The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (57 page)

I broke in and changed the subject, so as to keep from getting
inhospitable and saying language; for really I was a good deal tried.
I started him on the heavens, for he had been to a good many of
them and liked ours the best, on account of there not being any
Sunday there. They kept Saturday, and it was very pleasant: plenty
of rest for the tired, and plenty of innocent good times for the
others. But no Sunday, he said; the Sunday-Sabbath was a commercial invention and quite local, having been devised by Constantine
to equalize prosperities in this world between the Jews and the
Christians. The government statistics of that period showed that a
Jew could make as much money in five days as a Christian could in
six; and so Constantine saw that at this rate the Jews would by and
by have all the wealth and the Christians all the poverty. There
was nothing fair nor right about this, a righteous government
should have equal laws for all, and take just as much care of the
incompetent as of the competent-more, if anything. So he added
the Sunday-Sabbath, and it worked just right, because it equalized
the prosperities. After that, the Jew had to lie idle 104 days in the
year, the Christian only 52, and this enabled the Christian to catch
up. But my brother said there was now talk among Constantine and
other early Christians up there, of some more equalizing; because,
in looking forward a few centuries they could notice that along in
the twentieth century somewhere it was going to be necessary to
furnish the Jews another Sabbath to keep, so as to save what might
be left of Christian property at that time. Schwarz said he had been
down into the first quarter of the twentieth century lately, and it
looked so to him.

Then he "side-tracked" in his abrupt way, and looked avidly at my head and said he did wish he was back in my skull, he would
sail out the first time I fell asleep and have a scandalous good time!
-wasn't that magician ever coming back?

"And oh," he said, "what wouldn't I see! wonders, spectacles,
splendors which your fleshly eyes couldn't endure; and what
wouldn't I hear! the music of the spheres-no mortal could live
through five minutes of that ecstasy! If he would only come! If he
.. .." He stopped, with his lips parted and his eyes fixed, like one
rapt. After a moment he whispered, "do you feel that?"

I recognized it; it was that life-giving, refreshing, mysterious
something which invaded the air when 44 was around. But I
dissembled, and said-

"What is it?"

"It's the magician; he's coming. He doesn't always let that influence go out from him, and so we dream-sprites took him for an
ordinary necromancer for a while; but when he burnt 44 we were
all there and close by, and he let it out then, and in an instant we
knew what he was! We knew he was a . . . we knew he was a
a . . . a . . . how curious!-my tongue won't say it!"

Yes, you see, 44 wouldn't let him say it-and I so near to getting
that secret at last! It was a sorrowful disappointment.

FortyFour entered, still in the disguise of the magician, and
Schwarz flung himself on his knees and began to beg passionately
for release, and I put in my voice and helped. Schwarz said-

"Oh, mighty one, you imprisoned me, you can set me free, and no
other can. You have the power; you possess all the powers, all the
forces that defy Nature, nothing is impossible to you, for you are a
a .. .

So there it was again-he couldn't say it. I was that close to it a
second time, you see; 44 wouldn't let him say that word, and I
would have given anything in the world to hear it. It's the way we
are made, you know: if we can get a thing, we don't want it, but if
we can't get it, why-well, it changes the whole aspect of it, you
see.

FortyFour was very good about it. He said he would let this one
go-Schwarz was hugging him around the knees and lifting up the hem of his robe and kissing it and kissing it before he could get any
further with his remark-yes, he would let this one go, and make
some fresh ones for the wedding, the family could get along very
well that way. So he told Schwarz to stand up and melt. Schwarz
did it, and it was very pretty. First, his clothes thinned out so you
could see him through them, then they floated off like shreds of
vapor, leaving him naked, then the cat looked in, but scrambled out
again; next, the flesh fell to thinning, and you could see the skeleton through it, very neat and trim, a good skeleton; next the bones
disappeared and nothing was left but the empty form-just a
statue, perfect and beautiful, made out of the delicatest soap-bubble
stuff, with rainbow-hues dreaming around over it and the furniture
showing through it the same as it would through a bubble; thenpoof! and it was gone!

THE CAT walked in, waving her tail, then gathered it up in her
right arm, as she might a train, and minced her way to the middle
of the room, where she faced the magician and rose up and bent
low and spread her hands wide apart, as if it was a gown she was
spreading, then sank her body grandly rearward-certainly the
neatest thing you ever saw, considering the limitedness of the
materials. I think a curtsy is the very prettiest thing a woman ever
does, and I think a lady's-maid's curtsy is prettier than any one
else's; which is because they get more practice than the others, on
account of being at it all the time when there's nobody looking.
When she had finished her work of art she smiled quite Cheshirely
(my dream-brother's word, he knew it was foreign and thought it
was future, he couldn't be sure), and said, very engagingly-

"Do you think I could have a bite now, without waiting for the
second table, there'll be such goings-on this morning, and I would
just give a whole basket of rats to be in it! and if I-"

At that moment the wee-wee'est little bright-eyed mousie you ever saw went scrabbling across the floor, and Baker G. gave a skip
and let out a scream and landed in the highest chair in the room
and gathered up her imaginary skirts and stood there trembling.
Also at that moment her breakfast came floating out of the cupboard on a silver tray, and she asked that it come to the chair, which
it did, and she took a hurried bite or two to stay her stomach, then
rushed away to get her share of the excitements, saying she would
like the rest of her breakfast to be kept for her till she got back.

Now then, draw up to the table," said 44. "We'll have Vienna
coffee of two centuries hence-it is the best in the world-buckwheat cakes from Missouri, vintage of 1845, French eggs of last
century, and deviled breakfast-whale of the post-pliocene, when he
was whitebait size, and just too delicious!"

By now I was used to these alien meals, raked up from countries
I had never heard of and out of seasons a million years apart, and
was getting indifferent about their age and nationalities, seeing that
they always turned out to be fresh and good. At first I couldn't
stand eggs a hundred years old and canned manna of Moses's time,
but that effect came from habit and prejudiced imagination, and I
soon got by it, and enjoyed what came, asking few or no questions.
At first I would not have touched whale, the very thought of it
would have turned my stomach, but now I ate a hundred and sixty
of then and never turned a hair. As we chatted along during
breakfast, 44 talked reminiscently of dream-sprites, and said they
used to be important in the carrying of messages where secrecy and
dispatch were a desideratum. He said they took a pride in doing
their work well, in old times; that they conveyed messages with
perfect verbal accuracy, and that in the matter of celerity they were
up to the telephone and away beyond the telegraph. He instanced
the Joseph-dreams, and gave it as his opinion that if they had gone
per Western Union the lean kine would all have starved to death
before the telegrams arrived. He said the business went to pot in
Roman times, but that was the fault of the interpreters, not of the
dream-sprites, and remarked-

"You can easily see that accurate interpreting was as necessary as
accurate wording. For instance, suppose the Founder sends a tele gram in the Christian Silence dialect, what are you going to do?
Why, there's nothing to do but guess the best you can, and take the
chances, because there isn't anybody in heaven or earth that can
understand both ends of it, and so, there you are, you see! Up a
stump."

"LIP a which;"

"Stump. American phrase. Not discovered yet. It means defeated. You are bound to misinterpret the end you do not understand, and so the matter which was to have been accomplished by
the message miscarries, fails, and vast damage is done. Take a
specific example, then you will get my meaning. Here is a telegram
from the Founder to her disciples. Date, June 27, four hundred and
thirteen years hence; it's in the paper-Boston paper-I fetched it
this morning."

"What is a Boston paper?"

"It can't be described in just a mouthful of words-pictures,
scare-heads and all. You wait, I'll tell you all about it another time; I
want to read the telegram, now."

"Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord God is one Lord.

"I now request that the members of my Church cease special
prayer for the peace of nations, and cease in full faith that God does
not hear our prayers only because of oft speaking; but that lie will
bless all the inhabitants of the earth, and 'none can stay His hand
nor say unto Him what doest thou.' Out of His allness hie must
bless all with His own truth and love.

"MARY BAKER C. EDDY."

"Pleasant View, Concord, N.H., June 27, 1905."

"You see? Down to the word `nations' anybody can understand it.
There's been a prodigious war going on for about seventeen months,
with destruction of whole fleets and armies, and in seventeen words
she indicates certain things, to-wit: I believed we could squelch the
war with prayer, therefore I ordered it; it was an error of Mortal
Mind, whereas I had supposed it was an inspiration; I now order
you to cease from praying for peace and take hold of something
nearer our size, such as strikes and insurrections. The rest seems to mean-seems to mean . . . . Let me study it a minute. It seems to
mean that He does not listen to our prayers any more because we
pester Him too much. This carries us to the phrase 'oft-speaking.'
At that point the fog shuts down, black and impenetrable, it solidifies into uninterpretable irrelevancies. Now then, you add up, and
get these results: the praying must be stopped-which is clear and
definite; the reason for the stoppage is-well, uncertain. Don't you
know that the incomprehensible and uninterpretable remaining
half of the message may be of actual importance? we may be even
sure of it, I think, because the first half wasn't; then what are we
confronted with? what is the world confronted with? Why, possible
disaster-isn't it so? Possible disaster, absolutely impossible to
avoid; and all because one cannot get at the meaning of the words
intended to describe it and tell how to prevent it. You now understand how important is the interpreter's share in these matters. If
you put part of the message in school-girl and the rest in Choctaw,
the interpreter is going to be defeated, and colossal harm can come
of it."

"I am sure it is true. What is His allness?"

"I pass."

"You which?"

"Pass. Theological expression. It probably means that she entered the game because she thought only His halfness was in it and
would need help; then perceiving that His allness was there and
playing on the other side, she considered it best to cash-in and draw
out. I think that that must be it; it looks reasonable, you see,
because in seventeen months she hadn't put up a single chip and
got it back again, and so in the circumstances it would be natural
for her to want to go out and see a friend. In Roman times the
business went to pot through bad interpreting, as I told you before.
Here in Suetonius is an instance. He is speaking of Atia, the
mother of Augustus Caesar:

" `Before her delivery she dreamed that her bowels stretched to
the stars, and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and
earth.'

"Now how would you interpret that, August?"

"Who-me? I do not think I could interpret it at all, but I do
wish I could have seen it, it must have been magnificent."

"Oh, yes, like enough; but doesn't it suggest anything to you?"

"Why, n-no, I can't see that it does. What would you thinkthat there had been an accident?"

"Of course not! It wasn't real, it was only a dream. It was sent to
inform her that she was going to be delivered of something remarkable. What should you think it was?"

"I-why, I don't know."

"Guess."

"Do you think-well, would it be a slaughterhouse?"

"Sho, you've no talent for interpretation. But that is a striking
instance of what the interpreter had to deal with, in that day. The
dream-messages had become loose and rickety and indefinite, like
the Founder's telegram, and soon the natural thing happened: the
interpreters became loose and careless and discouraged, and got to
guessing instead of interpreting, and the business went to ruin.
Rome had to give up dream-messages, and the Romans took to
entrails for prophetic information."

"Why, then, these ones must have come good, 44, don't you
think?"

"I mean bird entrails-entrails of chickens."

"I would stake my money on the others; what does a chicken
know about the future?"

"Sho, you don't get the idea, August. It isn't what the chicken
knows; a chicken doesn't know anything, but by examining the
condition of its entrails when it was slaughtered, the augurs could
find out a good deal about what was going to happen to emperors,
that being the way the Roman gods had invented to communicate
with them when dream-transportation went out and Western
Union hadn't come in yet. It was a good idea, too, because often a
chicken's entrails knew more than a Roman god did, if he was
drunk, and he generally was."