“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?”
“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.
“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.
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.
“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.  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.

“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.  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!—”  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.”  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!
“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.  Mamma!”  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.
 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.  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.  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.  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!
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.  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.
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.”
“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.
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!”

“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.
“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.  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.
“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 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.  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.