  "She struck her child," said Wauna, sadly; "her little innocent,helpless child that Nature gave her to love and cherish, and make nobleand useful and happy."

  "Did she inflict a permanent injury?" I asked, with increasedastonishment at this new phase of refinement in the Mizora character.

  "No one can tell the amount of injury a blow does to a child. It mayimmediately show an obvious physical one; it may later develop a mentalone. It may never seem to have injured it at all, and yet it may haveshocked a sensitive nature and injured it permanently. Crime is evolvedfrom perverted natures, and natures become perverted from ill-usage. Itmerges into a peculiar structure of the brain that becomes hereditary."

  "What became of the prisoner's child?"

  "It was adopted by a young lady who had just graduated at the StateCollege of the State in which the mother resided. It was only five yearsold, and its mother's name was never mentioned to it or to anyone else.Long before that, the press had abolished the practice of giving anyprominence to crime. That pernicious eloquence that in uncivilized ageshad helped to nourish crime by a maudlin sympathy for the criminal, hadceased to exist. The young lady called the child daughter, and it calledher mother."

  "Did the real mother never want to see her child?"

  "That is said to be a true picture of her," said Wauna; "and who canlook at it and not see sorrow and remorse."

  "How could you be so stern?" I asked, in wondering astonishment.

  "Pity has nothing to do with crime," said Wauna, firmly. "You must lookto humanity, and not to the sympathy one person excites when you areaiding enlightenment. That woman wandered about these beautiful grounds,or sat in this elegant home a lonely and unsympathized-with prisoner.She was furnished with books, magazines and papers, and every physicalcomfort. Sympathy for her lot was never offered her. Childhood isregarded by my people as the only period of life that is capable ofknowing perfect happiness, and among us it is a crime greater than theheinousness of murder in your country, to deprive a human being of itschildhood--in which cluster the only unalloyed sweets of life.

  "A human being who remembers only pain, rebukes treatment in childhood,has lost the very flavor of existence, and the person who destroyed itis a criminal indeed."