The Voice of Nature - Page 2

discussing how
we should broach our remarkable situation to these Utopians before
our money is spent.

Our eyes meet, and I gather from the botanist that I am to open our
case.

I do my best.

"You came from the other side of space!" says the man in the crimson
cloak, interrupting me. "Precisely! I like that--it's exactly my
note! So do I! And you find this world strange! Exactly my case! We
are brothers! We shall be in sympathy. I am amazed, I have been
amazed as long as I can remember, and I shall die, most certainly,
in a state of incredulous amazement, at this remarkable world.
Eh? ... You found yourselves suddenly upon a mountain top! Fortunate
men!" He chuckled. "For my part I found myself in the still stranger
position of infant to two parents of the most intractable
dispositions!"

"The fact remains," I protest.

"A position, I can assure you, demanding Tact of an altogether
superhuman quality!"

We desist for a space from the attempt to explain our remarkable
selves, and for the rest of the time this picturesque and
exceptional Utopian takes the talk entirely under his control....

--

Section 2.

An agreeable person, though a little distracting, he was, and he
talked, we recall, of many things. He impressed us, we found
afterwards, as a poseur beyond question, a conscious Ishmaelite in
the world of wit, and in some subtly inexplicable way as a most
consummate ass. He talked first of the excellent and commodious
trams that came from over the passes, and ran down the long valley
towards middle Switzerland, and of all the growth of pleasant homes
and chalets amidst the heights that made the opening gorge so
different from its earthly parallel, with a fine disrespect. "But
they are beautiful," I protested. "They are graciously proportioned,
they are placed in well-chosen positions; they give no offence to
the eye."

"What do we know of the beauty they replace? They are a mere rash.
Why should we men play the part of bacteria upon the face of our
Mother?"

"All life is that!"

"No! not natural life, not the plants and the gentle creatures that
live their wild shy lives in forest and jungle. That is a part of
her. That is the natural bloom of her complexion. But these houses
and tramways and things, all made from ore and stuff torn from her
veins----! You can't better my image of the rash. It's a morbid
breaking out! I'd give it all for one--what is it?--free and natural
chamois."

"You live at times in a house?" I asked.

He ignored my question. For him, untroubled Nature was the best, he