The Arch-preposterous

“However, my boy, in order that you may not at this moment be too distressed, it is not superfluous to add that this happened in me then for the first and also for the last time during all the periods of my being-existence.

“But perhaps it would be better for the present not to touch on questions that concern exclusively only our family.

“Let us rather return to the tale I have begun about the Omnipresent-Okidanokh and my essence-friend Gornahoor Harharkh, who was, by the way, at one time considered everywhere among ordinary three-brained beings as a ‘great-scientist,’ and is now, though he still continues to exist, not only considered not ‘great,’ but thanks to his own result, that is to say, to his own son, is what our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin would call a ‘has-been’ or, as he sometimes says in such cases, ‘He-is-already-sitting-in-an-old-American-galosh.’

“Well, then, while floundering, Gornahoor Harharkh, with great difficulty, and only by means of a special and very complicated maneuver which he made, finally managed to get his planetary body, burdened with the various unusually heavy appliances, down onto the chair again, and this time he fixed it all with the aid of special screws which were on the chair for that purpose; and when we were both more or less arranged and communication was possible between us by means of the said artificial-connectors, he first drew my attention to those apparatuses hanging over the table which I told you were very much like the Momonodooars.

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