reach the Moon!" nodded Barbican.

"We shall reach the Moon or know for what!" cried M'Nicholl,
enthusiastically.

"The great American nation must not be disappointed!" continued Ardan.
"They are the only people on Earth capable of originating such an
enterprise! They are the only people capable of producing a Barbican!"

"Hurrah!" cried M'Nicholl.

"That point settled," continued the Frenchman, "another question comes
up to which I have not yet called your attention. When we get to the
Moon, what shall we do there? How are we going to amuse ourselves? I'm
afraid our life there will be awfully slow!"

His companions emphatically disclaimed the possibility of such a thing.

"You may deny it, but I know better, and knowing better, I have laid in
my stores accordingly. You have but to choose. I possess a varied
assortment. Chess, draughts, cards, dominoes--everything in fact, but a
billiard table?"

"What!" exclaimed Barbican; "cumbered yourself with such gimcracks?"

"Such gimcracks are not only good to amuse ourselves with, but are
eminently calculated also to win us the friendship of the Selenites."

"Friend Michael," said Barbican, "if the Moon is inhabited at all, her
inhabitants must have appeared several thousand years before the advent
of Man on our Earth, for there seems to be very little doubt that Luna
is considerably older than Terra in her present state. Therefore,
Selenites, if their brain is organized like our own, must have by this
time invented all that we are possessed of, and even much which we are
still to invent in the course of ages. The probability is that, instead
of their learning from us, we shall have much to learn from them."

"What!" asked Ardan, "you think they have artists like Phidias, Michael
Angelo and Raphael?"

"Certainly."

"And poets like Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakspeare, Goethe and Hugo?"

"Not a doubt of it."

"And philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Bacon, Kant?"

"Why not?"

"And scientists like Euclid, Archimedes, Copernicus, Newton, Pascal?"

"I should think so."

"And famous actors, and singers, and composers, and--and photographers?"

"I could almost swear to it."

"Then, dear boy, since they have gone ahead as far as we and even
farther, why have not those great Selenites tried to start a
communication with the Earth? Why have they not fired a projectile from
the regions lunar to the regions terrestrial?"

"Who says they have not done so?"