Before the Evolution we had completed the round of
your inventions and discoveries, impelled by the force that drives you on;
and we have since disused most of them as idle and unfit. But we profit,
now and then, by the advances you make in science, for we are passionately
devoted to the study of the natural laws, open or occult, under which all
men have their being. Occasionally an emissary returns with a sum of
money, and explains to the students of the national university the
processes by which it is lost and won; and at a certain time there was a
movement for its introduction among us, not for its use as you know it,
but for a species of counters in games of chance. It was considered,
however, to contain an element of danger, and the scheme was discouraged.
"Nothing amuses and puzzles our people more than the accounts our
emissaries give of the changes of fashion in the outside world, and of the
ruin of soul and body which the love of dress often works. Our own dress,
for men and for women, is studied, in one ideal of use and beauty, from
the antique; caprice and vagary in it would be thought an effect of vulgar
vanity.
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