who go to and fro upon the spiral
ways, who fill the ascending balloons and drop past me clinging to flimsy
parachutes are, I gather, of the operative class. 'Machine hands,' indeed,
some of these are in actual nature--it is not figure of speech, the
single tentacle of the mooncalf herd is profoundly modified for clawing,
lifting, guiding, the rest of them no more than necessary subordinate
appendages to these important mechanisms, have enormously developed
auditory organs; some whose work lies in delicate chemical operations
project a vast olfactory organ; others again have flat feet for
treadles with anchylosed joints; and others--who I have been told are
glassblowers--seem mere lung-bellows. But every one of these common
Selenites I have seen at work is exquisitely adapted to the social need
it meets. Fine work is done by fined-down workers, amazingly dwarfed
and neat. Some I could hold on the palm of my hand. There is even a
sort of turnspit Selenite, very common, whose duty and only delight it
is to apply the motive power for various small appliances. And to rule
over these things and order any erring tendency there might be in some
aberrant natures are the most muscular beings I have seen in the moon,
a sort of lunar police, who must have been trained from their earliest
years to give a perfect respect and obedience to the swollen heads.

"The making of these various sorts of operative must be a very curious and
interesting process. I am very much in the dark about it, but quite
recently I came upon a number of young Selenites confined in jars from
which only the fore-limbs protruded, who were being compressed to become
machine-minders of a special sort. The extended 'hand' in this highly
developed system of technical education is stimulated by irritants and
nourished by injection, while the rest of the body is starved. Phi-oo,
unless I misunderstood him, explained that in the earlier stages these
queer little creatures are apt to display signs of suffering in their
various cramped situations, but they easily become indurated to their lot;
and he took me on to where a number of flexible-minded messengers were
being drawn out and broken in. It is quite unreasonable, I know, but such
glimpses of the educational methods of these beings affect me
disagreeably. I hope, however, that may pass off, and I may be able to
see more of this aspect of their wonderful social order. That
wretched-looking hand-tentacle sticking ou