B917 <=> B919 (BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 918)

Chapter XLII Beelzebub in America

TWO “Dionosks” later, when the intersystem ship Karnak had resumed its falling, and the confirmed followers of our respected Mullah Nassr Eddin had again sat down in their usual seats, Hassein once more turned to Beelzebub with the following words:

“My dear Grandfather! May I remind you, as you bade me, about . . . the three-brained beings . . . of the planet Earth . . . about those . . . how are they called? . . . about the beings who breed and exist just on the diametrically opposite side of the place where contemporary terrestrial civilization is flourishing . . . About those three-brained beings there, who, as you were saying, are very great devotees of the ‘fox trot.’”

“Ah! About those Americans?”

“Yes, that’s it, about those Americans,” joyously exclaimed Hassein.

“Of course, I remember. I did, indeed, promise to tell you a little also about those contemporary queer ducks there.”

And Beelzebub began thus:

“I happened to visit that part of the surface of your planet now called ‘North America,’ just before my final departure from that solar system.

“I went there from my last place of existence on that planet, namely, from the city Paris of the continent of Europe.

“From the continent of Europe I sailed there on a steamship, according to the custom of all contemporary what are called ‘dollar holders,’ and arrived in the capital of ‘North America,’ in the city of New York, or as it is sometimes called there, the ‘city of the melting pot of the races of the Earth.’