Tired of reading? Add this page to your Bookmarks or Favorites and finish it later.
|
|
"I reassert my former assertion," began Kopy-Keck, with a plunge.
"There is not a fault in the princess, body or soul; only they are
wrong put together. Listen to me now, Hum-Drum, and I will tell you
in brief what I think. Don't speak. Don't answer me. I won't hear
you till I have done.-- At that decisive moment, when souls seek
their appointed habitations, two eager souls met, struck,
rebounded, lost their way, and arrived each at the wrong place. The
soul of the princess was one of those, and she went far astray. She
does not belong by rights to this world at all, but to some other
planet, probably Mercury. Her proclivity to her true sphere
destroys all the natural influence which this orb would otherwise
possess over her corporeal frame. She cares for nothing here. There
is no relation between her and this world.
"She must therefore be taught, by the sternest compulsion, to take
an interest in the earth as the earth. She must study every
department of its history--its animal history; its vegetable
history; its mineral history; its social history; its moral
history; its political history, its scientific history; its
literary history; its musical history; its artistical history;
above all, its metaphysical history. She must begin with the
Chinese dynasty and end with Japan. But first of all she must study
geology, and especially the history of the extinct races of
animals-their natures, their habits, their loves, their hates,
their revenges. She must--"
"Hold, h-o-o-old!" roared Hum-Drum. "It is certainly my turn now.
My rooted and insubvertible conviction is, that the causes of the
anomalies evident in the princess's condition are strictly and
solely physical. But that is only tantamount to acknowledging that
they exist. Hear my opinion.-- From some cause or other, of no
importance to our inquiry, the motion of her heart has been
reversed. That remarkable combination of the suction and the
force-pump works the wrong way-I mean in the case of the
unfortunate princess: it draws in where it should force out, and
forces out where it should draw in. The offices of the auricles and
the ventricles are subverted. The blood is sent forth by the veins,
and returns by the arteries. Consequently it is running the wrong
way through all her corporeal organism--lungs and all. Is it then
at all mysterious, seeing that such is the case, that on the other
particular of gravitation as well, she should differ from normal
humanity? My proposal for the cure is this:--
|