aged in creating schools of fiction by writing stories under
different names and then reviewing them in her own seven magazines.
Next, taking the guests at random, was Baxter, a deadly person in his
human incarnation, whose business it is to make stocks fly up or tumble
down.--I don't know what stocks are, but they must be something very
easily frightened.--Then there was a Mr. Waller, nicknamed the Reverend,
whom the Council allows to speak the truth occasionally, while the rest
of the time he tells people anything they want to hear to win their
confidence. And the two Miss Dooleys who sing so badly that thousands
who can not sing at all leave off singing altogether when they once hear
them. And Mr. Flick, who misbehaves at funerals to distract mourners
from their grief, and a Mr. O'Brien, whose duty it is to fly into
violent passions in public places just to show how unbecoming temper is.

There were many others, so many I can not begin to enumerate them. Some
had written books and were known all over the planet, and some who were
not known at all had done things because there was nobody else to do
them. And some were singers and some were actors, and some were rich and
some were poor to the outside world, but in the Council Room they met
and laughed and matched experiences and made jokes; from the one who had
built a battle ship so terrible that all the other ships were burnt on
condition that his should be also, to the ordinary helpers who applaud
stupid plays till intelligent human beings become thoroughly disgusted
with bad art.

In the world, of course, they are all serious enough, and often know
each other only by secret signs, while every day and night and minute
our poor earth-brothers come a little nearer the light--pushed toward
it, pulled toward it, wheedled and trickled and bullied and coaxed, and
thinking all the while how immensely clever they are, and what a
wonderful progressive, glorious age they have brought about for
themselves.--At all events, this is the rather vague composite
impression I have received of the plans and purposes of the Board of
Directors, and doubtless it is wrong.

I suppose with a little trouble I might have recognized nearly every
one, but the fancy took me to suspend intuition just to see how Earth
girls feel, and you know when one is hearing a lot of pleasant things
one does not much care who happens to be saying them.

I fancy Marlow thought less of me when I confessed th