Title: To Whom This May Come - 1898
Author: Bellamy, Edward, 1850-1898
Language: English
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TO WHOM THIS MAY COME

By Edward Bellamy

1898


It is now about a year since I took passage at Calcutta in the ship
Adelaide for New York. We had baffling weather till New Amsterdam Island
was sighted, where we took a new point of departure. Three days later,
a terrible gale struck us Four days we flew before it, whither, no one
knew, for neither sun, moon, nor stars were at any time visible, and we
could take no observation. Toward midnight of the fourth day, the glare
of lightning revealed the Adelaide in a hopeless position, close in upon
a low-lying shore, and driving straight toward it. All around and astern
far out to sea was such a maze of rocks and shoals that it was a miracle
we had come so far. Presently the ship struck, and almost instantly went
to pieces, so great was the violence of the sea. I gave myself up for
lost, and was indeed already past the worst of drowning, when I was
recalled to consciousness by being thrown with a tremendous shock upon
the beach. I had just strength enough to drag myself above the reach of
the waves, and then I fell down and knew no more.

When I awoke, the storm was over. The sun, already halfway up the sky,
had dried my clothing, and renewed the vigor of my bruised and aching
limbs. On sea or shore I saw no vestige of my ship or my companions, of
whom I appeared the sole survivor. I was not, however, alone. A group
of persons, apparently the inhabitants of the country, stood near,
observing me with looks of friendliness which at once freed me from
apprehension as to my treatment at their hands. They were a white and
handsome people, evidently of a high order of civilization, though I
recognized in them the traits of no race with which I was familiar.

Seeing that it was evidently their idea of etiquette to leave it to
strangers to open conversation, I addressed them in English, but failed
to elicit any response beyond deprecating smiles. I then accosted
them successively in the French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and
Portuguese tongues, but with no better results. I began to be very much
puzzled as to what could possibly be the nationality of a white and
evidently civilized race to which no one of the tongues of the great
seafaring nations was intelligible. The oddest thing of all was the
unbroken silence with which they contemplated my efforts to open
communication with them. It was as if they were agreed not to give me
a clue to their language by even a whisper; for while they regarded one
another with looks of smiling intelligence, they did not once open their
lips. But if this behavior suggested that they were amusing themselves
at my expense, that presumption was negatived by the unmistakable
friendliness and sympathy which their whole bearing expressed.

A most extraordinary conjecture occurred to me. Could it be that these
strange people were dumb? Such a freak of nature as an entire race thus
afflicted had never indeed been heard of, but who could say what wonders
the unexplored vasts of the great Southern Ocean might thus far have
hid from human ken? Now, among the scraps of useless information which
lumbered my mind was an acquaintance with the deaf-and-dumb alphabet,
and forthwith I began to spell out with my fingers some of the phrases I
had already uttered to so little effect. My resort to the sign language
overcame the last remnant of gravity in the already profusely smiling
group. The small boys now rolled on the ground in convulsions of mirth,
while the grave and reverend seniors, who had hitherto kept them in
check, were fain momentarily to avert their faces, and I could see their
bodies shaking with laughter. The greatest clown in the world never
received a more flattering tribute to his powers to amuse than had been
called forth by mine to make myself understood. Naturally, however, I
was not flattered, but on the contrary entirely discomfited. Angry I
could not well be, for the deprecating manner in which all, excepting of
course the boys, yielded to their perception of the ridiculous, and the
distress they showed at their failure in self-control, made me seem the
aggressor. It was as if they were very sorry for me, and ready to put
themselves wholly at my service, if I would only refrain from reducing
them to a state of disability by being so exquisitely absurd. Certainly
this evidently amiable race had a very embarrassing way of receiving
strangers.

Just at this moment, when my bewilderment was fast verging on
exasperation, relief came. The circle opened, and a little elderly
man, who had evidently come in haste, confronted me, and, bowing very
politely, addressed me in English. His voice was the most pitiable
abortion of a voice I had ever heard. While having all the defects in
articulation of a child's who is just beginning to talk, it was not
even a child's in strength of tone, being in fact a mere alternation of
squeaks and whispers inaudible a rod away. With some difficulty I was,
however, able to follow him pretty nearly.

"As the official interpreter," he said, "I extend you a cordial welcome
to these islands. I was sent for as soon as you were discovered, but
being at some distance, I was unable to arrive until this moment. I
regret this, as my presence would have saved you embarrassment.
My countrymen desire me to intercede with you to pardon the wholly
involuntary and uncontrollable mirth provoked by your attempts to
communicate with them. You see, they understood you perfectly well, but
could not answer you."

"Merciful heavens!" I exclaimed, horrified to find my surmise correct;
"can it be that they are all thus afflicted? Is it possible that you are
the only man among them who has the power of speech?"

Again it appeared that, quite unintentionally, I had said something
excruciatingly funny; for at my speech there arose a sound of gentle
laughter from the group, now augmented to quite an assemblage, which
drowned the plashing of the waves on the beach at our feet. Even the
interpreter smiled.

"Do they think it so amusing to be dumb?" I asked.

"They find it very amusing," replied the interpreter, "that their
inability to speak should be regarded by any one as an affliction; for
it is by the voluntary disuse of the organs of articulation that they
have lost the power of speech, and, as a consequence, the ability even
to understand speech."

"But," said I, somewhat puzzled by this statement, "did n't you just
tell me that they understood me, though they could not reply, and are
they not laughing now at what I just said?"

"It is you they understood, not your words," answered the interpreter.
"Our speech now is gibberish to them, as unintelligible in itself as the
growling of animals; but they know what we are saying, because they
know our thoughts. You must know that these are the islands of the
mind-readers."

Such were the circumstances of my introduction to this extraordinary
people. The official interpreter being charged by virtue of his office
with the first entertainment of shipwrecked members of the talking
nations, I became his guest, and passed a number of days under his roof
before going out to any considerable extent among the people. My first
impression had been the somewhat oppressive one that the power to read
the thoughts of others could be possessed only by beings of a superior
order to man. It was the first effort of the interpreter to disabuse me
of this notion. It appeared from his account that the experience of the
mind-readers was a case simply of a slight acceleration, from special
causes, of the course of universal human evolution, which in time was
destined to lead to the disuse of speech and the substitution of direct
mental vision on the part of all races. This rapid evolution of these
islanders was accounted for by their peculiar origin and circumstances.

Some three centuries before Christ, one of the Parthian kings of
Persia, of the dynasty of the Arsacid, undertook a persecution of the
soothsayers and magicians in his realms. These people were credited
with supernatural powers by popular prejudice, but in fact were merely
persons of special gifts in the way of hypnotizing, mind-reading,
thought transference, and such arts, which they exercised for their own
gain.

Too much in awe of the soothsayers to do them outright violence, the
king resolved to banish them, and to this end put them, with their
families, on ships and sent them to Ceylon. When, however, the fleet was
in the neighborhood of that island, a great storm scattered it, and one
of the ships, after being driven for many days before the tempest, was
wrecked upon one of an archipelago of uninhabited islands far to the
south, where the survivors settled. Naturally, the posterity of the
parents possessed of such peculiar gifts had developed extraordinary
psychical powers.

Having set before them the end of evolving a new and advanced order
of humanity, they had aided the development of these powers by a rigid
system of stirpiculture. The result was that, after a few centuries,
mind-reading became so general that language fell into disuse as a means
of communicating ideas. For many generations the power of speech still
remained voluntary, but gradually the vocal organs had become atrophied,
and for several hundred years the power of articulation had been wholly
lost. Infants for a few months after birth did, indeed, still emit
inarticulate cries, but at an age when in less advanced races these
cries began to be articulate, the children of the mind-readers developed
the power of direct vision, and ceased to attempt to use the voice.

The fact that the existence of the mind-readers had never been found
out by the rest of the world was explained by two considerations. In the
first place, the group of islands was small, and occupied a corner of
the Indian Ocean quite out of the ordinary track of ships. In the second
place, the approach to the islands was rendered so desperately perilous
by terrible currents, and the maze of outlying rocks and shoals, that
it was next to impossible for any ship to touch their shores save as a
wreck. No ship at least had ever done so in the two thousand years since
the mind-readers' own arrival, and the Adelaide had made the one hundred
and twenty-third such wreck.

Apart from motives of humanity, the mind-readers made strenuous
efforts to rescue shipwrecked persons, for from them alone, through the
interpreters, could they obtain information of the outside world. Little
enough this proved when, as often happened, the sole survivor of the
shipwreck was some ignorant sailor, who had no news to communicate
beyond the latest varieties of forecastle blasphemy. My hosts gratefully
assured me that, as a person of some little education, they considered
me a veritable godsend. No less a task was mine than to relate to them
the history of the world for the past two centuries, and often did I
wish, for their sakes, that I had made a more exact study of it.

It is solely for the purpose of communicating with shipwrecked strangers
of the talking nations that the office of the interpreters exists.
When, as from time to time happens, a child is born with some powers of
articulation, he is set apart, and trained to talk in the interpreters'
college. Of course the partial atrophy of the vocal organs, from
which even the best interpreters suffer, renders many of the sounds of
language impossible for them. None, for instance, can pronounce _v, f_,
or _s_; and as to the sound represented by _th_, it is five generations
since the last interpreter lived who could utter it. But for the
occasional inter-marriage of shipwrecked strangers with the island-ers,
it is probable that the supply of interpreters would have long ere this
quite failed.

I imagine that the very unpleasant sensations which followed the
realization that I was among people who, while inscrutable to me, knew
my every thought, were very much what any one would have experienced in
the same case. They were very comparable to the panic which accidental
nudity causes a person among races whose custom it is to conceal the
figure with drapery. I wanted to run away and hide myself. If I analyzed
my feeling, it did not seem to arise so much from the consciousness of
any particularly heinous secrets, as from the knowledge of a swarm of
fatuous, ill-natured, and unseemly thoughts and half thoughts concerning
those around me, and concerning myself, which it was insufferable that
any person should peruse in however benevolent a spirit. But while my
chagrin and distress on this account were at first intense, they were
also very shortlived, for almost immediately I discovered that the
very knowledge that my mind was overlooked by others operated to check
thoughts that might be painful to them, and that, too, without more
effort of the will than a kindly person exerts to check the utterance of
disagreeable remarks. As a very few lessons in the elements of courtesy
cures a decent person of inconsiderate speaking, so a brief experience
among the mind-readers went far in my case to check inconsiderate
thinking. It must not be supposed, however, that courtesy among the
mind-readers prevents them from thinking pointedly and freely concerning
one another upon serious occasions, any more than the finest courtesy
among the talking races restrains them from speaking to one another
with entire plainness when it it desirable to do so. Indeed, among the
mind-readers, politeness never can extend to the point of insincerity,
as among talking nations, seeing that it is always one another's real
and inmost thought that they read. I may fitly mention here, though it
was not till later that I fully understood why it must necessarily be
so, that one need feel far less chagrin at the complete revelation of
his weaknesses to a mind-reader than at the slightest betrayal of them
to one of another race. For the very reason that the mind-reader reads
all your thoughts, particular thoughts are judged with reference to the
general tenor of thought. Your characteristic and habitual frame of
mind is what he takes account of. No one need fear being misjudged by
a mind-reader on account of sentiments or emotions which are not
representative of the real character or general attitude. Justice may,
indeed, be said to be a necessary consequence of mind-reading.

As regards the interpreter himself, the instinct of courtesy was not
long needed to check wanton or offensive thoughts. In all my life
before, I had been very slow to form friendships, but before I had been
three days in the company of this stranger of a strange race, I had
become enthusiastically devoted to him. It was impossible not to be.
The peculiar joy of friendship is the sense of being understood by our
friend as we are not by others, and yet of being loved in spite of
the understanding. Now here was one whose every word testified to a
knowledge of my secret thoughts and motives which the oldest and nearest
of my former friends had never, and could never, have approximated.
Had such a knowledge bred in him contempt of me, I should neither have
blamed him nor been at all surprised. Judge, then, whether the cordial
friendliness which he showed was likely to leave me indifferent.

Imagine my incredulity when he informed me that our friendship was not
based upon more than ordinary mutual suitability of temperaments. The
faculty of mind-reading, he explained, brought minds so close together,
and so heightened sympathy, that the lowest order of friendship between
mind-readers implied a mutual delight such as only rare friends enjoyed
among other races. He assured me that later on, when I came to know
others of his race, I should find, by the far greater intensity of
sympathy and affection I should conceive for some of them, how true this
saying was.

It may be inquired how, on beginning to mingle with the mind-readers
in general, I managed to communicate with them, seeing that, while they
could read my thoughts, they could not, like the interpreter, respond to
them by speech. I must here explain that, while these people have no
use for a spoken language, a written language is needful for purposes
of record. They consequently all know how to write. Do they, then, write
Persian? Luckily for me, no. It appears that, for a long period after
mind-reading was fully developed, not only was spoken language disused,
but also written, no records whatever having been kept during this
period. The delight of the people in the newly found power of direct
mind-to-mind vision, whereby pictures of the total mental state were
communicated, instead of the imperfect descriptions of single thoughts
which words at best could give, induced an invincible distaste for the
laborious impotence of language.

When, however, the first intellectual intoxication had, after several
generations, somewhat sobered down, it was recognized that records
of the past were desirable, and that the despised medium of words was
needful to preserve it. Persian had meanwhile been wholly forgotten. In
order to avoid the prodigious task of inventing a complete new language,
the institution of the interpreters was now set up, with the idea of
acquiring through them a knowledge of some of the languages of the
outside world from the mariners wrecked on the islands.

Owing to the fact that most of the castaway ships were English, a better
knowledge of that tongue was acquired than of any other, and it
was adopted as the written language of the people. As a rule, my
acquaintances wrote slowly and laboriously, and yet the fact that they
knew exactly what was in my mind rendered their responses so apt
that, in my conversations with the slowest speller of them all, the
interchange of thought was as rapid and incomparably more accurate and
satisfactory than the fastest talkers attain to.

It was but a very short time after I had begun to extend my acquaintance
among the mind-readers before I discovered how truly the interpreter had
told me that I should find others to whom, on account of greater natural
congeniality, I should become more strongly attached than I had been to
him. This was in no wise, however, because I loved him less, but them
more. I would fain write particularly of some of these beloved friends,
comrades of my heart, from whom I first learned the undreamed-of
possibilities of human friendship, and how ravishing the satisfactions
of sympathy may be. Who, among those who may read this, has not known
that sense of a gulf fixed between soul and soul which mocks love I Who
has not felt that loneliness which oppresses the heart that loves it
best! Think no longer that this gulf is eternally fixed, or is any
necessity of human nature. It has no existence for the race of our
fellow-men which I describe, and by that fact we may be assured that
eventually it will be bridged also for us. Like the touch of shoulder to
shoulder, like the clasping of hands, is the contact of their minds and
their sensation of sympathy.

I say that I would fain speak more particularly of some of my friends,
but waning strength forbids, and moreover, now that I think of it,
another consideration would render any comparison of their characters
rather confusing than instructive to a reader. This is the fact that, in
common with the rest of the mind-readers, they had no names. Every one
had, indeed, an arbitrary sign for his designation in records, but it
has no sound value. A register of these names is kept, so they can at
any time be ascertained, but it is very common to meet persons who have
forgotten titles which are used solely for biographical and official
purposes. For social intercourse names are of course superfluous, for
these people accost one another merely by a mental act of attention,
and refer to third persons by transferring their mental pictures,--
something as dumb persons might by means of photographs. Something so,
I say, for in the pictures of one another's personalities which the
mind-readers conceive, the physical aspect, as might be expected with
people who directly contemplate each other's minds and hearts, is a
subordinate element.

I have already told how my first qualms of morbid self-consciousness at
knowing that my mind was an open book to all around me disappeared as I
learned that the very completeness of the disclosure of my thoughts and
motives was a guarantee that I would be judged with a fairness and a
sympathy such as even self-judgment cannot pretend to, affected as that
is by so many subtle reactions. The assurance of being so judged by
every one might well seem an inestimable privilege to one accustomed
to a world in which not even the tenderest love is any pledge of
comprehension, and yet I soon discovered that open-mindedness had a
still greater profit than this. How shall I describe the delightful
exhilaration of moral health and cleanness, the breezy oxygenated mental
condition, which resulted from the consciousness that I had absolutely
nothing concealed! Truly I may say that I enjoyed myself. I think surely
that no one needs to have had my marvelous experience to sympathize with
this portion of it. Are we not all ready to agree that this having a
curtained chamber where we may go to grovel, out of the sight of our
fellows, troubled only by a vague apprehension that God may look over
the top, is the most demoralizing incident in the human condition? It
is the existence within the soul of this secure refuge of lies which has
always been the despair of the saint and the exultation of the knave.
It is the foul cellar which taints the whole house above, be it never so
fine.

What stronger testimony could there be to the instinctive consciousness
that concealment is debauching, and openness our only cure, than the
world-old conviction of the virtue of confession for the soul, and that
the uttermost exposing of one's worst and foulest is the first step
toward moral health? The wickedest man, if he could but somehow attain
to writhe himself inside out as to his soul, so that its full sickness
could be seen, would feel ready for a new life. Nevertheless, owing to
the utter impotence of the words to convey mental conditions in their
totality, or to give other than mere distortions of them, confession is,
we must needs admit, but a mockery of that longing for self-revelation
to which it testifies. But think what health and soundness there must
be for souls among a people who see in every face a conscience which,
unlike their own, they cannot sophisticate, who confess one another
with a glance, and shrive with a smile! Ah, friends, let me now predict,
though ages may elapse before the slow event shall justify me, that
in no way will the mutual vision of minds, when at last it shall be
perfected, so enhance the blessedness of mankind as by rending the veil
of self, and leaving no spot of darkness in the mind for lies to hide
in. Then shall the soul no longer be a coal smoking among ashes, but a
star in a crystal sphere.

From what I have said of the delights which friendship among the
mind-readers derives from the perfection of the mental rapport, it may
be imagined how intoxicating must be the experience when one of the
friends is a woman, and the subtle attractions and correspondences
of sex touch with passion the intellectual sympathy. With my first
venturing into society I had begun, to their extreme amusement, to fall
in love with the women right and left. In the perfect frankness which is
the condition of all intercourse among this people, these adorable women
told me that what I felt was only friendship, which was a very good
thing, but wholly different from love, as I should well know if I were
beloved. It was difficult to believe that the melting emotions which I
had experienced in their company were the result merely of the friendly
and kindly attitude of their minds toward mine; but when I found that
I was affected in the same way by every gracious woman I met, I had to
make up my mind that they must be right about it, and that I should have
to adapt myself to a world in which, friendship being a passion, love
must needs be nothing less than rapture.

The homely proverb, "Every Jack has his Gill," may, I suppose, be taken
to mean that for all men there are certain women expressly suited by
mental and moral as well as by physical constitution. It is a thought
painful, rather than cheering, that this may be the truth, so altogether
do the chances preponderate against the ability of these elect ones
to recognize each other even if they meet, seeing that speech is so
inadequate and so misleading a medium of self-revelation. But among the
mind-readers, the search for one's ideal mate is a quest reasonably sure
of being crowned with success, and no one dreams of wedding unless it
be; for so to do, they consider, would be to throw away the choicest
blessing of life, and not alone to wrong themselves and their unfound
mates, but likewise those whom they themselves and those undiscovered
mates might wed. Therefore, passionate pilgrims, they go from isle to
isle till they find each other, and, as the population of the islands is
but small, the pilgrimage is not often long.

When I met her first we were in company, and I was struck by the sudden
stir and the looks and smiling interest with which all around turned and
regarded us, the women with moistened eyes. They had read her thought
when she saw me, but this I did not know, neither what was the custom
in these matters, till afterward. But I knew, from the moment she first
fixed her eyes on me, and I felt her mind brooding upon mine, how truly
I had been told by those other women that the feeling with which they
had inspired me was not love.

With people who become acquainted at a glance, and old friends in an
hour, wooing is naturally not a long process. Indeed, it may be said
that between lovers among mind-readers there is no wooing, but merely
recognition. The day after we met, she became mine.

Perhaps I cannot better illustrate how subordinate the merely physical
element is in the impression which mind-readers form of their friends
than by mentioning an incident that occurred some months after our
union. This was my discovery, wholly by accident, that my love, in whose
society I had almost constantly been, had not the least idea what was
the color of my eyes, or whether my hair and complexion were light
or dark. Of course, as soon as I asked her the question, she read the
answer in my mind, but she admitted that she had previously had no
distinct impression on those points. On the other hand, if in the
blackest midnight I should come to her, she would not need to ask who
the comer was. It is by the mind, not the eye, that these people know
one another. It is really only in their relations to soulless and
inanimate things that they need eyes at all.

It must not be supposed that their disregard of one another's bodily
aspect grows out of any ascetic sentiment. It is merely a necessary
consequence of their power of directly apprehending mind, that whenever
mind is closely associated with matter the latter is comparatively
neglected on account of the greater interest of the former, suffering as
lesser things always do when placed in immediate contrast with greater.
Art is with them confined to the inanimate, the human form having, for
the reason mentioned, ceased to inspire the artist. It will be naturally
and quite correctly inferred that among such a race physical beauty is
not the important factor in human fortune and felicity that it elsewhere
is. The absolute openness of their minds and hearts to one another makes
their happiness far more dependent on the moral and mental qualities
of their companions than upon their physical. A genial temperament, a
wide-grasping, godlike intellect, a poet soul, are incomparably more
fascinating to them than the most dazzling combination conceivable of
mere bodily graces.

A woman of mind and heart has no more need of beauty to win love in
these islands than a beauty elsewhere of mind or heart. I should mention
here, perhaps, that this race, which makes so little account of physical
beauty, is itself a singularly handsome one. This is owing doubtless in
part to the absolute compatibility of temperaments in all the marriages,
and partly also to the reaction upon the body of a state of ideal mental
and moral health and placidity.

Not being myself a mind-reader, the fact that my love was rarely
beautiful in form and face had doubtless no little part in attracting my
devotion. This, of course, she knew, as she knew all my thoughts,
and, knowing my limitations, tolerated and forgave the element of
sensuousness in my passion. But if it must have seemed to her so little
worthy in comparison with the high spiritual communion which her race
know as love, to me it became, by virtue of her almost superhuman
relation to me, an ecstasy more ravishing surely than any lover of my
race tasted before. The ache at the heart of the intensest love is the
impotence of words to make it perfectly understood to its object. But my
passion was without this pang, for my heart was absolutely open to her I
loved. Lovers may imagine, but I cannot describe, the ecstatic thrill
of communion into which this consciousness transformed every tender
emotion. As I considered what mutual love must be where both parties are
mind-readers, I realized the high communion which my sweet companion had
sacrificed for me.

She might indeed comprehend her lover and his love for her, but the
higher satisfaction of knowing that she was comprehended by him and her
love understood, she had foregone. For that I should ever attain the
power of mind-reading was out of the question, the faculty never having
been developed in a single lifetime.

Why my inability should move my dear companion to such depths of pity
I was not able fully to understand until I learned that mind-reading is
chiefly held desirable, not for the knowledge of others which it gives
its possessors, but for the self-knowledge which is its reflex effect.
Of all they see in the minds of others, that which concerns them most is
the reflection of themselves, the photographs of their own characters.
The most obvious consequence of the self-knowledge thus forced upon them
is to render them alike incapable of self-conceit or self-depreciation.
Every one must needs always think of himself as he is, being no more
able to do otherwise than is a man in a hall of mirrors to cherish
delusions as to his personal appearance.

But self-knowledge means to the mind-readers much more than this,--
nothing less, indeed, than a shifting of the sense of identity. When a
man sees himself in a mirror, he is compelled to distinguish between the
bodily self he sees and his real self, which is within and unseen. When
in turn the mind-reader comes to see the mental and moral self reflected
in other minds as in mirrors, the same thing happens. He is compelled
to distinguish between this mental and moral self which has been made
objective to him, and can be contemplated by him as impartially as if
it were another's, from the inner ego which still remains subjective,
unseen, and indefinable. In this inner ego the mind-readers recognize
the essential identity and being, the noumenal self, the core of the
soul, and the true hiding of its eternal life, to which the mind as well
as the body is but the garment of a day.

The effect of such a philosophy as this--which, indeed, with the
mind-readers is rather an instinctive consciousness than a philosophy
--must obviously be to impart a sense of wonderful superiority to the
vicissitudes of this earthly state, and a singular serenity in the midst
of the haps and mishaps which threaten or befall the personality. They
did indeed appear to me, as I never dreamed men could attain to be,
lords of themselves.

It was because I might not hope to attain this enfranchisement from the
false ego of the apparent self, without which life seemed to her race
scarcely worth living, that my love so pitied me.

But I must hasten on, leaving a thousand things unsaid, to relate the
lamentable catastrophe to which it is owing that, instead of being
still a resident of those blessed islands, in the full enjoyment of that
intimate and ravishing companionship which by contrast would forever dim
the pleasures of all other human society, I recall the bright picture as
a memory under other skies.

Among a people who are compelled by the very constitution of their minds
to put themselves in the places of others, the sympathy which is the
inevitable consequence of perfect comprehension renders envy, hatred,
and uncharitableness impossible. But of course there are people less
genially constituted than others, and these are necessarily the objects
of a certain distaste on the part of associates. Now, owing to the
unhindered impact of minds upon one another, the anguish of persons so
regarded, despite the tenderest consideration of those about them, is
so great that they beg the grace of exile, that, being out of the way,
people may think less frequently upon them. There are numerous small
islets, scarcely more than rocks, lying to the north of the archipelago,
and on these the unfortunates are permitted to live. Only one lives on
each islet, as they cannot endure each other even as well as the more
happily constituted can endure them. From time to time supplies of food
are taken to them, and of course, any time they wish to take the risk,
they are permitted to return to society.

Now, as I have said, the fact which, even more than their out-of-the-way
location, makes the islands of the mind-readers unapproachable, is the
violence with which the great antarctic current, owing probably to some
configuration of the ocean bed, together with the innumerable rocks and
shoals, flows through and about the archipelago.

Ships making the islands from the southward are caught by this current
and drawn among the rocks, to their almost certain destruction; while,
owing to the violence with which the current sets to the north, it is
not possible to approach at all from that direction, or at least it has
never been accomplished. Indeed, so powerful are the currents that even
the boats which cross the narrow straits between the main islands and
the islets of the unfortunate, to carry the latter their supplies, are
ferried over by cables, not trusting to oar or sail.

The brother of my love had charge of one of the boats engaged in this
transportation, and, being desirous of visiting the islets, I accepted
an invitation to accompany him on one of his trips. I know nothing of
how the accident happened, but in the fiercest part of the current of
one of the straits we parted from the cable and were swept out to
sea. There was no question of stemming the boiling current, our utmost
endeavors barely sufficing to avoid being dashed to pieces on the rocks.
From the first, there was no hope of our winning back to the land, and
so swiftly did we drift that by noon--the accident having befallen in
the morning--the islands, which are low-lying, had sunk beneath the
southwestern horizon.

Among these mind-readers, distance is not an insuperable obstacle to the
transfer of thought. My companion was in communication with our friends,
and from time to time conveyed to me messages of anguish from my dear
love; for, being well aware of the nature of the currents and the
unapproachableness of the islands, those we had left behind, as well
as we ourselves, knew well we should see each other's faces no more.
For five days we continued to drift to the northwest, in no danger
of starvation, owing to our lading of provisions, but constrained to
unintermitting watch and ward by the roughness of the weather. On the
fifth day my companion died from exposure and exhaustion. He died very
quietly,--indeed, with great appearance of relief. The life of the
mind-readers while yet they are in the body is so largely spiritual that
the idea of an existence wholly so, which seems vague and chill to us,
suggests to them a state only slightly more refined than they already
know on earth.

After that I suppose I must have fallen into an unconscious state, from
which I roused to find myself on an American ship bound for New York,
surrounded by people whose only means of communicating with one another
is to keep up while together a constant clatter of hissing, guttural,
and explosive noises, eked out by all manner of facial contortions and
bodily gestures. I frequently find myself staring open-mouthed at those
who address me, too much struck by their grotesque appearance to bethink
myself of replying.

I find that I shall not live out the voyage, and I do not care to. From
my experience of the people on the ship, I can judge how I should fare
on land amid the stunning Babel of a nation of talkers. And my friends,
--God bless them! how lonely I should feel in their very presence! Nay,
what satisfaction or consolation, what but bitter mockery, could I ever
more find in such human sympathy and companionship as suffice others
and once sufficed me,--I who have seen and known what I have seen
and known! Ah, yes, doubtless it is far better I should die; but the
knowledge of the things that I have seen I feel should not perish with
me. For hope's sake, men should not miss the glimpse of the higher,
sun-bathed reaches of the upward path they plod. So thinking, I have
written out some account of my wonderful experience, though briefer far,
by reason of my weakness, than fits the greatness of the matter. The
captain seems an honest, well-meaning man, and to him I shall confide
the narrative, charging him, on touching shore, to see it safely in the
hands of some one who will bring it to the world's ear.

Note.--The extent of my own connection with the foregoing document is
sufficiently indicated by the author himself in the final paragraph.--
E.B.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "To Whom This May Come - 1898" ***

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