CHAPTER III.
"My son," it began, "I am indeed in the red orb of light we have sooften looked up to when we were together on the earth, and about whichour wondering minds hazarded so many fruitless guesses. I have been herea short time, and now am able to return to you, by that cipher we sofortunately printed upon the tablet of memory, word of my existence.
"I can hardly describe to you my occurrence on this planet. I foundmyself here without any recollection of whence I had come, without atraceable thought of anything I had ever heard before.
"I was suddenly sitting in a high room, brilliantly lighted by a soft,tranquillizing radiance, listening to a chorus of most delicatelyattuned voices, indescribably sweet, penetrating and moving. Around meupon white ivory chairs arranged in an amphitheatre sat beings likemyself, all looking outward upon a sloping lawn where were gatheredbeneath blossoming fruit trees an army, it seemed, of half shiningcreatures, unlike myself, singing these wonderful choruses.
"I have since learned that I did not reach Mars in that identical momentwhen I found myself sitting in the hall. I had come to it, as alldisembodied spirits from the earth come to it at one receiving point, ahigh hill not far from the tropic of Mars. This hill, crowned andcovered with glass buildings, is known as the hill of the Phosphori.Here, for nearly one of our months, the incoming souls, which are littlemore than a sort of ethereal fluid, presenting a form only observable byrefracted light, or I should say polarized light, are bathed in amarvellously phosphorescent beam procured by absorption from the sun.These souls are intermingled in a chaotic stream that I may liken to thestreaming currents of heated air in convection from a source of heatupon our earth, and this continuous tide is caught in a great sphericalchamber or a series of chambers extending over five miles around thebald summit of this eminence.
"In these colossal chambers the phosphorescent light from enormousradiators beats incessantly through and through the slowly, oscillating,vibrating, revolving soul matter. And here the process ofindividualization is achieved. A soul, or many souls, are separatedfrom the great tide, by flashing, under the bombardment of thephosphorescent blaze into shining forms. They assume a shape outlined bylight, and just slightly subject to gravity from the atomic compressionnecessary to maintain their illumination, they fall lightly out from thedomes of the spheres, touch the floors beneath, and are led away.
"In this way I found later I had arrived at Mars. When the spirits, thusshaped in light and otherwise almost immaterial and unclothed, emergefrom the Hill of the Phosphori, they are taken along wide, white roadsto some of the many chorus halls which fill the City of Light, where Iam now, and from which I am sending this magnetic message. They remainfor hours, even days and weeks in these halls listening in a sort ofstupor or trance to beautiful music; for music is the one greatrecreation of the Martians, and is spontaneous, appearing as a vocalgift in beings who have never enjoyed its exercise on earth.
"Gradually under the influence of this musical immersion, as under thebombardment of the phosphorescent rays, a mentality seems developed;voice and language come, and the soul moves out of the concourse oflistening souls, moved by a desire to do something, into the streets ofthe city. This is called, as we might say, the Act Impulse. From thattime on the soul rushes, as it were, to its natural occupation. Itsmentality, aroused by music, becomes full of some sort of aptitude, andit enters the avenues of its congruous activity as easily, as quickly,as justly as the growing flower turns toward the Sun wherever it may be.
"Let me present to you the curious scene my eyes encountered as I sat inthe great Chorus Hall. I say my eyes. It is hard perhaps for you torealize what an organ can be in a creature, so apparently, as we are,little more than gaseous condensations. The physiology and morphology ofa spirit is not an easy thing to grasp or define. I am yet ignorant uponmany points. But dimly, at least, I may make your natural sensescognizant of it.
"You have seen faces and forms in clouds. How often you and I from MountCook on the earth have watched their changing and confluent lineamentsin the clouds above the New Zealand Alps. It is the same way withMartian spirits. They are tenuous fluids, but the individual pervadesthem and a material response is evoked, and the light from theirsurfaces is so halated, intensified, or reduced as to form a figure witha head and arms and legs.
"In some way I imagine the organs are optical effects, ruled by mind,which is located in this luminous matter. Later I will describe theprocess of _solidification, the resumption of matter_, for these spiritforms slowly concrete into beings like terrestrial men and women. Thereis, therefore, a dual population here, the extreme newly transplantedsouls, and the flesh and blood people, and between them the transitionsfrom spirit to corpuscular bodies. But all this takes place in the Cityof Light. Elsewhere over the whole planet the spirits are seldom seen,but only the vigorous and beautiful race of material beings into which,they--the spirits--have _consolidated_.
"To return to my first experience in the Chorus Hall in the City ofLight. I seemed to be in a great alabaster cage enormously large andvery beautiful. Its shining walls rose from the ground and at a greatheight arched together. The front was a network of sculpture, it heldthe rising rows of what seemed like ivory chairs on which the motionlesswhite and radiant assemblage were seated. The whole place glowed, andthis phosphorescent prevails throughout the City of Light, just as itdoes in the Hill of the Phosphori, when we first landed in this strangeexistence.
"The music came from a field in front of the Chorus Hall, which held awonderful array of beings who, while not radiant as we were, had a_lustrous_ look over their smooth and lovely bodies, which were tightlyclad in the palest blue tunics and leggings. These creatures wereconsolidated spirits. They are constantly augmented by new arrivals,and, as the number remains almost unchanged, as new arrivals appear,others leave and then move off from the City of Light into the vastregions of Mars outside and beyond the city.
"A word of explanation would make this all clear. The Hill of thePhosphori begins the transmutation of the psychic fluid which makes upthe souls as they flow into Mars from space. At the Hill the verymoderate condensation begins, just enough to bring them to the ground bygravity. The psychic fluid is susceptible to the light, absorbs andemits it, and so the spirit forms are shining like great _ignes fatui_on our old earth. The spirits thus individualize, pass in companies tothe City of Light, and come to the huge chorus halls which surround thecity on its outskirts, in the country margin.
"They reach these chorus halls by a sort of suasion produced apparentlyby their sympathy with music. Music and Light are the energies, which atfirst and measurably throughout all the latter days of Martian life,direct work and thought and being. The music is quite audible for longdistances, especially in the direction of the Hill of the Phosphoriwhere the spirits land. Drawn by it they move unconsciously toward thesinging centers. Now there are perhaps a hundred of these chorus hallsabout the City of Light grouped in the direction of the Hill of thePhosphori, and the music is quite different in them. There are fourprincipal sorts, the grave, the gay, the romantic and the harmonic. Bytheir interior sympathy the kinds of spirits move to the choruses whichafford the music they respond to and it is wonderful how infallibly thisattraction acts.
"The bands separate and strings and lines of the phosphorized spiritstrain away without direction to the choruses that attract them, althoughonly a sort of subdued and confused murmur reaches them from the halls.
"Throughout the first stages of life here, the spirits are somnambulous.They move and act unconsciously and in obedience to their imbeddedinstincts and tastes. Only, as under the influence of music and lightand afterwards occupation, they are transmuted by consolidation into thefair material race, which outside of the City of Light controls theplanet, does consciousness and curiosity and language arise. I sat along, long time in the chorus hall, to which I was drawn, whichproduced _grave_ music. I knew nothing, felt nothing, was but dimlycognizant of what was about me, but I thrilled with the music
.
"I felt the process of condensation going on, and it was a processexquisitely blissful. Now and then, a spirit form would arise and stepdown the rising forms and go out, another and another, while as silentlyspirits from the Hill of the Phosphori would enter and take their seatand bathe in the almost unbroken surges of music that come from thefield outside, from the multitude beneath the almond blossom ladentrees. Movement is without volition in the spirit stage; attraction thatfollows a hidden impulse, that seems indescribable at first, directsthem. It is only as the process of consolidation in the City of Lightindividualizes, that the spirits become, as you would say, human. But itis a humanity of great beauty. Material particles invade or transfusethem, replacing the diaphanous phosphorescent spirit fluid, and theygrade into supple white and rosy figures, strong, strenuous andsplendid.
"After remaining a long time, perhaps, in the chorus hall, I felt therestlessness that causes one after the other of the spirits to go out. Ifollowed the solitary line out into the city, the solemn, swaying musicstill heard as I stepped out upon the broad steps which face the city.I was now more observant, something like sight and feeling and memorywere slowly generated within me, and I noticed that whereas the arrivingspirits moved like apathetic ghosts, those with whom I now was, turnedwith interest this way and that, seemed apprehending and alive.
"The spirits from the Hill of the Phosphori came on the broad avenuesleading to the chorus halls like waifs of cloud driven by a zephyr, withno visible distention of parts, no leg, or arm, or head or body motion.Now they moved with some anatomical suggestions.
"I stood amid a colonnade of arches, the white shining columns rosearound me to the high, shining roof, before me a long descent of steps,and beyond me and around on a softly swelling eminence was spread theCity of Light. It was a marvellous picture.
"The City of Light is simple and monotonous in architecture, but itscomposition and its radiance quite surpass any earthly conception. Thebuildings are all domed and stand in squares which are filled with fruittrees, low bush-like spreading plants, bearing white pendant lily-likeflowers or pink button-shaped florets like almonds. Each building issquare, with a portico of columns, placed on rising steps, a pair ofcolumns to each step. Vines wind around the columns, cross from oneline of columns to another and form above a tracery of green frondsbearing, as it was then, red flowers, a sort of trumpet honeysuckle.
"The walls of the buildings are pierced on all sides with broad windowsor embrasures, filled, it seemed, with an opalescent glass. Avenuesopened in all directions, lined on both sides with these wonderfulhouses, which are made of a peculiar stone, veined intermittently withyellow, which has the property of absorbing and emitting light.
"It is indeed a phosphori as, if I recall it aright, the sulphides ofbarium, strontium, and calcium were upon our earth. Later I shall seethe great quarries of this stone in the Martian mountains. Anotherstrange feature in these Martian houses was the hollow sphere of glassupheld above each house. It is a sphere some six feet in diameter madeup of lenses. It encloses a space in the center of which is a ball ofthe phosphorescent stone. During the day the rays of the sun areconcentrated upon this ball of stone, and at night the stored-upsunlight is radiated into lambent phosphorescent light.
"It was the close of a Martian day that I felt the returning impact ofvolition and left the chorus hall. I emerged, as I said before, upon thebroad platform with its colonnade of columns and arches and saw thecity as the night drew on. It is difficult to put in words, my son, thewonderful effect.
"Each house built of this strange substance, which throughout the dayhad been storing up the energies of light, now, as the fading day waned,became a center of light itself. At first a glow covered the sides ofthe houses, the colonnade and dome, while the glass prisms above themsent out rays from their imprisoned balls of phosphori. The glow spread,rising from the outskirts of the city in the lower grounds to thesummits of the hills where the sun's last rays lingered. It becameintensified. The green beds of trees were black squares and the houses,pulsating fabrics of light between them. A slight variety ofarchitecture in places was accentuated by diverse and varying lines orsurface light.
"The whole finally blended and a sea of radiance was before me in whichthe beautiful houses were descried, the illuminated groves, and likeenormous scintillations the glassy spheres--the Martians call them the_Plenitudes_ above them. Many other developing beings were around me,and voiceless, mute, impassioned, with an admiration which we had as yetno adequate organs to express we gazed upon the throbbing metropolis,ourselves luminous spectres in the vast eruption of glorious lightbefore, above, around us.
"As the night settled down the light grew more intense, more beautiful.I could discern the opalescent glasses in the houses sending out theirparti-colored rays, patching the trees with quilts of changing colors,and far away there came, still unsubdued by the night, the continuouselation of music.
"All night, all day, the choruses kept on with intermissions, but thesingers change. This musical facility is the mental or emotionalcharacteristic of the Martian. There is more in music than youearthlings know or dream of. It is a part of the immortal fiber of men,and in Mars it _creates_ matter, for the slow assumption of materialparts, as I have said, is propagated and accomplished by music, and theparts thus made are the most perfect expression of matter the divineform of man or woman can know, I think. They are tuned to health, tobeauty, to inspiration, but all of this you shall know.
"So I went down the steps into the city. I was with a group of spiritswho noticed me, and whom I noticed, but as yet the listless, strange,doomed expression was on our faces, and though memory was beginning tolight its fires within us, though the transmission of viewless particlesof matter into our fluent bodies of spirit had begun, though mind anddesire were awakened, not a word passed our shining lips, and we movedon in silence.
"The City of Light is often called in the Martian language also the Cityof Occupation, for here the forming spirits work. I have told you thatas _consolidation_, through Music and Light, goes on, the aptitudes ortastes are awakened, and this first birth of desire in Mars carries thespirits off from their ivory seats in the Chorus Halls to the City,where like an animal ferreting its purpose by intuition, they seemimpelled whither their needs are best satisfied.
"I now know that the City of Light is generally divided,--not exactly,but as association would naturally impel, into four quarters, thequarter of art, the quarter of science, the quarter of invention, thequarter of thought. This is simply that the artists, the scientificminds, the designers, and the philosophers are somewhat by themselves.The population of the City of Light is made up of a fair, white race ofMartians, and of the forming spirits. As the forming spirits attainmaterialization through occupation, they may remain in the City or goout into the other cities, and into the country to work and live.
"Besides the quarters I have mentioned, there is the business sectionand the offices of the government.
"In the light of all I have learned since I came, I may at once explainsomething about the actual life and social organization of this strangeworld.
"The Martian world is one country. There are here no nationalities. Thecenter of the country is in the City of Scandor, quite removed from theCity of Light. Business is carried on as with you on the earth, but itsnature and its physical elements vary, as you will see. There is acirculating medium, banks and business enterprises, but it is moreveiled, more hidden, less, far less, insistent than with you. A greatsocialistic republic is represented in Mars, and the limits ofindividual initiative are very narrow. Still they exist.
"One prime element of difference is in the nourishment and the area ofpopulation. The Martian lives only on fruit, and he lives only a fewdegrees on either side of the Equator. All the businesses that in yourearth arise from the preparation and sale of meat and all the variousconfections, disappear there, and also all the mechanism of househeating and lighting. Also there are no railroads, but innumerableca
nals, which form a labyrinth of waterways, and are fed from the tidesof the great northern and southern seas.
"The business is largely agricultural, but in the cities the pursuit ofknowledge still continues. There is, however, on Mars a much lessenedintellectual activity than on the earth. It is a sphere of simplifiedneeds and primal feelings exalted by acutely developed love of Music.Mars is the music planet. There are not on Mars newspapers, journals,magazines, books. The tireless production of these things on the earthhas but one analogy in Mars, the publication of music scores, therecitation of poetry and symposia, and the great illustrated journal,Dia. But these things I will explain later.
"I wandered on that night through the city with other spirits. We wentthrough the city streets in the radiance of the _Plenitudes_ above thehouses. The night air was blowing through the trees, and the city wasfilled with people. They were the Martians. We were scarcely noticed. Inthe City of Light the new arrivals are not questioned until they beginto "take shape," as they say here, and then they are closely examined,and their origin, if it can be traced, is written down and kept in greatregisters.
"The groups were moving in streams toward the higher ground, and as mycompanions were gradually separated from me and were lost like wisps ofmoving light here and there, I went on alone. I came up long, wonderfulavenues between walls of light, regularly punctuated by the dark squaresof trees, and the spherical radiations of the Plenitudes above thehouses.
"The people about me seemed all young, or scarcely more than, as we say,in middle life. They speak less than the earth folk, and when they speakthey utter very simple sentences, and seem very sincere. I often stoodby little groups gathered at the corners of cross streets, and listenedto their musical intonations. The language is vocalic and monosyllabic.It sometimes suggests a Mongolian tongue, but without the gutturalclicks and coughs. The Martians are all gifted in music. It fills theirlives.
"From point to point crowds were assembled about platforms where singingwas in progress, and every now and then a man or woman in the streetwould sing loudly and passionately with such power and beauty that theimpressionable Martians would follow the refrain of the song and thewhole street for blocks and blocks would resound in waves of delightfulmelody. There are no mechanical modes of propulsion in the streets ofthe City of Light. _The Martians all walk_.
"I approached the top of the broad hill on which the City is built, andcame suddenly out into a square filled again in its park-like centerwith trees. From amid these trees rose a massive building, which Iinstantly recognized as an observatory; the many round domes, as onearth, were unmistakable.
"I passed up the walks of the square to the building and entered it.
"It was illuminated by balls of phosphori in glass globes, and its cool,broad halls and stairways were, in the soft light, very beautiful. Buttheir wonderfulness consisted in the insertion upon the walls ofilluminated plans and maps of the heavens. These miniature firmamentswere all afire, so that each opening, carefully graded in size torepresent stars of the first or second or third magnitude, was filledwith a beaming point of light, and I walked in these noble corridorsbetween reduced patterns of the universe of stars. I can hardly tell youhow astonished and entranced I was.
"I had for the first time since I reached the planet the impulse ofspeech, and I raised my hands with that motion of snapping the fingers,which you recall was characteristic of me on earth, and _spoke_. Icried, 'Here is my home.'
"As my hands dropped to my sides I felt resistance. I looked down uponmyself and could behold the changing surfaces of my body. Under thiscompleting stroke of volition the work begun upon the Hill of thePhosphori and the Chorus Hall in reducing the intangible spirit fluid tocorporeal expression was now hastening to an end. I do not stop here toconsider the reflections this suggests as to the nature of matter, thoseabstruse speculations we indulged in so often over the pages of Muir andHelmholz and Tait and Crookes.
"I had reached the ascending stairway, when my hand--for hand it nowseemed to be--was taken in a friendly pressure, and I turned and saw atall figure with a face of extreme nobility, somewhat scarred, Ithought, dressed in the usual Martian attire of a flowing tunic andclosely fitting body clothing. He said in English, 'You are from theearth as I am.'
"My son, how can I, in this dull, mechanical method of conversation withyou, ignorant, indeed, whether the magnetic waves loaded with mymessage, are traversing or not the millions of miles of space to yourear, how can I make you realize the wonderful and blessed feelings ofamazement and happiness that the stranger's words brought me. Here Iwas, a disembodied soul from Earth, which at that moment I only dimlyrecalled, undergoing the strange process of re-establishment in fleshand blood, and slowly appropriating those natural appetites which comewith flesh and blood, a waif of spiritual being in the great voids ofcreation, impelled by some implanted power of affinity to this remote,strange, phantasmal and unreal place, overwhelmed in a stupor ofconfusion, like some awakening patient from the vertigo of a terrifyingdream!
"I looked upon my friend, and in the rapidly rising flood of emotionsthat came with the acting members of my body, flushed and throbbing withexcitement, and with a wild joy besides, I flung myself upon his neckand pressed him with arms that seemed once more those natural physicalties that have held upon my breast those I best loved on earth.
"The stranger led me slowly up the stairway and past great celestialspheres which filled the higher hallways, conducting me to a room at onecorner of the great structure. The room was a singular and uniqueapartment. It consisted of a large central space, furnished with theusual ivory chairs, and a broad, massive center table, also of ivory,curiously inlaid with particles of the omnipresent _phosphori_, whichgave out a liquid light and imparted indescribable chasteness and beautyto the carved ornaments upon them. The floor was dark, a leaden color,lustrous, however, like black glass, and made up in mosaic. Around theroom were alcoves lit by lamps of the phosphori, and in each alcove aglobe of a blue metal upon which were painted sketches like charts ormaps. A chandelier of this blue metal was pendant from the ceiling, andin its cup-like extremities, arranged in vertical tiers, were roundballs of the phosphori, glowing softly.
"Wide windows, unprotected by glass or sashes, just embrasures framed inwhite stone which everywhere prevails in Mars, looked out upon themarvellous City, which thus seemed a lake of glowing fires, over which,rising and refluent waves of light constantly chased each other to itsdark borders, where the surrounding plain country met the City's edges.But throughout the distance I could trace lines of light markinghighways or roads leading interminably away until quite extinguished atthe optical limits of my vision.
"The walls of this beautiful room rose to an arched ceiling which wasinlaid with this wonderful blue metal, seen in the globes, designed inscrolls and waving ribbons, and just descending upon the wallsthemselves in attenuated twigs and strings. The walls were bare andshining.
"My friend led me to one of the great windows and placed me in a chair.Drawing another beside me, placing his hand on mine, and leaning outwardtoward the burning splendor below us, above which in the still, clearheavens shone those stellar hosts you and I have so often watched withwonder, he said:
"'Ten Martian years ago I came to this world as you have come. As aspirit I entered the chambers on the Hill of the Phosphori. I sat in theChorus Hall. I entered the City and slowly changed, as you are changing,into one of the Martian white people. I found my work, as you will, inthis Patenta, for by that name in Mars is called this home of astronomyand physical philosophy. Here, amid telescopes and apparatus ofexperiment and investigation, I have spent the years, mapping with manyothers the skies, and above all beating the earth we left, as have many,many, whom you will meet, with magnetic waves, hoping against hope, thatsome response might be gained, some hint of that connection throughspace which the physicists of this planet expect, ere long, may make allthe beings of the universe one great sidereal society.'
"He stopped and leane
d away from me, perusing my face with interest.Words came to my lips, memory again asserted its triumphant declarationthat I was the same being as had lived upon the earth, and with it thesudden turbulence of hope that she, your mother, whom we so oftenexpected to regain, might, as I had, have reached this planet, too, andto me, renewed in youth, might come the glory and the joy of knowing heragain.
"I turned to him and spoke: 'Kind friend, I am yet dazed and strickenwith the marvellousness of my being here. It seems but a short time, alapse of even a day, that I bade good-bye to my son on the death-bed inmy home on earth. I am too tormented with wonder to speak to you much. Ican tell all I know of myself in a little while. But now as I growstronger, tell me of this new world, and oh! give me, sir, food. I feelthe quickening fevers of appetite and desire.'
"The man arose and left the room. In a few moments he returned followedby a boy and a young woman bearing a basket. They spread a yellow clothupon a small ivory table and set down two plates of the bright bluemetal; upon one they placed a pile of small round cakes and on the othera number of red and yellow gourd shaped fruits. At a signal from mycompanion I arose and sat at the table.
"He remained at the window and continued: 'While you break your longfast, let me tell you what I know about this new world which will now beyour home for a long time. You will learn all, but I am not watchingto-night. In seeing you and hearing the familiar English speech I ammoved myself by currents of retrospection; my earth home comes back tome. I will satisfy your curiosity, and, you in turn, must tell me whathas happened in the old home.'
"He paused; from the streets of the city rose a sacred song. It camelike a slowly increasing torrent of sound, soft and low, rising withimpetuous fervor until it seemed to engulf us in its melodic tide.Individual tones were heard in it, but its solidity and mass were mostimpressive. I shook and trembled beneath the impact of its vibrations;in its surging glory of sound I became fully reincarnated. I awoke nakedand ashamed. The man saw my confusion. He hurried to a niche in the walland handed me the tunic of the Martians with its girdle of blue cord andits cap and shoes of the blue metal exquisitely wrought and light. I putthem upon me and lifting the cakes and the mellow-soaked pears to mylips, listened.
"'The Martians,' he continued, 'are both a natural and supernaturalrace. The natural race are largely prehistoric, though many yet exist;the supernatural race are made up of beings from other worlds and agreat majority come up from the earth. How reincarnation first began onMars is unknown, though the natural people, the Dendas, have traditionsabout it, vague and contradictory. It must have been slow. Thesupernatural people thus brought to Mars have created its civilization,discovered the phosphori, and established Music, which is so much oftheir life, and accelerated in the way you have learned the process ofmaterialization.
"'They built this City of Light from phosphorescent stone quarried fromthe Mountains of Tiniti. Formerly the spirits came helter skelter toMars all over its surface and went wandering about, helped toreincarnation by the various villagers or citizens. The great newimprovement in the last half century has been the creation of thereceiving station at the Hill of the Phosphori, the building of theChorus Halls, and the establishment of the City of Light. Light drawsthe spirits, and though spirits reach other points of Mars, thecentralization of Light here, draws most of them to this side. TheMartians are not immortal. They vanish in time.
"'As reincarnated all spirit becomes young but nourishment has undergonea change. The physiological process is singular. I need not dwell uponit. Evaporation replaces defecation. Love enters the Martian world, butit has lost much of the earthly passion. The physiological effects arealso different. There are no children here.
"'We live in the tropical regions mostly of Mars, and the polar andnorth temperate zones are empty. The natural Martian races are foundmore plentifully there. They are strong and small and work under thesupervision of the supernaturals. They are like the earthlings and eatmeat. Our food is bread and fruit. Our language does not lend itself tocomposition; it only sings. Literature, as we knew it on earth, does notexist here. The natural Martians have tales and stories and plays andsome books. These things no longer interest the supernaturals. Our lifeis quite simple, almost expressionless, except for the power of ourmusic. The souls from different parts of the earth recognize each otherand converse in human language, but, unless practiced, it is forgottenand our euphonies take its place. I have used my earth language with afriend and still speak English well.
"'We have art here, but it is almost wholly sculpture and architectureand design. Color, except in glass, does not greatly please the Martiansand there are few painters. They survive from other worlds, but cannotsecure pigments, and draw only in black and white for the most part.They are cartoonists, as we would say, on the earth. But we grow fruitsand flowers, the former in varieties and richness unknown upon theearth and the latter in delicate tints with blues and yellows, the onlyprimary strong tints the Martians admire.
"'Mechanical invention is discouraged, except as it assists astronomy.Astronomy is the great profession. Cars, railroads and conveyances, asyou say on earth, do not exist. We walk or sail and float upon ourcanals. Our industry is agriculture and building. Architecture isstudied and advanced beyond all you have ever known on the earth. Marsis filled with beautiful cities. Its whole government consists in acouncil at the City of Scandor, from which representatives issue to itsvarious departments. One is here in the City of Light. His motives arealways just. There are no parties, for there are no policies. Life is sosimple. Beauty and knowledge only rule us. Character, as you, as I, knewit on the earth, does not exist. There are no temptations, and we liveas children of Light, in a sort of childhood of feeling, with greatgifts of mind. But even living is noble. There is indeed rivalry. Yes,envy is with us. We worship God in great temples in services of song.Sermons are never heard.
"'In this city the great designers live, also the men who work at thedeep problems of life and thought and matter; and the sculptors. It isthe next largest city to Scandor. Scandor is far away. I never saw it.Glass work is done here and throughout Mars. Making the blue metal whichyou see, quarrying stone and ore and coal for the smelters and glassfactories, the fabrication of dress material and fabrics for houses,making our boats and canal ships, cutting down the forests in theMartian highlands, cultivating fruits and flowers and the great wheatfields are the chief industries, and there are lesser lines of work, asthe potteries and the instrument makers.
"'There are no industries in the City of Light. It is employed as I toldyou. Its population is constantly changing, for spirits like you arereincarnated here, and these new multitudes come and go. To-morrow, theships on the canals will carry many away. The spirits, as you did, whenthey enter the city, wander as they will; they enter the houses, theworkshops, the laboratories, everything in obedience to theirinstinctive choice. The people of the City of Light are thereforelargely engaged in caring for them as they fall into bodily forms,clothing, feeding, housing them.
"'Each householder and all citizens report to the Registeries whatspirits have come to them, and whence they came, and the great diversionand entertainment of our people is to listen to the stories of otherworlds, which these new arrivals bring. Memory does not survive longand they soon forget their past history. It is best so, except infugitive and dreamlike fragments, unless they are great.
"'According to their desire or aptitudes, the spirits are sent away whenMartianized to the different parts of Mars, and many stay here with usin the workshops and laboratories.
"'Besides Music, the people of Mars delight in recitation, and in theCity of Scandor I hear there are great theatres or public places whererecitations and concerts and even noble operas are held. Many of theseare brought to us by great spirits from other worlds, their own works inpoetry or prose or music. In Scandor there are great orchestras with allthe instruments we had upon the earth, and the paper, Dia, is publishedthere, which is read everywhere in Mars. There are few books, n
o schoolsin the common sense. The thinkers have assemblies and there areannouncements and explanations of discoveries.
"'Our life in many ways is like the life on earth, but less active, morecontemplative, and sin and money-making are almost absent. The wicked ofall sorts have one fate; they are fired off the planet. We can overcomethe attraction of gravitation by our Toto powder. These executions arestrange to earth eyes. You will see them. The Toto powder is also amotive power.
"'We have a medium of exchange, silver, and there are rich and poor withus, but no poverty. There can be no armies nor navies. The governmentcarries on extensive works of improvement and keeps the canals and paysits laborers. The government supports this City of Light and the peoplehere are paid for the number of spirits they care for and assist.Happiness reigns on Mars, but it is a pensive happiness. We never,because of the singular physiology of our bodies, can know theboisterous and passionate joys of earth, neither do we know many of theills of the flesh. We have sickness and there are accidents. We have adeath, but it is like evaporation. We decline again after a long life tothe spirit stage and vanish. So there are partings here, and the oldsadness of the end as on earth; but the gaiety of children, the ambitionof youth, the devotion of parents is unknown.'
"His voice sank, he bent his head upon his hands, and a sort of tremorran through him, and when again he looked upon me his eyes shone withmoisture, and the hot tears ran down his cheeks. Memory might befleeting on Mars, but the loved ones of the earth were yet remembered,and the abysses of the eternal void of space could never be crossed bythe wave of speech or recognition. This was the pathos of the Martianlife.
"I was shown by him, as the slowly arising sweetness of fatigue showeditself within me, to a bedchamber of charming simplicity. The gracefulbedstead of the blue metal was covered with snowy covers, curtains hungat the windows also white. The furniture of the room was of a sort ofpale, red wood obtained in the great Martian forests where the treesknown as the Ribi grow, whose leaves and flowers have a pink tint, whichin seasons of fruitage is more intense, and present enormous areas ofextraordinary beauty.
"This room was at the top of one of the many branching wings of thiscomposite astronomical laboratory. To reach my room we walked throughhallways all illuminated with the phosphorescent glowing balls while theradiant patterns in the walls shone also with a pale beauty. These ballspossess a wonderful lighting power and besides their self-illuminationcan be stimulated into the most intense brilliancy by electric currentswith which the Martians are profoundly acquainted. The electricaldisplays on Mars surpass description and the waves of magnetism I am nowutilizing to send to you these messages are ten miles in amplitude.
"I fell asleep, quickly lulled into an almost death-like slumber by thecadence of innumerable fountains. Near the _Patenta_ is the Garden ofFountains, which I shall tell you about in another message. It was theplash and rivulous current of these water courts that brought on sleep.
"I awoke when the Martian dawn was coming on. Slumber had given me thelast reassurance of identity of body, and I awoke with a delightfulsense of health and youth. I stood at the wide window near my bed andgazed out upon the yet luminous City of Occupation. The picture was ofsurprising strangeness and beauty. Far off, until melting into theencroaching edges of an outer blackness, the City extended its folds andsurfaces of light. The streets were empty, the music of the Chorus Hallsstilled. Here and there, a spirit was moving slowly through the streets,a half-made Martian; a breeze soft and salubrious stirred the thicklyleaved trees and the firmament shone with the larger stars, beginning topale before the rising sun. As the sun rose higher, the effulgence ofthe City died away, the light of the same great orb which brings thedawn to you, covered with its rays the white and glorious City, themusic seemed again revived, and from the doorways of the houses I couldsee forms issuing, while far off the Hill of the Phosphori raised itsglass domes in the air, where the homogeneous tide of spirit wasundergoing differentiation, as we might say, into separate cognizable,discreet beings. An unspeakable delight filled me. I felt the power ofmind and with it the radiant energy of manhood."
No more words came. The message ended. Not a motion or sound succeededthis wonderful trans-abysmal dispatch.
Well, here, at last, was the long expected, impossible, amazing reality.When I had deciphered the last word, when I had it borne fully in uponme, the significance of it all, I turned to the one natural effort toanswer this Martian communication. I sent out from the battery of ourtransmitter the longest wave of magnetic oscillation I could emit. Themessage was simple: "Have received all. Await more. Transmissionperfect."