A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development | Page 6

through, and fell down, down to the centre of
the earth.
To his astonishment he landed upon the top of a coach which was
passing at the time, and soon found himself perfectly at home, and
began to enter into conversation with the passenger opposite to him, a
very gentlemanly looking man enveloped entirely in a black cloak. He
soon found out that the country into which his lot had fallen was a very
strange one. Its peculiarities were thus stated by his gentlemanly
fellow-passenger. "Ours, Sir," said he, "is called the country of
Skitzland. All the Skitzlanders are born with all their limbs and features
perfect; but when they arrive at a certain age, all their limbs and
features which have not been used drop off, leaving only the bones
behind. It is rather dark this evening, or you would have seen this more
plainly. Look forward there at our coachman, he consists simply of a
stomach and hands, these being the only things he has ever used. Those
two whom you see chatting together are brothers in misfortune; one is a
clergyman, the other a lawyer; they have neither of them got any legs at
all, though each of them possess a finely developed understanding; and
you cannot help remarking what a massive jaw the lawyer has got.
Yonder is Mr.----, the celebrated millionaire, he is just raising his hat;
you see he has lost all the top part of his head, indeed he has little of his
head left, except the bump of acquisitiveness and the faculty of
arithmetical calculation. There are two ladies, members of the
fashionable world, their case is very pitiable, they consist of nothing
whatever but a pair of eyes and a bundle of nerves. There are two
members of the mercantile world, they are munching some sandwiches,
you see, but it is merely for the sake of keeping up appearances; as I
can assure you, from my own personal knowledge, that they have no
digestive organs whatever. As for myself, I am a schoolmaster. I have
been a hard student all my life, at school and at college, and moreover I
have had a natural sympathy with my fellow-men, and so I am blessed
with a brain and heart entire. But see here." And he lifted up his cloak,
and lo! underneath, a skeleton, save just here! "See, here are the limbs I
never used, and therefore they have deserted me. All the solace I now
have consists in teaching the young children to avoid a similar doom. I
sometimes show them what I have shown you. I labor hard to convince
them that most assuredly the same misfortune will befall them which

has happened to me and to all the grown-up inhabitants; but even then,
I grieve to say, I cannot always succeed. Many believe that they will be
lucky enough to escape, and some of the grown-up inhabitants pad
themselves, and so cheat the poor children into the belief that they are
all right, though all the elder ones know better. You will now perceive
the reason why all the gentlemen you see wear such tight pantaloons,
they pretend that it is fashionable, but in reality it is in order to prevent
their false legs from tumbling out. Surely my case is miserable enough;
my only hope consists in the idea of educating the rising generation to
do better. No doubt it is easy to persuade them to do so in the country
from which you come, but I assure you," added he with a heartfelt sigh,
"that it is sometimes very hard to do so here. Nearly all of us, then,
have lost something of our bodies. Some have no head, some no legs,
some no heart, and so on; the less a man has lost, the higher he ranks in
the social scale; and our Aristocracy, the governing body, consists of
the few individuals who have used all their faculties, and therefore now
possess them all."
At this moment a dreadful earthquake broke out, and an extempore
volcano shot the gentleman who had listened to this interesting,
narration right up to the crust of the earth again, and by a strange and
fortunate chance shot him up into the very hole which he had been
digging, and he discovered himself lying down at the bottom of the
hole, feeling just as if he had awakened from a dream; and to his
surprise, heard distinctly the voice of his wife crying out from the top,
"Come, come, dear, you're very late, and supper is getting quite cold!"
The name of the country of Skitzland translated into the vulgar tongue
is the planet earth, and America is one of the portions thereof. If we
were to look round in a circuit