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August 9, 2025 15 mins
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seventeen, in which read dear friends, something about a
live alarm clock and a pseudopsy bather and rubber, our
first breakfast in the city of Silver, A new way
to catch fish without hurting their feelings. How the streets
and houses were numbered, and where the sign boards were

(00:20):
A very original library in which books never get dog eared.
How velvet souls enjoyed her favorite poets. I am presented
to the learned barrel brow, who proceeds to give me
his views of the upper world. They entertained me amazingly
and may interest you. I can't tell you, dear friends,

(00:40):
exactly how long Bulgar and I slept, but it must
have been a good while, for when I was awakened,
I felt thoroughly refreshed. I say awakened, for I was
awakened by a gentle tapping on the back of my hand,
six taps. At first I thought I was dreaming, but
upon rubbing my eyes, I saw standing by the side
of my bed one of the udopsys, who, feeling me

(01:02):
stir took up his tablet and wrote as follows. My
name is Taphard. I am a clock. There is a
score of us. We keep the time for our people.
By counting the swing of the pendulum in the time house,
it swings about as fast as we breathe. There are
one hundred breaths to a minute and one hundred minutes
to an hour. Our day is divided into six hours

(01:23):
work time and six hours sleep time. It is now
the rising hour. If thou wilt be pleased to rise
one of our people from the health house, will rub
all the tired out of thy limbs. I touched Taphart's
heart to thank him, and made haste to scramble out
of bed. Now, for the first time, I looked about
the silver chamber in which I had slept. On silver

(01:46):
shelves lay silver combs, and silver shears and silver knives.
On a silver stand stood a silver ewer within a
silver basin. On silver pegs hung silken towels, while spread
upon the silver floor lay soft silk and rugs, and
above and around on seating in walls. The tongues of
flame were a thousand times repeated in the panels of

(02:07):
burnished silver. I had made trial of all sorts of
oriental rubber and bath attendants in my day, But the
silent little pseudopsy who laughed and rubbed and tapped and
stroked me, exceeding the all in dexterity, added to which
was a new charm, for I was not obliged to
listen to long and senseless tales of adventure in a tree,

(02:28):
but was left quite alone to my own thoughts. Bulger
was also treated to a sponging and a rubbing, a
luxury which he had not enjoyed since we had left
Castle Trump. My toilette was no sooner completed than long
Thumbs made his appearance to inquire after my health and
to superintend the serving of my breakfast, which consisted of
a piece of most delicate boiled fish, flanked with oysters

(02:51):
of delicious flavor, and trimmed with slices of those monstrous
mushrooms which I had eaten among the Micamenkes. The whole
served in a beautiful silver dish on a silver tray
with silver eating utensils. Remembering the strange way in which
the fish were caught and killed in the land of Amcamenke's,
I was curious to know how the pseudopsis managed it,

(03:14):
for I knew enough of them to know that the
sensation of anything struggling for its life in their hands
would suffice to throw them into fits of great suffering,
to fill their gentle hearts with nameless terror. At the
end of one of the many corridors leading out of
our city, explained long thumbs, there is a rocky chamber,
which was called by our ancestors oposlop or the death hole,

(03:37):
because any being which breathes its air for a few
moments is sure to die, so they closed it up forever,
leaving only a small pipe projecting through the door. But
strange to say, those who breathe this air suffer no
pain whatever, but presently drop off into a pleasant dream,
and unless they be rescued, would of course never wake again. Now,

(04:00):
as our laws forbid us to cause any pain to
the most insignificant creature, it occurred to our ancestors that,
by means of a long pipe, they could turn this
poisoned air into the river whenever they wanted a supply
of fish for food. This they did, and, strange to say,
the moment the fish felt the gas bubbling into the river,
they at once swam up to the mouth of the

(04:22):
pipe and struggled with each other for a chance to
catch the deadly bubbles. As they left its mouth. So
pleasant a sensation do they cause as they gradually plunged
the creature, breathing them into his last sleep. And in
this way it is we are able to feed upon
the fish in our river without breaking the law of
the land. I began to understand that I had fallen

(04:42):
in with a very original and interesting folk. But Bulgar
was not altogether pleased with them, for several reasons, as
I soon observed. In the first place, he couldn't accustom
himself to the cold and glassy look of their eyes,
and in the next he was a bit jealous of
their wonderfully keen scent, a sense which with them was

(05:04):
so strong that they invariably gave signs of being conscious
of Bulgar's approach even before I could see him, and
always turned their faces in the direction in which he
was coming. You will remember, dear friends, that I mention
the fact that the former folk went barefoot, and that
their feet, as well as their hands, seemed altogether too
large for their bodies. And I wished to add that

(05:27):
while Bulgar and I were being led through the long
corridors and winding passages on our way into the city
of Silver, the three soudopsies frequently half halted and seemed
to be feeling on the floor for something with the
balls of their feet. I thought no more about it
until Bulgar and I started out for our first stroll
through their wonderful town, when, to my great delight, I

(05:50):
made the discovery that the numbers of the houses, the
names of the occupants, the names of the streets, as
well as all sign boards, so to speak, and all
guide posts were in slightly raised letters on the floors
and pavements. And then the truth dawned upon me that
Long Thumbs and his companions were simply halting now and
then to read the names of the streets with the

(06:11):
balls of their feet in order to know if they
were taking the right road. I more than this, dear friends,
the first time Bulgar and I passed through one of
the open squares of the city of Silver. You may
imagine my satisfaction upon the discovery that the silver pavements
were literally covered with the writings of the pseudopsy authors
in raised characters. Now in Don Fun's wonderful book, he had,

(06:35):
in his masterly manner, giving me the key to the
language of the former folk, so that with very slight effort,
I was able to make the additional discovery that some
of the streets were given up to the writers of
history and some to story writers, while others were filled
with the learned works of philosophers, and others still contained
many thousands of lines from the best poets which the

(06:55):
nation had produced. And I had very little difficulty in
discovering which were the favorite poems of the pseudopsis, For
as you may readily suppose, these were polished like a
silver mirror by the shuffling of the many thankful feet
over their sweet and soulful lines. I noticed that the
writings of the philosophers in this as in my own world,

(07:16):
found few readers, for the raised letters were in many
cases tarnished and black from lack of souls trampling over
them in search of wisdom. Somewhat later, when I had
become acquainted with velvet souls, the daughter of long thumbs,
a gracious little being, as full of inward light as
she was blind to the outer world, and she invited

(07:37):
me to come for a read. I had a hard
task of it in persuading her that I could not
remove what she called my ridiculous foot boxes and join
her in enjoying some of her favorite poems. It was
to me a delicious pastime to accompany this happy little
maiden when she went for a reed to walk beside
her and watch the ever varying expression of her beautiful

(07:59):
face as the souls 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, Oh dwellers in

(08:21):
the upper world, with the light streaming into the windows
of your souls, with your ears open, to the music
of type and flute and violin, and to the sweeter
music of the voice of love, how much more heavy
than she? And yet how rarely are ye as happy?
How rarely do ye know that sweet contentment, which, as

(08:42):
in this case, came from within. Go to the ant,
Consider her way as it 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 former folks seemed to become quite accustomed to having
bulgar in me among them, and they apparently touched hands

(09:05):
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 Pseudopsy's berrel 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.

(09:26):
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,

(09:49):
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,

(10:12):
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.
He 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

(10:35):
possessed of, continued Beryl 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 fruitless 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

(10:57):
your sky, as ye call it, might feel if if
you could touch it with your fingers, which you can't do. However,
how soon rain will fall, which is a useless piece
of knowledge. If ye have ruse 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 you call pictures, by means of which he

(11:20):
seemed 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 a 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

(11:41):
stand for hours in front of one of these bits
of trickery when ye might, if ye choose, 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

(12:04):
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 termed 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

(12:25):
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

(12:49):
jaws thus sets the air in motion, and calling its
young or breathing defiance at an enemy. And if I
understand correctly, little Baron, so 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

(13:11):
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

(13:32):
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

(13:56):
overlooked and regarded in the light of mere amusement. Where
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 your thoughts to each other, produce different effects upon
different persons. And the result is that the people of

(14:18):
the upper world spent half of 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 it has become necessary to provide what ye call
judges to settle these disputes, which offered last for lifetimes,

(14:43):
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 Beryl Brow on his
tablet of silver, that when thou returnest to thy people,

(15:04):
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 Pseodopsy to do as he requested, and then we
touched each other on the back of the head, which
is the way they say good bye in the land
of the former folk, a touch on the forehead, meaning

(15:27):
how d'ye do? End of Chapter seventeen.
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