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[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COLLEGE YELL OF A SCHOOL OF WHALES]
Besides the animals and vegetables there are mountains, table-lands, rivers, forests and lakes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PRESIDENTIAL RANGE Showing comparative height of princ.i.p.al peaks.--Reading from left to right: Mt. Was.h.i.+ngton--Jefferson--Lincoln--Cleveland--Roosevelt--Wilson.
Note:--At the moment this picture was taken a war cloud drifted over the last two peaks.--Until the cloud pa.s.ses it will be impossible to ascertain their alt.i.tudes.]
In former times mountains were used as protective barriers. Today they serve as monuments to Public Men for whom they are named (_See Presidential Range_), and country seats for retired Grocers and Fishmongers.
Rivers are the most curious and interesting form of Water.
Though seldom as shallow, they are as lengthy and involved as Congressional speeches, and have to be curled into the most ludicrous shapes to get them into the countries where they belong.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A RIVER BED]
The first thing a river does after rising is to betake itself as fast as it can to the nearest River-Bed, in which it remains for the rest of its days.
The largest river in the world is the Amazon, named after the single-breasted suffragette of ancient times.
_QUESTIONS_
_How many rivers can get into one river-bed?_
_Why is a Congressman?_
[Ill.u.s.tration: NOAH SIGHTING ARARAT]
When Noah saw the flood subside, "The world is going dry!" he cried, "So let us all, without delay, Fill up against a drouthy day."
CHAPTER XII
THE DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD
In the first geography we are told of a young married couple who were cast into the world for a pomological error on their part, about 4000 B.C.
Some seventeen centuries later, the world was lost sight of in a deluge.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NOAH]
It was re-discovered by a navigator named Noah who, though barely six hundred years old, was the commander of a sea-going menagerie.
Commander Noah, after cruising about for twelve months and ten days, landed from his zoological water-wagon upon a precipitous Asiatic Jag called Ararat on the twenty-seventh of February, 2300 B.C.
CHAPTER XIII
THE HABITABLE GLOBE
The term "Habitable Globe" was doubtless invented by some Celestial Humorist who had never visited this planet.
People live on it, to be sure, but they have no choice. There is nowhere else to live.
The Giddy Globe ...*
* Isn't it about time to drop this personal simile?
_The Reader._
... Quite so. Suppose we consider the Globe as an Apartment House.
We are told it was finished in six days. No wonder it is faultily constructed.
The Heating Apparatus is out of date. The apartments nearest to the Radiator are insufferably hot, those farthest away unbearably cold, and those between too changeable for comfort.
The Water Supply is unreliable. In some apartments, great numbers perish every year from thirst.
In the cellar there is a munition factory where, in defiance of regulations, there are stored High Explosives. These blow up from time to time, causing great damage and loss of life among the tenants.
The janitor is a disobliging old person who has been there since the house was started and holds his job, in spite of incessant complaints.
When asked to hurry, he fairly crawls and, when people want him most to stay, nothing can stop him.
His name is Tempus.
CHAPTER XIV
THE TENANTS
The first tenants (as before stated) were a young couple who had been compelled to leave a more luxurious apartment because children were not allowed, though animals of all kinds, even snakes, were tolerated.
[Ill.u.s.tration: POST-IMPRESSIONIST SAVAGE]
On the whole, the Globe is anything but a model Apartment House. Each family considers itself the only respectable one in the building and they are constantly squabbling for the possession of the most desirable rooms.
The tenants of the different stories, originally of one colour, have been tanned according to their proximity to the Solar Stove. They come in five shades of fast colours--Black, Brown, Yellow, Red and White,--the White being farthest away from the Stove.
