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    Utopia Novels repository

Cover image by
Liza Daly

Unveiling a Parallel

A Romance
by Two Women of the West

Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and
Ella Merchant

1893

Public Domain

EPUB version of this book: unveiling-a-parallel.epub

Originally published anonymously by “Two
        Women of the West”, this satirical novel depicts two
        women-centered utopian societies: one with total economic and
        sexual freedom for women, the other chaste but
        communally-supportive. Alice Ilgenfritz Jones (1846-1906)
        published other novels in her lifetime, including an
        intersectional novel on race called Beatrice of Bayou
        Têche; her writing partner Mary Ella Merchant (1857-1916)
        managed a large Cedar Rapids printing company and travelled
        extensively. See this article on Unveiling
        a Parallel and Ella Merchant and the critical
        edition by Carol A. Kolmerten for biographies of the authors
        and analysis of the story.

Chapter 1. A
        Remarkable Acquaintance.

“A new person is to me always a great event, and hinders me
        from sleep.”

—Emerson.

You know how certain kinds of music will beat everything out
        of your consciousness except a wild delirium of joy; how love of
        a woman will take up every cranny of space in your being,—and
        fill the universe beside,—so that people who are not en rapport
        with the strains that delight you, or with the beauty that
        enthralls you, seem pitiable creatures, not in touch with the
        Divine Harmony, with Supreme Loveliness.

So it was with me, when I set my feet on Mars! My soul leaped
        to its highest altitude and I had but one vast thought,—“I have
        triumphed; I am here! And I am alone; Earth is unconscious of
        the glory that is mine!”

I shall not weary you with an account of my voyage, since you
        are more interested in the story of my sojourn on the red planet
        than in the manner of my getting there.

It is not literally red, by the way; that which makes it
        appear so at this distance is its atmosphere,—its “sky,”—which
        is of a soft roseate color, instead of being blue like ours. It
        is as beautiful as a blush.

I will just say, that the time consumed in making the journey
        was incredibly brief. Having launched my aeroplane on the
        current of attraction which flows uninterruptedly between this
        world and that, traveling was as swift as thought. My impression
        is that my speed was constantly accelerated until I neared my
        journey’s end, when the planet’s pink envelope interposed its
        soft resistance to prevent a destructive landing.

I settled down as gently as a dove alights, and the sensation
        was the most ecstatic I have ever experienced.

When I could distinguish trees, flowers, green fields,
        streams of water, and people moving about in the streets of a
        beautiful city, it was as if some hitherto unsuspected chambers
        of my soul were flung open to let in new tides of feeling.

My coming had been discovered. A college of astronomers in an
        observatory which stands on an elevation just outside the city,
        had their great telescope directed toward the Earth,—just as our
        telescopes were directed to Mars at that time,—and they saw me
        and made me out when I was yet a great way off.

They were able to determine the exact spot whereon I would
        land, about a mile distant from the observatory, and repaired
        thither with all possible speed,—and they have very perfect
        means of locomotion, superior even to our electrical
        contrivances.

Before I had time to look about me, I found myself
        surrounded, and unmistakably friendly hands outheld to welcome
        me.

There were eight or ten of the astronomers,—some young, some
        middle-aged, and one or two elderly men. All of them, including
        the youngest, who had not even the dawn of a beard upon his
        chin, and the oldest, whose hair was silky white, were
        strikingly handsome. Their features were extraordinarily mobile
        and expressive. I never saw a more lively interest manifest on
        mortal countenances than appeared on theirs, as they bent their
        glances upon me. But their curiosity was tempered by a dignified
        courtesy and self-respect.

They spoke, but of course I could not understand their words,
        though it was easy enough to interpret the tones of their
        voices, their manner, and their graceful gestures. I set them
        down for a people who had attained to a high state of culture
        and good-breeding.

I suddenly felt myself growing faint, for, although I had not
        fasted long, a journey such as I had just accomplished is
        exhausting.

Near by stood a beautiful tree on which there was ripe fruit.
        Some one instantly interpreted the glance I involuntarily
        directed to it, and plucked a cluster of the large rich berries
        and gave them to me, first putting one in his own mouth to show
        me that it was a safe experiment.

While I ate,—I found the fruit exceedingly refreshing,—the
        company conferred together, and presently one of the younger men
        approached and took me gently by the arm and walked me away
        toward the city. The others followed us.

We had not to go farther than the first suburb. My companion,
        whom they called Severnius, turned into a beautiful park, or
        grove, in the midst of which stood a superb mansion built of
        dazzling white stone. His friends waved us farewells with their
        hands,—we responding in like manner,—and proceeded on down the
        street.

I learned afterwards that the park was laid out with
        scientific precision. But the design was intricate, and required
        study to follow the curves and angles. It seemed to me then like
        an exquisite mood of nature.

The trees were of rare and beautiful varieties, and the
        shrubbery of the choicest. The flowers, whose colors could not
        declare themselves,—it being night,—fulfilled their other
        delightful function and tinctured the balmy air with sweet
        odors.

Paths were threaded like white ribbons through the thick
        greensward.

As we walked toward the mansion, I stopped suddenly to listen
        to a most musical and familiar and welcome sound,—the plash of
        water. My companion divined my thought. We turned aside, and a
        few steps brought us to a marble fountain. It was in the form of
        a chaste and lovely female figure, from whose chiseled fingers a
        shower of glittering drops continually poured. Severnius took an
        alabaster cup from the base of the statue, filled it, and
        offered me a drink. The water was sparkling and intensely cold,
        and had the suggestion rather than the fact of sweetness.

“Delicious!” I exclaimed. He understood me, for he smiled and
        nodded his head, a gesture which seemed to say, “It gives me
        pleasure to know that you find it good.” I could not conceive of
        his expressing himself in any other than the politest
        manner.

We proceeded into the house. How shall I describe that house?
        Imagine a place which responds fully to every need of the
        highest culture and taste, without burdening the senses with
        oppressive luxury, and you have it! In a word, it was an ideal
        house and home. Both outside and inside, white predominated. But
        here and there were bits of color the most brilliant, like
        jewels. I found that I had never understood the law of contrast,
        or of economy in art; I knew nothing of “values,” or of
        relationships in this wonderful realm, of which it maybe truly
        said, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

I learned subsequently that all Marsians of taste are sparing
        of rich colors, as we are of gems, though certain classes
        indulge in extravagant and gaudy displays, recognizing no law
        but that which permits them to have and to do whatsoever they
        like.

I immediately discovered that two leading ideas were carried
        out in this house; massiveness and delicacy. There was extreme
        solidity in everything which had a right to be solid and stable;
        as the walls, and the supporting pillars, the staircases, the
        polished floors, and some pieces of stationary furniture, and
        the statuary,—the latter not too abundant. Each piece of
        statuary, by the way, had some special reason for being where it
        was; either it served some practical purpose, or it helped to
        carry out a poetical idea,—so that one was never taken aback as
        by an incongruity.

Some of the floors were of marble, in exquisite mosaic-work,
        and others were of wood richly inlaid. The carpets were
        beautiful, but they were used sparingly. When we sat down in a
        room a servant usually brought a rug or a cushion for our feet.
        And when we went out under the trees they spread carpets on the
        grass and put pillows on the rustic seats.

The decorations inside the house were the most airy and
        graceful imaginable. The frescoes were like clouds penetrated by
        the rarest tints,—colors idealized,—cunningly wrought into
        surpassingly lovely pictures, which did not at once declare the
        artist’s intention, but had to be studied. They were not only an
        indulgence to the eye, but a charming occupation for the
        thoughts. In fact, almost everything about the place appealed to
        the higher faculties as well as to the senses.

There comes to us, from time to time, a feeling of
        disenchantment toward almost everything life has to offer us. It
        never came to me with respect to Severnius’ house. It had for me
        an interest and a fascination which I was never able to dissect,
        any more than you would be able to dissect the charm of the
        woman you love.

With all its fine artistic elaborations, there was a
        simplicity about it which made it possible for the smallest
        nature to measure its capacity there, as well as the greatest.
        The proper sort of a yardstick for all uses has inch-marks.

Severnius took me upstairs and placed a suite of rooms at my
        command, and indicated to me that he supposed I needed rest,
        which I did sorely. But I could not lie down until I had
        explored my territory.

The room into which I had been ushered, and where Severnius
        left me, closing the noiseless door behind him, looked to me
        like a pretty woman’s boudoir,—almost everything in it being of
        a light and delicate color. The walls were cream-tinted, with a
        deep frieze of a little darker shade, relieved by pale green and
        brown decorations. The wood work was done in white enamel paint.
        The ceiling was sprinkled with silver stars. Two or three
        exquisite water-colors were framed in silver, and the andirons,
        tongs and shovel, and the fender round the fire-place, and even
        the bedstead, were silver-plated.

The bed, which stood in an alcove, was curtained with silk,
        and had delicacies of lace also, as fine and subtle as Arachne’s
        web. The table and a few of the chairs looked like our
        spindle-legged Chippendale things. And two or three large rugs
        might have been of Persian lamb’s wool. A luxurious couch was
        placed across one corner of the room and piled with down
        cushions. An immense easy chair, or lounging chair, stood
        opposite.

The dressing table, of a peculiarly beautiful cream-colored
        wood, was prettily littered with toilet articles in carved ivory
        or silver mountings. Above it hung a large mirror. There was a
        set of shelves for books and bric-a-brac; a porphyry lamp-stand
        with a lamp dressed in an exquisite pale-green shade; a
        chiffonier of marquetry.

The mantel ornaments were vases of fine pottery and marble
        statuettes. A musical instrument lay on a low bamboo stand. I
        could not play upon it, but the strings responded sweetly to the
        touch.

A little investigation revealed a luxurious bath-room. I felt
        the need of a bath, and turned on the water and plunged in. As I
        finished, a clock somewhere chimed the hour of midnight.

Before lying down, I put by the window draperies and looked
        out. I was amazed at the extreme splendor of the familiar
        constellations. Owing to the peculiarity of the atmosphere of
        Mars, the night there is almost as luminous as our day. Every
        star stood out, not a mere twinkling eye, or little flat, silver
        disk, but a magnificent sphere, effulgent and supremely
        glorious.

Notwithstanding that it was long before I slept, I awoke with
        the day. I think its peculiar light had something to do with my
        waking. I did not suppose such light was possible out of heaven!
        It did not dazzle me, however; it simply filled me, and gave me
        a sensation of peculiar buoyancy.

I had a singular feeling when I first stepped out of
        bed,—that the floor was not going to hold me. It was as if I
        should presently be lifted up, as a feather is lifted by a
        slight current of air skimming along on the ground. But I soon
        found that this was not going to happen. My feet clung securely
        to the polished wood and the soft wool of the rug at the
        bedside. I laughed quietly to myself. In fact I was in the humor
        to laugh. I felt so happy. Happiness seemed to be a quality of
        the air, which at that hour was particularly charming in its
        freshness and its pinkish tones.

I had made my ablutions and was taking up my trousers to put
        them on, when there was a tap at the door and Severnius appeared
        with some soft white garments, such as he himself wore, thrown
        over his arm. In the most delicate manner possible, he conveyed
        the wish that I might feel disposed to put them on.

I blushed,—they seemed such womanish things. He
        misinterpreted my confusion. He assured me by every means in his
        power that I was entirely welcome to them, that it would give
        him untold pleasure to provide for my every want. I could not
        stand out against such generosity. I reached for the
        things—swaddling clothes I called them—and Severnius helped me
        to array myself in them. I happened to glance into the mirror,
        and I did not recognize myself. I had some sense of how a
        barbarian must feel in his first civilized suit.

At my friend’s suggestion I hung my own familiar apparel up
        in the closet,—you may imagine with what reluctance.

But I may say, right here, that I grew rapidly to my new
        clothes. I soon liked them. There was something very graceful in
        the cut and style of them.

They covered and adorned the body without disguising it. They
        left the limbs and muscles free and encouraged grace of pose and
        movement.

The elegant folds in which the garments hung from the
        shoulders and the waist, the tassels and fringes and artistic
        drapery arrangements, while seemingly left to their own caprice,
        were as secure in their place as the plumage of a bird,—which
        the wind may ruffle but cannot displace.

I suspect that it requires a great deal of skill to construct
        a Marsian costume, whether for male or female. They are not
        altogether dissimilar; the women’s stuffs are of a little finer
        quality ordinarily, but their dress is not usually so
        elaborately trimmed as the men’s garb, which struck me as very
        peculiar. Both sexes wear white, or a soft cream. The fabric is
        either a sort of fine linen, or a mixture of silk and wool.

After Severnius and I came to understand each other, as
        comrades and friends, he laughingly compared my dress, in which
        I had made my first appearance, to the saddle and housings of a
        horse. He declared that he and his friends were not quite sure
        whether I was a man or a beast. But he was too polite to give me
        the remotest hint, during our early acquaintance, that he
        considered my garb absurd.

When, having completed my toilet, I indicated to him that I
        was ready for the next thing on the program,—which I sincerely
        hoped might be breakfast,—he approached me and taking my hand
        placed a gold ring on my finger. It was set with a superb
        rubellite enhanced with pearls. The stone was the only bit of
        color in my entire dress. Even my shoes were of white
        canvas.

I thanked him as well as I was able for this especial mark of
        favor. I was pleased that he had given me a gem not only
        beautiful, but possessing remarkable qualities. I held it in a
        ray of sunlight and turned it this way and that, to show him
        that I was capable of appreciating its beauties and its peculiar
        characteristics.

He was delighted, and I had the satisfaction of feeling that
        I had made a good impression upon him.

He led the way down-stairs, and luckily into the breakfast
        room.

We were served by men dressed similarly to ourselves, though
        their clothing was without trimming and was of coarser material
        than ours. They moved about the room swiftly and noiselessly.
        Motion upon that planet seems so natural and so easy. There is
        very little inertia to overcome.

Our meal was rather odd; it consisted of fruits, some
        curiously prepared cereals, and a hot palatable drink. No
        meat.

After this light but entirely satisfactory repast we ascended
        the grand stairway—a marvel of beauty in its elaborate
        carvings—and entered a lofty apartment occupying a large part of
        the last etage.

I at first made out that it was a place devoted to the fine
        arts. I had noticed a somewhat conspicuous absence, in the rooms
        below, of the sort of things with which rich people in our
        country crowd their houses. I understood now, they were all
        marshaled up here.

There were exquisitely carved vessels of all descriptions,
        bronzes, marbles, royal paintings, precious minerals.

Here also were the riches of color.

The brilliant morning light came through the most beautiful
        windows I have ever seen, even in our finest cathedrals. The
        large central stained glasses were studded round with prisms
        that played extraordinary pranks with the sunbeams, which, as
        they glanced from them, were splintered into a thousand
        scintillating bits, as splendid as jewels.

We sat down, I filled—I do not know why—with a curious sense
        of expectancy that was half awe.

Across one end of the great room was stretched a superb
        curtain of tapestry,—a mosaic in silk and wool.

Severnius did not make any other sign or gesture to me except
        the one that bade me be seated.

I watched him wonderingly but furtively. He seemed to be
        composing himself, as I have seen saintly people compose
        themselves in church. Not that he was saintly; he did not strike
        me as being that kind of a man, though there was that about him
        which proclaimed him to be a good man, whose friendship would be
        a valuable acquisition.

He folded his hands loosely in his lap and sat motionless,
        his glance resting serenely on one of the great windows for a
        time and then passing on to other objects equally beautiful.

We were still enwrapped in this august silence when I became
        conscious that somewhere, afar off, beyond the tapestry curtain,
        there were stealing toward us strains of unusual, ineffable
        music, tantalizingly sweet and vague.

Gradually the almost indistinguishable sounds detached
        themselves from, and rose above, the pulsing silence,—or that
        unappreciable harmony we call silence,—and swelled up among the
        arches that ribbed the lofty ceiling, and rolled and
        reverberated through the great dome above, and came reflected
        down to us in refined and sublimated undulations.

Our souls—my soul,—in this new wonder and ecstasy I forgot
        Severnius,—awoke in responsive raptures, inconceivably thrilling
        and exalted.

I did not need to be told that it was sacred music, it
        invoked the Divine Presence unmistakably. No influence that had
        ever before been trained upon my spiritual senses had so
        compelled to adoration of the Supreme One who holds and rules
        all worlds.

“He lifts me to the golden doors; The flashes come and go;
        All heaven bursts her starry floors, And strows her lights
        below, And deepens on and up! the gates Roll back.”

This I murmured, and texts of our scriptures, and fragments
        of anthems. It was as if I brought my earthly tribute to lay on
        this Marsian shrine.

The gates did roll back, the heavens were broken up, new
        spiritual heights were shown to me, up which my spirit
        mounted.

I looked at Severnius. His eyes were closed. His face,
        lighted as by an inner illumination, and his whole attitude,
        suggested a “waiting upon God,” that

“Intercourse divine, Which God permits, ordains, across the
        line.”

There stole insensibly upon the sound-burdened air, the
        hallowed perfume of burning incense.

I conjectured, and truly as I afterward learned, that I was
        in my friend’s private sanctuary. It was his spiritual lavatory,
        in which he made daily ablutions. A service in which the soul
        lays aside the forms necessary in public worship and stands
        unveiled before its God.

It was a rare honor he paid me, in permitting me to accompany
        him. And he repeated it every morning during my stay in his
        house, except on one or two occasions. It speedily became almost
        a necessity to me. You know how it is when you have formed a
        habit of exercising your muscles in a gymnasium. If you leave it
        off, you are uncomfortable, you have a feeling that you have
        cheated your body out of its right. It was so with me, when for
        any reason I was obliged to forego this higher exercise. I was
        heavy in spirit, my conscience accused me of a wrong to one of
        the “selfs” in me,—for we have several selfs, I think.

There was not always music. Sometimes a wonderful voice
        chanted psalms and praises, and recited poems that troubled the
        soul’s deepest waters. At first I did not understand the words,
        of course, but the intonations spoke to me the same as music
        does. And I felt that I knew what the words expressed.

Often there was nothing there but The Presence, which hushed
        our voices and set our souls in tune with heavenly things. No
        matter, I was fed and satisfied.

At the end of a sweet half-hour, the music died away, and we
        rose and passed out of the sacred place. I longed to question
        Severnius, but was powerless.

He led the way down into the library, which was just off the
        wide entrance hall. Books were ranged round the walls on
        shelves, the same as we dispose ours. But they were all bound in
        white cloth or white leather.

The lettering on the backs was gold.

I took one in my hand and flipped its leaves to show
        Severnius that I knew what a book was. He was delighted. He
        asked me, in a language which he and I had speedily established
        between ourselves, if I would not like to learn the Marsian
        tongue. I replied that it was what I wished above all things to
        do. We set to work at once. His teaching was very simple and
        natural, and I quickly mastered several important
        principles.

After a little a servant announced some visitors, and
        Severnius went out into the hall to receive them. He left the
        door open, and I saw that the visitors were the astronomers I
        had met the night before. They asked to see me, and Severnius
        ushered them into the library. I stood up and shook hands with
        each one, as he advanced, and repeated their own formula for
        “How do you do!” which quite amused them. I suppose the words
        sounded very parrot-like,—I did not know where to put the
        accent. They congratulated me with many smiles and
        gesticulations on my determination to learn the
        language,—Severnius having explained this fact to them. He also
        told them that I had perhaps better be left to myself and him
        until I had mastered it, when of course I should be much more
        interesting to them and they to me. They acquiesced, and with
        many bows and waves of the hand, withdrew.

The language, I found, was not at all difficult,—not so
        arbitrary as many of our modern languages. It was similar in
        form and construction to the ancient languages of southern
        Europe. The proper names had an almost familiar sound. That of
        the country I was in was Paleveria. The city was called Thursia,
        and there was a river flowing through it,—one portion of
        Severnius’ grounds, at the back of the house, sloped to
        it,—named the Gyro.

Chapter 2. A Woman.

“Her face so fair, as flesh it seemed not, But heavenly
        portrait of bright angels hew, Clear as the skye withouten blame
        or blot, Through goodly mixture of complexion’s dew; And in her
        cheeks the vermeil red did shew Like roses in a bed of lillies
        shed. In her faire eyes two living lamps did flame.”

—Spenser.

Thus far, I had seen no women. I was curious on this point,
        and I was not kept long in suspense. Late in the afternoon of
        the day following my arrival, Severnius and I went out to walk
        about the grounds, and were returning through an avenue of
        eucalyptus trees,—of a variety more wide-spreading in their
        branches than any I have seen in our country,—when a person
        alighted from a carriage in the porte cochere and,
        instead of entering the house, came to meet us. It was a woman.
        Though it was not left to her dress, nor her stature,—she was
        nearly as tall as myself,—to proclaim that fact; her grace and
        carriage would have determined her sex, if her beautiful face
        had not. She advanced swiftly, with long, free steps. Her white
        dress, similar in cut and style to ours, was relieved only by a
        girdle studded with gems. She carried a little white parasol
        with a gold fringe, and wore no head-gear to crush down her
        beautifully massed hair.

I felt myself growing red under her lively gaze, and
        attributed it to my clothes. I was not accustomed to them yet,
        and I felt as you would to appear before a beautiful woman in
        your night shirt. Especially if you fancied you saw something in
        her eyes which made you suspect that she thought you cut a
        ludicrous figure. Of course that was my imagination, my apparel,
        in her eyes, must have been correct, since it was selected from
        among his best by my new friend, who was unmistakably a man of
        taste.

Her face, which was indescribably lovely, was also keenly
        intelligent,—that sort of intelligence which lets nothing
        escape, which is as quick to grasp a humorous situation as a
        sublime truth. It was a face of power and of passion,—of, I
        might say, manly self-restraint,—but yet so soft!

I now observed for the first time the effect of the pinkish
        atmosphere on the complexion. You have seen ladies in a room
        where the light came through crimson hangings or glass stained
        red. So it was here.

Severnius smiled, spoke, and gave her his hand. The glance
        they bestowed upon each other established their relationship in
        my mind instantly. I had seen that glance a thousand times,
        without suspecting it had ever made so strong an impression upon
        me that in a case like this I should accept its evidence without
        other testimony. They were brother and sister. I was glad of
        that, for the reason, I suppose, that every unmarried man is
        glad to find a beautiful woman unmarried,—there are seductive
        possibilities in the situation.

Severnius did his best to introduce us. He called her Elodia.
        I learned afterwards that ladies and gentlemen in that country
        have no perfunctory titles, like Mrs., or Mr., they support
        their dignity without that. It would have seemed belittling to
        say “Miss” Elodia.

I had a feeling that she did not attach much importance to
        me, that she was half amused at the idea of me; a peculiar
        tilting-up of her eyebrows told me so, and I was piqued. It
        seemed unfair that, simply because she could not account for me,
        she should set me down as inferior, or impossible, or
        ridiculous, whichever was in her mind. She regarded me as I have
        sometimes regarded un-English foreigners in the streets of New
        York.

She indulged her curiosity about me only for a moment, asking
        a few questions I inferred, and then passed me over as though
        she had more weighty matters in hand. I knew, later on, that she
        waived me as a topic of conversation when her brother insisted
        upon talking about me, saying half impatiently, “Wait till he
        can talk and explain himself, Severnius,—since you say he is
        going to learn our speech.”

I studied her with deep interest as we walked along, and no
        movement or accent of hers was lost upon me. Once she raised her
        hand—her wide sleeve slipped back and bared a lovely arm—to
        break off a long scimeter-shaped leaf from a bough overhead.
        Quicker than thought I sprang at the bough and snapped off the
        leaf in advance of her, and presented it with a low obeisance.
        She drew herself up with a look of indignant surprise, but
        instantly relented as though to a person whose eccentricities,
        for some reason or other, might better be excused. She did not,
        however, take the leaf,—it fluttered to the ground.

She was not like any other woman,—any woman I had ever seen
        before. You could not accuse her of hauteur, yet she bore
        herself like a royal personage, though with no suggestion of
        affecting that sort of an air. You had to take her as seriously
        as you would the Czar. I saw this in her brother’s attitude
        toward her. There was none of that condescension in his manner
        that there often is in our manner toward the women of our
        households. I began to wonder whether she might not be the queen
        of the realm! But she was not. She was simply a private
        citizen.

She sat at the dinner table with us, and divided the honors
        equally with Severnius.

I wish I could give you an idea of that dinner,—the
        dining-room, the service, the whole thing! It surpassed my
        finest conceptions of taste and elegance.

We sat down not merely to eat,—though I was hungry
        enough!—but to enjoy ourselves in other ways.

There was everything for the eye to delight in. The room was
        rich in artistic decorations upon which the rarest talent must
        have been employed. The table arrangements were superb; gold and
        silver, crystal, fine china, embroidered linen, flowers. And the
        food, served in many courses, was a happy combination of the
        substantial and the delicate. There was music—not too near—of a
        bright and lively character. Music enters largely into the life
        of these people. It seemed to me that something beat time to
        almost everything we did.

The conversation carried on between the brother and sister—in
        which I could take no more part than a deaf-mute—was, I felt
        sure, extremely entertaining if not important. My eyes served me
        well,—for one sense is quick to assume the burdens of
        another,—and I knew that the talk was not mere banter, nor was
        it simply the necessary exchange of words and opinions about
        everyday matters which must take place in families periodically,
        concerning fuel, and provisions, and servants, and water-tax,
        and the like. It took a much higher range. The faces of both
        were animated, their eyes beamed brightly upon each other. It
        was clear that the brother did not talk down to her
        understanding, rather he talked up to it,—or no, they were on a
        level with each other, the highest level of both, for they held
        each other up to their best. However, Elodia had been away for a
        couple of days, I learned, and absence gives a bloom of newness
        which it is delightful to brush off.

I did not detect any of the quality we call chivalry in
        Severnius’ pose, nor of its complement in hers. Though one would
        hardly expect that between brothers and sisters anywhere. Still,
        we have a way with our near women relations which never ignores
        the distinction between the sexes; we humor them, patronize
        them, tyrannize over them. And they defer to, and exalt us, and
        usually acknowledge our superiority.

It was not so with this pair. They respected and honored each
        other equally. And there was a charming camaraderie
        between them, the same as if they had both been men—or women, if
        you single out the right kind.

They held widely different opinions upon many subjects, but
        they never crowded them upon each other. Their tastes were
        dissimilar. For one thing, Elodia had not her brother’s fine
        religious sense. She seldom entered the sanctuary, though once
        or twice I saw her there, seated far apart from Severnius and
        myself.

Stimulated by the hope of some day being able to talk with
        her, and of convincing her that I was a person not altogether
        beneath her intelligence, I devoted myself, mind and soul, to
        the Paleverian language. In six weeks I could read and write it
        fairly well.

Severnius was untiring in his teaching; and every day
        strengthened my regard for him as a man. He was an accomplished
        scholar, and he was as clean-souled as a child,—but not weakly
        or ignorantly so. He knew evil as well as good; but he renounced
        the one and accepted the other. He was a man “appointed by
        Almighty God to stand for a fact.” And I never knew him to
        weaken his position by defending it. Often we spent hours in the
        observatory together. It was a glorious thing to me to watch the
        splendid fleet of asteroids sailing between Jupiter and Mars,
        and to single out the variously colored moons of Jupiter, and to
        distinguish with extraordinary clearness a thousand other
        wonders but dimly seen from the Earth.

Even to study the moons of Mars, the lesser one whirling
        round the planet with such astonishing velocity, was a world of
        entertainment to me.

I had begged Severnius not to ask me to see any visitors at
        all until I could acquit myself creditably in conversation. He
        agreed, and I saw no one. I believe that in those weeks of quiet
        study, observation, and close companionship of one noble man, my
        soul was cleared of much dross. I lived with books, Severnius,
        and the stars.

At last, I no longer feared to trust myself to speak, even to
        Elodia. It was a great surprise to her, and evidently a pleasure
        too.

My first brilliant attempt was at the dinner table. Severnius
        adroitly drew me into a conversation about our world. Elodia
        turned her delightful gaze upon me so frankly and approvingly
        that I felt myself blushing like a boy whom his pretty
        Sabbath-school teacher praises with her smile when he says his
        text.

Up to that time, although she had been polite to me,—so
        entirely polite that I never for a moment felt myself an
        intruder in her home,—she apparently took no great interest in
        me. But now she voluntarily addressed me whenever we met, and
        took pains to draw me out.

Once she glanced at a book I was reading, a rather heavy
        work, and smiled.

“You have made astonishing progress,” she said.

“I have had the best of instructors,” I replied.

“Ah, yes; Severnius has great patience. And besides, he likes
        you. And then of course he is not wholly disinterested, he wants
        to hear about your planet.”

“And do you?” I asked foolishly. I wanted somehow to get the
        conversation to running in a personal channel.

“O, of course,” she returned indifferently, “though I am not
        an astronomer. I should like to hear something about your
        people.”

I took that cue joyfully, and soon we were on very sociable
        terms with each other. She listened to my stories and
        descriptions with a most flattering interest, and I soon found
        myself worshiping her as a goddess. Yes, as a goddess, not a
        woman. Her entire lack of coquetry prevented me from making love
        to her, or would have prevented me if I had dared to have such a
        thought. If there could have been anything tender between us, I
        think she must have made the advances. But this is foolish. I am
        merely trying to give you some idea of the kind of woman she
        was. But I know that I cannot do that; the quality of a woman
        must be felt to be understood.

There was a great deal of social gayety in Thursia. We went
        out frequently, to opera, to concert, and to crowded gatherings
        in splendid homes. I observed that Elodia immediately became the
        centre of interest wherever she appeared. She gave fresh zest to
        every amusement or conversation. She seemed to dignify with her
        presence whatever happened to be going on, and made it worth
        while. Not that she distinguished herself in speech or act; she
        had the effect of being infinitely greater than anything she did
        or said and one was always looking out for manifestations of
        that. She kept one’s interest in her up to the highest pitch. I
        often asked myself, “Why is it that we are always looking at her
        with a kind of inquiry in our glances?—what is it that we expect
        her to do?”

It was a great part of her charm that she was not
        blasé. She was full of interest in all about her, she
        was keenly and delightfully alive. Her manners were perfect, and
        yet she seemed careless of etiquette and conventions. Her good
        manners were a part of herself, as her regal carriage was.

It was her unvarying habit, almost, to spend several hours
        down town every day. I ventured to ask Severnius wherefore.

He replied that she had large business interests, and looked
        carefully after them herself.

I expressed astonishment, and Severnius was equally surprised
        at me. I questioned him and he explained.

“My father was a banker,” he said, “and very rich. My sister
        inherited his gift and taste for finance. I took after my
        mother’s family, who were scientists. We were trained, of
        course, in our early years according to our respective talents.
        At our parents’ death we inherited their fortune in equal
        shares. Elodia was prepared to take up my father’s business
        where he left it. In fact he had associated her with himself in
        the business for some time previous to his departure, and she
        has carried it on very successfully ever since.”

“She is a banker!” said I.

“Yes. I, myself, have always had a liking for astronomy, and
        I have been employed, ever since I finished my education, in the
        State Observatory.”

“And how do you employ your capital?” I asked.

“Elodia manages it for me. It is all in the bank, or in
        investments which she makes. I use my dividends largely in the
        interest of science. The State does a great deal in that
        direction, but not enough.”

“And what, may I ask, does she do with her surplus,—your
        sister, I mean,—she must make a great deal of money?”

“She re-invests it. She has a speculative tendency, and is
        rather daring; though they tell me she is very safe—far-sighted,
        or large-sighted, I should call it. I do not know how many great
        enterprises she is connected with,—railroads, lines of steamers,
        mining and manufacturing operations. And besides, she is
        public-spirited. She is much interested in the cause of
        education,—practical education for the poor especially. She is
        president of the school board here in the city, and she is also
        a member of the city council. A great many of our modern
        improvements are due to her efforts.”

My look of amazement arrested his attention.

“Why are you so surprised?” he asked. “Do not your women
        engage in business?”

“Well, not to such an extraordinary degree,” I replied. “We
        have women who work in various ways, but there are very few of
        them who have large business interests, and they are not
        entrusted with important public affairs, such as municipal
        government and the management of schools!”

“Oh!” returned Severnius with the note of one who does not
        quite understand. “Would you mind telling me why? Is it because
        they are incapable, or—unreliable?”

Neither of the words he chose struck me pleasantly as applied
        to my countrywomen. I remembered that I was the sole
        representative of the Earth on Mars, and that it stood me in
        hand to be careful about the sort of impressions I gave out. It
        was as if I were on the witness’ stand, under oath. Facts must
        tell the story, not opinions,—though personally I have great
        confidence in my opinions. I thought of our government
        departments where women are the experts, and of their almost
        spotless record for faithfulness and honesty, and replied:

“They are both capable and reliable, in as far as they have
        had experience. But their chances have been circumscribed, and I
        believe they lack the inclination to assume grave public duties.
        I fear I cannot make you understand,—our women are so different,
        so unlike your sister.”

Elodia was always my standard of comparison.

“Perhaps you men take care of them all,” suggested Severnius,
        “and they have grown dependent. We have some such women
        here.”

“No, I do not think it is that entirely,” said I. “For in my
        city alone, more than a hundred and seventy thousand women
        support not only themselves, but others who are dependent upon
        them.”

“Ah, indeed! but how?”

“By work.”

“You mean servants?”

“Not so-called. I mean intelligent, selfrespecting women;
        teachers, clerks, stenographers, type-writers.”

“I should think it would be more agreeable, and easier, for
        them to engage in business as our women do.”

“No doubt it would,” I replied, feeling myself driven to a
        close scrutiny of the Woman Question, as we call it, for the
        first time in my life. For I saw that my friend was deeply
        interested and wanted to get at the literal truth. “But the
        women of my country,” I went on, “the self-supporting ones, do
        not have control of money. They have a horror of speculation,
        and shrink from taking risks and making ventures, the failure of
        which would mean loss or ruin to others. A woman’s right to make
        her living is restricted to the powers within herself, powers of
        brain and hand. She is a beginner, you know. She has not yet
        learned to make money by the labor of others; she does not know
        how to manipulate those who are less intelligent and less
        capable than herself, and to turn their ignorance and
        helplessness to her own account. Perhaps I had better add that
        she is more religious than man, and is sustained in this seeming
        injustice by something she calls conscience.”

Severnius was silent for a moment; he had a habit of setting
        his reason to work and searching out explanations in his own
        mind, of things not easily understood.

As a rule, the Marsians have not only very highly developed
        physical faculties, such as sight and hearing, but remarkably
        acute intellects. They let no statement pass without
        examination, and they scrutinize facts closely and seek for
        causes.

“If so many women,” said he, “are obliged to support
        themselves and others beside, as you say, by their work simply,
        they must receive princely wages,—and of course they have no
        responsibilities, which is a great saving of energy.”

I remembered having heard it stated that in New York City,
        the United States Bureau gives the average of women’s
        wages—leaving out domestic service and unskilled labor—as five
        dollars and eighty-five cents per week. I mentioned the fact,
        and Severnius looked aghast.

“What, a mere pittance!” said he. “Only about a third as much
        as I give my stableman. But then the conditions are different,
        no doubt. Here in Thursia that would no more than fight off the
        wolf, as we say,—the hunger and cold. It would afford no taste
        of the better things, freedom, leisure, recreation, but would
        reduce life to its lowest terms,—mere existence.”

“I fear the conditions are much the same with us,” I
        replied.

“And do your women submit to such conditions,—do they not try
        to alter them, throw them off?”

“They submit, of course,” I said; “I never heard of a revolt
        or an insurrection among them! Though there seems to be growing
        up among them, lately, a determination strong as death, to work
        out of those conditions as fast as may be. They realize—just as
        men have been forced to realize in this century—that work of the
        hands cannot compete with work of machines, and that trained
        brains are better capital than trained fingers. So, slowly but
        surely, they are reaching up to the higher callings and working
        into places of honor and trust. The odds are against them,
        because the ‘ins’ always have a tremendous advantage over the
        ‘outs.’ The women, having never been in, must submit to a rigid
        examination and extraordinary tests. They know that, and they
        are rising to it. Whenever, it is said, they come into
        competition with men, in our colleges and training schools, they
        hold their own and more.”

“What are they fitting for?” asked Severnius.

“Largely for the professions. They are becoming doctors,
        lawyers, editors, artists, writers. The enormous systems of
        public schools in my own and other countries is entirely in
        their hands,—except of course in the management and
        directorship.”

“Except in the management and directorship?” echoed
        Severnius.

“Of course they do not provide and disburse the funds, see to
        the building of school-houses, and dictate the policy of the
        schools!” I retorted. “But they teach them; you can hardly find
        a male teacher except at the head of a school,—to keep the
        faculty in order.”

Severnius refrained from comment upon this, seeing, I
        suppose, that I was getting a little impatient. He walked along
        with his head down. I think I neglected to say that we were
        taking a long tramp into the country, as we often did. In order
        to change the conversation, I asked him what sort of a
        government they had in Paleveria, and was delighted when he
        replied that it was a free republic.

“My country is a republic also,” I said, proudly.

“We both have much to be thankful for,” he answered. “A
        republic is the only natural government in the world, and man
        cannot get above nature.”

I thought this remark rather singular,—at variance with
        progress and high civilization. But I let it pass, thinking to
        take it up at some future time.

“How do you vote here?” I asked. “What are your
        qualifications and restrictions?”

“Briefly told,” he replied. “Every citizen may vote on all
        public questions, and in all elections.”

“But what constitutes citizenship?”

“A native-born is a citizen when he or she reaches maturity.
        Foreigners are treated as minors until they have lived as long
        under the government as it takes for a child to come of age. It
        is thus,” he added, facetiously, “that we punish people for
        presuming to be born outside our happy country.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but do I understand you to say that
        your women have the right of suffrage?”

“Assuredly. Do not yours?”

“Indeed no!” I replied, the masculine instinct of superiority
        swelling within me.

Severnius wears spectacles. He adjusted them carefully on his
        nose and looked at me.

“But did you not tell me just now that your country is a
        republic?”

“It is, but we do not hold that women are our political
        equals,” I answered.

His face was an exclamation and interrogation point fused
        into one.

“Indeed! and how do you manage it,—how, for instance, can you
        prevent them from voting?”

“O, they don’t often try it,” I said, laughing. “When they
        do, we simply throw their ballots out of the count.”

“Is it possible! That seems to me a great unfairness.
        However, it can be accounted for, I suppose, from the fact that
        things are so different on the Earth to what they are here. Our
        government, you see, rests upon a system of taxation. We tax all
        property to defray governmental expenses, and for many other
        purposes tending toward the general good; which makes it
        necessary that all our citizens shall have a voice in our
        political economy. But you say your women have no property, and
        so—”

“I beg your pardon!” I interposed; “I did not say that. We
        have a great many very rich women,—women whose husbands or
        fathers have left them fortunes.”

“Then they of course have a vote?”

“They do not. You can’t make a distinction like that.”

“No? But you exempt their property, perhaps?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you tell me that you tax property, to whatever amount,
        and for whatever purpose, you choose, without allowing the owner
        her fractional right to decide about either the one or the
        other?”

“Their interests are identical with ours,” I replied, “so
        what is the difference? We men manage the government business,
        and I fancy we do it sufficiently well.”

I expanded my chest after this remark, and Severnius simply
        looked at me. I think that at that moment I suffered vicariously
        in his scornful regard for all my countrymen.

I did not like the Socratic method he had adopted in this
        conversation, and I turned the tables on him.

“Do your women hold office, other than in the school board
        and the council?” I asked.

“O, yes, fully half our offices are filled by women.”

“And you make no discrimination in the kind of office?”

“The law makes none; those things adjust themselves. Fitness,
        equipment, are the only things considered. A woman, the same as
        a man, is governed by her taste and inclination in the matter of
        office-holding. Do women never take a hand in state affairs on
        the Earth?”

“Yes, in some countries they do,—monarchies. There have been
        a good many women sovereigns. There are a few now.”

“And are they successful rulers?”

“Some are, some are not.”

“The same as men. That proves that your women are not really
        inferior.”

“Well, I should say not!” I retorted. “Our women are very
        superior; we treat them more as princesses than as
        inferiors,—they are angels.”

I was carried away in the heat of resentment, and knew that
        what I had said was half cant.

“I beg your pardon!” said Severnius quickly; “I got a wrong
        impression from your statements. I fear I am very stupid. Are
        they all angels?”

I gave him a furtive glance and saw that he was in earnest.
        His brows were drawn together with a puzzled look.

I had a sudden vision of a scene in Five Points; several
        groups of frowsled, petticoated beings, laughing, joking,
        swearing, quarreling, fighting, and drinking beer from dirty
        mugs.

“No, not all of them,” I replied, smiling. “That was a figure
        of speech. There are so many classes.”

“Let us confine our discussion to one, then,” he returned.
        “To the women who might be of your own family; that will
        simplify matters. And now tell me, please, how this state of
        things came about, this subjection of a part of your people. I
        cannot understand it,—these subjects being of your own flesh and
        blood. I should think it would breed domestic discontent, where
        some of the members of a family wield a power and enjoy a
        privilege denied to the others. Fancy my shaking a ballot over
        Elodia’s head!”

“O, Elodia!” I said, and was immediately conscious that my
        accent was traitorous to my countrywomen. I made haste to
        add,

“Your sister is—incomparable. She is unusual even here. I
        have seen none others like her.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean that she is as responsible as a man; she is not
        inconsequent.”

“Are your women inconsequent?”

“They have been called so, and we think it rather adds to
        their attractiveness. You see they have always been relieved of
        responsibility, and I assure you the large majority of them have
        no desire to assume it,—I mean in the matter of government and
        politics.”

“Yes?”

I dislike an interrogative “yes,” and I made no reply.
        Severnius added,

“I suppose they have lost the faculty which you say they
        lack,—the faculty that makes people responsible,—through disuse.
        I have seen the same thing in countries on the other side of our
        globe, where races have been held as slaves for several
        centuries. They seem to have no ideas about personal rights, or
        liberties, as pertaining to themselves, and no inclination in
        that direction. It always struck me as being the most pathetic
        feature of their condition that they and everybody else accepted
        it as a matter of course, as they would a law of nature. In the
        place of strength and self-assertion there has come to them a
        dumb patience, or an unquestioning acquiescence like that of
        people born blind. Are your women happy?”

“You should see them!” I exclaimed, with certain ball-room
        memories rushing upon me, and visions of fair faces radiant with
        the joy of living. But these were quickly followed by other
        pictures, and I felt bound to add, “Of late, a restless spirit
        has developed in certain circles,—”

“The working circles, I suppose,” interrupted Severnius. “You
        spoke of the working women getting into the professions.”

“Not those exclusively. Even the women of leisure are not so
        satisfied as they used to be. There has been, for a great many
        years, more or less chaffing about women’s rights, but now they
        are beginning to take the matter seriously.”

“Ah, they are waking up, perhaps?”

“Yes, some of them are waking up,—a good many of them. It is
        a little ridiculous, when one thinks of it, seeing they have no
        power to enforce their ‘rights’, and can never attain them
        except through the condescension of men. Tell me, Severnius,
        when did your women wake up?”

Severnius smiled. “My dear sir, I think they have never been
        asleep!”

We stalked along silently for a time; the subject passed out
        of my mind, or was driven out by the beauties of the landscape
        about us. I was especially impressed with the magnificence of
        the trees that hedged every little patch of farm land, and threw
        their protecting arms around houses and cottages, big and
        little; and with the many pellucid streams flowing naturally, or
        divided like strands of silk and guided in new courses, to lave
        the roots of trees or run through pasture lands where herds were
        feeding.

A tree is something to be proud of in Paleveria, more than a
        fine residence; more even than ancient furniture and cracked
        china. Perhaps because the people sit out under their trees a
        great deal, and the shade of them has protected the heads of
        many generations, and they have become hallowed through sacred
        memories and traditions. In Paleveria they have tree doctors,
        whose business it is to ward off disease, heal wounded or broken
        boughs, and exterminate destructive insects.

Severnius startled me suddenly with another question:

“What, may I ask, is your theory of Man’s creation?”

“God made Man, and from one of his ribs fashioned woman,” I
        replied catechetically.

“Ours is different,” said he. “It is this: A pair of
        creatures, male and female, sprang simultaneously from an
        enchanted lake in the mountain region of a country called
        Caskia, in the northern part of this continent. They were only
        animals, but they were beautiful and innocent. God breathed a
        Soul into them and they were Man and Woman, equals in all
        things.”

“A charming legend!” said I.

Later on I learned the full breadth of the meaning of the
        equality he spoke of. At that time it was impossible for me to
        comprehend it, and I can only convey it to you in a complete
        account of my further experiences on that wonderful planet.

Chapter 3. The Aurora’s
        Annual.

It was winter, and snow was on the ground; white and
        sparkling, and as light as eider-down. Elodia kept a fine
        stable. Four magnificent white horses were harnessed to her
        sleigh, which was in the form of an immense swan, with a head
        and neck of frosted silver. The body of it was padded outside
        with white varnished leather, and inside with velvet of the
        color of a dove’s breast. The robes were enormous skins of polar
        bears, lined with a soft, warm fabric of wool and silk. The
        harness was bestrung with little silver bells of most musical
        and merry tone; and all the trappings and accoutrements were
        superb. Elodia had luxurious tastes, and indulged them.

Every day we took an exhilarating drive. The two deep,
        comfortable seats faced each other like seats in a landau.
        Severnius and I occupied one, and Elodia the other; so that I
        had the pleasure of looking at her whenever I chose, and of
        meeting her eyes in conversation now and then, which was no
        small part of my enjoyment. The mere sight of her roused the
        imagination and quickened the pulse. Her eyes were unusually
        dark, but they had blue rays, and were as clear and beautiful as
        agates held under water. In fact they seemed to swim in an
        invisible liquid. Her complexion had the effect of alabaster
        through which a pink light shines,—deepest in the cheeks, as
        though they were more transparent than the rest of her face. Her
        head, crowned with a fascinating little cap, rose above her soft
        furs like a regal flower. She was so beautiful that I wondered
        at myself that I could bear the sight of her.

Strange to say, the weather was not cold, it was simply
        bracing,—hardly severe enough to make the ears tingle.

The roads were perfect everywhere, and we often drove into
        the country. The horses flew over the wide white stretches at an
        incredible speed.

One afternoon when, at the usual hour, the coachman rang the
        bell and announced that he was ready, I was greatly disappointed
        to find that we were not to have Elodia. But I said nothing, for
        I was shy about mentioning her name.

When we were seated, Severnius gave directions to the
        driver.

“Time yourself, Giddo, so that you will be at the Public
        Square at precisely three o’clock,” said he, and turned to me.
        “We shall want to see the parade.”

“What parade?” I inquired.

“Oh! has not Elodia told you? This is The Auroras’ Annual,—a
        great day. The parade will be worth seeing.”

In the excitement of the drive, and in my disappointment
        about not having Elodia with us, I had almost forgotten about
        The Auroras’ Annual, when three o’clock came. I had seen parades
        in New York City, until the spectacle had calloused my sense of
        the magnificent, and I very much doubted whether Mars had
        anything new to offer me in that line.

Punctual to the minute, Giddo fetched up at the Square,—among
        a thousand or so of other turnouts,—with such a flourish as all
        Jehus love. We were not a second too soon. There was a sudden
        burst of music, infinitely mellowed by distance; and as far up
        the street as the eye could well reach there appeared a mounted
        procession, advancing slowly. Every charger was snow white, with
        crimped mane and tail, long and flowing, and with trappings of
        various colors magnificent in silver blazonry.

The musicians only were on foot. They were beating upon drums
        and blowing transcendent airs through silver wind instruments. I
        do not know whether it was some quality of the atmosphere that
        made the strains so ravishing, but they swept over one’s soul
        with a rapture that was almost painful. I could hardly sit
        still, but I was held down by the thought that if I should get
        up I would not know what to do. It is a peculiar sensation.

On came the resplendent column with slow, majestic movement;
        and I unconsciously kept time with the drums, with Browning’s
        stately lines on my tongue, but unspoken:

“Steady they step adown the slope, Steady they climb the
        hill.”

There was no hill, but a very slight descent. As they drew
        nearer the splendor of the various uniforms dazzled my eyes. You
        will remember that everything about us was white; the buildings
        all of white stone or brick, the ground covered with snow, and
        the crowds of people lining the streets all dressed in the
        national color, or no-color.

There were several companies in the procession, and each
        company wore distinguishing badges and carried flags and banners
        peculiar to itself.

The housings on the horses of the first brigade were of
        yellow, and all the decorations of the riders corresponded; of
        the second pale blue, and of the third sky-pink. The uniforms of
        the riders were inconceivably splendid; fantastic and gorgeous
        head-gear, glittering belts, silken scarfs and sashes, badges
        and medals flashing with gems, and brilliant colors twisted into
        strange and curious devices.

As the first division was about to pass, I lost my grip on
        myself and half started to my feet with a smothered exclamation,
        “Elodia!”

Severnius put out his hand as though he were afraid I was
        going to leap out of the sleigh, or do something unusual.

“What is it?” he cried, and following my gaze he added, “Yes,
        that is Elodia in front; she is the Supreme Sorceress of the
        Order of the Auroras.”

“The—what!”

“Don’t be frightened,” he laughed; “the word means
        nothing,—it is only a title.”

I could not believe him when I looked at the advancing figure
        of Elodia. She sat her horse splendidly erect. Her fair head was
        crowned with a superb diadem of gold and topazes, with a diamond
        star in the centre, shooting rays like the sun. Her expression
        was grave and lofty; she glanced neither to right nor left, but
        gazed straight ahead—at nothing, or at something infinitely
        beyond mortal vision. Her horse champed its bits, arched its
        beautiful neck, and stepped with conscious pride; dangling the
        gold fringe on its sheeny yellow satin saddle-cloth, until one
        could hardly bear the sight.

“The words mean nothing!” I repeated to myself. “It is not
        so; Severnius has deceived me. His sister is a sorceress; a—I
        don’t know what! But no woman could preserve that majestic mien,
        that proud solemnity of countenance, if she were simply—playing!
        There is a mystery here.”

I scrutinized every rider as they passed. There was not a man
        among them,—all women. Their faces had all borrowed, or had
        tried to borrow, Elodia’s queenly look. Many of them only
        burlesqued it. None were as beautiful as she.

When it was all over, and the music had died away in the
        distance, we drove off,—Giddo threading his way with consummate
        skill, which redounded much to his glory in certain circles he
        cared for, through the crowded thoroughfares.

I could not speak for many minutes, and Severnius was a man
        upon whom silence always fell at the right time. I never knew
        him to break in upon another’s mood for his own entertainment.
        Nor did he spy upon your thoughts; he left you free. By-and-by,
        I appealed to him:

“Tell me, Severnius, what does it mean?”

“This celebration?” returned he. “With pleasure. Giddo, you
        may drive round for half an hour, and then take us to the
        Auroras’ Temple,—it is open to visitors to-day.”

We drew the robes closely, and settled ourselves more
        comfortably, as we cleared the skirts of the crowd. It was
        growing late and the air was filled with fine arrows of frost,
        touched by the last sunbeams,—their sharp little points stinging
        our faces as we were borne along at our usual lively speed.

“This society of the Auroras,” said Severnius, “originated
        several centuries ago, in the time of a great famine. In those
        days the people were poor and improvident, and a single failure
        in their crops left them in a sorry condition. Some of the
        wealthiest women of the country banded themselves together and
        worked systematically for the relief of the sufferers. Their
        faces appeared so beautiful, and beamed with such a light of
        salvation as they went about from hut to hut, that they got the
        name of ‘auroras’ among the simple poor. And they banished want
        and hunger so magically, that they were also called
        ‘sorcerers’.”

“O, then, it is a charitable organization?” I exclaimed, much
        relieved.

“It was,” replied Severnius. “It was in active operation for
        a hundred or so years. Finally, when there was no more need of
        it, the State having undertaken the care of its poor, it passed
        into a sentiment, such as you have seen to-day.”

“A very costly and elaborate sentiment,” I retorted.

“Yes, and it is growing more so, all the time,” said he. “I
        sometimes wonder where it is going to stop! For those who, like
        Elodia, have plenty of money, it does not matter; but some of
        the women we saw in those costly robes and ornaments can ill
        afford them,—they mean less of comfort in their homes and less
        of culture to their children.”

“I should think their husbands would not allow such a waste
        of money,” I said, forgetting the social economy of Mars.

“It does not cost any more than membership in the orders to
        which the husbands themselves belong,” returned he. “They argue,
        of course, that they need the recreation, and also that
        membership in such hightoned clubs gives them and their children
        a better standing and greater influence in society.”

Severnius did not forget his usual corollary,—the question
        with which he topped out every explanation he made about his
        country and people.

“Have you nothing of the sort on the Earth?” he asked.

“Among the women?—we have not,” I answered.

“I did not specify,” he said.

“O, well, the men have,” I admitted; “I belong to one such
        organization myself,—the City Guards.”

“And you guard the city?”

“No; there is nothing to guard it against at present. It’s a
        ‘sentiment,’ as you say.”

“And do you parade?”

“Yes, of course, upon occasion,—there are certain great
        anniversaries in our nation’s history when we appear.”

“And why not your women?”

I smiled to myself, as I tried to fancy some of the New York
        ladies I knew, arrayed in gorgeous habiliments for an equestrian
        exhibition on Broadway. I replied,

“Really, Severnius, the idea is entirely new to me. I think
        they would regard it as highly absurd.”

“Do they regard you as absurd?” he asked, in that way of his
        which I was often in doubt about, not knowing whether he was in
        earnest or not.

“I’m sure I do not know,” I said. “They may,—our women have a
        keen relish for the ludicrous. Still, I cannot think that they
        do; they appear to look upon us with pride. And they present us
        with an elaborate silken banner about once a year, stitched
        together by their own fair fingers and paid for out of their own
        pocket money. That does not look as though they were laughing at
        us exactly.”

I said this as much to convince myself as Severnius.

The half-hour was up and we were at the Temple gate. The
        building, somewhat isolated, reared itself before us, a grand
        conception in chiseled marble, glinting in the brilliant lights
        shot upon it from various high points. Already it was dark
        beyond the radius of these lights,—neither of the moons having
        yet appeared.

Severnius dismissed the sleigh, saying that we would walk
        home,—the distance was not far,—and we entered the grounds and
        proceeded to mount the flight of broad steps leading up to the
        magnificent arched entrance. The great carved doors,—the
        carvings were emblematic,—swung back and admitted us. The Temple
        was splendidly illuminated within, and imagination could not
        picture anything more imposing than the great central hall and
        winding stairs, visible all the way up to the dome.

Below, on one side of this lofty hall, there were extensive
        and luxurious baths. Severnius said the members of the Order
        were fond of congregating here,—and I did not wonder at that;
        nothing that appertains to such an establishment was lacking.
        Chairs and sofas that we would call “Turkish,” thick, soft rugs
        and carpets, pictures, statuary, mirrors, growing plants, rare
        flowers, books, musical instruments. And Severnius told me the
        waters were delightful for bathing.

The second story consisted of a series of spacious rooms
        divided from each other by costly portieres, into which the
        various emblems and devices were woven in their proper
        tinctures.

All of these rooms were as sumptuously furnished as those
        connected with the baths; and the decorations, I thought, were
        even more beautiful, of a little higher or finer order.

In one of the rooms a lady was playing upon an instrument
        resembling a harp. She dropped her hands from the strings and
        came forward graciously.

“Perhaps we are intruding?” said Severnius.

“Ah, no, indeed,” she laughed, pleasantly; “no one could be
        more welcome here than the brother of our Supreme
        Sorceress!”

“Happy the man who has a distinguished sister!” returned
        he.

“I am unfortunate,” she answered with a slight blush.
        “Severnius is always welcome for his own sake.”

He acknowledged the compliment, and with a certain
        reluctance, I thought, said, “Will you allow me, Claris, to
        introduce my friend—from another planet?”

She took a swift step toward me and held out her hand.

“I have long had a great curiosity to meet you, sir,” she
        said.

I bowed low over her hand and murmured that her curiosity
        could not possibly equal the pleasure I felt in meeting her.

She gave Severnius a quick, questioning look. I believe she
        thought he had told me something about her. He let her think
        what she liked.

“How is it you are here?” he asked.

“You mean instead of being with the others?” she returned. “I
        have not been well lately, and I thought—or my husband thought—I
        had better not join the procession. I am awaiting them
        here.”

As she spoke, I noticed that she was rather delicate looking.
        She was tall and slight, with large, bright eyes, and a
        transparent complexion. If Elodia had not filled all space in my
        consciousness I think I should have been considerably interested
        in her. I liked her frank, direct way of meeting us and talking
        to us. We soon left her and continued our explorations.

I wanted to ask Severnius something about her, but I thought
        he avoided the subject. He told me, however, that her husband,
        Massilia, was one of his closest friends. And then he added, “I
        wonder that she took his advice!”

“Why so,” I asked; “do not women here ever take their
        husbands’ advice?”

“Claris is not in the habit of doing so,” he returned with, I
        thought, some severity. And then he immediately spoke of
        something else quite foreign to her.

The third and last story comprised an immense hall or
        assembly room, and rows of deep closets for the robes and
        paraphernalia of the members of the Order. In one of these
        closets a skeleton was suspended from the ceiling and underneath
        it stood a coffin. On a shelf were three skulls with their
        accompanying cross-bones, and several cruel-looking weapons.

Severnius said he supposed these hideous tokens were employed
        in the initiation of new members. It seemed incredible. I
        thought that, if it were so, the Marsian women must have
        stronger nerves than ours.

A great many beautiful marble columns and pillars supported
        the roof of the hall, and the walls had a curiously fluted
        appearance. There was a great deal of sculpture, not only
        figures, but flowers, vines, and all manner of decorations,—even
        draperies chiseled in marble that looked like frozen lace, with
        an awful stillness in their ghostly folds. There was a
        magnificent canopied throne on an elevation like an
        old-fashioned pulpit, and seats for satellites on either side,
        and at the base. If I had been alone, I would have gone up and
        knelt down before the throne,—for of course that was where
        Elodia sat,—and I would have kissed the yellow cushion on which
        her feet were wont to rest when she wielded her jeweled scepter.
        The scepter, I observed, lay on the throne-chair.

There was an orchestra, and there were “stations” for the
        various officials, and the walls were adorned with innumerable
        cabalistic insignia. I asked Severnius if he knew the meaning of
        any of them.

“How should I know?” he replied in surprise. “Only the
        initiates understand those things.”

“Then these women keep their secrets,” said I.

“Yes, to be sure they do,” he replied.

The apartment to the right, on the entrance floor, opposite
        the baths, was the last we looked into, and was a magnificent
        banquet hall. A servant who stood near the door opened it as
        though it had been the door of a shrine, and no wonder! It was a
        noble room in its dimensions and in all its unparalleled
        adornments and appurtenances.

The walls and ceiling bristled with candelabra all alight.
        The tables, set for a banquet, held everything that could charm
        the eye or tempt the appetite in such a place.

I observed a great many inverted stemglasses of various
        exquisite styles and patterns, including the thin, flaring
        goblets, as delicate as a lily-cup, which mean the same thing to
        Marsians as to us.

“Do these women drink champagne at their banquets?” I asked,
        with a frown.

“O, yes,” replied Severnius. “A banquet would be rather tame
        without, wouldn’t it? The Auroras are not much given to drink,
        ordinarily, but on occasions like this they are liable to
        indulge pretty freely.”

“Is it possible!” I could say no more than this, and
        Severnius went on:

“The Auroras, you see, are the cream of our society,—the
        elite,—and costly drinks are typical, in a way, of the
        highest refinement. Do you people never drink wine at your
        social gatherings?”

“The men do, of course, but not the women,” I replied in a
        tone which the whole commonwealth of Paleveria might have taken
        as a rebuke.

“Ah, I fear I shall never be able to understand!” said he.
        “It is very confusing to my mind, this having two codes—social
        as well as political—to apply separately to members of an
        identical community. I don’t see how you can draw the line so
        sharply. It is like having two distinct currents in a river-bed.
        Don’t the waters ever get mixed?”

“You are facetious,” I returned, coldly.

“No, really, I am in earnest,” said he. “Do no women in your
        country ever do these things,—parade and drink wine, and the
        like,—which you say you men are not above doing?”

I replied with considerable energy:

“I have never before to-day seen women of any sort dress
        themselves up in conspicuous uniforms and exhibit themselves
        publicly for the avowed purpose of being seen and making a
        sensation, except in circuses. And circus women,—well, they
        don’t count. And of course we have a class of women who crack
        champagne bottles and even quaff other fiery liquors as freely
        as men, but I do not need to tell you what kind of creatures
        those are.”

At that moment there were sounds of tramping feet outside,
        and the orchestra filed in at the farther end of the
        salon and took their places on a high dais. At a given
        signal every instrument was in position and the music burst
        forth, and simultaneously the banqueters began to march in. They
        had put off their heavy outside garments but retained their
        ornaments and insignia. Their white necks and arms gleamed
        bewitchingly through silvered lace. They moved to their places
        without the least jostling or awkwardness, their every step and
        motion proving their high cultivation and grace.

“We must get out of here,” whispered Severnius in some
        consternation. But a squad of servants clogged the doorway and
        we were crowded backward, and in the interest of
        self-preservation we took refuge in a small alcove behind a
        screen of tall hot-house plants with enormous leaves and
        fronds.

“Good heavens! what shall we do?” cried Severnius, beginning
        to perspire.

“Let us sit down,” said I, who saw nothing very dreadful in
        the situation except that it was warm, and the odor of the
        blossoms in front of us was overpowering. There was a bench in
        the alcove, and we seated ourselves upon it,—I with much
        comfort, for it was a little cooler down there, and my companion
        with much fear.

“Would it be a disgrace if we were found here?” I asked.

“I would not be found here for the world!” replied Severnius.
        “It would not be a disgrace, but it would be considered highly
        improper. Or, to put it so that you can better understand it, it
        would be the same as though they were men and we women.”

“That is clear!” said I; and I pictured to myself two
        charming New York girls of my acquaintance secreting themselves
        in a hall where we City Guards were holding a banquet,—ye
        gods!

As the feast progressed, and as my senses were almost swept
        away by the scent of the flowers, I sometimes half fancied that
        it was the City Guards who were seated at the
        tables.

During the first half-hour everything was carried on with
        great dignity, speakers being introduced—this occurred in the
        interim between courses—in proper order, and responding with
        graceful and well-prepared remarks, which were suitably
        applauded. But after the glasses had been emptied a time or two
        all around, there came a change with which I was very familiar.
        Jokes abounded and jolly little songs were sung,—O, nothing you
        would take exception to, you know, if they had been men; but
        women! beautiful, cultivated, charming women, with eyes like
        stars, with cheeks that matched the dawn, with lips that you
        would have liked to kiss! And more than this: the preservers of
        our ideals, the interpreters of our faith, the keepers of our
        consciences! I felt as though my traditionary idols were
        shattered, until I remembered that these were not my
        countrywomen, thank heaven!

Severnius was not at all surprised; he took it all as a
        matter of course, and was chiefly concerned about how we were
        going to get out of there. It was more easily accomplished than
        we could have imagined. The elegant candelabra were a cunningly
        contrived system of electric lights, and, as sometimes happens
        with us, they went out suddenly and left the place in darkness
        for a few convenient seconds. “Quick, now!” cried Severnius with
        a bound, and there was just time for us to make our escape. We
        had barely reached the outer door when the whole building was
        ablaze again.

Severnius offered no comments on the events of the evening,
        except to say we were lucky to get out as we did, and of course
        I made none. At my suggestion we stopped at the observatory and
        spent a few hours there. Lost among the stars, my soul recovered
        its equilibrium. I have found that little things cease to fret
        when I can lift my thoughts to great things.

It must have been near morning when I was awakened by the
        jingling of bells, and a sleigh driving into the porte
        cochere. A few moments later I heard Elodia and her maid
        coming up the stairs. Her maid attended her everywhere, and
        stationed herself about like a dummy. She was the sign always
        that Elodia was not far off; and I am sure she would have laid
        down her life for her mistress, and would have suffered her
        tongue to be cut out before she would have betrayed her secrets.
        I tell you this to show you what a power of fascination Elodia
        possessed; she seemed a being to be worshiped by high and
        low.

Severnius and I ate our breakfast alone the following
        morning. The Supreme Sorceress did not get up, nor did she go
        down town to attend to business at all during the day. At lunch
        time she sent her maid down to tell Severnius that she had a
        headache.

“Quite likely,” he returned, as the girl delivered her
        message; “but I am sorry to hear it. If there is anything I can
        do for her, tell her to let me know.”

The girl made her obeisance and vanished.

“We have to pay for our fun,” said Severnius with a sigh.

“I should not think your sister would indulge in such ‘fun’!”
        I retorted as a kind of relief to my hurt sensibilities, I was
        so cruelly disappointed in Elodia.

“Why my sister in particular?” returned he with a look of
        surprise.

“Well, of course, I mean all those women,—why do they do such
        things? It is unwomanly, it—it is disgraceful!”

I could not keep the word back, and for the first time I saw
        a flash of anger in my friend’s eyes.

“Come,” said he, “you must not talk like that! That term may
        have a different signification to you, but with us it means an
        insult.”

I quickly begged his pardon and tried to explain to him.

“Our women,” I said, “never do things of that sort, as I have
        told you. They have no taste for them and no inclination in that
        direction,—it is against their very nature. And if you will
        forgive me for saying so, I cannot but think that such
        indulgence as we witnessed last night must coarsen a woman’s
        spiritual fibre and dull the fine moral sense which is so highly
        developed in her.”

“Excuse me,” interposed Severnius. “You have shown me in the
        case of your own sex that human nature is the same on the Earth
        that it is on Mars. You would not have me think that there are
        two varieties of human nature on your planet, corresponding with
        the sexes, would you? You say ‘woman’s’ spiritual fibre and fine
        moral sense, as though she had an exclusive title to those
        qualities. My dear sir, it is impossible! you are all born of
        woman and are one flesh and one blood, whether you are male or
        female. I admit all you say about the unwholesome influence of
        such indulgence as wine drinking, late hours, questionable
        stories and songs,—a night’s debauch, in fact, which it requires
        days sometimes to recover from,—but I must apply it to men as
        well as women; neither are at their best under such conditions.
        I think,” he went on, “that I begin to understand the
        distinction which you have curiously mistaken for a radical
        difference. Your women, you say, have always been in a state of
        semi-subjection—”

“No, no,” I cried, “I never said so! On the contrary, they
        hold the very highest place with us; they are honored with
        chivalrous devotion, cared for with the tenderest consideration.
        We men are their slaves, in reality, though they call us their
        lords; we work for them, endure hardships for them, give them
        all that we can of wealth, luxury, ease. And we defend them from
        danger and save them every annoyance in our power. They are the
        queens of our hearts and homes.”

“That may all be,” he replied coolly, “but you admit that
        they have always been denied their political rights, and it
        follows that their social rights should be similarly limited.
        Long abstinence from the indulgences which you regard as purely
        masculine, has resulted in a habit merely, not a change in their
        nature.”

“Then thank heaven for their abstinence!” I exclaimed.

“That is all very well,” he persisted, “but you must concede
        that in the first place it was forced upon them, and that was an
        injustice, because they were intelligent beings and your
        equals.”

“They ought to thank us for the injustice, then,” I
        retorted.

“I beg your pardon! they ought not. No doubt they are very
        lovely and innocent beings, and that your world is the better
        for them. But they, being restricted in other ways by man’s
        authority, or his wishes, or by fear of his disfavor perhaps,
        have acquired these gentle qualities at the expense of—or in the
        place of—others more essential to the foundation of character; I
        mean strength, dignity, self-respect, and that which you once
        attributed to my sister,—responsibility.”

I was bursting with indignant things which I longed to say,
        but my position was delicate, and I bit my tongue and was
        silent.

I will tell you one thing, my heart warmed toward my gentle
        countrywomen! With all their follies and frivolities, with all
        their inconsistencies and unaccountable ways, their whimsical
        fancies and petty tempers, their emotions and their
        susceptibility to new isms and religions, they still represented
        my highest and best ideals. And I thought of Elodia, sick
        upstairs from her last night’s carousal, with contempt.

Chapter 4. Elodia.

“If to her lot some female errors fall, Look to her face and
        you’ll forget them all.”

—Pope.

My contempt for Elodia vanished at the first intimation of
        her presence. I had expected to meet her with an air of cold
        superiority, but when she entered the dining-room that evening
        with her usual careless aplomb, the glance with which she
        favored me reduced me to my customary attitude toward her,—that
        of unquestioning admiration. Our physical nature is weak, and
        this woman dominated my senses completely, with her beauty, with
        her melodious voice, her singular magnetic attraction, and every
        casual expression of her face.

On that particular evening, her dress was more than
        ordinarily becoming, I thought. She had left off some of the
        draperies she usually wore about her shoulders, and her round,
        perfect waist was more fully disclosed in outline. She was
        somewhat pale, and her eyes seemed larger and darker than their
        wont, and had deeper shadows. And a certain air of languor that
        hung about her was an added grace. She had, however, recovered
        sufficiently from the dissipations of the day before to make
        herself uncommonly agreeable, and I never felt in a greater
        degree the charm and stimulus of her presence and
        conversation.

After dinner she preceded us into the parlor,—which was
        unusual, for she was always too sparing of her society, and the
        most we saw of her was at dinner or luncheon time,—and crossed
        over to an alcove where stood a large and costly harp whose
        strings she knew well how to thrum.

“Elodia, you have never sung for our friend,” said
        Severnius.

She shook her head, and letting her eyes rest upon me
        half-unconsciously—almost as if I were not there in fact, for
        she had a peculiar way of looking at you without actually seeing
        you,—she went on picking out the air she had started to play. I
        subjoined a beseeching look to her brother’s suggestive remark,
        but was not sure she noted it. But presently she began to sing
        and I dropped into a chair and sat spell-bound. Her voice was
        sweet, with a quality that stirred unwonted feelings; but it was
        not that alone. As she stood there in the majesty of her
        gracious womanhood, her exquisite figure showing at its best,
        her eyes uplifted and a something that meant power radiating
        from her whole being, I felt that, do what she might, she was
        still the grandest creature in that world to me!

Soon after she had finished her song, while I was still in
        the thrall of it, a servant entered the room with a packet for
        Severnius, who opened and read it with evident surprise and
        delight.

“Elodia!” he cried, “those friends of mine, those Caskians
        from Lunismar, are coming to make us a visit.”

“Indeed!” she answered, without much enthusiasm, and
        Severnius turned to me.

“It is on your account, my friend, that I am to be indebted
        to them for this great pleasure,” he explained.

“On my account?” said I.

“Yes, they have heard about you, and are extremely anxious to
        make your acquaintance?”

“They must be,” said Elodia, “to care to travel a thousand
        miles or so in order to do it.”

“Who are they, pray?” I asked.

“They are a people so extraordinarily good,” she said with a
        laugh, “so refined and sublimated, that they cast no shadow in
        the sun.”

Severnius gave her a look of mild protest.

“They are a race exactly like ourselves, outwardly,” he said,
        “who inhabit a mountainous and very picturesque country called
        Caskia, in the northern part of this continent.”

“O, that is where the Perfect Pair came from,” I rejoined,
        remembering what he had told me about Man’s origin on Mars.

Elodia smiled. “Has Severnius been entertaining you with our
        religious fables?” she asked. I glanced at him and saw that he
        had not heard; he was finishing his letter.

“You will be interested in these Caskians,” he said to me
        animatedly as he folded it up; “I was. I spent some months in
        Lunismar, their capital, once, studying. They have rare
        facilities for reading the heavens there,—I mean of their own
        contrivance,—beside their natural advantages; their high
        altitude and the clearness of the air.”

“And they name themselves after the planetoids and other
        heavenly bodies,” interjected Elodia, “because they live so near
        the stars. What is the name of the superlative creature you were
        so charmed with, Severnius?”

“I suppose you mean my friend Calypso’s wife, Clytia,”
        returned he.

“O, yes, I remember,—Clytia. Is she to favor us?”

“Yes, and her husband and several others.”

“Any other women?”

“One or two, I think.”

“And how are we to conduct ourselves during the
        visitation?”

“As we always do; you will not find that they will put any
        constraint upon you.”

“No, hardly,” said Elodia, with a slight curl of the lip.

I was eager to hear more about these singular people,—the
        more eager, perhaps, because the thought of them seemed to
        arouse Elodia to an unwonted degree of feeling and interest. Her
        eyes glowed intensely, and the color flamed brightly in her
        cheeks.

I pressed a question or two upon Severnius, and he
        responded:

“According to the traditions and annals of the Caskians, they
        began many thousands of years ago to train themselves toward the
        highest culture and most perfect development of which mankind is
        capable. Their aim was nothing short of the Ideal, and they
        believed that the ideal was possible. It took many centuries to
        counteract and finally to eradicate hereditary evils, but their
        courage and perseverance did not give way, and they triumphed.
        They have dropped the baser natural propensities—”

“As, in the course of evolution, it is said, certain species
        of animals dropped their tails to become Man,” interrupted
        Elodia.

She rose from the divan on which she had gracefully disposed
        herself when she quit playing, and glided from the room,
        sweeping a bow to us as she vanished, before Severnius or I
        could interpose an objection to her leaving us. Although there
        was never any appearance of haste in her manner, she had a swift
        celerity of movement which made it impossible to anticipate her
        intention.

Severnius, however, did not care to interpose an objection, I
        think. He felt somewhat hurt by her sarcastic comments upon his
        friends, and he expanded more after she had gone.

“You must certainly visit Lunismar before you leave Mars,” he
        said. “You will feel well repaid for the trouble. It is a
        beautiful city, wonderful in its cleanness, in its dearth of
        poverty and squalor, and in the purity and elevation of its
        social tone. I think you will wish you might live there
        always.”

There seemed to be a regret in his voice, and I asked:

“Why did not you remain there?”

“Because of my sister,” he answered.

“But she will marry, doubtless.” For some occult reason I
        hung upon his reply to this. He shook his head.

“I do not think she will,” he said. “And she and I are all
        that are left of our family.”

“She does not like,—or she does not believe in these
        Caskians?” I hoped he would contradict me, and he did. I had
        come to found my judgments of people and of things upon
        Elodia’s, even against the testimony of my reason. If she
        disapproved of her brother’s extraordinary friends and thought
        them an impossible people, why, then, I knew I should have
        misgivings of them, too; and I wanted to believe in them, not
        only on Severnius’ account, but because they presented a curious
        study in psychology.

“O, yes, she does,” he said. “She thinks that their
        principles and their lives are all right for themselves, but
        would not be for her—or for us; and our adoption of them would
        be simply apish. She is genuine, and she detests imitation. She
        accepts herself—as she puts it—as she found herself. God, who
        made all things, created her upon a certain plane of life, and
        with certain tastes, faculties, passions and propensities, and
        that it is not her office to disturb or distort the order of His
        economy.”

“She does not argue thus in earnest,” I deprecated.

“It is difficult to tell when Elodia is in earnest,” he
        replied. “She thinks my sanctuary in the top story of the house
        here, is a kind of weakness, because I brought the idea from
        Lunismar.”

“O, then, it is not common here in Thursia for people to have
        things of that sort in their homes!” I said in surprise.

“Yes, it has gotten to be rather common,” he replied.

“Since you put in yours?”

He admitted that to be the case.

“You must think that you have done your country a great
        good,” I began enthusiastically, “in introducing so beautiful an
        innovation, and—”

“You are mistaken,” he interrupted, “I think the contrary;
        because our rich people, and some who are not rich but only
        ambitious, took it up as a fad, and I believe it has really
        worked evil. It is considered aristocratic to have one’s own
        private shrine, and not to go to church at all except in
        condescension, to patronize the masses. Elodia saw clearly just
        how it would be, before I began to carry out my plan. She has a
        logical mind, and her thought travels from one sequence to the
        next with unfailing accuracy. I recall her saying that one
        cannot superinduce the customs and habits of one society upon
        another of a different order, without affectation; and that you
        cannot put on a new religion, like a new garment, and feel
        yourself free in it.”

“Does she not believe, then, in progress, development?”

“Only along the familiar lines. She thinks you can reach
        outward and upward from your natural environment, but you must
        not tear yourself out of it with violence. However, she admitted
        that my sanctuary was well enough for me, because of my having
        lived among the Caskians and studied their sublime ethics until
        I grew into the meanings of them. But no person can take them
        second-hand from me, because I could not bring away with me the
        inexpressible something which holds those people together in a
        perfect Unit. I can go to Caskia and catch the spirit of their
        religion, but I cannot bring Caskia here. It was a mistake in so
        far as my neighbors are concerned, since they only see in it, as
        I have said, a new fashion, a new diversion for their ennuied
        thoughts.”

“What is there peculiar about the religion of those people?”
        I asked.

“The most peculiar thing about it is that they live it,
        rather than profess it,” he replied.

“I don’t think I understand,” said I, and after a moment’s
        consideration of the matter in his own mind, he tried to make
        his meaning clear to me.

“Do you often hear an upright man professing his honesty? It
        is a part of himself. He is so free of the law which enjoins
        honesty that he never gives it a thought. So with the man who is
        truly religious, he has flung off the harness and no longer
        needs to guide himself by bit and rein, or measure his conduct
        by the written code. My friends, the Caskians, have emancipated
        themselves from the thraldom of the law by absorbing its
        principles into themselves. It was like seed sown in the ground,
        the germs burst from the husk and shot upward; they are enjoying
        the flower and the fruit. That which all nations and peoples,
        and all individuals, prize and desire above everything else in
        life, is liberty. But I have seen few here in Paleveria who have
        any conception of the vast spiritual meanings of the word. We
        limit it to the physical; we say ‘personal’ liberty, as though
        that were all. You admire the man of high courage, because in
        that one thing he is free. So with all the virtues, named and
        unnamable; he is greatest who has loosed himself the most, who
        weighs anchor and sails away triumphant and free. But this is
        but a general picture of the Caskians; let me particularize: we
        are forbidden to steal, by both our civil and religious
        canons,—the coarseness of such a command would offend them as
        much as a direct charge of theft would offend you or myself, so
        exquisite is their sense of the rights of others, not only in
        the matter of property but in a thousand subtle ways. Robbery in
        any form is impossible with them. They would think it a crying
        sin for one to take the slightest advantage of another,—nay, to
        neglect an opportunity to assist another in the accomplishment
        of his rightful purpose would be criminal. We, here on Mars, and
        you upon the Earth, have discovered very sensitive elements in
        nature; they have discovered the same in their own souls. Their
        perceptions are singularly acute, their touch upon each other’s
        lives finely delicate. In this respect we compare with them as
        the rude blacksmith compares with the worker in precious
        metals.”

“But do they also concern themselves with science?” I
        asked.

“Assuredly,” he answered. “Their inventions are remarkable,
        their methods infinitely superior to ours. They believe in the
        triple nature,—the spiritual, the intellectual, and the
        physical,—and take equal pains in the development and culture of
        all.”

“How wonderful!” I said, remembering that upon the Earth we
        have waves of culture breaking over the land from time to time,
        spasmodic, and never the same; to-day it may be physical,
        to-morrow intellectual, and by-and-by a superfine spiritual
        bloom. But, whichever it is, it sacrifices the other two and
        makes itself supreme.

Severnius went on. As he proceeded, I was struck by the fact
        that the principles of our Christian civilization formed the
        basis of Paleverian law.

“I wanted to give you some other instances,” he said, “of the
        ‘peculiarities’ of the Caskians, as we started out with calling
        them. There is a law with us against bearing false witness; they
        hold each other in such honor and in such tenderness, that the
        command is an idle breath. There is nothing mawkish or
        sentimental about this, however; they, in fact, make no virtue
        of it, any more than you or I make a virtue of the things we do
        habitually—perhaps from unanalyzed motives of policy. You would
        not strike a man if you knew he would hit back and hurt you
        worse than he himself was hurt; well, these people have
        sensibilities so finely developed, that a wrong done to another
        reacts upon themselves with exquisite suffering. The law and its
        penalties are both unseen forces, operating on an internal not
        an external plane. With us, the authority which declares, ‘Thou
        shalt not commit adultery,’ becomes powerless at the threshold
        of marriage. Like other such laws which hold us together in an
        outward appearance of decency and good order, it is a dead
        letter to them up to the point where we drop and trample upon
        it; here they take it up and carry it into their inmost lives
        and thoughts in a way almost too fine for us to comprehend.
        Because we have never so much as dreamed of catching the spirit
        of that law.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded, with a wide stare.

“Why, that marriage does not sanction lust. The Caskians hold
        that the exercise of the procreative faculty is a divine
        function, and should never be debased to mere animal indulgence.
        It has been said upon Divine Authority—as we believe—that if a
        man look upon a woman to lust after her, he has committed
        adultery in his heart. The Caskians interpret that to mean a
        man’s wife, the same as any other woman, because—they hold—one
        who owes his being to lust and passion naturally inherits the
        evil and the curse, just as surely as though wedlock had not
        concealed the crime. Their children are conceived in immaculate
        purity.”

My look of prolonged amazement called out the usual
        question:

“Have you no such class in any of your highly civilized
        countries?”

“No, I think not. With us, children do not come in answer to
        an intelligent desire for their existence, but are too often
        simply the result of indulgence, and so unwelcome that their
        pre-natal life is overshadowed by sorrow and crime.”

“Well,” said he, “it is the same here; our people believe
        that conception without lust is an impossibility in nature, and
        that instances of it are supernatural. And certainly it is
        incredible unless your mind can grasp the problem, or rather the
        great fact, of a people engaged for centuries in eliminating the
        purely animal instincts from their consciousness.”

After a moment he added:

“In Caskia it would be considered shocking if a pair
        contemplating marriage were to provide themselves with only one
        suite of rooms, to be shared together day and night. Even the
        humblest people have their respective apartments; they think
        such separateness is absolutely essential to the perfect
        development of the individual,—for in the main we each must
        stand alone,—and to the preservation of moral dignity, and the
        fine sentiment and mutual respect which are almost certain to be
        lost in the lawlessness of undue familiarity. The relation
        between my friend Calypso and his wife is the finest thing I
        ever saw; they are lovers on the highest plane. It would be an
        impossibility for either of them to say or do a coarse or
        improper thing in the other’s presence, or to presume, in any of
        the innumerable ways you and I are familiar with in our
        observations of husbands and wives, upon the marriage bond
        existing between them. This matter of animal passion,” he went
        on, after a little pause, “has been at the bottom of untold
        crimes, and unnumbered miseries, in our land. I doubt if any
        other one thing has been prolific of more or greater evils,—even
        the greed of wealth. Men, and women, too, have sacrificed
        kingdoms for it, have bartered their souls for it. Countless
        homes have been desolated because of it, countless lives and
        hearts have been laid on its guilty altar. We ostracize the
        bastard; he is no more impure than the offspring of legalized
        licentiousness, and the law which protects the one and despises
        the other, cannot discriminate in the matter of after effects,
        cannot annul or enforce the curse of heredity. With these people
        the law of chastity is graven in the inmost heart, and in this
        matter, as in all others, each generation acknowledges its
        obligation to the next.”

Chapter 5. The
        Vaporizer.

“Portable ecstasies … corked up in a pint bottle.”

—De Quincey.

I was glad when spring came, when the trees began to bud, the
        grass to grow, the flowers to bloom; for, of all the seasons, I
        like it best,—this wonderful resurrection of life and
        sweetness!

Thursia is a fine city,—not only in its costly and
        architecturally and æsthetically perfect buildings, public and
        private, but in its shaded avenues, its parks, lawns, gardens,
        fountains, its idyllic statues, and its monuments to
        greatness.

Severnius took pains to exhibit all its attractions to me,
        driving with me slowly through the beautiful streets, and
        pointing out one conspicuous feature and another. Of course
        there were some streets which were not beautiful, but he avoided
        those as much as possible,—as I have done myself when I have had
        friends visiting me in New York. It is a compliment to your
        guest to show him the best there is and to spare him the
        worst.

But often, too, we took long walks through fields and woods.
        When Elodia accompanied us, which she did a few times, the whole
        face of nature smiled, and I thought Paleveria the most
        incomparably charming country I had ever seen. Her presence gave
        importance to everything,—the song of a bird, the opening of a
        humble little flower, the babbling of water. But other things
        absorbed most of her time,—we only got the scraps, the remnants.
        When she was with us she relaxed, as though we were in some sort
        a recreation. She amused herself with us just as I have seen a
        busy father amuse himself with his family for an hour or so of
        an evening. And I think we really planned our little theatricals
        of evening conversation for her,—at least I did. I saved up
        whatever came to me of thought or incident to give to her at the
        dinner table. And she appreciated it; her mind bristled with
        keen points, upon which any ideas let loose were caught in a
        flash. The sudden illumination of her countenance when a new
        thing, or even an old thing in a new dress, was presented to
        her, was of such value to me that I found myself laying traps
        for it, inventing stories and incidents to touch her fancy.

Besides her banking interests, over which she kept a close
        surveillance, she had a great many other matters that required
        to be looked after. As soon as the weather was fine enough, and
        business activities in the city began to be redoubled,
        especially in the matter of real estate, she made a point of
        driving about by herself to inspect one piece of property and
        another, and to make plans and see that they were carried out
        according to her ideas. And she was just as conscientious in the
        discharge of her official duties. She was constantly devising
        means for the betterment of the schools, both as to buildings
        and methods of instruction. I believe she knew every teacher
        personally,—and there must have been several thousand,—and her
        relations with all of them were cordial and friendly. Her
        approbation was a thing they strove for and valued,—not because
        of her official position and the authority she held in her
        hands, but because of a power which was innate in herself and
        that made her a leader and a protector.

But I was too selfish to yield my small right to her
        society,—the right only of a guest in her house,—to these
        greater claims with absolute sweetness and patience.

“Why does she take all these things upon herself?” I asked of
        Severnius.

“Because she has a taste for them,” he replied. “Or, as she
        would say, a need of them. It is an internal hunger. It is her
        nature to exert herself in these ways.”

“I cannot believe it is her nature; it is no woman’s nature,”
        I retorted. “It is a habit which she has cultivated until it has
        got the mastery of her.”

“Perhaps,” returned Severnius, who was never much disposed to
        argue about his sister’s vagaries—as they seemed to me.

“All this is mannish,” I went on. “There are other things for
        women to do. Why does she not give her time and attention to the
        softer graces, to feminine occupations?”

“I see,” he laughed; “you want her to drop these weighty
        matters and devote herself to amusing us! and you call that
        ‘feminine.’”

I joined in his laugh ruefully.

“Perhaps I am narrow, and selfish, too,” I admitted; “but she
        is so charming, she brings so much into our conversations
        whenever we can entice her to spend a moment with us.”

“Yes, that is true,” he answered. “She gleans her ideas from
        a large and varied field.”

“I do not mean her ideas, so much as—well, as the delicious
        flavor of her presence and personality.”

“Her presence and her personality would not have much flavor,
        my friend, if she had no ideas, I am thinking.”

“O, yes, they would,” I insisted. “They are the ether in
        which our own thoughts expand and take shape and color. They are
        the essence of her supreme beauty.”

He shook his head. “Beauty is nothing without intelligence.
        What is the camellia beside the rose? Elodia is the rose. She
        has several pleasing qualities that appeal to you at one and the
        same time.”

This was rather pretty, but a man’s praises of his sister
        always sound tame to me. “She is adorable!” I cried with fervor.
        We were walking toward a depot connected with a great railway.
        For the first time I was to try the speed of a Marsian train.
        Severnius wanted me to visit the city of Frambesco, some two
        hundred miles from Thursia, in another state.

After a short, ruminating silence I broke out again:

“We don’t even have her company evenings, to any extent. What
        does she do with her evenings?”

“Who? O, Elodia! Why, she goes to her club. For recreation,
        you know.”

“That is complimentary to you and me,” I said coolly.

He brought his spectacles to bear upon me somewhat
        sharply.

“Don’t you think you are a little unreasonable?” he demanded.
        “You have curious ideas about individual liberty! Now, we hold
        that every soul shall be absolutely free,—that is, in its
        relations to other souls; it shall not be coerced by any other.
        It is as though souls were stars suspended in space, each moving
        in its appointed orbit. No one has the right to disturb the
        poise and equilibrium of another, not even the one nearest it.
        That is a Caskian idea, by the way; about the only one Elodia is
        enamored of. These souls, or spheres, are extremely sensitive;
        and they may, and do, exert a tremendous influence, one upon
        another,—but without violence.”

“Your meaning is clear,” I said coldly. “My powers of
        attraction in this case are feeble. Is the club you speak of
        composed entirely of women?”

“Certainly.”

“Do not the men here have clubs?”

“O, yes; I belong to one, though I do not often attend. I
        will take you to visit it,—I wonder I had not thought of it
        before! But those things are disturbing; we scientists like to
        keep our minds clear, like the lenses of our telescopes.”

“Is Elodia’s club a literary one?” I asked, though I was
        almost sure it was not.

“O, no; it is for recreation purely, as I said. The same kind
        of a club, I suppose, that you men have. Of course, they have
        the current literature, which they skim over and discuss, so as
        to keep themselves informed about what is going on in the world.
        It is the only way you can keep up with the times, I think, for
        no one can read everything. They have games and various
        diversions. Elodia’s clubhouse is furnished with elegant baths,
        for women have an extraordinary fondness for bathing. And they
        have a gymnasium,—you notice what splendid figures most of our
        women have!—and of course a wine cellar.”

“Severnius!” I cried. “You don’t mean to tell me that these
        women have wines in their clubhouse?”

“Why, yes,” said he.

“And it is tolerated, allowed, nobody objects?”

“O, yes, there are plenty of objectors,” he replied. “There
        is a very strong anti-intoxicant element here, but it has no
        actual force and exerts but little influence in—in our
        circles.”

Severnius was too modest a man to boast of belonging to the
        upper class of society, but that was what “our circles”
        meant.

“But do not the male relatives of these women object,—their
        husbands, fathers, brothers?”

“No, indeed, why should they? We do the same things they do,
        without demur from them.”

“But they should be looking after their domestic affairs,
        their children, their homes.”

“My dear sir! they have servants to attend to those
        matters.”

It seemed useless to discuss these things with Severnius, his
        point of view concerning the woman question was so different
        from mine. Nevertheless, I persisted.

“Tell me, Severnius, do women on this planet do everything
        that men do?”

“They have that liberty,” he replied, “but there is sometimes
        a difference of tastes.”

“I am glad to hear it!”

“For instance, they do not smoke. By the way, have a cigar?”
        He passed me his case and we both fired up. There is a
        peculiarly delightful flavor in Marsian tobacco.

“They have a substitute though,” he added, removing the
        fragrant weed from his lips to explain. “They vaporize.”

“They what?”

“They have a small cup, a little larger than a common tobacco
        pipe, which they fill with alcohol and pulverized valerian root.
        This mixture when lighted diffuses a kind of vapor, a portion of
        which they inhale through the cup-stem, a slender, tortuous tube
        attached to the cup. The most of it, however, goes into the
        general air.”

“Good heavens!” I cried, “valerian! the most infernal,
        diabolical smell that was ever emitted from any known or unknown
        substance.”

“It is said to be soothing to the nerves,” he replied.

“But do you not find it horribly disagreeable, unbearable?” I
        suddenly recollected that, in passing through the upper hall of
        the house, I had once or twice detected this nauseating odor, in
        the neighborhood of Elodia’s suite of rooms.

“Yes, I do,” he answered, “when I happen to come in contact
        with it, which is seldom. They are careful not to offend others
        to whom the vapor is unpleasant. Elodia is very delicate in
        these matters; she is fond of the vapor habit, but she allows no
        suggestion of it to cling to her garments or vitiate her
        breath.”

“It must be a great care to deodorize herself,” I returned,
        with ill-concealed contempt.

“That is her maid’s business,” said he.

“Is it not injurious to health?” I asked.

“Quite so; it often induces frightful diseases, and is
        sometimes fatal to life even.”

“And yet they persist in it! I should think you would
        interfere in your sister’s case.”

“Well,” said he, “the evils which attend it are really no
        greater than those that wait upon the tobacco habit; and, as I
        smoke, I can’t advise with a very good grace. I have a sort of
        blind faith that these good cigars of mine are not going to do
        me any harm,—though I know they have harmed others; and I
        suppose Elodia reasons in the same friendly way with her vapor
        cup.”

The train stood on the track ready to start. I was about to
        spring up the steps of the last car when Severnius stopped
        me.

“Not that one,” he said; “that is the woman’s special.”

I stepped back, and read the word Vaporizer,—printed
        in large gilt letters,—bent like a bow on the side of the
        car.

“Do you mean to tell me, Severnius,” I exclaimed, “that the
        railroad company devotes one of these magnificent coaches
        exclusively to the use of persons addicted to the obnoxious
        habit we have been speaking of?”

“That is about the size of it,” he returned,—he borrowed the
        phrase from me. “Come, make haste, or we shall be left; the next
        car is the smoker; we’ll step into that and finish these cigars,
        after which I’ll show you what sumptuous parlor coaches we
        have.”

As we mounted to the platform I could not resist glancing
        into the Vaporizer. There were only two or three ladies
        there, and one of them held in her ungloved hand the little cup
        with the tortuous stem which my friend had described to me. From
        it there issued a pale blue smoke or vapor, and oh! the smell of
        it! I held my breath and hurried after Severnius.

“That is the most outrageous, abominable thing I ever heard
        of!” I declared, as we entered the smoker and took our
        seats.

“O, it is nothing,” he returned, smiling; “you are a very
        fastidious fellow. I saw you look into that car; did you observe
        the lady in blue?”

“I should think I did! she was in the act,” I replied. “And I
        recognized her, too; she is that Madam Claris you introduced me
        to in the Auroras’ Temple, is she not?”

“Yes; but did you notice her cup?”

“Not particularly.”

“It is carved out of the rarest wood we have,—wood that
        hardens like stone with age,—and has an indestructible lining
        and is studded with costly gems; the thing is celebrated, an
        heirloom in Claris’ family. They like to sport those things, the
        owners of them do. They are a mark of distinction,—or, as they
        might say in some of your countries, a patent of nobility.”

“I suppose, then, that only the rich and the aristocratic
        ‘vaporize’?”

“By no means; whatever the aristocracy do, humble folk essay
        to imitate. These vapor cups are made in great quantities, of
        the commonest clay, and sold for a penny apiece.”

“Then it must be a natural taste, among your women?” said
        I.

“No, no more than smoking is among men. They say it is
        nauseating in the extreme, at first, and requires great courage
        and persistence to continue in it up to the point of liking.
        There is no doubt that it becomes very agreeable to them in the
        end, and that it is almost impossible to break the habit when
        once it is fixed.”

“And what do they do with their cups,— I mean, how do they
        carry them about when they are not using them?” I asked.

“Put them in a morocco case, the same as you would a
        meerschaum, and drop them into a fanciful little bag which they
        wear on the arm, suspended by a chain or ribbon.”

Frambesco could not compare with Thursia either in size or
        beauty; and it had a totally different air, a kind of swagger,
        you might say. I felt the mercury in my moral barometer drop
        down several degrees as we walked about the streets amid much
        filth, and foul odors, and unsightly spectacles.

I made the natural comments to my friend, and he replied that
        neither Frambesco nor any other city on the continent could hold
        a candle to Thursia, where the best of every thing was
        centered.

We observed a great many enormous placards posted about
        conspicuously, announcing a game of fisticuffs to take place
        that afternoon in an amphitheatre devoted to such purposes; and
        we decided to look in upon it. I think it was I who suggested
        it, for I had no little curiosity about the “tactics” of the
        manly art in that country, having seen Sullivan and several
        other famous hitters in our own.

Severnius had considerable difficulty in procuring tickets,
        and finally paid a fabulous price to a speculator for convenient
        seats. The great cost of admission of course kept out the
        rabble, and, in a way, it was an eminently respectable throng
        that was assembled,—I mean in so far as money and rich clothes
        make for respectability. But there was an unmistakable
        coarseness in most of the faces, or if not that, a curiosity
        which bordered on coarseness. I was amazed to see women in the
        audience; but this was nothing to the horror that quivered
        through me like a deadly wound, when the combatants sprang into
        the arena and squared off for action. For they, too, were
        women,—women with tender, rosy flesh; with splendid dark eyes
        gleaming with high excitement. Their long, fair hair was braided
        and twisted into a hard knot on top of the head. They wore no
        gloves. Ah, a woman’s hands are soft enough without padding!—I
        thought.

They went at it in scientific fashion and were careful to
        observe the etiquette of the game; it was held “foul” to attack
        the face. In fact it was more of a wrestling than a sparring
        match,—a test of strength, prowess, agility. But I recoiled from
        it with loathing, and feeling myself grow sick and faint, I
        muttered something to Severnius and rushed out of the place. He
        followed me, of course; the performance was quite as distasteful
        to him as to me, the only difference being that he was familiar
        with the idea and I was not.

As I passed out, I observed that many of the women were
        vaporizing and many of the men smoking. I suppose it was, in
        part, the intolerable abomination of these commingled smells
        that affected me, for I experienced a physical as well as moral
        nausea. I did not get over it for hours, and I was as glad as a
        child when it came time to take the train back to Thursia.

My disgust was so great that I could not discuss the matter
        with Severnius, as I was wont to discuss other matters with him.
        There was one thing for which I was supremely thankful,—that
        Elodia was not there.

A few days later, the subject accidentally came up, and I had
        the satisfaction of hearing her denounce the barbarity as
        emphatically as I could denounce it,—and more sweepingly, for
        she included male fighters in her condemnation, and I was unable
        to make her see that that was quite another matter.

Chapter 6. Cupid’s
        Gardens.

“O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose.”

—Shakspeare.

During the time that intervened before the arrival of the
        Caskians, to make their proposed visit, I gleaned many more
        interesting hints from Severnius relative to their life and
        conduct, which greatly whetted my curiosity to meet them. For
        instance, we were one day engaged in a conversation, he, Elodia,
        and myself, upon the subject of the province of poetry in
        history,—but that does not matter,—when dinner was announced in
        the usual way; that is, the way which assumes without doubt that
        nothing else in the world is so important as dinner. It may be a
        bell, or a gong, or a verbal call, but it is as imperative as
        the command of an autocrat. It brings to the ground, with the
        suddenness of a mental shock, the finest flights of the
        imagination. It wakes the soul from transcendent dreams, cools
        the fervor of burning eloquence, breaks the spell of music. More
        than this: it destroys the delicate combination of mental states
        and forces sometimes induced when several highly trained minds
        have fallen into an attitude of acute sympathy toward one
        another,—a rare and ineffable thing!—and are borne aloft through
        mutual helpfulness to regions of thought and emotion infinitely
        exalted, which can never be reproduced.

I have often had this experience myself, and have wished that
        the cook was a creature of supernatural intuitions, so that he
        could divine the right moment in which to proclaim that the soup
        was served! There is a right moment, a happy moment, when the
        flock of intellectual birds, let loose to whirl and circle and
        soar in the upper air, descend gracefully and of their own
        accord to the agreeable level of soup.

On the occasion to which I have referred, I tried to ignore,
        and to make my companions ignore, the discordant summons—by a
        kind of dominant action of my mind upon theirs—in order that we
        might continue the talk a little longer. We three had never
        before shown ourselves off to each other to such striking
        advantage; we traveled miles in moments, we expanded, we
        unrolled reams of intelligence which were apprehended in a
        flash, as a whole landscape is apprehended in a glare of
        lightning. It was as if our words were tipped with flame and
        carried their illumination along with them. I knew that there
        never would, never could, come another such time, but Elodia
        thwarted my effort to hold it a moment longer.

“Come!” she cried gayly, rising to her feet and breaking off
        in the middle of a beautiful sentence, the conclusion of which I
        was waiting for with tremors of delight,—for her views, as it
        happened, accorded with mine,—“the ideal may rule in art, but
        not in life; it is very unideal to eat, but the stomach is the
        dial of the world.”

“We make it so,” said Severnius.

“Of course, we make all our sovereigns,” she returned. “We
        set the dial to point at certain hours, and it simply holds us
        to our agreement,—it and the chef.”

“That reminds me of our Caskian friends,” said Severnius.
        “They have exceedingly well-ordered homes, but occasionally one
        of the three Natures waits upon another; the Mind may yield to
        some contingency connected with the Body, or the Body waive its
        right in favor of the Spirit.”

“I had supposed they were more machine-like,” commented
        Elodia, with her usual air of not being able to take a great
        interest in the Caskians.

“They are the farthest from that of any people I know,” he
        answered. “They have great moments, now and then, when a few
        people are gathered together, and their thought becomes
        electrical and their minds mingle as you have seen the glances
        of eyes mingle in a language more eloquent than speech,—and, to
        tell the truth, we ourselves have such moments, I’ll not deny
        that; but the difference is, that they appreciate the value of
        them and hold them fast, while we open our hands and let them
        fly away like uncoveted birds, or worthless butterflies. I have
        actually known a meal to be dropped out entirely in Calypso’s
        house, forgotten in the felicity of an intellectual or spiritual
        delectation!”

“Thank heaven, that we live in Thursia!” cried Elodia, “where
        such lapses are impossible.”

“They are next to impossible there,” said Severnius; “but
        they do happen, which proves a great deal. They are in the
        nature of miracles, they are so wonderful,—and yet not so
        wonderful. We forget sometimes that we have a soul, and they
        forget that they have a body; there’s no great difference.”

“There is a mighty difference,” answered Elodia. “We are put
        into a material world, to enjoy material benefits. I should
        think those people would miss a great deal of the actual good of
        life in the pursuit of the unactual,—always taking their flights
        from lofty pinnacles, and skipping the treasures that lie in the
        valleys.”

“On the contrary,” he returned, “the humblest little flower
        that grows, the tiniest pebble they pick up on the beach, the
        smallest voice in nature, all have place in their economy. They
        miss nothing; they gather up into their lives all the treasures
        that nature scatters about. If a bird sings, they listen and
        say, ‘That song is for me;’ or, if a blossom opens, ‘I will take
        its beauty into my heart.’ These things, which are free to all,
        they accept freely. Their physical senses are
        supplemented,—duplicated as it were, in finer quality,—by
        exquisite inner perceptions.”

The morning after this conversation, Severnius and I took a
        long drive in a new direction. We went up the river a mile or
        so, the road winding through an avenue of century-old elms,
        whose great, graceful branches interlocked overhead and made a
        shade so dense that the very atmosphere seemed green. We were so
        earnestly engaged in conversation that I did not observe when we
        left the avenue and entered a wood. We drove some distance
        through this, and then the road branched off and skirted round a
        magnificent park,—the finest I had seen,—bordered by a thick
        hedge, all abloom with white, fragrant flowers, and fenced with
        a fretwork of iron, finished with an inverted fringe of
        bristling points. Within, were evidences of costly and elaborate
        care; the trees were of noble growth and the greensward like
        stretches of velvet over which leaf-shadows flickered and
        played. The disposition of shrubbery and flowers, the chaste and
        beautiful statuary, the fountains, brooklets, arbors, and
        retreats; the rustic effects in bridges, caves, grottoes, and
        several graceful arches, hidden in wreathed emerald, from which
        snow-white cherubs with wings on their shoulders peeped
        roguishly, all betokened ingenious design, and skilful and
        artistic execution.

Beyond, seen vaguely through the waving foliage, were
        handsome buildings, of the elegant cream-colored stone so much
        in vogue in Thursia. Here and there, I espied a fawn; one pretty
        creature, with a ribbon round its neck, was drinking at a
        fountain, and at the same time some beautiful birds came and
        perched upon the marble rim and dipped into the sparkling
        water.

“How lovely! how idyllic!” I cried. “What place is it,
        Severnius, and why have I never seen it before?”

His answer came a little reluctantly, I thought. “It is
        called Cupid’s Gardens.”

“And what does it mean?” I asked.

“Does not its name and those naked imps sufficiently explain
        it?” he replied. As I looked at him, a blush actually mantled
        his cheek. “It is a rendezvous,” he explained, “where women meet
        their lovers.”

“How curious! I never heard of such a thing,” said I. “Do you
        mean that the place was planned for that purpose, or did the
        name get fastened upon it through accident? Surely you are
        joking, Severnius; women can receive their lovers in their homes
        here, the same as with us!”

“Their suitors, not their lovers,” he replied.

“You make a curious distinction!” said I.

“Women sometimes marry their suitors, never their lovers,—any
        more than men marry their mistresses.”

“Great heavens, Severnius!” I felt the blood rush to my face
        and then recede, and a cold perspiration broke out all over me.
        There was a question in my mind which I did not dare to ask, but
        Severnius divined it.

“Is it a new idea to you?” said he. “Have you no houses of
        prostitution in your country, licensed by law, as this is?”

“For men, not for women,” said I.

“Ah! another of your peculiar discriminations!” he
        returned.

“Well, surely you will agree with me that in this matter, at
        least, there should be discrimination?” I urged.

He shook his head with that exasperating stubbornness one
        occasionally finds in sweet-tempered people.

“No, I cannot agree with you, even in this,” he replied.
        “What possible reason is there why men, more than women, should
        be privileged to indulge in vice?”

“Why, in the very nature of things!” I cried. “There is a
        hygienic principle involved; you know,—it is a statistical
        fact,—that single men are neither so vigorous nor so long-lived
        as married men, and a good many men do not marry.”

“Well, a good many more women do not marry; what of
        those?”

“Severnius! I cannot believe you are in earnest. Women!—that
        is quite another matter. Women are differently constituted from
        men; their nature—”

“O, come!” he interrupted; “I thought we had settled that
        question—that their nature is of a piece with our own. It
        happens in your world, my friend, that your women were kept to a
        strict line of conduct, according to your account, by a severe
        discipline,—including even the death penalty,—until their
        virtue, from being long and persistently enforced, grew into a
        habit and finally became a question of honor.”

“Yes, stronger than death, thank God!” I affirmed.

“Well, then, it seems to me that the only excuse men have to
        offer for their lack of chastity—I refer to the men on your
        planet—is that they have not been hedged about by the wholesome
        restraints that have developed self-government in women. I
        cannot admit your ‘hygienic’ argument in this matter; life is a
        principle that needs encouragement, and a man of family has more
        incentives to live, and usually his health is better cared for,
        than a single man, that is all.”

We rode in silence for some time. I finally asked, nodding
        toward the beautiful enclosure still in view:

“How do they manage about this business; do they practice any
        secrecy?”

“Of course!” he replied. “I hope you do not think we live in
        open and shameless lawlessness? Usually it is only the very
        wealthy who indulge in such ‘luxuries,’ and they try to seal the
        lips of servants and go-betweens with gold. But it does not
        always work; it is in the nature of those things to leak
        out.”

“And if one of these creatures is found out, what then?” I
        asked.

He answered with some severity: “‘Creatures’ is a harsh name
        to apply to women, some of whom move in our highest
        circles!”

“I beg your pardon! call them what you like, but tell me,
        what happens when there is an exposé? Are they
        denounced, ostracized, sat upon?” I inquired.

“No, not so bad as that,” said he. “Of course there is a
        scandal, but it makes a deal of difference whether the scandal
        is a famous or an infamous one. If the woman’s standing is high
        in other respects,—if she has money, political influence,
        talent, attractiveness,—there is very little made of it; or if
        society feels itself particularly insulted, she may conciliate
        it by marrying an honest man whose respectability and position
        protect her.”

“What! does an honest man—a gentleman—ever marry such a woman
        as that?” I cried.

“Frequently; and sometimes they make very good wives. But it
        is risky. I have a friend, a capital fellow, who was so
        unfortunate as to attract such a woman, and who finally yielded
        to her persuasions and married her.”

“Heavens! do the women propose?”

“Certainly, when they choose to do so; what is there
        objectionable in that?”

I made no reply, and he continued, “My friend, as I said,
        succumbed to her pleadings partly—as I believe—because she threw
        herself upon his mercy, though she is a beautiful woman, and he
        might have been fascinated to some extent. She told him that his
        love and protection would be her salvation, and that his denial
        of her would result in her total ruin; and that for his sake she
        would reform her life. He is both chivalrous and tender, and,
        withal, a little romantic, and he consented. My opinion is that,
        if she could have had him without marriage, she would have
        preferred it; but he is a true man, a man of honor. Women of her
        sort like virtuous men, and seldom marry any other. Her love
        proved to be an ephemeral passion—such as she had had before—and
        the result has been what you might expect, though Claris is not,
        by any means, the worst woman in the world.”

“Claris?” I exclaimed.

“Ah! I did not mean to speak her name,” he returned in some
        confusion; “and I had forgotten that you knew her. Well, yes,
        since I have gone so far, it is my friend Massilia’s wife that I
        have been speaking of. In some respects she is an admirable
        woman, but she has broken her husband’s heart and ruined his
        life.”

“Admirable!” I repeated with scorn; “why, in my country, such
        conduct would damn a woman eternally, no matter what angelic
        qualities she might possess. She would be shown no quarter in
        any society—save the very lowest.”

“And how about her counterpart of the other sex?” asked
        Severnius, slyly.

I disregarded this, and returned:

“Did he not get a divorce?”

“No; the law does not grant a divorce in such a case. There
        was where Claris was shrewder than her husband; she made herself
        safe by confessing her misdeeds to him, and cajoling him into
        marrying her in spite of them.”

“I beg your pardon, but what a fool he was!”

Severnius acquiesced in this. “I tried to dissuade him,” he
        said, “before the miserable business was consummated,—he made me
        his confidant,—but it was too late, she had him under her
        influence.”

Another silence fell upon us, which I broke by asking, “Who
        were those pretty youngsters we saw lounging about on the lawn
        back there?” I referred to several handsome young men whom I had
        observed strolling through the beautiful grounds.

He looked at me in evident surprise at the question, and
        replied:

“Why, those are some of the professional ‘lovers’.”

“Great Cæsar’s ghost!”

“Yes,” he went on; “some of our most promising youths are
        decoyed into those places. It is a distressing business,—a
        hideous business! And, on the other hand, there are similar
        institutions where lovely young girls are the victims. I do not
        know which is the more deplorable,—sometimes I think the latter
        is. A tender mother would wish that her daughter had never been
        born, if she should take up with such a life; and an honorable
        father would rather see his son gibbeted than to find him inside
        that railing.”

“I should think so!” I responded, and inquired, “What kind of
        standing have these men in the outside world?”

“About the same that a leper would have. They are ignored and
        despised by the very women who court their caresses here. In
        fact, they are on a level with the common, paid courtesan,—the
        lowest rank there is. I have often thought it a curious thing
        that either men or women should so utterly despise these poor
        instruments of their sensual delights!”

My friend saw that I was too much shocked to moralize on the
        subject, and he presently began to explain, and to modify the
        facts a little.

“You see, these fellows, when they begin this sort of thing,
        are mostly mere boys, with the down scarcely started on their
        chins; in the susceptible, impressionable stage, when a woman’s
        honeyed words—ay, her touch, even—may turn the world upside down
        to them. The life, of course, has its attractions,—money and
        luxury; to say nothing of the flattery, which is sweeter. Still,
        few, if any, adopt it deliberately. Often they are wilily drawn
        into ‘entanglements’ outside; for the misery of it is, that good
        society, as I have said before, throws its cloak around these
        specious beguilers, and the unfortunate dupe does not dream
        whither he is being led,—youth has such a sincere faith in
        beauty, and grace, and feminine charm! Sometimes reverses and
        disaster, of one kind or another, or a cheerless home
        environment, drive a young man into seeking refuge and lethean
        pleasures here. It is a form of dissipation similar to the drink
        habit, only a thousand times worse.”

“Worse?” I cried. “It is infernal, diabolical, damnable! And
        it is woman who accomplishes this horrible ruin!—and is
        ‘received’ in society, which, if too flagrantly outraged, will
        not forgive her unless she marries some good man!”

“O, not always that,” protested Severnius; “the unlucky
        sinner sometimes recovers caste by a course of penitence, by
        multiplying her subscriptions to charities, and by costly
        peace-offerings to the aforesaid outraged society.”

“What sort of peace-offerings?” I asked.

“Well, an entertainment, perhaps, something superb, something
        out of the common; or may be a voyage in her private yacht. Bait
        of that sort is too tempting for any but the high and mighty,
        the real aristocrats, to withstand. The simply respectable, but
        weak-hearted,—who are a little below her level in point of
        wealth, position, or ancestry,—fall into her net. I have
        observed that a woman who has forfeited her place in the highest
        rank of society usually begins her reascent by clutching hold of
        the skirts of honest folk who are flattered by her
        condescension, and whose sturdy arms assist her to rise
        again.”

“I have observed the same thing myself,” I rejoined, but he
        had not finished; there was a twinkle in his eye as he went
        on:

“If you were to reveal the secret of your air-ship to a woman
        of this kind she would probably seize upon it as a means of
        salvation; she would have one constructed, on a large and
        handsome scale, and invite a party to accompany her on an
        excursion to the Earth. And though she were the worst of her
        class, every mother’s son—and daughter—of us would accept! for
        none of us hold our self-respect at a higher figure than that, I
        imagine.”

“Yes, Severnius, you do,” I replied emphatically.

“I beg your pardon! I would knock off a good deal for a visit
        to your planet,” he said, laughing.

By this time we had left Cupid’s Gardens far behind. The road
        bent in again toward the river, which we presently crossed. If
        it had not been for the dreadful things I had just listened to,
        I think I should have been in transports over the serene
        loveliness of the prospect around us. The view was especially
        fine from the summit of the bridge; it is a “high” bridge, for
        the Gyro is navigated by great steam-ships and high-masted
        schooners.

Severnius bade the driver stop a moment that we might
        contemplate the scene, but I had little heart for its beauties.
        And yet I can recall the picture now with extraordinary
        clearness. The river has many windings, and the woods often hide
        it from view; but it reappears, again and again, afar off, in
        green meadows and yellowing fields,—opalescent jewels in gold or
        emerald setting. Here and there, in the distance, white sails
        were moving as if on land. Far beyond were vague mountain
        outlines, and over all, the tender rose-blush of the sky. The
        sweetness of it, contrasted with the picture newly wrought in my
        mind, saddened me.

Some distance up the river, on the other side, we passed an
        old, dilapidated villa, or group of buildings jumbled together
        without regard to effect evidently, but yet picturesque. They
        were half hidden in mammoth forest trees that had never been
        trimmed or trained, but spread their enormous limbs wheresoever
        they would. Unpruned shrubbery and trailing vines rioted over
        the uneven lawn, and the rank, windblown grass, too long to
        stand erect, lay in waves like a woman’s hair.

In a general way, the lawn sloped downward toward the road,
        so that we could see nearly the whole of it over the high, and
        ugly, board fence which inclosed it. Under the trees, a little
        way back, I observed a group of young girls lolling in hammocks
        and idling in rustic chairs. They caught sight of us and sprang
        up, laughing boistterously. I thought they were going to run
        away in pretended and playful flight; but instead, they came
        toward us, and blew kisses at us off their fingers.

I looked at Severnius. “What does this mean?” I asked.

“Why,” he said, and the blush mantled his handsome face
        again, “this place is the counterpart of Cupid’s Gardens,—a
        resort for men.”

“I thought so,” I replied.

By-and-by he remarked, “I hope you will not form too bad an
        opinion of us, my friend! You have learned to-day what horrible
        evils exist among us, but I assure you that the sum total of the
        people who practice them constitutes but a small proportion of
        our population. And the good people here, the great majority,
        look upon these things with the same aversion and disgust that
        you do, and are doing their best—or they think they are—to
        abolish them.”

“How?—by legislation?” I asked.

“Partly; but more through education. Our preachers and
        teachers have taken the matter up, but they are handicapped by
        the delicacy of the question and the privacy involved in it,
        which seems to hinder discussion even, and to forestall advice.
        Though this is the only way to accomplish anything, I think. I
        have very little faith in legislative measures against secret
        vices; it is like trying to dam a stream which cannot be dammed
        but must break out somewhere. I am convinced that my friends,
        the Caskians, have solved the question in the only possible
        way,—by elevating and purifying the marriage relation. I hope
        some good may be accomplished by the visit of the few who are
        coming here!”

“Will they preach or lecture?” I asked, with what seemed to
        me a moment later to be stupid simplicity.

“O, no!” replied Severnius, with the same air of modest but
        emphatic protest which they themselves would have doubtless
        assumed had the question been put to them. “It was simply their
        personal influence I had reference to. I do not know that I can
        make you understand, but their presence always seemed to me like
        a disinfectant of evil. With myself, when I was among them, all
        the good that was in me responded to their nobility; the evil in
        me slept, I suppose.”

I made a skeptical rejoinder to the implication in his last
        sentence, for to me he seemed entirely devoid of evil; and we
        finished the drive in silence.

Chapter 7. New Friends.

“Having established his equality with class after class, of
        those with whom he would live well, he still finds certain
        others, before whom he cannot possess himself, because they have
        somewhat fairer, somewhat grander, somewhat purer, which extorts
        homage of him.

—Emerson.

It is scarcely egotistical for me to say that I was much
        sought after, not only by the citizens of Thursia, but by many
        distinguished people from other cities and countries. Among them
        were many men and women of great scientific learning, who made
        me feel that I ought to have provided myself with a better
        equipment of knowledge relative to my own world, before taking
        my ambitious journey to Mars! They were exceedingly polite, but
        I fear they were much disappointed in many of my hazy responses
        to their eager questionings. I learned by this experience the
        great value of exact information. In a country like ours, where
        so much, and so many sorts, of knowledge are in the air, a
        person is apt, unless he is a student of some particular thing,
        to get little more than impressions.

There was I,—an average (let me hope!) American citizen,—at
        the mercy of inquisitive experts in a hundred different arts and
        trades, concerning which, in the main, my ideas might be
        conservatively described as “general.” You may imagine how
        unsatisfactory this was to people anxious to know about our
        progress in physics and chemistry, botany, and the great family
        of “ologies,”—or rather about our processes in developing the
        principles of these great sciences.

With the astronomers and the electricians I got along all
        right; and I was also able to make myself interesting,—or so I
        fancied—in describing our social life, our educational and
        political institutions, and our various forms of religion. Our
        modes of dress were a matter of great curiosity to most of these
        people, and I was often asked to exhibit my terrestrial
        garments.

It was when the crowd of outside visitors was at its thickest
        that the Caskians arrived, and as their stay was brief, covering
        only two days, you may suppose that we did not advance far on
        the road to mutual acquaintance. But to tell the truth, there
        was not a moment’s strangeness between us after we had once
        clasped hands and looked into each other’s eyes. It might have
        been partly due to my own preparedness to meet them with
        confidence and trust; but more, I think, to their singular
        freedom from the conventional barriers with which we hedge round
        our selfness. Their souls spoke to mine, and mine answered back,
        and the compact of friendship was sealed in a glance.

I cannot hope to give you a very clear idea of their perfect
        naturalness, their perfect dignity, their kindliness, or their
        delightful gayety,—before which stiffness, formality, ceremony,
        were borne down, dissolved as sunshine dissolves frost. No
        menstruum is so wonderful as the quality of merriment, take it
        on any plane of life; when it reaches the highest, and is
        subtilized by cultured and refined intellects, it creates an
        atmosphere in which the most frigid autocrat of society, and of
        learning, too, must thaw. The haughtiest dame cannot keep her
        countenance in the face of this playful spirit toying with her
        frills. The veriest old dry-as-dust, hibernating in mouldy
        archæological chambers, cannot resist the blithesome thought
        which dares to illumine his antique treasures with a touch of
        mirth.

I was struck by Clytia’s beauty, which in some ways seemed
        finer than Elodia’s. The two women were about the same height
        and figure. But Clytia’s coloring was pure white and black,
        except for the healthy carmine of her lips, and occasional
        fluctuations of the rose tint in her cheeks.

I was present when they first met, in the drawing-room.
        Elodia rose to her full stature, armed cap-a-pie with her
        stateliest manner, but with a gracious sense of hospitality upon
        her. I marked with pleasure that Clytia did not rush upon her
        with any exuberance of gladness,—as some women would have done
        in a first meeting with their friend’s sister,—for that would
        have disgusted Elodia and driven her to still higher ground. How
        curious are our mental attitudes toward our associates, and how
        quickly adjusted! Here had I been in Elodia’s house, enjoying
        her companionship—if not her friendship—for months; and yet, you
        see, I secretly did not wish any advantage to be on her side. It
        could not have been disloyalty, for the impulse was swift and
        involuntary. I would like to suppose that it sprang from my
        instantaneous recognition of the higher nature; but it did not.
        It was due, no doubt, to a fear for the more timid one—as I
        fancied it to be. I had a momentary sensation as of wanting to
        “back” Clytia,—knowing how formidable my proud hostess could be,
        and, I feared, would be,—but the beautiful Caskian did not need
        my support. She was not timid. I never saw anything finer than
        her manner; the most consummate woman of the world could not
        have met the situation with more dignity and grace, and with not
        half so much simplicity. Her limpid dark eyes met Elodia’s
        blue-rayed ones, and the result was mutual respect, with a
        slight giving on Elodia’s part.

I felt that I had, for the first time in my life, seen a
        perfect woman; a woman of such fine proportions, of such nice
        balance, that her noble virtues and high intelligence did not
        make her forget even the smallest amenities. She kept in hand
        every faculty of her triple being, so that she was able to use
        each in its turn and to give to everything about her its due
        appreciation. She had, as Balzac says, the gift of admiration
        and of comprehension. That which her glance rested upon, that
        which her ear listened to, responded with all that was in them.
        I thought it a wonderful power that could so bring out the
        innate beauties and values of even inanimate things. Elodia’s
        eyes rested upon her, from time to time, with a keen and
        questioning interest. I think that, among other things, she was
        surprised—as I was—at the elegance, the “style” even, of
        Clytia’s dress.

Although there is very little fashion on that planet, as we
        know the word, there is a great deal of style. I had speedily
        mastered all its subtle gradations, and could “place” a woman
        with considerable certainty, by, let me say, her manner of
        wearing her clothes, if not the clothes themselves. I have never
        studied woman’s apparel in detail, it always seems as mysterious
        to me as woman herself does; but I have a good eye for effects
        in that line, as most men have, and I knew that Clytia’s costume
        was above criticism. She wore, just where they seemed to be
        needed,—as the keystone is needed in an arch,—a few fine gems. I
        could not conceive of her putting them on to arouse the envy of
        any other woman, or to enhance her personal charms in the eyes
        of a man. She dressed well, as another would sing well. Sight is
        the sense we value most, but how often is it offended! You can
        estimate the quality of a woman by the shade of green she
        chooses for her gown. And there is poetry in the fit of a gown,
        as there is in the color of it. Clytia knew these things, these
        higher principles of dress, as the nightingale knows its
        song,—through the effortless working of perfected faculties. But
        not she alone. My description of her will answer for the others;
        the Caskians are a people, you see, who neglect nothing. We upon
        the Earth are in the habit of saying, with regretful cadence,
        Life is short. It is because our life is all out of proportion.
        We are trying to cheat time; we stuff too much plunder into our
        bags, and discriminate against the best.

Clytia and Calypso and their friend Ariadne, a young girl,
        stayed with us throughout their visit; the others of their party
        were entertained elsewhere. On each of the two evenings they
        were with us, Elodia invited a considerable company of
        people,—not so many as to crowd the rooms, nor so few as to make
        them seem empty. Those gatherings were remarkable events, I
        imagine, in a good many lives.

They were in mine. At the close of each evening I retired to
        my room in a state of high mental intoxication; my unaccustomed
        brain had taken too large a draught of intellectual champagne.
        And when I awoke in the morning, it was with a sense of fatigue
        of mind, the same as one feels fatigue of body the day after
        extraordinary feats of physical exertion.

But not so the guests! who came down into the breakfast room
        as radiant as ever and in full possession of themselves. With
        them fatigue seemed impossible. We do not know—because we are so
        poorly trained—the wonderful elasticity of a human being, in all
        his parts. We often see it exemplified in single faculties,—the
        voice of a singer, the legs of a runner, the brain of a lawyer,
        the spirit of a religionist. But, as I have said before, we are
        all out of proportion, and any slight strain upon an unused
        faculty gives us the cramp. The fact is, the most of us are
        cripples in some sense. We lack a moral leg, a spiritual arm;
        there are parts of us that are neglected, withered,
        paralyzed.

One thing in the Caskians which especially pleased me, and
        which I am sure made a strong—and favorable—impression upon
        Elodia, too, was that their conduct and conversation never
        lacked the vital human interest without which all philosophy is
        cold, and all religion is asceticism.

It appeared that these people had taken the long journey not
        only to meet me, but that they might extend to me in person a
        cordial invitation to visit their country. Severnius warmly
        urged me to accept, assuring me, with unmistakable sincerity,
        that it would give him pleasure to put his purse at my disposal
        for the expenses of the journey,—I having brought up this point
        as a rather serious obstacle. As it would only add one more item
        to the great sum of my indebtedness to my friend, I took him at
        his word, and gave my promise to the Caskians to make the
        journey to Lunismar sometime in the near future. And with that
        they left us, and left behind them matter for conversation for
        many a day.

Chapter 8. A Talk with
        Elodia.

“It behoveth us also to consider the nature of him that
        offendeth.

— Seneca.

The longer I delayed my visit to Caskia, the more difficult
        it became for me to tear myself away from Thursia. You may guess
        the lodestar that held me back. It was as if I were attached to
        Elodia by an invisible chain which, alas! in no way hindered her
        free movements, because she was unconscious of its existence.
        Sometimes she treated me with a charmingly frank
        camaraderie, and at other times her manner was simply,
        almost coldly, courteous,—which I very well knew to be due to
        the fact that she was more than usually absorbed in her business
        or official affairs; she was never cold for a purpose, any more
        than she was fascinating for a purpose. She was singularly
        sincere, affecting neither smiles nor frowns, neither affability
        nor severity, from remote or calculating motives. In brief, she
        did not employ her feminine graces, her sexpower, as speculating
        capital in social commerce. The social conditions in Thursia do
        not demand that women shall pose in a conciliatory attitude
        toward men—upon whose favor their dearest privileges hang.
        Marriage not being an economic necessity with them, they are
        released from certain sordid motives which often actuate women
        in our world in their frantic efforts to avert the appalling
        catastrophe of missing a husband; and they are at liberty to
        operate their matrimonial campaigns upon other grounds. I do not
        say higher grounds, because that I do not know. I only know that
        one base factor in the marriage problem,—the ignoble scheming to
        secure the means of living, as represented in a husband,—is
        eliminated, and the spirit of woman is that much more free.

We men have a feeling that we are liable at any time to be
        entrapped into matrimony by a mask of cunning and deceit, which
        heredity and long practice enable women to use with such amazing
        skill that few can escape it. We expect to be caught with chaff,
        like fractious colts coquetting with the halter and secretly not
        unwilling to be caught.

Another thing: woman’s freedom to propose—which struck me as
        monstrous—takes away the reproach of her remaining single; the
        supposition being, as in the case of a bachelor, that it is a
        matter of choice with her. It saves her the dread of having it
        said that she has never had an opportunity to marry.

Courtship in Thursia may lack some of the tantalizing
        uncertainties which give it zest with us, but marriage also is
        robbed of many doubts and misgivings. Still I could not accustom
        myself with any feeling of comfort to the situation there,—the
        idea of masculine pre-eminence and womanly dependence being too
        thoroughly ingrained in my nature.

Elodia, of course, did many things and held many opinions of
        which I did not approve. But I believed in her innate nobility,
        and attributed her defects to a pernicious civilization and a
        government which did not exercise its paternal right to cherish,
        and restrain, and protect, the weaker sex, as they should be
        cherished, and restrained, and protected. And how charming and
        how reliable she was, in spite of her defects! She had an atomic
        weight upon which you could depend as upon any other known
        quantity. Her presence was a stimulus that quickened the
        faculties and intensified the emotions. At least I may speak for
        myself; she awoke new feelings and aroused new powers within
        me.

Her life had made her practical but not prosaic. She had
        imagination and poetic feeling; there were times when her
        beautiful countenance was touched with the grandeur of lofty
        thought, and again with the shifting lights of a playful humor,
        or the flashings of a keen but kindly wit. She had a laugh that
        mellowed the heart, as if she took you into her confidence. It
        is a mark of extreme favor when your superior, or a beautiful
        woman, admits you to the intimacy of a cordial laugh! Even her
        smiles, which I used to lie in wait for and often tried to
        provoke, were not the mere froth of a light and careless
        temperament; they had a significance like speech. Though she was
        so busy, and though she knew so well how to make the moments
        count, she could be idle when she chose, deliciously,
        luxuriously idle,—like one who will not fritter away his pence,
        but upon occasion spends his guineas handsomely. At the dinner
        hour she always gave us of her best. Her varied life supplied
        her with much material for conversation,—nothing worth noticing
        ever escaped her, in the life and conduct of people about her.
        She was fond of anecdote, and could garnish the simplest story
        with an exquisite grace.

Upon one of her idle days,—a day when Severnius happened not
        to be at home,—she took up her parasol in the hall after we had
        had luncheon, and gave me a glance which said, “Come with me if
        you like,” and we went out and strolled through the grounds
        together. Her manner had not a touch of coquetry; I might have
        been simply another woman, she might have been simply another
        man. But I was so stupid as to essay little gallantries, such as
        had been, in fact, a part of my youthful education; she either
        did not observe them or ignored them, I could not tell which.
        Once I put out my hand to assist her over a ridiculously narrow
        streamlet, and she paid no heed to the gesture, but reefed her
        skirts, or draperies, with her own unoccupied hand and stepped
        lightly across. Again, when we were about to ascend an abrupt
        hill, I courteously offered her my arm.

“O, no, I thank you!” she said; “I have two, which balance me
        very well when I climb.”

“You are a strange woman,” I exclaimed with a blush.

“Am I?” she said, lifting her brows. “Well, I suppose—or
        rather you suppose—that I am the product of my ancestry and my
        training.”

“You are, in some respects,” I assented; and then I added, “I
        have often tried to fancy what effect our civilization would
        have had upon you.”

“What effect do you think it would have had?” she asked, with
        quite an unusual—I might say earthly—curiosity.

“I dare not tell you,” I replied, thrilling with the felicity
        of a talk so personal,—the first I had ever had with her.

“Why not?” she demanded, with a side glance at me from under
        her gold-fringed shade.

“It would be taking too great a liberty.”

“But if I pardon that?” There was an archness in her smile
        which was altogether womanly. What a grand opportunity, I
        thought, for saying some of the things I had so often wanted to
        say to her! but I hesitated, turning hot and then cold.

“Really,” I said, “I cannot. I should flatter you, and you
        would not like that.”

For the first time, I saw her face crimson to the
        temples.

“That would be very bad taste,” she replied; “flattery being
        the last resort—when it is found that there is nothing in one to
        compliment. Silence is better; you have commendable tact.”

“Pardon my stupid blunder!” I cried; “you cannot think I
        meant that! Flattery is exaggerated, absurd, unmeaning praise,
        and no praise, the highest, the best, could do you justice,
        could—”

She broke in with a disdainful laugh:

“A woman can always compel a pretty speech from a man, you
        see,—even in Mars!”

“You did not compel it,” I rejoined earnestly, “if I but
        dared,—if you would allow me to tell you what I think of you,
        how highly I regard—”

She made a gesture which cut short my eloquence, and we
        walked on in silence.

Whenever there has been a disturbance in the moral
        atmosphere, there is nothing like silence to restore the
        equilibrium. I, watching furtively, saw the slight cloud pass
        from her face, leaving the intelligent serenity it usually wore.
        But still she did not speak. However, there was nothing ominous
        in that, she was never troubled with an uneasy desire to keep
        conversation going.

On top of the hill there were benches, and we sat down. It
        was one of those still afternoons in summer when nature seems to
        be taking a siesta. Overhead it was like the heart of a rose.
        The soft, white, cottony clouds we often see suspended in our
        azure ether, floated—as soft, as white, as fleecy—in the pink
        skies of Mars.

Elodia closed her parasol and laid it across her lap and
        leaned her head back against the tree in whose shade we were. It
        was an acute pleasure, a rapture indeed, to sit so near to her
        and alone with her, out of hearing of all the world. But she was
        calmly unconscious, her gaze wandering dreamily through
        half-shut lids over the wide landscape, which included forests
        and fields and meadows, and many windings of the river, for we
        had a high point of observation.

I presently broke the silence with a bold, perhaps an
        inexcusable question,

“Elodia, do you intend ever to marry?”

It was a kind of challenge, and I held myself rigid, waiting
        for her answer, which did not come immediately. She turned her
        eyes toward me slowly without moving her head, and our glances
        met and gradually retreated, as two opposing forces might meet
        and retreat, neither conquering, neither vanquished. Hers went
        back into space, and she replied at last as if to space,—as if
        the question had come, not from me alone, but from all the
        voices that urge to matrimony.

“Why should I marry?”

“Because you are a woman,” I answered promptly.

“Ah!” her lip curled with a faint smile, “your reason is very
        general, but why limit it at all, why not say because I am one
        of a pair which should be joined together?”

The question was not cynical, but serious; I scrutinized her
        face closely to make sure of that before answering.

“I know,” I replied, “that here in Mars there is held to be
        no difference in the nature and requirements of the sexes, but
        it is a false hypothesis, there is a difference,—a vast
        difference! all my knowledge of humanity, my experience and
        observation, prove it.”

“Prove it to you, no doubt,” she returned, “but not to me,
        because my experience and observation have been the reverse of
        yours. Will you kindly tell me,” she added, “why you think I
        should wish to marry any more than a man,—or what reasons can be
        urged upon a woman more than upon a man?”

An overpowering sense of helplessness fell upon me,—as when
        one has reached the limits of another’s understanding and is
        unable to clear the ground for further argument.

“O, Elodia! I cannot talk to you,” I replied. “It is true, as
        you say, that our conclusions are based upon diverse premises;
        we are so wide apart in our views on this subject that what I
        would say must seem to you the merest cant and sentiment.”

“I think not; you are an honest man,” she rejoined with an
        encouraging smile, “and I am greatly interested in your
        philosophy of marriage.”

I acknowledged her compliment.

“Well,” I began desperately, letting the words tumble out as
        they would, “it is woman’s nature, as I understand it, to care a
        great deal about being loved,—loved wholly and entirely by one
        man who is worthy of her love, and to be united to him in the
        sacred bonds of marriage. To have a husband, children; to assume
        the sweet obligations of family ties, and to gather to herself
        the tenderest and purest affections humanity can know, is
        surely, indisputably, the best, the highest, noblest, province
        of woman.”

“And not of man?”

“These things mean the same to men, of course,” I replied,
        “though in lesser degree. It is man’s office—with us—to buffet
        with the world, to wrest the means of livelihood, of comfort,
        luxury, from the grudging hand of fortune. It is the highest
        grace of woman that she accepts these things at his hands, she
        honors him in accepting, as he honors her in bestowing.”

I was aware that I was indulging in platitudes, but the
        platitudes of Earth are novelties in Mars.

Her eyes took a long leap from mine to the vague horizon
        line. “It is very strange,” she said, “this distinction you
        make, I cannot understand it at all. It seems to me that this
        love we are talking about is simply one of the strong instincts
        implanted in our common nature. It is an essential of our being.
        Marriage is not, it is a social institution; and just why it is
        incumbent upon one sex more than upon the other, or why it is
        more desirable for one sex than the other, is inconceivable to
        me. If either a man, or a woman, desires the ties you speak of,
        or if one has the vanity to wish to found a respectable family,
        then, of course, marriage is a necessity,—made so by our social
        and political laws. It is a luxury we may have if we pay the
        price.”

I was shocked at this cold-blooded reasoning, and cried, “O,
        how can a woman say that! have you no tenderness, Elodia? no
        heart-need of these ties and affections,—which I have always
        been taught are so precious to woman?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and, leaning forward a little,
        clasped her hands about her knees.

“Let us not make it personal,” she said; “I admitted, that
        these things belong to our common nature, and I do not of course
        except myself. But I repeat that marriage is a convention, and—I
        am not conventional.”

“As to that,” I retorted, “all the things that pertain to
        civilization, all the steps which have ever been taken in the
        direction of progress, are conventions: our clothing, our
        houses, our religions, arts, our good manners. And we are bound
        to accept every ‘convention’ that makes for the betterment of
        society, as though it were a revelation from God.”

I confess that this thought was the fruit of my brief
        intercourse with the Caskians, who hold that there is a divine
        power continually operating upon human consciousness,—not
        disclosing miracles, but enlarging and perfecting human
        perceptions. I was thinking of this when Elodia suddenly put the
        question to me:

“Are you married?”

“No, I am not,” I replied. The inquiry was not agreeable to
        me; it implied that she had been hitherto altogether too
        indifferent as to my “eligibility,”—never having concerned
        herself to ascertain the fact before.

“Well, you are perhaps older than I am,” she said, “and you
        have doubtless had amours?”

I was as much astounded by the frankness of this inquiry as
        you can be, and blushed like a girl. She withdrew her eyes from
        my face with a faint smile and covered the question by
        another:

“You intend to marry, I suppose?”

“I do, certainly,” I replied, the resolution crystallizing on
        the instant.

She drew a long sigh. “Well, I do not, I am so comfortable as
        I am.” She patted the ground with her slipper toe. “I do not
        wish to impose new conditions upon myself. I simply accept my
        life as it comes to me. Why should I voluntarily burden myself
        with a family, and all the possible cares and sorrows which
        attend the marriage state! If I cast a prophetic eye into the
        future, what am I likely to see?—Let us say, a lovely daughter
        dying of some frightful malady; an idolized son squandering my
        wealth and going to ruin; a husband in whom I no longer delight,
        but to whom I am bound by a hundred intricate ties impossible to
        sever. I think I am not prepared to take the future on trust to
        so great an extent! Why should the free wish for fetters?
        Affection and sympathy are good things, indispensable things in
        fact,—but I find them in my friends. And for this other matter:
        this need of love, passion, sentiment,-which is peculiarly
        ephemeral in its impulses, notwithstanding that it has such an
        insistent vitality in the human heart,—may be satisfied without
        entailing such tremendous responsibilities.”

I looked at her aghast; did she know what she was saying; did
        she mean what her words implied?

“You wrong yourself, Elodia,” said I; “those are the
        sentiments, the arguments, of a selfish person, of a mean and
        cowardly spirit. And you have none of those attributes; you are
        strong, courageous, generous—”

“You mistake me,” she interrupted, “I am entirely selfish; I
        do not wish to disturb my present agreeable pose. Tell me, what
        is it that usually prompts people to marry?”

“Why, love, of course,” I answered.

“Well, you are liable to fall in love with my maid—”

“Not after having seen her mistress!” I ejaculated.

“If she happens to possess a face or figure that draws your
        masculine eye,” she went on, the rising color in her cheek
        responding to my audacious compliment; “though there may be
        nothing in common between you, socially, intellectually, or
        spiritually. What would be the result of such a marriage, based
        upon simple sex-love?”

I had known many such marriages, and was familiar with the
        results, but I did not answer. We tacitly dropped the subject,
        and our two minds wandered away as they would, on separate
        currents.

She was the first to break this second silence.

“I can conceive of a marriage,” she said, “which would not
        become burdensome, any more than our best friendships become
        burdensome. Beside the attraction on the physical plane—which I
        believe is very necessary—there should exist all the higher
        affinities. I should want my husband to be my most delightful
        companion, able to keep my liking and to command my respect and
        confidence as I should hope to his. But I fear that is
        ideal.”

“The ideal is only the highest real,” I answered, “the ideal
        is always possible.”

“Remotely!” she said with a laugh. “The chances are many
        against it.”

“But even if one were to fall short a little in respect to
        husband or wife, I have often observed that there are
        compensations springing out of the relation, in other ways,” I
        returned.

“You mean children? O, yes, that is true, when all goes well.
        I will tell you,” she added, her voice dropping to the tone one
        instantly recognizes as confidential, “that I am educating
        several children in some of our best schools, and that I mean to
        provide for them with sufficient liberality when they come of
        age. So, you see, I have thrown hostages to fortune and shall
        probably reap a harvest of gratitude,—in place of filial
        affection.”

She laughed with a touch of mockery.

I suppose every one is familiar with the experience of having
        things—facts, bits of knowledge,—“come” to him, as we say.
        Something came to me, and froze the marrow in my bones.

“Elodia,” I ventured, “you asked me a very plain question a
        moment ago, will you forgive me if I ask you the same,—have you
        had amours?”

The expression of her face changed slightly, which might have
        been due to the expression of mine.

“We have perhaps grown too frank with each other,” she said,
        “but you are a being from another world, and that must excuse
        us,—shall it?”

I bowed, unable to speak.

“One of the children I spoke of, a little girl of six, is my
        own natural child.”

She made this extraordinary confession with her glance fixed
        steadily upon mine.

I am a man of considerable nerve, but for a moment the world
        was dark to me and I had the sensation of one falling from a
        great height. And then suddenly relief came to me in the
        thought, She is not to be judged by the standards that measure
        morality in my country! When I could command my voice again I
        asked:

“Does this little one know that she is your child,—does any
        one else know?”

“Certainly not,” she answered in a tone of surprise, and then
        with an ironical smile, “I have treated you to an exceptional
        confidence. It is a matter of etiquette with us to keep these
        things hidden.”

As I made no response she added:

“Is it a new thing to you for a parent not to acknowledge
        illegitimate children?”

“Even the lowest class of mothers we have on Earth do not
        often abandon their offspring,” I replied.

“Neither do they here,” she said. “The lowest class have
        nothing to gain and nothing to lose, and consequently there is
        no necessity that they should sacrifice their natural
        affections. In this respect, the lower classes are better off
        than we aristocrats.”

“You beg the question,” I returned; “you know what I mean! I
        should not have thought that you, Elodia, could ever be moved by
        such unworthy considerations—that you would ever fear the
        world’s opinions! you who profess manly qualities, the noblest
        of which is courage!”

“Am I to understand by that,” she said, “that men on your
        planet acknowledge their illegitimate progeny, and allow them
        the privileges of honored sons and daughters?”

Pushed to this extremity, I could recall but a single
        instance,—but one man whose courage and generosity, in a case of
        the kind under discussion, had risen to the level of his crime.
        I related to her the story of his splendid and prolonged life,
        with its one blot of early sin, and its grace of practical
        repentance. And upon the other hand, I told her of the one
        distinguished modern woman, who has had the hardihood to face
        the world with her offenses in her hands, as one might say.

“Are you not rather unjust to the woman?” she asked. “You
        speak of the man’s acknowledgment of his sin as something fine,
        and you seem to regard hers as simply impudent.”

“Because of the vast difference between the moral attitude of
        the two,” I rejoined. “He confessed his error and took his
        punishment with humility; she slaps society in the face, and
        tries to make her genius glorify her misdeeds.”

“Possibly society is to blame for that, by setting her at
        bay. If I have got the right idea about your society, it is as
        unrelenting to the one sex as it is indulgent to the other.
        Doubtless it was ready with open arms to receive back the
        offending, repentant man, but would it not have set its foot
        upon the woman’s neck if she had given it the chance, if she had
        knelt in humility as he did? A tree bears fruit after its kind;
        so does a code of morals. Gentleness and forgiveness breed
        repentance and reformation, and harshness begets defiance.” She
        added with a laugh, “What a spectacle your civilization would
        present if all the women who have sinned had the genius and the
        spirit of a Bernhardt!”

“Or all the men had the magnanimity of a Franklin,” I
        retorted.

“True!” she said, and after a moment she continued, “I am not
        so great as the one, nor have I the ‘effrontery’ of the other.
        But it is not so much that I lack courage; it is rather,
        perhaps, a delicate consideration for, and concession to, the
        good order of society.”

I regarded her with amazement, and she smiled.

“Really, it is true,” she said. “I believe in social order
        and I pay respect to it—”

“By concealing your own transgressions,” I interpolated.

“Well, why not? Suppose I and my cult—a very large class of
        eminently respectable sinners!—should openly trample upon this
        time-honored convention; the result would eventually be, no
        doubt, a moral anarchy. We have a very clear sense of our
        responsibility to the masses. We make the laws for their
        government, and we allow ourselves to seem to be governed by
        them also,—so that they may believe in them. We build churches
        and pay pew rent, though we do not much believe in the religious
        dogmas. And we leave off wine when we entertain temperance
        people.”

“But why do you do these things?” I asked; “to what end?”

“Simply for the preservation of good order and decency. You
        must know that the pleasant vices of an elegant person are
        brutalities in the uncultured. The masses have no tact or
        delicacy, they do not comprehend shades, and refinements of
        morals and manners. They can understand exoteric but not
        esoteric philosophy. We have really two codes of laws.”

“I think it would be far better for the masses—whom you so
        highly respect!—” I said, “if you were to throw off your masks
        and stand out before them just as you are. Let moral anarchy
        come if it must, and the evil be consumed in its own flame; out
        of its ashes the phœnix always rises again, a nobler bird.”

“How picturesque!” she exclaimed; “do you know, I think your
        language must be rich in imagery. I should like to learn
        it.”

I did not like the flippancy of this speech, and made no
        reply.

After a brief pause she added, “There is truth in what you
        say, a ball must strike hard before it can rebound. Society must
        be fearfully outraged before it turns upon the offender, if he
        be a person of consequence. But you cannot expect the offender
        to do his worst, to dash himself to pieces, in order that a
        better state of morals may be built upon his ruin. We have not
        yet risen to such sublimity of devotion and self-sacrifice. I
        think the fault and the remedy both, lie more with the good
        people,—the people who make a principle of moral conduct. They
        allow us to cajole them into silence, they wink at our misdeeds.
        They know what we are up to, but they conceal the
        knowledge,—heaven knows why!—as carefully as we do our vices.
        Contenting themselves with breaking out in general denunciations
        which nobody accepts as personal rebuke.”

This was such a familiar picture that for a moment I fancied
        myself upon the Earth again. And I thought, what a difficult
        position the good have to maintain everywhere, for having
        accepted the championship of a cause whose standards are the
        highest and best! We expect them to be wise, tender, strong,
        just, stern, merciful, charitable, unyielding, forgiving,
        sinless, fearless.

“Elodia,” I said presently, “you can hardly understand what a
        shock this—this conversation has been to me. I started out with
        saying that I had often tried to fancy what our civilization
        might have done for you. I see more clearly now. You are the
        victim of the harshest and cruelest assumption that has ever
        been upheld concerning woman,—that her nature is no finer,
        holier than man’s. I have reverenced womanhood all my life as
        the highest and purest thing under heaven, and I will, I must,
        hold fast to that faith, to that rock on which the best
        traditions of our Earth are founded.”

“Do your women realize what they have got to live up to?” she
        asked ironically.

“There are things in men which offset their virtues,” I
        returned, in justice to my own sex. “Where men are strong, women
        are gentle, where women are faithful, men are brave, and so
        on.”

“How charming to have the one nature dovetail into the other
        so neatly!” she exclaimed. “I seem to see a vision, shall I tell
        it to you,—a vision of your Earth? In the Beginning, you know
        that is the way in which all our traditions start out, there was
        a great heap of Qualities stacked in a pyramid upon the Earth.
        And the human creatures were requested to step up and help
        themselves to such as suited their tastes. There was a great
        scramble, and your sex, having some advantages in the way of
        muscle and limb,—and not having yet acquired the arts of
        courtesy and gallantry for which you are now so
        distinguished,—pressed forward and took first choice. Naturally
        you selected the things which were agreeable to possess in
        themselves, and the exercise of which would most redound to your
        glory; such virtues as chastity, temperance, patience, modesty,
        piety, and some minor graces, were thrust aside and eventually
        forced upon the weaker sex,—since it was necessary that all the
        Qualities should be used in order to make a complete Human
        Nature. Is not that a pretty fable?”

She arose and shook out her draperies and spread her parasol.
        There were crimson spots in her cheeks, I felt that I had
        angered her,—and on the other hand, she had outraged my finest
        feelings. But we were both capable of self-government.

“It must be near dinner time,” she said, quietly.

I walked along by her side in silence.

As we again crossed the brooklet, she stooped and picked a
        long raceme of small white, delicately odorous flowers, and
        together we analyzed them, and I recognized them as belonging to
        our family of convallaria majalis. This led to a
        discussion of comparative botany on the two planets,—a safe,
        neutral topic. In outward appearance our mutual attitude was
        unchanged. Inwardly, there had been to me something like the
        moral upheaval of the universe. For the first time I had
        melancholy symptoms of nostalgia, and passionately regretted
        that I had ever exchanged the Earth for Mars.

Severnius had returned. After dinner he invited me out onto
        the veranda to smoke a cigar,—he was very particular not to fill
        the house with tobacco smoke. Elodia, he said, did not like the
        odor. I wondered whether he took such pains out of consideration
        for her, or whether he simply dreaded her power to retaliate
        with her obnoxious vapor. The latter supposition, however, I
        immediately repudiated as being unjust to him; he was the
        gentlest and sweetest of men.

My mind was so full of the subject Elodia and I had discussed
        that I could not forbear repeating my old question to him:

“Tell me, my friend,” I entreated, “do you in your inmost
        soul believe that men and women have one common nature,—that
        women are no better at all than men, and that men may, if they
        will, be as pure as—well as women ought to be?”

Severnius smiled. “If you cannot find an answer to your first
        question here in Paleveria, I think you may in any of the savage
        countries, where I am quite positive the women exhibit no finer
        qualities than their lords. And for a very conclusive reply to
        your second question,—go to Caskia!”

“Does the same idea of equality, or likeness rather, exist in
        Caskia that prevails here?” I asked.

“O, yes,” said he, “but their plane of life is so much
        higher. I cannot but believe in the equality” he added, “bad as
        things are with us. We hope that we are progressing onward and
        upward; all our teaching and preaching tend toward that, as you
        may find in our churches and schools, and in our literature. I
        am so much of an optimist as to believe that we are getting
        better and better all the time. One evidence is that there is
        less of shamelessness than there used to be with respect to some
        of the grossest offences against decency. People do not now
        glory in their vices, they hide them.”

“Then you approve of concealment!” I exclaimed.

“It is better than open effrontery, it shows that the moral
        power in society is the stronger; that it is making the way of
        the transgressor hard, driving him into dark corners.”

I contrasted this in my mind with Elodia’s theory on the same
        subject. The two differed, but there was a certain harmony after
        all.

Severnius added, apropos of what had gone before, “It does
        not seem fair to me that one half of humanity should hang upon
        the skirts of the other half; it is better that we should go
        hand in hand, even though our progress is slow.”

“But that cannot be,” I returned; “there are always some that
        must bear the burden while others drag behind.”

“O, certainly; that is quite natural and right,” he assented.
        “The strong should help the weak. What I mean is that we should
        not throw the burden upon any particular class, or allow to any
        particular class special indulgences. That—pardon me!—is the
        fault I find with your civilization; you make your women the
        chancellors of virtue, and claim for your sex the privilege of
        being virtuous or not, as you choose.” He smiled as he added,
        “Do you know, your loyalty and tender devotion to individual
        women, and your antagonistic attitude toward women in general—on
        the moral plane—presents the most singular contrast to my
        mind!”

“No doubt,” I said; “it is a standing joke with us. We are
        better in the sample than in the whole piece. As individuals, we
        are woman’s devoted slaves, and lovers, and worshipers; as a
        political body, we are her masters, from whom she wins grudging
        concessions; as a social factor, we refuse her dictation.”

I was not in a mood to discuss the matter further. I was sick
        at heart and angry,—not so much with Elodia as with the
        conditions that had made her what she was, a woman perfect in
        every other respect, but devoid of the one supreme thing,—the
        sense of virtue. She was now to me simply a splendid ruin, a
        temple without holiness. I went up to my room and spent the
        night plunged in the deepest sadness I had ever known. When one
        is suffering an insupportable agony, he catches at the flimsiest
        delusions for momentary relief. He says to himself, “My friend
        is not dead!” “My beloved is not false!” So I tried to cheat
        myself. I argued, “Why, this is only a matter of education with
        me, surely; how many women, with finer instincts than mine, have
        loved and married men of exactly the same stamp as Elodia!” But
        I put away the thought with a shudder, feeling that it would be
        a far more dreadful thing to relax my principles and to renounce
        my faith in woman’s purity than to sacrifice my love. The
        tempter came in another form. Suppose she should repent? But my
        soul revolted. No, no; Jesus might pardon a Magdalene, but I
        could not. Elodia was dead; Elodia had never been! That night I
        buried her; I said I would never look upon her face again. But
        the morning brought resurrection. How hard a thing it is to
        destroy love!

Chapter 9. Journeying
        Upward.

“The old order changeth, giving place to the new, And God
        fulfils himself in many ways.”

— Tennyson.

My conversation with Elodia had the effect of crystallizing
        my nebulous plans about visiting the Caskians into a sudden
        resolve. I could not remain longer in her presence without pain
        to myself; and, to tell the truth, I dreaded lest her astounding
        lack of the moral sense—which should be the foundation stone of
        woman’s character—would eventually dull my own. Men are
        notoriously weak where women are concerned—the women they
        worship.

As soon as I had communicated with the Caskians and learned
        that they were still anticipating my coming, with—they were so
        kind as to say it—the greatest pleasure, I prepared to set
        forth.

In the meantime, an event occurred which further illustrated
        the social conditions in Paleveria. Claris, the wife of
        Massilla, died very suddenly, and I was astonished at the
        tremendous sensation the circumstance occasioned throughout the
        city. It seemed to me that the only respect it was possible to
        pay to the memory of such a woman must be that which is
        expressed in absolute silence,—even charity could not be
        expected to do more than keep silent. But I was mistaken, Claris
        had been a woman of distinction, in many ways; she was
        beautiful, rich, and talented, and she had wielded an influence
        in public and social affairs. Immediately, the various
        periodicals in Thursia, and in neighboring cities, flaunted
        lengthy eulogistic obituaries headed with more or less well
        executed portraits of the deceased. It seemed as if the authors
        of these effusions must have run through dictionaries of
        complimentary terms, which they culled lavishly and inserted
        among the acts and facts of her life with a kind of journalistic
        sleight-of-hand. And private comment took its cue from these
        authorities. It was said that she was a woman of noble traits,
        and pretty anecdotes were told of her, illustrating her generous
        impulses, her wit, her positiveness. She had had great personal
        magnetism, many had loved her, many had also feared her, for her
        tongue could cut like a sword. It was stated that her children
        had worshiped her, and that her death had prostrated her husband
        with grief. Of the chief blackness of her character none
        spoke.

Severnius invited me to attend the funeral obsequies which
        took place in the Auroras’ Temple, where the embalmed body lay
        in state; with incense burning and innumerable candles casting
        their pallid light upon the bier. I observed as we drove through
        the streets that the closed doors of all the business houses
        exhibited the emblems of respect and sorrow.

The Auroras were assembled in great numbers, having come from
        distant parts of the country to do honor to the dead. They were
        in full regalia, with mourning badges, and carried inverted
        torches. The religious ceremonies and mystic rites of the Order
        were elaborate and impressive. The dirge which followed, and
        during which the members of the Order formed in procession and
        began a slow march, was so unutterably and profoundly sad that I
        could not keep back the tears. A little sobbing voice directly
        in front of me wailed out “Mamma! Mamma!” A woman stooped down
        and whispered, “Do you want to go up and kiss Mamma ‘good-by’
        before they take her away?” But the child shrank back, afraid of
        the pomp and ghostly magnificence surrounding the dead form.

Elodia was of course the chief figure in the procession, and
        she bore herself with a grave and solemn dignity in keeping with
        the ceremonies. The sight of her beautiful face, with its
        subdued but lofty expression, was more than I could bear. I
        leaned forward and dropped my face in my hands, and let the
        sorrow-laden requiem rack my soul with its sweet torture as it
        would.

That was my last day in Thursia.

I had at first thought of taking my aeroplane along with me,
        reflecting that I might better begin my homeward flight from
        some mountain top in Caskia; but Severnius would not hear of
        that.

“No indeed!” said he, “you must return to us again. I wish to
        get ready a budget for you to carry back to your astronomers,
        which I think will be of value to them, as I shall make a
        complete map of the heavens as they appear to us. Then we shall
        be eager to hear about your visit. And besides, we want to see
        you again on the ground of friendship, the strongest reason of
        all!”

“You are too kind!” I responded with much feeling. I knew
        that he was as sincere as he was polite. This was at the last
        moment, and Elodia was present to bid me “good-by.” She seconded
        her brother’s invitation,—“O, yes, of course you must come
        back!” and turned the whole power of her beautiful face upon me,
        and for the first time gave me her hand. I had coveted it a
        hundred times as it lay lissome and white in her lap. I clasped
        it, palm to palm. It was as smooth as satin, and not moist,—I
        dislike a moist hand. I felt that up to that moment I had always
        undervalued the sense of touch,—it was the finest of all the
        senses! No music, no work of art, no wondrous scene, had ever so
        thrilled me and set my nerves a-quiver, as did the delicate,
        firm pressure of those magic fingers. The remembrance of it made
        my blood tingle as I went on my long journey from Thursia to
        Lunismar.

It was a long journey in miles, though not in time, we
        traveled like the wind.

Both Clytia and Calypso were at the station to meet me, with
        their two children, Freya and Eurydice. I learned that nearly
        all Caskians are named after the planetoids or other heavenly
        bodies,—a very appropriate thing, since they live so near the
        stars!

My heart went out to the children the moment my eyes fell
        upon their faces.

They were as beautiful as Raphael’s cherubs, you could not
        look upon them without thrills of delight. They were two perfect
        buds of the highest development humanity has ever attained
        to,—so far as we know. I felt that it was a wonderful thing to
        know that in these lovely forms there lurked no germs of evil,
        over their sweet heads there hung no Adam’s curse! They were
        seated in a pretty pony carriage, with a white canopy top lined
        with blue silk. Freya held the lines. It appeared that Eurydice
        had driven down and he was to drive back. The father and mother
        were on foot. They explained that it was difficult to drive
        anything but the little carriage up the steep path to their home
        on the hillside, half a mile distant.

“Who would wish for any other means of locomotion than nature
        has given him, in a country where the buoyant air makes walking
        a luxury!” I cried, stretching my legs and filling my lungs,
        with an unwonted sense of freedom and power.

I had become accustomed to the atmosphere of Paleveria, but
        here I had the same sensations I had experienced when I first
        landed there.

“If you would rather, you may take my place, sir?” said the
        not much more than knee-high Freya, ready to relinquish the
        lines. I felt disposed to laugh, but not so the wise
        parents.

“The little ponies could not draw our friend up the hill, he
        is too heavy,” explained Clytia.

“Thank you, my little man, all the same!” I added.

It was midsummer in Paleveria, but here I observed everything
        had the newness and delightful freshness of spring. A busy,
        bustling, joyous, tuneful spring. The grass was green and
        succulent; the sap was in the trees and their bark was sleek and
        glossy, their leaves just unrolled. Of the wild fruit trees,
        every branch and twig was loaded with eager buds crowding upon
        each other as the heads of children crowd at a cottage window
        when one goes by. Every thicket was full of bird life and music.
        I heard the roar of a waterfall in the distance, and Calypso
        told me that a mighty river, the Eudosa, gathered from a hundred
        mountain streams, was compressed into a deep gorge or canyon and
        fell in a succession of cataracts just below the city, and
        finally spread out into a lovely lake, which was a wonder in its
        way, being many fathoms deep and as transparent as the
        atmosphere.

We paused to listen,—the children also.

“How loud it is to-day, Mamma,” exclaimed Freya. His mother
        assented and turned to me with a smile. “The falls of Eudosa
        constitute a large part of our life up here,” she said; “we note
        all its moods, which are many. Sometimes it is drowsy, and purrs
        and murmurs; again it is merry, and sings; or it is sublime, and
        rises to a thunderous roar. Always it is sound. Do you know, my
        ears ached with the silence when I was down in Paleveria!”

I have said Clytia’s eyes were black; it was not an opaque
        blackness, you could look through them down into her soul. I
        likened them in my mind to the waters of the Eudosa which
        Calypso had just described.

Every moment something new attracted our attention and the
        brief journey was full of incident; the children were especially
        alive to the small happenings about us, and I never before took
        such an interest in what I should have called insignificant
        things. Sometimes the conversation between my two friends and
        myself rose above the understanding of the little ones, but they
        were never ignored,—nor were they obtrusive; they seemed to know
        just where to fit their little questions and remarks into the
        talk. It was quite wonderful. I understood, of course, that the
        children had been brought down to meet me in order that I might
        make their acquaintance immediately and establish my relations
        with them, since I was to be for some time a member of the
        household. They had their small interests apart from their
        elders—carefully guarded by their elders—as children should
        have; but whenever they were permitted to be with us, they were
        of us. They were never allowed to feel that loneliness in a
        crowd which is the most desolate loneliness in the world. Clytia
        especially had the art of enveloping them in her sympathy,
        though her intellectual faculties were employed elsewhere. And
        how they loved her! I have seen nothing like it upon the
        Earth.

Perhaps I adapt myself with unusual readiness to new
        environments, and assimilate more easily with new persons than
        most people do. I had, as you know, left Paleveria with deep
        reluctance, under compulsion of my will—moved by my better
        judgment; and throughout my journey I had deliberately steeped
        myself in sweet and bitter memories of my life there, to the
        exclusion of much that might have been interesting and
        instructive to me on the way,—a foolish and childish thing to
        have done. And now, suddenly, Paleveria dropped from me like a
        garment. Some moral power in these new friends, and perhaps in
        this city of Lunismar,—a power I could feel but could not
        define,—raised me to a different, unmistakably a higher, plane.
        I felt the change as one feels the change from underground to
        the upper air.

We first walked a little way through the city, which quite
        filled the valley and crept up onto the hillsides, here and
        there.

Each building stood alone, with a little space of ground
        around it, upon which grass and flowers and shrubbery grew, and
        often trees. Each such space bore evidence that it was as
        tenderly and scrupulously tended as a Japanese garden.

It was the cleanest city I ever saw; there was not an
        unsightly place, not a single darksome alley or lurking place
        for vice, no huddling together of miserable tenements. I
        remarked upon this and Calypso explained:

“Our towns used to be compact, but since electricity has
        annihilated distance we have spread ourselves out. We have
        plenty of ground for our population, enough to give a generous
        slice all round. Lunismar really extends through three
        valleys.”

Crystal streams trickled down from the mountains and were
        utilized for practical and æsthetic purposes. Small parks,
        exquisitely pretty, were very numerous, and in them the
        sparkling water was made to play curious pranks. Each of these
        spots was an ideal resting place, and I saw many elderly people
        enjoying them,—people whom I took to be from sixty to seventy
        years of age, but who, I was astonished to learn, were all
        upwards of a hundred. Perfect health and longevity are among the
        rewards of right living practiced from generation to generation.
        The forms of these old people were erect and their faces were
        beautiful in intelligence and sweetness of expression.

I remarked, apropos of the general beauty and elegance of the
        buildings we passed:

“This must be the fine quarter of Lunismar.”

“No, not especially,” returned Calypso, “it is about the same
        all over.”

“Is it possible! then you must all be rich?” said I.

“We have no very poor,” he replied, “though of course some
        have larger possessions than others. We have tried, several
        times in the history of our race, to equalize the wealth of the
        country, but the experiment has always failed, human nature
        varies so much.”

“What, even here?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” said he.

“Why, I understand that you Caskians have attained to a most
        perfect state of development and culture, and—” I hesitated and
        he smiled.

“And you think the process eliminates individual traits?” he
        inquired.

Clytia laughingly added:

“I hope, sir, you did not expect to find us all exactly
        alike, that would be too tame!”

“You compliment me most highly,” said Calypso, seriously,
        “but we must not permit you to suppose that we regard our
        ‘development’ as anywhere near perfect, In fact, the farther we
        advance, the greater, and the grander, appears the excellence to
        which we have not yet attained. Though it would be false
        modesty—and a disrespect to our ancestors—not to admit that we
        are conscious of having made some progress, as a race. We know
        what our beginnings were, and what we now are.”

After a moment he went on:

“I suppose the principle of differentiation, as we observe it
        in plant and animal life, is the same in all life, not only
        physical, but intellectual, moral, spiritual. Cultivation,
        though it softens salient traits and peculiarities, may develop
        infinite variety in every kind and species.”

I understood this better later on, after I had met a greater
        number of people, and after my perceptions had become more
        delicate and acute,—or when a kind of initiatory experience had
        taught me how to see and to value excellence.

A few years ago a border of nasturtiums exhibited no more
        than a single color tone, the pumpkin yellow; and a bed of
        pansies resembled a patch of purple heather. Observe now the
        chromatic variety and beauty produced by intelligent
        horticulture! A group of commonplace people—moderately
        disciplined by culture—might be compared to the pansies and
        nasturtiums of our early recollection, and a group of these
        highly refined Caskians to the delicious flowers abloom in
        modern gardens.

We crave variety in people, as we crave condiments in food.
        For me, this craving was never so satisfied—and at the same time
        so thoroughly stimulated—as in Caskian society, which had a
        spiciness of flavor impossible to describe.

Formality was disarmed by perfect breeding, there was nothing
        that you could call “manner.” The delicate faculty of intuition
        produced harmony. I never knew a single instance in which the
        social atmosphere was disagreeably jarred,—a common enough
        occurrence where we depend upon the machinery of social order
        rather than upon the vital principle of good conduct.

I inquired of Calypso, as we walked along, the sources of the
        people’s wealth. He replied that the mountains were full of it.
        There were minerals and precious stones, and metals in great
        abundance; and all the ores were manufactured in the vicinity of
        the mines before being shipped to the lower countries and
        exchanged for vegetable products.

This prompted me to ask the familiar question:

“And how do you manage the labor problem?” He did not
        understand me until after I had explained about our difficulties
        in that line. And then he informed me that most of the people
        who worked in mines and factories had vested interests in
        them.

“Physical labor, however,” he added, “is reduced to the
        minimum; machinery has taken the place of muscle.”

“And thrown an army of workers out of employment and the
        means of living, I suppose?” I rejoined, taking it for granted
        that the small share-holders had been squeezed out, as well as
        the small operators.

“O, no, indeed,” he returned, in surprise. “It has simply
        given them more leisure. Everybody now enjoys the luxury of
        spare time, and may devote his energies to the service of other
        than merely physical needs.” He smiled as he went on, “This
        labor problem the Creator gave us was a knotty one, wasn’t it?
        But what a tremendous satisfaction there is in the thought—and
        in the fact—that we have solved it.”

I was in the dark now, and waited for him to go on.

“To labor incessantly, to strain the muscles, fret the mind,
        and weary the soul, and to shorten the life, all for the sake of
        supplying the wants of the body, and nothing more, is, I think,
        an inconceivable hardship. And to have invoked the forces of the
        insensate elements and laid our burdens upon them, is a glorious
        triumph.”

“Yes, if all men are profited by it,” I returned
        doubtfully.

“They are, of course,” said he, “at least with us. I was
        shocked to find it quite different in Paleveria. There, it
        seemed to me, machinery—which has been such a boon to the
        laborers here—has been utilized simply and solely to increase
        the wealth of the rich. I saw a good many people who looked as
        though they were on the brink of starvation.”

“I don’t see how you manage it otherwise,” I confessed.

“It belongs to the history of past generations,” he replied.
        “Perhaps the hardest struggle our progenitors had was to conquer
        the lusts of the flesh,—of which the greed of wealth is
        doubtless the greatest. They began to realize, generations ago,
        that Mars was rich enough to maintain all his children in
        comfort and even luxury,—that none need hunger, or thirst, or go
        naked or houseless, and that more than this was vanity and
        vain-glory. And just as they, with intense assiduity, sought out
        and cultivated nature’s resources—for the reduction of labor and
        the increase of wealth—so they sought out and cultivated within
        themselves corresponding resources, those fit to meet the new
        era of material prosperity; namely, generosity and brotherly
        love.”

“Then you really and truly practice what you preach!” said I,
        with scant politeness, and I hastened to add, “Severnius told me
        that you recognize the trinity in human nature. Well, we do,
        too, upon the Earth, but the Three have hardly an equal chance!
        We preach the doctrine considerably more than we practice
        it.”

“I understand that you are a highly intellectual people,”
        remarked Calypso, courteously.

“Yes, I suppose we are,” said I; “our achievements in that
        line are nothing to be ashamed of. And,” I added, remembering
        some felicitous sensations of my own, “there is no greater
        delight than the travail of intellect which brings forth great
        ideas.”

“Pardon me!” he returned, “the travail of soul which brings
        forth a great love—a love willing to share equally with others
        the fruits of intellectual triumph—is, to my mind, infinitely
        greater.”

We had reached the terrace, or little plateau, on which my
        friends’ house stood; it was like a strip of green velvet for
        color and smoothness.

The house was built of rough gray stone which showed silver
        glintings in the sun. Here and there, delicate vines clung to
        the walls. There was a carriage porch—into which the children
        drove—and windows jutting out into the light, and many verandas
        and little balconies, that seemed to give the place a friendly
        and hospitable air. Above there was a spacious observatory, in
        which was mounted a very fine telescope that must have cost a
        fortune,—though my friends were not enormously rich, as I had
        learned from Severnius. But these people do not regard the
        expenditure of even very large sums of money for the means of
        the best instruction and the best pleasures as extravagance, if
        no one suffers in consequence. I cannot go into their economic
        system very extensively here, but I may say that it provides
        primarily that all shall share bountifully in the general good;
        and after that, individuals may gratify their respective
        tastes—or rather, satisfy their higher needs; for their tastes
        are never fanciful, but always real—as they can afford.

I do not mean that this is a written law, a formal edict, to
        be evaded by such cunning devices as we know in our land, or at
        best loosely construed; nor is it a mere sentiment preached from
        pulpits and glorified in literature,—a beautiful but
        impracticable conception! It is purely a moral law, and being
        such it is a vital principle in each individual
        consciousness.

The telescope was Calypso’s dearest possession, but I never
        doubted his willingness to give it up, if there should come a
        time when the keeping of it would be the slightest infringement
        of this law. I may add that in all the time I spent in Caskia, I
        never saw a man, woman, or child, but whose delight in any
        possession would have been marred by the knowledge that his, or
        her, gratification meant another’s bitter deprivation. The
        question between Thou and I was always settled in favor of Thou.
        And no barriers of race, nationality, birth, or position,
        affected this universal principle.

I made a discovery in relation to the Caskians which would
        have surprised and disappointed me under most circumstances;
        they had no imagination, and they were not given to emotional
        excitation. Their minds touched nothing but what was real. But
        mark this: Their real was our highest ideal. The moral world was
        to them a real world; the spiritual world was to them a real
        world. They had no need of imagery. And they were never carried
        away by floods of feeling, for they were always up to their
        highest level,—I mean in the matter of kindness and sympathy and
        love. Moreover, their intellectual perceptions were so clear,
        and the mysteries of nature were unrolled before their
        understanding in such orderly sequence, that although their
        increase of knowledge was a continuous source of delight, it
        never came in shocks of surprise or excited childish wonderment.
        I cannot hope to give you more than a faint conception of the
        dignity and majesty of a people whose triple nature was so
        highly and so harmoniously developed. One principle governed the
        three: Truth. They were true to every law under which they had
        been created and by which they were sustained. They were taught
        from infancy—but of this further on. I wish to reintroduce
        Ariadne to you and let her explain some of the wonders of their
        teaching, she being herself a teacher.

The observatory was a much used apartment, by both the family
        and by guests. It was a library also, and it contained musical
        instruments. A balcony encircled it on the outside, and here we
        often sat of evenings, especially if the sky was clear and the
        stars and moon were shining. The heavens as seen at night were
        as familiar to Clytia and Calypso, and even to the children, as
        a friend’s face.

It was pleasant to sit out upon the balcony even on moonless
        nights and when the stars were hidden, and look down upon the
        city all brilliantly alight, and listen to the unceasing music
        of the Falls of Eudosa. I, too, soon learned his many
        “moods.”

Back of the house there rose a long succession of hills,
        ending finally in snow-capped mountains, the highest of which
        was called the Spear, so sharply did it thrust its head up
        through the clouds into the heavens.

The lower hills had been converted into vineyards. A couple
        of men were fixing the trellises, and Calypso excused himself to
        his wife and me and went over to them. A neatly dressed maid
        came out of the house and greeted the children, who had much
        important news to relate concerning their drive; and a last
        year’s bird-nest to show her, which they took pains to explain
        was quite useless to the birds, who were all making nice new
        nests. The sight of the maid,—evidently an intelligent and
        well-bred girl,—whose face beamed affectionately upon the little
        ones, prompted a question from me:

“How do you manage about your servants, I mean house
        servants,” I asked; “do you have people here who are willing to
        do menial work?”

Clytia looked up at me with an odd expression. Her answer,
        coming from any one less sincere, would have sounded like
        cant.

“We do not regard any work as mean.”

“But some kinds of work are distasteful, to say the least,” I
        insisted.

“Not if you love those for whom you labor,” she returned. “A
        mother does not consider any sort of service to her child
        degrading.”

“O, I know that,” said I; “that is simply natural
        affection.”

“But natural affection, you know, is only the germ of love.
        It is narrow,—only a little broader than selfishness.”

“Well, tell me how it applies in this question of service?” I
        asked. “I am not able to comprehend it in the abstract.”

“We do not require people to do anything for us which we
        would not do for ourselves, or for them,” she said. “And then,
        we all work. We believe in work; it means strength to the body
        and relief to the mind. No one permits himself to be served by
        another for the unworthy reason, openly or tacitly confessed,
        that he is either too proud, or too indolent, to serve
        himself.”

“Then why have servants at all?” I asked.

“My husband explained to you,” she returned, “that our people
        are not all equally rich; and they are not all adapted to what
        you would call, perhaps, the higher grades of service. You see
        the little maid yonder with the children; she has the gifts of a
        teacher,—our teachers are very carefully chosen, and as
        carefully instructed. She has been placed with me for our mutual
        benefit,—I could not intrust my little ones to the care of a
        mere paid nurse who thought only of her wages. Nor could she
        work simply for wages. The money consideration is the smallest
        item in the arrangement. My husband superintends some steel
        works in which he has some shares. The man he is talking with
        now—who is attending to the grape vines—has also a large
        interest in the steel works, but he has no taste or faculty for
        engaging in that kind of business. He might spend his whole life
        in idleness if he chose, or in mental pursuits, for he is a very
        scholarly man, but he loves the kind of work he is doing now,
        and our vineyard is his especial pride. Moreover,” a beautiful
        smile touched her face as she looked up at the two men on the
        hillside, “Fides loves my Calypso, they are soul friends!”

When I became more familiar with the household, I found that
        the same relations existed all round; mutual pleasure, mutual
        sympathy, mutual helpfulness. First there seemed to be on the
        part of each employe a distinct preference and liking for the
        kind of work he or she had undertaken to do; second, a fitness
        and careful preparation for the work; and last, the love of
        doing for those who gave appreciation, love, and another sort of
        service or assistance in return. I heard one of them say one
        day:

“I ask nothing better than to be permitted to cook the meals
        for these dear people!”

This was a woman who wrote monthly articles on chemistry and
        botany for one of the leading scientific journals. She was a
        middle-aged woman and unmarried, who did not wish to live alone,
        who abhorred “boarding,” and who had found just such a
        comfortable nest in Clytia’s home as suited all her needs and
        desires. Of course she did not slave in the kitchen all day
        long, and her position did not debar her from the best and most
        intelligent society, nor cut her off from the pleasure and
        privileges that sweeten life. She brought her scientific
        knowledge to the preparation of the food she set before us, and
        took as much pride in the results of her skill as an inventor
        takes in his appliances. And such wholesome, delicious,
        well-cooked dishes I have never eaten elsewhere. Clytia believed
        in intelligently prepared food, as she believed in intelligent
        instruction for her children; she would have thought it a crime
        to set an ignorant person over her kitchen. And this woman of
        whom I am speaking knew that she held a place of honor and
        trust, and she filled it not only with dignity but lovingness.
        She had some younger women to assist her, whom she was
        instructing in the science and the art of cooking, and who would
        by-and-by take responsible positions themselves. These women, or
        girls, assisted also in the housekeeping, which was the most
        perfect system in point of cleanliness, order and beauty that it
        is possible to conceive of in a home; because skill, honesty and
        conscientiousness enter into every detail of the life of these
        people. The body is held in honor, and its needs are respected.
        Life is sacred, and physical sins,—neglect or infringement of
        the laws of health,—are classed in the same category with moral
        transgressions. In fact, the same principles and the same
        mathematical rules apply in the Three Natures of Man,—refined of
        course to correspond with the ascending scale from the lowest to
        the highest, from the physical to the spiritual. But so closely
        are the Three allied that there are no dividing lines,—there is
        no point where the Mind may say, “Here my responsibility ends,”
        or where the Body may affirm, “I have only myself to please.”
        Day by day these truths became clear to me. There was nothing
        particularly new in anything that I heard,—indeed it was all
        singularly familiar, in sound. But the wonder was, that the
        things we idealize, and theorize about, they accept literally,
        and absorb into their lives. They have made living facts of our
        profoundest philosophy and our sublimest poetry. Are we then too
        philosophical, too poetical,—and not practical? A good many
        centuries have rolled up their records and dropped them into
        eternity since we were given the simple, wonderful lesson,
        “Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap,”—and we have not
        learned it yet! St. Paul’s voice rings through the Earth from
        age to age, “Work out your own salvation,” and we do not
        comprehend. These people have never had a Christ—in flesh and
        blood—but they have put into effect every precept of our Great
        Teacher. They have received the message, from whence I know
        not,—or rather by what means I know not,—“A new commandment I
        give unto you, that ye love one another.”

Chapter 10. The Master.

“I spoke as I saw. I report, as a man may report God’s
        work—all’s Love, yet all’s Law.”

— Browning.

I have spoken of Ariadne, and promised to re-introduce her to
        you. You will remember her as the graceful girl who accompanied
        Clytia and her husband to Thursia. She had not made quite so
        strong an impression upon me as had the elder woman, perhaps
        because I was so preoccupied with, and interested in watching
        the latter’s meeting with Elodia. Certainly there was nothing in
        the young woman herself, as I speedily ascertained, to justify
        disparagement even with Clytia. I was surprised to find that she
        was a member of our charming household.

She was an heiress; but she taught in one of the city
        schools, side by side with men and women who earned their living
        by teaching. I rather deprecated this fact in conversation with
        Clytia one day; I said that it was hardly fair for a rich woman
        to come in and usurp a place which rightfully belonged to some
        one who needed the work as a means of support,—alas! that
        I should have presumed to censure anything in that
        wonderful country. With knowledge came modesty.

Clytia’s cheeks crimsoned with indignation. “Our teachers are
        not beneficiaries,” she replied; “nor do we regard the positions
        in our schools—the teachers’ positions—as charities to be
        dispensed to the needy. The profession is the highest and most
        honorable in our land, and only those who are fitted by nature
        and preparation presume to aspire to the office. There is no bar
        against those who are so fitted,—the richest and the most
        distinguished stand no better, and no poorer, chance than the
        poorest and most insignificant. We must have the best material,
        wherever it can be found.”

We had but just entered the house, Clytia and I, when Ariadne
        glided down the stairs into the room where we sat, and
        approached me with the charming frankness and unaffectedness of
        manner which so agreeably characterizes the manners of all these
        people. She was rather tall, and slight; though her form did not
        suggest frailty. She resembled some elegant flower whose nature
        it is to be delicate and slender. She seemed even to sway a
        little, and undulate, like a lily on its stem.

I regarded her with attention, not unmixed with curiosity,—as
        a man is prone to regard a young lady into whose acquaintance he
        has not yet made inroads.

My chief impression about her was that she had remarkable
        eyes. They were of an indistinguishable, dark color, large
        horizontally but not too wide open,—eyes that drew yours
        continually, without your being able to tell whether it was to
        settle the question of color, or to find out the secret of their
        fascination, or whether it was simply that they appealed to your
        artistic sense—as being something finer than you had ever seen
        before. They were heavily fringed at top and bottom, and so were
        in shadow except when she raised them toward the light. Her
        complexion was pale, her hair light and fluffy; her brows and
        lashes were several shades darker than the hair. Her hands were
        lovely. Her dress was of course white, or cream, of some soft,
        clinging material; and she wore a bunch of blue flowers in her
        belt, slightly wilted.

There is this difference in women: some produce an effect
        simply, and others make a clear-cut, cameo-like impression upon
        the mind. Ariadne was of the latter sort. Whatever she
        appropriated, though but a tiny blossom, seemed immediately to
        proclaim its ownership and to swear its allegiance to her. From
        the moment I first saw her there, the blue flowers in her belt
        gave her, in my mind, the supreme title to all of their kind. I
        could never bear to see another woman wear the same variety,—and
        I liked them best when they were a little wilted! Her belongings
        suggested herself so vividly that if one came unexpectedly upon
        a fan, a book, a garment of hers, he was affected as by a
        presence.

I soon understood why it was that my eyes sought her face so
        persistently, drawn by a power infinitely greater than the mere
        power of beauty; it was due to the law of moral
        gravitation,—that by which men are attracted to a leader,
        through intuitive perception of a quality in him round which
        their own energies may nucleate. We all recognize the need of a
        centre, of a rallying-point,—save perhaps the few eccentrics,
        detached particles who have lost their place in the general
        order, makers of chaos and disturbers of peace.

It is this power which constitutes one of the chief
        qualifications of a teacher in Lunismar; because it rests upon a
        fact universally believed in,—spiritual royalty; an august force
        which cannot be ignored, and is never ridiculed—as Galileo was
        ridiculed, and punished, for his wisdom; because there ignorance
        and prejudice do not exist, and the superstition which planted
        the martyr’s stake has never been known.

Ariadne said that she had been up in the observatory, and
        that there were indications of an approaching storm.

“I hope it may be a fine one!” exclaimed Clytia.

I thought this rather an extraordinary remark—coming from one
        of the sex whose formula is more likely to be, “I hope it will
        not be a severe one.”

At that moment a man appeared in the doorway, the majesty of
        whose presence I certainly felt before my eyes fell upon him. Or
        it might have been the reflection I saw in the countenances of
        my two companions,—I stood with my back to the door, facing
        them,—which gave me the curious, awe-touched sensation.

I turned round, and Clytia immediately started forward.
        Ariadne exclaimed in an undertone, with an accent of peculiar
        sweetness,—a commingling of delight, and reverence, and
        caressing tenderness:

“Ah! the Master!”

Clytia took him by the hand and brought him to me, where I
        stood rooted to my place.

“Father, this is our friend,” she said simply, without
        further ceremony of introduction. It was enough. He had come on
        purpose to see me, and therefore he knew who I was. As for
        him—one does not explain a king! The title by which Ariadne had
        called him did not at the moment raise an inquiry in my mind. I
        accepted it as the natural definition of the man. He was a man
        of kingly proportions, with eyes from which Clytia’s had
        borrowed their limpid blackness. His glance had a wide
        compresiveness, and a swift, sure, loving insight.

He struck me as a man used to moving among multitudes, with
        his head above all, but his heart embracing all.

You may think it strange, but I was not abashed. Perfect love
        casteth out fear; and there was in this divine countenance—I may
        well call it divine!—the lambent light of a love so kindly and
        so tender, that fear, pride, vanity, egotism, even false
        modesty—our pet hypocrisy—surrendered without a protest.

I think I talked more than any one else, being delicately
        prompted to furnish some account of the world to which I belong,
        and stimulated by the profound interest with which the Master
        attended to every word that I said. But I received an equal
        amount of information myself,—usually in response to the
        questions with which I rounded up my periods, like this: We do
        so, and so, upon the Earth; how is it here? The replies threw an
        extraordinary light upon the social order and conditions
        there.

I naturally dwelt upon the salient characteristics of our
        people,—I mean, of course, the American people. I spoke of our
        enormous grasp of the commercial principle; of our manipulation
        of political and even social forces to great financial ends; of
        our easy acquisition of fortunes; of our tremendous push and
        energy, directed to the accumulation of wealth. And of our
        enthusiasms, and institutions; our religions and their
        antagonisms, and of the many other things in which we take
        pride.

And I learned that in Caskia there is no such thing as
        speculative enterprise. All business has an actual basis most
        discouraging to the adventurous spirit in search of sudden
        riches. There is no monetary skill worthy the dignified
        appellation of financial management,—and no use for that
        particular development of the talent of ingenuity.

All the systems involving the use of money conduct their
        affairs upon the simplest arithmetical rules in their simplest
        form; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. There are
        banks, of course, for the mutual convenience of all, but there
        are no magnificent delusions called “stocks;” no boards of
        trade, no bulls and bears, no “corners,” no mobilizing of
        capital for any questionable purposes; no gambling houses; no
        pitfalls for unwary feet; and no mad fever of greed and scheming
        coursing through the veins of men and driving them to insanity
        and self-destruction. More than all, there are no fictitious
        values put upon fads and fancies of the hour,—nor even upon
        works of art. The Caskians are not easily deceived. An impostor
        is impossible. Because the people are instructed in the quality
        of things intellectual, and moral, and spiritual, as well as in
        things physical. They are as sure of the knowableness of art, as
        they are—and as we are—of the knowableness of science. Art is
        but refined science, and the principles are the same in both,
        but more delicately, and also more comprehensively, interpreted
        in the former than in the latter.

One thing more: there are no would-be impostors. The law
        operates no visible machinery against such crimes, should there
        be any. The Master explained it to me in this way:

“The Law is established in each individual conscience, and
        rests securely upon self-respect.”

“Great heavens!” I cried, as the wonder of it broke upon my
        understanding, “and how many millions of years has it taken your
        race to attain to this perfection?”

“It is not perfection,” he replied, “it only approximates
        perfection; we are yet in the beginning.”

“Well, by the grace of God, you are on the right way!” said
        I. “I am familiar enough with the doctrines you live by, to know
        that it is the right way; they are the same that we have been
        taught, theoretically, for centuries, but, to tell the truth, I
        never believed they could be carried out literally, as you
        appear to carry them out. We are tolerably honest, as the word
        goes, but when honesty shades off into these hair-splitting
        theories, why—we leave it to the preachers, and—women.”

“Then you really have some among you who believe in the
        higher truths?” the Master said, and his brows went up a little
        in token of relief.—My picture of Earth-life must have seemed a
        terrible one to him!

“O, yes, indeed,” said I, taking my cue from this. And I
        proceeded to give some character sketches of the grand men and
        women of Earth whose lives have been one long, heroic struggle
        for truth, and to whom a terrible death has often been the
        crowning triumph of their faith. I related to him briefly the
        history of America from its discovery four hundred years ago;
        and told him about the splendid material prosperity,—the
        enormous wealth, the extraordinary inventions, the great
        population, the unprecedented free-school system, and the
        progress in general education and culture,—of a country which
        had its birth but yesterday in a deadly struggle for freedom of
        conscience; and of our later, crueller war for freedom that was
        not for ourselves but for a despised race. I described the
        prodigious waves of public and private generosity that have
        swept millions of money into burned cities for their rebuilding,
        and tons of food into famine-stricken lands for the
        starving.

I told him of the coming together in fellowship of purpose,
        of the great masses, to face a common danger, or to meet a
        common necessity; and of the moral and intellectual giants who
        in outward appearance and in the seeming of their daily lives
        are not unlike their fellows, but to whom all eyes turn for help
        and strength in the hour of peril. But I did not at that time
        undertake any explanation of our religious creeds, for it
        somehow seemed to me that these would not count for much with a
        people who expressed their theology solely by putting into
        practice the things they believed. I had the thought in mind
        though, and determined to exploit it later on. As I have said
        before, the Master listened with rapt attention, and when I had
        finished, he exclaimed,

“I am filled with amazement! a country yet so young, so far
        advanced toward Truth!”

He gave himself up to contemplation of the picture I had
        drawn, and in the depths of his eyes I seemed to see an inspired
        prophecy of my country’s future grandeur.

Presently he rose and went to a window, and, with uplifted
        face, murmured in accents of the sublimest reverence that have
        ever touched my understanding, “O, God, All-Powerful!”

And a wonderful thing happened: the invocation was responded
        to by a voice that came to each of our souls as in a flame of
        fire, “Here am I.” The velocity of worlds is not so swift as was
        our transition from the human to the divine.

But it was not an unusual thing, this supreme triumph of the
        spirit; it is what these people call “divine worship,”—a service
        which is never perfunctory, which is not ruled by time or place.
        One may worship alone, or two or three, or a multitude, it
        matters not to God, who only asks to be worshiped in spirit and
        in truth,—be the time Sabbath or mid-week, the place temple, or
        field, or closet.

A little later I remarked to the Master,—wishing to have a
        point cleared up,—

“You say there are no fictitious values put upon works of
        art; how do you mean?”

He replied, “Inasmuch as truth is always greater than human
        achievement—which at best may only approximate the truth,—the
        value of a work of art should be determined by its merit alone,
        and not by the artist’s reputation, or any other remote
        influence,—of course I do not include particular objects
        consecrated by association or by time. But suppose a man paints
        a great picture, for which he recieves a great price, and
        thereafter uses the fame he has won as speculating capital to
        enrich himself,—I beg the pardon of every artist for setting up
        the hideous hypothesis!—But to complete it: the moment a man
        does that, he loses his self-respect, which is about as bad as
        anything that can happen to him; it is moral suicide. And he has
        done a grievous wrong to art by lowering the high standard he
        himself helped to raise. But his crime is no greater than that
        of the name-worshipers, who, ignorantly, or insolently, set up
        false standards and scorn the real test of values. However,
        these important matters are not left entirely to individual
        consciences; artists, and so-called art-critics, are not the
        only judges of art. We have no mysterious sanctuaries for a
        privileged few; all may enter,—all are indeed made to enter, not
        by violence, but by the simple, natural means employed in all
        teaching. All will not hold the brush, or the pen, or the
        chisel; but from their earliest infancy our children are
        carefully taught to recognize the forms of truth in all art; the
        eye was made to see, the ear to hear, the mind to
        understand.”

The visit was at an end. When he left us it was as though the
        sun had passed under a cloud.

Clytia went out with him, her arm lovingly linked in his; and
        I turned to Ariadne. “Tell me,” I said, “why is he called
        Master? Is it a formal title, or was it bestowed in recognition
        of the quality of the man?”

“Both,” she answered. “No man receives the title who has not
        the ‘quality.’ But it is in one way perfunctory; it is the
        distinguishing title of a teacher of the highest rank.”

“And what are teachers of the highest rank, presidents of
        colleges?” I asked.

“O, no,” she replied with a smile, “they are not necessarily
        teachers of schools—old and young alike are their pupils. They
        are those who have advanced the farthest in all the paths of
        knowledge, especially the moral and the spiritual.”

“I understand,” said I; “they are your priests, ministers,
        pastors,—your Doctors of Divinity.”

“Perhaps,” she returned, doubtfully; our terminology was not
        always clear to those people.

“Usually,” she went on, “they begin with teaching in the
        schools,—as a kind of apprenticeship. But, naturally, they rise;
        there is that same quality in them which forces great poets and
        painters to high positions in their respective fields.”

“Then they rank with geniuses!” I exclaimed, and the mystery
        of the man in whose grand company I had spent the past hour was
        solved.

Ariadne looked at me as though surprised that I should have
        been ignorant of so natural and patent a fact.

“Excuse me!” said I, “but it is not always the case with us;
        any man may set up for a religious teacher who chooses, with or
        without preparation,—just as any one may set up for a poet, or a
        painter, or a composer of oratorio.”

“Genius must be universal on your planet then,” she returned
        innocently. I suppose I might have let it pass, there was nobody
        to contradict any impressions I might be pleased to convey! but
        there is something in the atmosphere of Lunismar which compels
        the truth, good or bad.

“No,” said I, “they do it by grace of their unexampled
        self-trust,—a quality much encouraged among us,—and because we
        do not legislate upon such matters. The boast of our country is
        liberty, and in some respects we fail to comprehend the glorious
        possession. Too often we mistake lawlessness for liberty. The
        fine arts are our playthings, and each one follows his own
        fancy, like children with toys.”

“Follows-his-own-fancy,” she repeated, as one repeats a
        strange phrase, the meaning of which is obscure.

“By the way,” I said, “you must be rather arbitrary here. Is
        a man liable to arrest or condign punishment, if he happens to
        burlesque any of the higher callings under the impression that
        he is a genius?”

She laughed, and I added, “I assure you that this is not an
        uncommon occurrence with us.”

“It would be impossible here,” she replied, “because no one
        could so mistake himself, though it seems egotistical for one of
        us to say so! but”—a curious expression touched her face, a
        questioning, doubting, puzzled look—“we are speaking honestly,
        are we not?”

I wondered if I had betrayed my American characteristic of
        hyperbole, and I smiled as I answered her:

“My countrymen are at my mercy, I know; but had I a thousand
        grudges against them, I beg you to believe that I am not so base
        as to take advantage of my unique opportunity to do them harm!
        We are a young people, as I said awhile ago, a very young
        people; and in many respects we have the innocent audacity of
        babes. Yes,” I added, “I have told you the truth,—but not all of
        it; Earth, too, is pinnacled with great names,—of Masters, like
        yours, and poets, and painters, and scientists, and inventors.
        Even in the darkest ages there have been these points of
        illumination. What I chiefly wonder at here, is the universality
        of intelligence, of understanding. You are a teacher of
        children, pray tell me how you teach. How do you get such
        wonderful results? I can comprehend—a little—‘what’ you people
        are, I wish to know the ‘how,’ the ‘why’.”

“All our teaching,” she said, “embraces the three-fold
        nature. The physical comes first of course, for you cannot reach
        the higher faculties through barriers of physical pain and
        sickness, hunger and cold. The child must have a good body, and
        to this end he is taught the laws that govern his body, through
        careful and attentive observance of cause and effect. And almost
        immediately, he begins to have fascinating glimpses of similar
        laws operating upon a higher than the physical plane. Children
        have boundless curiosity, you know, and this makes the teacher’s
        work easy and delightful,—for we all love to tell a piece of
        news! Through this faculty, the desire to know, you can lead a
        child in whatever paths you choose. You can almost make him what
        you choose. A little experience teaches a child that every act
        brings consequences, good or bad; but he need not get all his
        knowledge by experience, that is too costly. The reasoning
        faculty must be aroused, and then the conscience,—which is to
        the soul what the sensatory nerves are to the body. But the
        conscience is a latent faculty, and here comes in the teacher’s
        most delicate and important work. Conscience is quite dependent
        upon the intellect; we must know what is right and what is
        wrong, otherwise conscience must stagger blindly.”

“Yes, I know,” I interrupted, “the consciences of some very
        good people in our world have burned witches at the stake.”

“Horrible!” she said with a shudder.

She continued: “This, then, is the basis. We try, through
        that simple law of cause and effect, which no power can set
        aside, to supply each child with a safe, sure motive for conduct
        that will serve him through life, as well in his secret thought
        as in outward act. No one with this principle well-grounded in
        him will ever seek to throw the blame of his misdeeds upon
        another. We teach the relative value of repentance; that though
        it cannot avert or annul the effects of wrong-doing, it may
        serve to prevent repetition of the wrong.”

“Do you punish offenders?” I asked.

She smiled. “Punishment for error is like treating symptoms
        instead of the disease which produced them, is it not?—relief
        for the present, but no help for the future. Punishment, and
        even criticism, are dangerous weapons, to be used, if at all,
        with a tact and skill that make one tremble to think of! They
        are too apt to destroy freedom of intercourse between teacher
        and pupil. Unjust criticism, especially, shuts the teacher from
        an opportunity to widen the pupil’s knowledge. Too often our
        criticisms are barriers which we throw about ourselves, shutting
        out affection and confidence; and then we wonder why friends and
        family are sealed books to us!”

“That is a fact,” I assented, heartily, “and no one can keep
        to his highest level if he is surrounded by an atmosphere of
        coldness and censure. Even Christ, our Great Teacher, affirmed
        that he could not do his work in certain localities because of
        prevailing unbelief.”

“There is one thing which it is difficult to learn,” went on
        Ariadne, “discrimination, the fitness of things. I may not do
        that which is proper for another to do,—why? Because in each
        individual consciousness is a special and peculiar law of
        destiny upon which rests the burden of personal responsibility.
        It is this law of the individual that makes it an effrontery for
        any one to constitute himself the chancellor of another’s
        conscience, or to sit in judgment upon any act which does not
        fall under the condemnation of the common law. It is given to
        each of us to create a world,—within ourselves and round about
        us,—each unlike all the others, though conforming to the
        universal principles of right, as poets, however original,
        conform to the universal principles of language. We have
        choice—let me give you a paradox!—every one may have first
        choice of inexhaustible material in infinite variety. But how to
        choose!”

I quoted Milton’s lines:

“He that has light within his own clear breast, May sit in
        the center and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul
        and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
        Himself is his own dungeon.”

She thanked me with a fine smile.

Clytia had come in a few moments before, but her entrance had
        been such that it had caused no disturbing vibrations in the
        current of sympathetic understanding upon which Ariadne and
        myself were launched.

Now, however, we came ashore as it were, and she greeted us
        as returned voyagers love to be greeted, with cordial
        welcome.

She informed us that dinner was ready, and I was alarmed lest
        we might have delayed that important function.

The children had disappeared for the day, having already had
        their dinner in the nursery under the supervision of their
        mother.

Calypso had invited in his friend Fides. He was a man of
        powerful frame, and strong, fine physionomy; with a mind as
        virile as the former, and as clear-cut as the latter. The woman
        who had created the dinner—I do not know of a better word—also
        sat at table with us, and contributed many a gem to the thought
        of the hour. Thought may seem an odd word to use in connection
        with a dinner conversation,—unless it is a “toast” dinner! but
        even in their gayest and lightest moods these people are never
        thoughtless. Their minds instead of being lumbering machinery
        requiring much force and preparation to put in motion, are set
        upon the daintiest and most delicate wheels. Their mental
        equipment corresponds with the astonishing mechanical
        contrivances for overcoming friction in the physical world. And
        this exquisite machinery is applied in exactly the same
        ways,—sometimes for utility, and sometimes for simple
        enjoyment.

Ariadne’s prediction had been correct, the storm-king was
        mustering his forces round the mountain-tops, and the Eudosa was
        answering the challenge from the valley.

After dinner we went up into the observatory, and from thence
        passed out onto the balcony, thrilled by the same sense of
        delightful expectancy you see in the unennuied eyes of Youth,
        waiting for the curtain to go up at a play. All save myself had
        of course seen thunder-storms in Lunismar, but none were
        blasé. There was eagerness in every face.

We took our station at a point which gave us the best view of
        the mountains, and saw the lightning cut their cloud-enwrapped
        sides with flaming swords, and thrust gleaming spears down into
        the darkling valley, as if in furious spite at the blackness
        which had gathered everywhere. For the sun had sunk behind a
        wall as dense as night and left the world to its fate. Before
        the rain began to fall there was an appalling stillness, which
        even the angry mutterings of the Eudosa could not overcome. And
        then, as though the heavens had marshaled all their strength for
        one tremendous assault, the thunder broke forth. I have little
        physical timidity, but the shock struck me into a pose as rigid
        as death.

The others were only profoundly impressed, spiritually alive
        to the majesty of the performance.

That first explosion was but the prelude to the mighty piece
        played before us, around us, at our feet, and overhead.

Earth has been spared the awfulness—(without destruction)—and
        has missed the glory of such a storm as this.

But the grandest part was yet to come. The rain lasted
        perhaps twenty minutes, and then a slight rent was made in the
        thick and sombre curtain that covered the face of the heavens,
        and a single long shaft of light touched the frozen point of the
        Spear and turned its crystal and its snow to gold. The rest of
        the mountain was still swathed in cloud. A moment more, and a
        superb rainbow, and another, and yet another, were flung upon
        the shoulder of the Spear, below the glittering finger. The rent
        in the curtain grew wider, and beyond, all the splendors of
        colors were blazoned upon the shimmering draperies that closed
        about and slowly vanished with the sun.

We sat in silence for a little time. I happened to be near
        Fides, and I presently turned to him and said:

“That was a most extraordinary manifestation of the
        Almighty’s power!”

He looked at me but did not reply.

Ariadne, who had heard my remark, exclaimed laughingly:

“Fides thinks the opening of a flower is a far more wonderful
        manifestation than the stirring up of the elements!”

In the midst of the storm I had discovered the Master
        standing at the farther end of the balcony, and beside him a
        tall, slender woman with thick, white hair, whom I rightly took
        to be his wife. I was presented to her shortly, and the mental
        comment I made at the moment, I never afterward reversed,—“She
        is worthy to be the Master’s wife!”

Although the rain had ceased, the sky was a blank, as night
        settled upon the world. Not a star shone. But it was cool and
        pleasant, and we sat and talked for a couple of hours. Suddenly,
        a band of music on the terrace below silenced our voices. It was
        most peculiar music: now it was tone-pictures thrown upon the
        dark background of shadows; and now it was a dance of sprites;
        and now a whispered confidence in the ear. It made no attempt to
        arouse the emotions, to produce either sadness or exaltation. It
        was a mere frolic of music. When it was over, I went down
        stairs, with the others, humming an inaudible tune, as though I
        had been to the opera.

Chapter 11. A
        Comparison.

“He who rests on what he is, has a destiny above destiny, and
        can make mouths at fortune.”

—Emerson.

“Work out your own salvation.”

—St. Paul.

I had a feeling, when I retired to my room that night, as if
        years lay between me and the portion of my life which I had
        spent in Paleveria. But across the wide gulf my soul embraced
        Severnius. All that was beautiful, and lovable, and noble in
        that far-off country centered in him, as light centres in a
        star.

But of Elodia I could not think without pain. I even felt a
        kind of helpless rage mingling with the pain,—remembering that
        it was simply the brutality of the social system under which she
        had been reared, that had stamped so hideous a brand upon a
        character so fair. I contrasted her in my mind with the women
        asleep in the rooms about me, whose thoughts were as pure as the
        thoughts of a child. Had she been born here, I reflected, she
        would have been like Clytia, like Ariadne. And oh! the pity of
        it, that she had not!

I was restless, wakeful, miserable, thinking of her;
        remembering her wit, her intelligence, her power; remembering
        how charming she was, how magnetic, and alas! how faulty!

She gave delight to all about her, and touched all life with
        color. But she was like a magnificent bouquet culled from the
        gardens of wisdom and beauty; a thing of but temporary value,
        whose fragrance must soon be scattered, whose glory must soon
        pass away.

Ariadne was the white and slender lily, slowly unfolding
        petal after petal in obedience to the law of its own inner
        growth. Should the blossom be torn asunder its perfume would
        rise as incense about its destroyer, and from the life hidden at
        its root would come forth more perfect blossoms and more
        delicate fragrance.

I had arrived at this estimate of her character by a process
        more unerring and far swifter than reason. You might call it
        spiritual telegraphy. The thought of her not only restored but
        immeasurably increased my faith in woman; and I fell asleep at
        last soothed and comforted.

I awoke in the morning to the sound of singing. It was
        Ariadne’s voice, and she was touching the strings of a harp. All
        Caskians sing, and all are taught to play upon at least one
        musical instrument. Every household is an orchestra.

Ariadne’s voice was exceptionally fine—where all voices were
        excellent. Its quality was singularly bird-like; sometimes it
        was the joyous note of the lark, and again it was the tenderly
        sweet, and passionately sad, dropping-song of the
        mocking-bird.

When I looked out of my window, the sun was just silvering
        the point of the Spear, and light wreaths of mist were lifting
        from the valleys. I saw the Master, staff in hand, going up
        toward the mountains, and Fides was coming across the hills.

I had wondered, when I saw the Master and his wife on the
        balcony the night before, how they came to be there at such an
        hour on such a night. I took the first opportunity to find out.
        The only way to find out about people’s affairs in Caskia, is by
        asking questions, or, by observation—which takes longer. They
        speak with their lives instead of their tongues, concerning so
        many things that other people are wordy about. They are quite
        devoid of theories. But they are charmingly willing to impart
        what one wishes to know.

I learned that Clytia’s parents lived within a stone’s throw
        of her house on one side, and Calypso’s grandparents at about
        the same distance on the other. And I also learned that it was
        an arrangement universally practiced; the clustering together of
        families, in order that the young might always be near at hand
        to support, and protect, and to smooth the pathway of the old.
        Certain savage races upon the Earth abandon the aged to
        starvation and death; certain other races, not savage, abandon
        them to a loneliness that is only less cruel. But these
        extraordinarily just people repay to the helplessness of age,
        the tenderness and care, the loving sympathy, which they
        themselves received in the helplessness of infancy.

The grandparents happened to be away from home, and I did not
        meet them for some days.

On that first morning we had Clytia’s parents to breakfast.
        Immediately after breakfast the circle broke up. It was Clytia’s
        morning to visit and assist in the school which her little ones
        attended; Ariadne started off to her work, with a fresh cluster
        of the delicious blue flowers in her belt; and I had the choice
        of visiting the steel-works with Calypso, or taking a trip to
        Lake Eudosa, on foot, with the Master. I could hardly conceal
        the delight with which I decided in favor of the latter. We set
        off at once, and what a walk it was! A little way through the
        city, and then across a strip of lush green meadow, starred with
        daisies, thence into sweet-smelling woods, and then down, down,
        down, along the rocky edge of the canyon, past the deafening
        waterfalls to the wonderful Lake!

We passed, on our way through the city, a large, fine
        structure which, upon inquiry, I found to be the place where the
        Master “taught” on the Sabbath day.

“Do you wish to look in?” he asked, and we turned back and
        entered. The interior was beautiful and vast, capacious enough
        to seat several thousand people; and every Sunday it was
        filled.

I thought it a good opportunity for finding out something
        about the religion of this people, and I began by asking:

“Are there any divisions in your Church,—different
        denominations, I mean?”

He seemed unable to comprehend me, and I was obliged to enter
        into an explanation, which I made as simple as possible, of
        course, relative to the curse of Adam and the plan of
        redemption. In order that he might understand the importance
        attaching to our creeds, I told him of the fierce, sanguinary
        struggles of past ages, and the grave controversies of modern
        times, pertaining to certain dogmas and tenets,—as to whether
        they were essential, or non-essential to salvation.

“Salvation from what?” he asked.

“Why, from sin.”

“But how? We know only one way to be saved from sin.”

“And what is that?” I inquired.

“Not to sin.”

“But that is impossible!” I rejoined, feeling that he was
        trifling with the subject. Though that was unlike him.

“Yes, it is impossible,” he replied, gravely. “God did not
        make us perfect. He left us something to do for ourselves.”

“That is heretical,” said I. “Don’t you believe in the Fall
        of Man?”

“No, I think I believe in the Rise of Man,” he answered,
        smiling.

“O, I keep forgetting,” I exclaimed, “that I am on another
        planet!”

“And that this planet has different relations with God from
        what your planet has?” returned he. “I cannot think so, sir; it
        is altogether a new idea to me, and—pardon me!—an illogical one.
        We belong to the same system, and why should not the people of
        Mars have the sentence for sin revoked, as well as the people of
        Earth? Why should not we have been provided with an intercessor?
        But tell me, is it really so?—do you upon the Earth not suffer
        the consequences of your acts?”

“Why, certainly we do,” said I; “while we live. The plan of
        salvation has reference to the life after death.”

He dropped his eyes to the ground.

“You believe in that life, do you not?” I asked.

“Believe in it!”—he looked up, amazed. “All life is eternal;
        as long as God lives, we shall live.”

A little later he said:

“You spoke of the fall of man,—what did you mean?”

“That Man was created a perfect being, but through sin became
        imperfect, so that God could not take him back to Himself,—save
        by redemption.”

“And God sent His Only Son to the Earth, you say, to redeem
        your race from the consequences of their own acts?”

“So we believe,” said I.

After another brief silence, he remarked:

“Man did not begin his life upon this planet in
        perfection.”

At this moment we passed a beautiful garden, in which there
        was an infinite profusion of flowers in infinite variety.

“Look at those roses!” he exclaimed; “God planted the
        species, a crude and simple plant, and turned it over to man to
        do what he might with it; and in the same way he placed man
        himself here,—to perfect himself if he would. I am not jealous
        of God, nor envious of you; but just why He should have arranged
        to spare you all this labor, and commanded us to work out our
        own salvation, I cannot comprehend.”

It struck me as a remarkable coincidence that he should have
        used the very words of one of our own greatest logicians.

A longer silence followed. The Master walked with his head
        inclined, in the attitude of profound thought. At last he drew a
        deep breath and looked up, relaxing his brows.

“It may be prodigiously presumptuous,” he said, “but I am
        inclined to think there has been a mistake somewhere.”

“How, a mistake?” I asked.

He paid no heed to the question, but said: “Tell me the
        story,—tell me the exact words, if you can, of this Great
        Teacher whom you believe to be the Son of God?”

I gave a brief outline of the Saviour’s life and death, and
        it was a gratification to me—because it seemed, in some sort, an
        acknowledgment, or concession to my interpretation,—to see that
        he was profoundly affected.

“Oh!” he cried,—his hands were clenched and his body writhed
        as with the actual sufferings of the Man of Sorrows,—“that a
        race of men should have been brought through such awful
        tribulation to see God! Why could they not accept the truth from
        his lips?”

“Because they would not. They kept crying ‘Give us a sign,’
        and he gave himself to death.”

I grouped together as many of the words of Christ as I could
        recall, and I was surprised, not only that his memory kept its
        grasp on them all, but that he was able to see at once their
        innermost meaning. It was as if he dissolved them in the
        wonderful alembic of his understanding, and instantly restored
        them in crystals of pure truth, divested alike of mysticism and
        remote significance. He took them up, one by one, and held them
        to the light, as one holds precious gems. He knew them,
        recognized them, and appraised them with the delight, and
        comprehensiveness, and the critical judgment of a connoisseur of
        jewels.

“You believe that Christ came into your world,” he said,
        “that you ‘might have life.’ That is, he came to teach you that
        the life of the soul, and not the body, is the real life. He
        died ‘that you might live,’ but it was not the mere fact of his
        death that assured your life. He was willing to give up his life
        in pledge of the truth of what he taught, that you might believe
        that truth, and act upon that belief, and so gain life. He
        taught only the truth,—his soul was a fountain of truth. Hence,
        when he said, Suffer the little children to come unto me, it was
        as though he said, Teach your children the truths I have taught
        you. And when he cried in the tenderness of his great and
        yearning love, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy
        laden, and I will give you rest, he meant,—oh! you cannot doubt
        it, my friend,—he meant, Come, give up your strifes, and
        hatreds, your greeds, and vanities, and selfishness, and the
        endless weariness of your pomps and shows; come to me and learn
        how to live, and where to find peace, and contentment. ‘A new
        commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.’ This was
        the ‘easy yoke,’ and the ‘light burden,’ which your Christ
        offered to you in place of the tyranny of sin. ‘Whatsoever ye
        would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’ There
        is nothing finer than that,—there is no law above that! We
        Caskians have been trying to work upon that principle for
        thousands of years. It is all that there is of religion, save
        the spiritual perception of abstract truths which we may
        conceive of; more or less clearly, as attributes of God. Your
        Great Teacher explained to you that God is a spirit, and should
        be worshiped in spirit and in truth. Hence we may worship Him
        where and when we will. Worship is not a ceremony, but profound
        contemplation of the infinite wisdom, the infinite power, and
        the infinite love of God. The outdoor world,—here, where we
        stand now, with the marvelous sky above us, the clouds, the sun;
        this mighty cataract before us; and all the teeming life, the
        beauty, the fragrance, the song,—is the best place of all. I
        pity the man who lacks the faculty of worship! it means that
        though he may have eyes he sees not, and ears he hears not.”

“Do you believe in temples of worship?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “I believe in them; for though walls and
        stained windows shut out the physical glories of the world, they
        do not blind the eyes of the spirit. And if there is one in the
        pulpit who has absorbed enough of the attributes of God into his
        soul to stand as an interpreter to the people, it is better than
        waiting outside. Then, too, there is grandeur in the coming
        together of a multitude to worship in oneness of spirit. And all
        things are better when shared with others. I believe that art
        should bring its best treasures to adorn the temples of worship,
        and that music should voice this supreme adoration. But in this
        matter, we should be careful not to limit God in point of
        locality. What does the saying mean, ‘I asked for bread, and ye
        gave me a stone?’ I think it might mean, for one thing, ‘I asked
        where to find God, and you pointed to a building.’ The finite
        mind is prone to worship its own creations of God. There are
        ignorant races upon this planet,—perhaps also upon yours,—who
        dimly recognize Deity in this way; they bring the best they have
        of skill in handiwork, to the making of a pitiful image to
        represent God; and then, forgetting the motive, they bow down to
        the image. We call that idolatry. But it is hard even for the
        enlightened to avoid this sin.”

He paused a moment and then went on:

“I cannot comprehend the importance you seem to place upon
        the forms and symbols, nor in what way they relate to religion,
        but they may have some temporary value, I can hardly judge of
        that. Baptism, you say, is a token and a symbol, but do a people
        so far advanced in intelligence and perception, still require
        tokens and symbols? And can you not, even yet, separate the
        spiritual meaning of Christ’s words from their literal meaning?
        You worship the man—the God, if you will,—instead of that for
        which he stood. He himself was a symbol, he stood for the things
        he wished to teach. ‘I am the truth,’ ‘I am the life.’ Do you
        not see that he meant, ‘I am the exponent of truth, I teach you
        how to live; hearken unto me.’ In those days in which he lived,
        perhaps, language was still word-pictures, and the people whom
        he taught could not grasp the abstract, hence he used the more
        forcible style, the concrete. He could not have made this
        clearer, than in those remarkable words, ‘Inasmuch as ye have
        done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have
        done it unto me.’”

“I know,” I replied, as he paused for some response from me;
        “my intellect accepts your interpretation of these things, but
        this symbolic religion of ours is ingrained in our very
        consciences, so that neglect of the outward forms of
        Christianity seems almost worse than actual sin.”

“And it will continue to be so,” he said, “until you learn to
        practice the truth for truth’s sake,—until you love your
        neighbor—not only because Christ commanded it, but because the
        principle of love is ‘ingrained in your consciences.’ As for
        belonging to a church, I can only conceive of that in the social
        sense, for every soul that aspires upward belongs to Christ’s
        church universal. They are the lambs of his flock, the objects
        of his tenderest care. But I can see how a great number of
        religious societies, or organizations, are possible, as
        corresponding with the requirements of different groups of
        people.”

“Yes,” I said, glad of this admission, “and these societies
        are all aiming at the same thing that you teach,—the brotherhood
        of man. They clothe the poor, they look after the sick, they
        send missionaries to the heathen, they preach morality and
        temperance,—all, in His Name, because, to tell the truth, they
        cannot conceive of any virtue disassociated from the man, Jesus.
        Jesus is the great leader of the spiritual forces marshaled
        under the banners of truth upon the Earth. In all their good
        works, which are so great and so many, good christians give
        Christ the glory, because, but for him, they would not have had
        the Truth, the Life,—the world was so dark, so ignorant. All the
        ancient civilizations upon the Earth,—and some of them were
        magnificent!—have perished, because they did not possess this
        truth and this spiritual life which Christ taught. There was a
        great deal of knowledge, but not love; there was a great deal of
        philosophy, but it was cold. There was mysticism, but it did not
        satisfy. Do you wonder, sir, that a world should love the man
        who brought love into that world,—who brought peace, good-will,
        to men?”

“No, no,” said the Master, “I do not wonder. It is grand,
        sublime! And he gave his body to be destroyed by his
        persecutors, in order to prove to the world that there is a life
        higher than the physical, and indestructible,—and that physical
        death has no other agony than physical pain. Ah, I see, I
        understand, and I am not surprised that you call this man your
        redeemer! I think, my friend,” he added, “that you have now a
        civilization upon the Earth, which will not perish!”

After a moment, he remarked, turning to me with a smile, “We
        are not so far apart as we thought we were, when we first
        started out, are we?”

“No,” said I, “the only wonder to me is, that you should have
        been in possession, from the beginning, of the same truths that
        were revealed to us only a few centuries ago, through, as we
        have been taught to believe, special Divine Favor.”

“Say, rather, Infinite Divine Love,” he returned; “then we
        shall indeed stand upon the same plane, all alike, children of
        God.”

As we continued our walk, his mind continued to dwell upon
        the teachings of Christ, and he sought to make clear to me one
        thing after another.

“Pray without ceasing,” he repeated, reflectively. “Well,
        now, it would be impossible to take that literally; the literal
        meaning of prayer is verbal petition. The real meaning is, the
        sincere desire of the soul. You are commanded to pray in secret,
        and God will reward you openly. Put the two together and you
        have this: Desire constantly, within your secret soul, to learn
        and to practice the truth; and your open reward shall be the
        countless blessings which are attracted to the perfect life, the
        inner life. ‘Ask whatsoever you will, in my name, and it shall
        be granted you.’ That is, ‘Ask in the name of truth and love.’
        Shall you pray for a personal blessing or favor which might mean
        disaster or injury to another? Prayer is the desire and effort
        of the soul to keep in harmony with God’s great laws of the
        universe.”

As it had been in Thursia, so it was here; people came to see
        me from all parts, and there were some remarkable companies in
        Clytia’s parlors! Usually they were spontaneous gatherings,
        evening parties being often made up with little or no
        premeditation. There was music always, in great variety, and of
        the most delightful and elevated character,—singing, and many
        kinds of bands. And sometimes there was dancing,—not of the kind
        which awakened in De Quincey’s soul, “the very grandest form of
        passionate sadness,”—but of a kind that made me wish I had been
        the inventor of the phrase, “poetry of motion,” so that I could
        have used it here, fresh and unhackneyed. In all, there was no
        more voluptuousness than in the frolic of children. Conversation
        might—and often was—as light as the dance of butterflies, but it
        was liable at any moment to rise, upon a hint, or a suggestion,
        to the most sublimated regions of thought,—for these people do
        not leave their minds at home when they go into society. And
        here, in society, I saw the workings of the principle of
        brotherly love, in a strikingly beautiful aspect. There was no
        disposition on the part of any one to outdo another; rather
        there seemed to be a general conspiracy to make each one rise to
        his best. The spirit of criticism was absent, and the spirit of
        petty jealousy. The women without exception were dressed with
        exquisite taste, because this is a part of their culture. And
        every woman was beautiful, for loving eyes approved her; and
        every man was noble, for no one doubted him.

If the sky was clear, a portion of each evening was spent in
        the observatory, or out upon the balcony, as the company chose,
        and the great telescope was always in requisition, and always
        pointed to the Earth!—if the Earth was in sight.

The last evening I spent in Lunismar was such an one as I
        have described. Ariadne and I happened to be standing together,
        and alone, in a place upon the balcony which commanded a view of
        our world. It was particularly clear and brilliant that night,
        and you may imagine with what feelings I contemplated it, being
        about to return to it! We had been silent for some little time,
        when she turned her eyes to me—those wonderful eyes!—and said, a
        little sadly, I thought:

“I shall never look upon Earth again, without happy memories
        of your brief visit among us.”

A strange impulse seized me, and I caught her hands and held
        them fast in mine. “And I, O, Ariadne! when I return to Earth
        again, and lift my eyes toward heaven, it will not be Mars that
        I shall see, but only—Ariadne!”

A strange light suddenly flashed over her face and into her
        eyes as she raised them to mine, and in their clear depths was
        revealed to me the supreme law of the universe, the law of life,
        the law of love. In a voice tremulous with emotion—sad, but not
        hopeless—she murmured:

“And I, also, shall forget my studies in the starry fields of
        space to watch for your far-distant planet—the Earth—which shall
        forever touch all others with its glory.”

And there, under the stars, with the plaintive music of the
        Eudosa in our ears, and seeing dimly through the darkness the
        white finger of the snowy peaks pointing upward, we looked into
        each other’s eyes and—“I saw a new heaven and a new earth.”

The End.

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