Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey
of her tiny feet pressed the words of love and hope and joy, and her
heart expanded, and she clasped her hands in attitudes of blissful
enjoyment, seemingly just as deep and fervent as if the blessed sunlight
rested on her brow, and her eyes were drinking in the glory of a summer
sunset. O dwellers in the upper world with the light streaming into the
windows of your souls, with your ears open to the music of pipe and
flute and violin, and to the sweeter music of the voice of love, how
much more have ye than she, and yet how rarely are ye as happy, how
rarely do ye know that sweet contentment which, as in this case, came
from within?
“Go to the ant; consider her ways, and be wise, which, having no guide,
overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her
food in the harvest.”
In a short time the Formifolk seemed to become quite accustomed to
having Bulger and me among them, and they apparently “touched hands”
with me in quite as friendly a fashion as if I had been one of them.
One day Long Thumbs conducted me to the house of the most aged and
learned of the Soodopsies, Barrel Brow by name.
He received me very cordially, although I interrupted him at his
studies, for, as I entered his apartment, he was in the act of reading
four different books at the same time: two were lying on the floor, and
he was perusing their raised characters with the soles of his feet, and
two others were set up on a frame in front of him and he was deciphering
them with the tips of his fingers.
But when informed who I was he stopped work at once and taking up his
tablets, asked me a number of questions concerning the upper world, of
which he had, however, no very exalted opinion.
“You people,” said he, “if I understand correctly the ancient writings
of those of our nation who still preserved certain traditions of the
upper world, are endowed with several senses which are utterly lacking
in us, I am happy to say, for if I understand correctly ye have in the
first place a sense which ye call hearing, a most troublesome sense, for
by means of it ye are being constantly disturbed and annoyed by
vibrations of the air coming from afar. Now, they can be of no possible
good to you. Ye might as well have a sense that would inform you what
was going on in the moon. Therefore, my conclusion is, that the sense of
hearing only serves to distract and weaken the brain.
“Another sense that ye are possessed of,” continued Barrel Brow, “ye
call the sense of sight—a power even more useless and distracting than
hearing, for the reason that it enables you to know things which it is
utterly bootless to know, such as what your next door neighbors may be
doing, how the mountains are acting on the other side of your rivers,
how your sky, as ye call it, might feel if you could touch it with your
fingers, which ye can’t do, however; how soon rain will fall, which is a
useless piece of knowledge if ye have roofs to cover you, as I suppose
ye have; but the most ridiculous use which ye make of this sense of
sight is the manufacture of what ye call pictures, by means of which ye
seem to take the greatest pleasure in deceiving this very sense of which
ye are so very proud. If I understand correctly these pictures, if felt
of, are quite as smooth as that panel there, but so cunningly do ye draw
the lines and lay in the colors, whatever they may be, that ye really
succeed in deceiving yourselves and stand for hours in front of one of
these bits of trickery when ye might, if ye chose, feast your eyes, as
ye call it, upon the very thing which the trickster has imitated. Now,
as life is much shorter in the upper world than in ours, it seems very
strange to me that ye should wish to waste it in this foolish manner.
Then, there is another thing, little baron,” continued the learned
Barrel Brow, “which I wish to mention. It is this: The people of the
upper world pride themselves very much upon what they term the power of
speech, which, if I understand correctly, is a faculty they have of
expressing their thoughts to each other by violently expelling the air
from their lungs, and that this air, rushing into the ventilators of the
brain, which ye call ears, produces a sensation of sound as ye term it,
and in this way one of thy people standing at one end of the town might
make his wishes known to another standing at the other end. Now, thou
wilt pardon my thinking so, little baron, but this seems to me to be not
a whit above the brute creature, which, opening its vast jaws, thus sets
the air in motion in calling its young or breathing defiance at an
enemy. And if I understand correctly, little baron, so proud are thy
people of this power of speech that they insist upon making use of it at
all times and upon all occasions, and, strange to say, these ‘talkers’
can always find plenty of people to open their ears to these vibrations
of the air, although the effect is so wearying to the brain that in the
end they invariably fall asleep. But if I understand correctly, the
women are even fonder of displaying their skill in thus puffing out the
air from their lungs than the men are; but, that not satisfied with this
superior power of puffing out the words, they actually have recourse to
a potent herb which they steep in boiling water and drink as hot as
possible on account of its effect in loosening the tongue and allowing
the talker to do more puffing than she could otherwise.
“But all this, little baron,” continued the learned Barrel Brow, “might
be overlooked and regarded in the light of mere amusement were it not
for the fact, if I understand correctly, that brain ventilators being of
different sizes in different persons, the consequence is that these
puffs of air which ye use to make known your thoughts to each other
produce different effects upon different persons, and the result is,
that the people of the upper world spend half their time repeating the
puffs which they have already sent out, and that even then thou canst
rarely find two people who will agree exactly as to the number, kind,
strength, and meaning of the puffs blown into each other’s brain
ventilators, and that therefore has it become necessary to provide what
ye call judges to settle these disputes which often last for lifetimes,
the two parties spending their entire fortunes hiring witnesses to come
before these judges and imitate the sound which the air made when it was
set in motion years ago by the angry puffs of the two parties. I
sincerely trust, little baron,” wrote the learned Barrel Brow on his
tablet of silver, “that when thou returnest to thy people thou wilt make
known to them what I have written for thee to-day, for it is never too
late to correct a fault, and the longer that fault has lasted the
greater the credit for correcting it.”
I promised the learned Soodopsy to do as he requested, and then we
touched each other on the back of the head, which is the way they say
good-by in the land of the Formifolk, a touch on the forehead meaning,
“How d’ye do?”
CHAPTER XVIII
EARLY HISTORY OF THE SOODOPSIES AS RELATED BY BARREL BROW.—HOW THEY
WERE DRIVEN TO TAKE REFUGE IN THE UNDER WORLD, AND HOW THEY CAME
UPON THE MARBLE HIGHWAY.—THEIR DISCOVERY OF NATURAL GAS WHICH
YIELDS THEM LIGHT AND WARMTH, AND OF NATURE’S MAGNIFICENT TREASURE
HOUSE.—HOW THEY REPLACED THEIR TATTERED GARMENTS AND BEGAN TO
BUILD THE CITY OF SILVER.—THE STRANGE MISFORTUNES THAT CAME UPON
THEM, AND HOW THEY ROSE SUPERIOR TO THEM, TERRIBLE AS THEY WERE.
And, no doubt, dear friends, you would be glad to hear something about
the early history of the Soodopsies: who they were, where they came
from, and how they happened to find their way down into the World within
a World.
At least, this was the way I felt after I had been presented to the
learned Barrel Brow, and so the next time I called upon him I waited
patiently for him to finish reading the four books in front of him, and
then I said,—
“Be pleased, dear Master, to tell me something concerning the early
history of thy people, and to explain to me how they came to make their
way down into this underground world.”
“Ages and ages ago,” wrote the learned Barrel Brow, “my people lived
upon the shores of a beautiful land with a vast ocean to the north of
it, and in those days they had the same senses as the other people of
the upper world. It was a very fair land, indeed, so fair that, in the
words of the ancient chronicles, the sun looked in vain for a fairer.
Its rivers were deep and broad, its plains were rich and fertile, and
its mountains stored full of silver and gold and copper and tin, and so
easily mined were these metals that our people became famous as metal
workers; so deft in their workmanship that the other nations from far
and near came to us for swords and shields and spear heads and suits of
armor and table service and armlets and bracelets and, above all, for
lamps most gloriously chased and carved to hang in their palaces and
temples. And so we were very happy, until one terrible day the great
round world gave a twist and we were turned away from the sun, so that
its rays went slantingly over our heads and gave us no warmth.
“Ah me, I could weep now,” exclaimed the learned Barrel Brow, “after all
these centuries, when I think of the cruel fate that overtook my people.
In a few months the whole face of our fair land was covered with ice and
snow, and our cattle died, and many of our people, too, before they
could weave thick cloth to keep their delicate bodies from the pinching
cold. But this was not all; the great blue ocean which had until then
dashed its warm waves and white foam up against our shores now breathed
its icy breath full upon us, driving into our cellars to escape its
fury; and in a few brief months, to our horror, there came drifting down
upon us fields and mountains of ice, which the tempestuous waters cast
up against our shores with deafening crash. To remain there meant death,
swift and terrible, so the command was given to abandon homes and
firesides and escape to the southward, and this most of them did. But it
so happened that several hundred families belonging to the metal-working
guilds, who knew the underground passages to the mines as foresters know
the pathless wood, had taken refuge in the vast underground caverns with
all the goods they could carry. Poor deluded creatures! they thought
that this sudden coming of the winter blast, of the blinding snow and
vast floating fields of ice, was but a freak of nature, and that in a
few months the old warmth and the old sunshine would come back again.
“Alas, months went by and their supply of food was almost exhausted and
the entrances to the mines were closed by gigantic blocks of ice
cemented into one great mass by the snow which the gray clouds had
sifted down upon them. There was now no escape that way. Their only hope
was to make their way underground to some portal to the upper world.
“So, with lighted torches but with hearts plunged in the darkness of
despair, they kept on their way, when one day, or one night, they knew
not which, their leaders suddenly came upon a broad street of marble
opened by nature’s own hands. It was skirted by a softly flowing river
that swarmed with fish in scales and shells and skin, and here our
people halted to eat and drink and rest, and while one of their number
was striking his flint on one occasion to make a fire to cook a meal, to
his surprise and delight a tongue of flame darted up from the rocky
floor and continued to burn, giving light and warmth to them.
“As they had brought their tools—their drills and chisels and files and
gravers and blow-pipes—with them in their carts and wagons, they made