The First “Growl”

CHAPTER I

The First “Growl”

A LITTLE later, Beelzebub began to speak as follows:

“A story I have just recalled, connected with these ‘anathemas’ I have mentioned, may provide very useful material for beginning to comprehend the strangeness of the psyche of the three-brained beings of that planet which has taken your fancy; and furthermore, this story may reassure you a little and give you some hope that if these peculiar terrestrial beings should chance to learn how you had insulted them and should ‘anathematize’ you, then perhaps after all something ‘not so very bad’ might come of it for you.

“The story I am going to tell you occurred quite recently among the contemporary three-brained beings there, and it arose from the following events:

“In one of these large communities, there peaceably existed an ordinary being who was by profession what is there called a ‘writer.’

“You must here know, that in long-past ages one might still occasionally run across beings of that profession who still invented and wrote something really by themselves; but in these later epochs the ‘writers’ among the beings there, particularly among contemporary beings, have been of those that only copy from many already existing books all kinds of ideas, and by fitting them together make a ‘new book.’

“And they prefer books which have reached them from their very remote ancestors.

“It is necessary to remark that the books written by contemporary ‘writers’ there are, all taken together, the principal cause that the Reason of all the other three-brained beings is becoming more and more what the
venerable Mullah Nassr Eddin calls ‘stuff and nonsense.’

98