_Correliana_ (with clasped hands and tearful eyes.) “May goodness forefend us from a calamity so dire! Better by far the consummation so long urged by our savage foes! But we must still cling to our hopes founded upon your ready perception of an affection that enables us to live away from human bodies with habits such as you have so wofully described.”
As Correliana uttered in fervent appeal her invocation, the prætor called M. Hollydorf to indicate the selection he had made from the young maidens to fulfill the marriage intention with the verging graduates of the male department? In answer to this quizzical request, he acknowledged that the only maidens he had seen were Luocuratia and Correliana, but with his happy impressions would endeavor to make amends for his selfishness. All, with the exception of the padre, confirmed the censor’s choice, but he with his usual uncertitude of thought made such varied and liberal selections that in consummation they would have proved sadly polygamous. The Dosch had already explained that the education of the Heraclean children had been limited to the practical requirements for the supply of family wants, in conducive aid for the perfection of happy association. So that in the educational department of letters the variety had been of the most meagre description, the quota of information relative to the affairs of the world at large having been supplied by Manatitlan auramentors. Accomplishments and ritual formulistic ceremonies were unknown.
We were more than surprised with admiration, when we visited the kitchen department, in which the manipulations were conducted with such ease and purity, that our previous ideas entertained of housekeeping were quite confounded. During our inspection of the kitchen, the busy hands of a detachment of young maidens were engaged in the preparation of food for the midday collation; their faces the while were beaming with the rays of unspeakable gladness, and their eyes in condimental purity imparted luxurious joy, as a relishing foretaste to the edible results of their culinary pastimes. In keeping the bright glow of the unique utensils, of beautifully alloyed gold, reflected in the convex and concave radiance of their disks the lustrous embodiment of maidenly proportions, with faces comically imaged in grotesque contrast with the reality. The dwarfed reduction of their graceful forms and faces to a semblance in breadth of visaged mouth, nose, cheek, and eyes, to the chattel biddy instincts who hold untidy supremacy in the kitchen departments of civilization, gave a mirthful vitality to the metallic expression that heightened the ludicrous effect, so that under our watchful gaze, it would occasionally culminate in the voiceful melody of a laugh. Purity and order reigned supreme, so that there was neither odor or speck for insect attraction. The effect of this ruling self-dependence was heightened with vivid impression, from the expression of grateful pride that beamed with the emulative exhibition of their “useful accomplishments.” In their personalities they were so free from adhesive taint, that the atmosphere seemed pervaded with the clarifying transpirations of beings exalted above the grossness of mortality.