here is hardly a thing that is left in
this modern world a man can go to for its own sake. Except by stepping
off the globe, perhaps, now and then--practically arranging a world of
one's own, and breaking with one's kind,--the life that a man must live
to-day can only be described as a kind of eternal parting with himself.
There is getting to be no possible way for a man to preserve his five
spiritual senses--even his five physical ones--and be a member, in good
and regular standing, of civilisation at the same time.

"If civilisation and human nature are to continue to be allowed to exist
together there is but one way out, apparently--an extra planet for all
of us, one for a man to live on and the other for him to be civilised
on."

P. G. S. of M.: "But----"

"As long as we, who are the men and women of the world, are willing to
continue our present fashion of giving up living in order to get a
living, one planet will never be large enough for us. If we can only get
our living in one place and have it to live with in another, the
question is, To whom does this present planet belong--the people who
spend their days in living into it and enjoying it, or the people who
never take time to notice the planet, who do not seem to know that they
are living on a planet at all?"

P. G. S. of M.: "But----"

"I may not be very well informed on very many things, but I am very sure
of one of them," said The Mysterious Person, "and that is, that this
present planet--this one we are living on now--belongs by all that is
fair and just to those who are really living on it, and that it should
be saved and kept as a sacred and protected place--a place where men
shall be able to belong to the taste and colour and meaning of things
and to God and to themselves. If people want another planet--a planet to
belong to Society on,--let them go out and get it.

"Look at our literature--current literature. It is a mere headlong,
helpless literary rush from beginning to end. All that one can extract
from it is getting to be a kind of general sound of going. We began
gently enough. We began with the annual. We had Poor Richard's Almanac.
Then we had the quarterly. A monthly was reasonable enough in course of
time; so we had monthlies. Then the semi-monthly came to ease our
literary nerves; and now the weekly magazine stumbles, rapt and wistful,
on the heels of men of genius. It makes contracts for prophecy. Unborn
poems are sold in the open mar