Dear Don Guillermo: You will be very much surprised, notwithstanding the forewarning of intention, to find yourself unexpectedly greeted in Heraclea by your little favorites Lovieta and Lavoca. It has cost us a painful struggle to part with them; but we should have been unmindful of our privilege and duty as conservators for their future welfare, in joyous transmission, if we had consulted the disposition of our selfish feelings. Even if our household was of the most suitable description known to civilization for rearing children, I should not have hesitated a moment in imploring your influence for their admission into the Heraclean school. Consolata, with unprejudiced consideration, fully appreciates the advantages of the protective course, for conferring present and future happiness.

Realmente, the evidence appeals so directly to the affectionate understanding, the ni?as fully comprehend the advantages that it will afford, which in thoughtful mood they expressed, by asking us if we did not think the Manatitlans and Heracleans from having such nice parents for so long a time were better than good? I am free to confess that I felt a wince at the touch palpable the question conveyed; tears glistened in the eyes of Consolata, as she enfolded the unconscious challengers in her arms, with a languaged embrace that impressed them with affirmative conviction, while it imparted a desire for their 418forgiveness, which trebly admonished me of my own unworthiness. It is strange how little use we now have for voiced words to give expression to our thoughts. This silent source of happy intercourse bespeaks with increasing flow our current perception of a joyous unity in affection, including in its circle of communion M. Baudois and our neighborly confluents. In our morning and evening walks for the exampled demonstration of happy regeneration, that in practice its source may be made known to others, reflections from objects are so similar in impression that a glance is sufficient for the conveyance of coincident thought comparisons. Last evening, while on our way to visit the “industrial” establishments of our foreign “citizens” (by invitation), who are constantly begging for governmental concessions for the encouragement of their enterprising “undertakings,” we passed many of our black priestly scentipedes, and it was with conscious emotions of joy that I felt the confiding pressure of Consolata’s arm, as she averted her face to avoid the necessity of hypocritical salutation. As my governmental position had evoked from Mr. Hogg an invitation to visit his distillery, I proposed to M. Baudois the advisability of taking the family, that we might observe the effect produced by the improvements, upon my wife and children. With his approval they were taken; and while we were cautiously picking our path along the causeway crossing of the slough that separates the brewery premises of Von Guzzledorf from those of the distillery, Mr. Hogg, in his obsequious desire to honor our visit with propitious attention, hastened to meet us with his ponderous body and jowled cheeks and neck in jellied tremor from the emotions of a waddling gait, in gloat of the expectant relish of selfish gratification. After a wheezing prelude, with a cough that in fitful gusts conveyed the foul odors of gamey engorgement, he lamented his asthmatic affliction, that refused to yield 419to remedies, although he had spared no expense to avail himself of the best talent that could be secured for “love” or money. But recently, he said, he had obtained great relief from the prescriptions of Dr. Bull, a member of the royal college of surgeons, who had recently come out from London, at his instigation; a man of eminent ability who had gained a great reputation for his prophylactic pills, a box of which every family should keep in their house, to be taken regular every morning. While engaged in this preliminary detail of health and its providential means of preservation, Lovieta and Lavoca with ill suppressed disdainful sniffs of comparison, allowed their eyes to alternate between his person and a family of his namesake’s, who, with a strong personal resemblance and odor, were indulging in the luxurious contributions from the neighboring brewery and kindred establishments bordering upon the slough.

Our visits to the distillery and brewery were certainly not propitious for securing the desired grant of land, for the enlargement of their industrial facilities, notwithstanding the sacrificial offering of a box of Wolf’s Scheidam Schnapps and a dozen of old London Dock Sherry, of 1824. When leaving, Mr. Hogg begged me for the welfare of myself and family, not to forget that Dr. Bull was for the present stopping at the Hotel del Mundo. On our return home, a bath was held in requisition for purification from the attaint of the visit. Under these contrasted impressions, our thoughts have withheld us from instinctive gratification by the force of repulsive comparison. Of course, our singularity has evoked the despiteful recognition of the evil disposed, but we feel an enduring recompense in the loving reciprocations of our household; for we no longer suffer from those transitions which of old subjected us in a day to mutations, that realized within the zones of affection, tropical heats, with terror motor accompaniments of tornado, 420thunder gusts, and intermediate alternations to the frosty stillness of the frigid.

With realized happiness, we are encouraged with the approving commendations of our Manatitlan sojourners to believe that a perfect eradication of the parental past will be accomplished in the memories of our children, under Heraclean tuition, for in the change they already recognize the happy cause. When a sufficient time has elapsed for the fulfillment of an end so desirable, we shall, with the pr?tor’s permission, make Heraclea our permanent home. Then, with the privilege of monthly visits to our daughters, we shall enter upon an era of happiness that we feel assured will outlast the records of time; for we have already tested the efficacy of purity and goodness, in sufficient degree for an initial impression of immortality. In companionship with you and the members of the corps, under the direction of the Dosch, and the example of the Heracleans, I shall endeavor to amend my own crotchety humors, which, if we except the superstitious devotion of instinct to rites and ceremonies, and herding predilections, are in no great degree above those I affect to despise, in the matter of stability. But I am fully impressed with the belief, that Creative wisdom devised purity and goodness, as the simple creed of self legislation and approving test of immortality.

I will now offer for your remorseful consideration, a counterblast. Have you reflected upon the responsibility you have incurred in leading us astray from the glorious system of rewards and punishments offered for the encouragement and correction of indulgences, by the “good” old mother church? Why did you not leave us in ignorance of the audacious Manatitlan system of education, that dares usurp with self legislation the infallible promulgations of law and gospel for the correction of excessive indulgences. The substitution of direct responsibility for 421salvation by saving grace, deprives instinctive humanity of its barter privilege of using the gold of its god as a compromising compensation for indulgence, and the consolations of confession and absolution, causing us, especially, to hold them in extreme contempt as subterfuges begot from the vileness of hereditary cause and effect. The instinctive reverence we once paid to priestly mediums of heavenly assurance against the devices of hell, you have turned into the bitterness of shame, from the reflection of past humiliation imposed by their impudent assumptions of delegated divine authority.

Our present feeling of responsibility for perfection in purity and goodness, revolts at the thought that our perceptions were ever so weak as to believe there ever existed in the pampered bodies of priests, other than a swinish divinity endowed with an instinctive audacity that prefers deception to honest labor. We now avoid church and street mummeries of host processions and masses, as a profanation of good instinctive common sense, as our presence would implicate us in the blasphemous degradation. To our chance acquaintance with you, fostered with affectionate sympathy, I must charge this defection, also the retrospective pangs of shame engendered from sensitive regrets for my stupidity, which suffers from revival with every rattling peal of church bells. Not content with casting these heretical shadows across our path, you have devised to rob us of our ni?as, our abiding source of love. Bethink you of the accountability you have incurred, with your chances of self-forgiveness.

With a falcon script in acknowledgment we shall feel assured that you will bestow upon our ni?étas a father’s care and love.... P. G.

Mr. Welson joyfully exclaimed, as he closed the letter, “It is really reviving to hope, to hear a provincial, 422of Spanish descent, express himself with such perceptive clearness, in freedom from the thraldom of sensual embargo, which has rendered our race the phantasmal victims of stomach indulgence, from time out of date!”

The Dosch, in confirmation of Mr. Welson’s train of thought, urged, “It has required our utmost efforts to hold our feelings of contempt subdued that they might not altogether usurp the rule of discreet generosity, in view of the obstinate stupidity of civilized Giga races; who, with star gazing, and moon conjectures, forget their preservative accountability to Creative indications designed for the attainment of a living realization of immortality. How it has been possible for the races of civilized humanity to exist in individual communion with self, and the advantage it affords for deductive comparison, aside from the mutations of attrition, through so many cycles of re-degradation, without discovering the active cause and remedial source, puzzles our comprehension. The ridiculous abstractions of your philosophers, which in thoughtless aberration leads them to lose the substance while pursuing the shadow, was aptly illustrated by some of our frolicsome dames, who decoyed Dr. Baāhar, in successful test of his lack of discernment, to follow the shadow, more vehemently, from its supposed evasions, than he had previously bestowed upon the gossamer substance of a butterfly. While amusing themselves with a morning volant airing upon a beautiful azure-tinted specimen of the L. Matutinal in its wafting sips from the flowers of the latifundium, it caught the covetous gaze of the doctor, who was on his way with his net for a hunt beyond the walls. After pursuing its doubling variations in flight, which from graceful composure seemed void of evasive intention, to the verge of vexatious anxiety, while his back was to the sun, it suddenly soared, substituting its shadow, which the 423dames made still more attractive by prismatic colors rayed from their silicoth mantles. His efforts grew more frantic from the apparently miraculous escape of the coveted prize through the meshes of the net; which caused the infatuated pursuer to suppose that its illusive power indicated a new species. To our surprise the illusive chase continued with increased avidity as the prismatic colors were varied, the shadow being kept just in advance of the net’s swoop, until after an hour’s pursuit, the excited naturalist fell exhausted upon his knees in the formulistic attitude of prayer. In this position, with upraised eyes and hands, he watched imploringly the lessening shadow of his morning’s devotions. Although surrounded with evidences, which should have led to an impulsive detection of the cause of the tantalizing movements, previous to substitution, there never was for a moment the least hesitation that indicated suspicion or doubt of the limn’s substance reality.”

In character, nothing has surprised us more than the insensibility of Gigas, who claim the disciplined aid of collegiate education, to the effects evolved from their own experience. Yet, notwithstanding the contempt you personally feel for the selfish enactments of your past life, your relapse, in partial degree, would not appear strange if subjected to reversed example. But with the Heracleans, from hereditary usage the impression has become immutable. The contrast will lead you to realize the great difficulties that will attend the inceptive stages required for reversing the progressive position of your people; as they have been accustomed to advance with their backs to the future from time immemorial, the change will prove embarrassing for many generations. These contrasted facts, which expose in extremity the habits of usage, with the inveteracy incurred for good or evil, has caused us to view the act of self-denial on the part of the parents of your 424pets, as a trustful deviation that exceeds any in our former experience, and it will certainly insure a harmonious transmission. If the mother’s affection had been void of delusive infatuation, permitting her to act in accordance with the promptings of its natural expression, the devisement of the children to the Heraclean school would not have appeared strange, as unprejudiced by delusive agency and its evil tendencies the love of maternity extends to the future. In exemplification of the evil tendencies of your delusive legendary book of creeds, that has defied the efforts of ninety-five thousand human commentators to render it comprehensible, with accumulating legions of preaching expounders, I will relate an event that transpired during the inceptive period of my auramental labors.

The dramatis person? in the triangular scriptural duel I am about to relate, for exemplifying the utter perversion of intelligent affection, wrought by this precedental tramway to discord, were in scenic representation, a grandmother of Scotch extraction, derived from the amiable clan McGregor, her daughter, and granddaughter, who in passionate exacerbation occupied counter positions in domestic antagonism. The locale of the scenic enactment, for your more perfect understanding of its mouthpat entente cordiale, we will award to Londonderry, Ireland. Having, by a strange fatality peculiar to auramentation in youth, been led by diverse circumstances to become a member of the household, I was forced to witness the repulsive drama in all the progressive stages to culmination. When in the morning avocations the three “fell out” to disagree, from a flux of hereditary passion, they would exhaust their store of word provocations, and then have recourse to prayer, after the mid-mother had read a formal challenge from the creed “omnium gatherum.” These formulistic rites concluded, and the male members dispersed to their 425employments foreign to the house, the three antagonists would enter the “sitting-room” to decide their quarrel, each taking a corner of the room with their book of missals in hand. With the room appropriately darkened, they would each, with hasty avidity, hurriedly search for some virulent passage of “scripture” of innuendic import, and when found it would be hurled in venomous recital against her adversarie............