blowing through the trees, and the city was
filled with people. They were the Martians. We were scarcely noticed. In
the City of Light the new arrivals are not questioned until they begin
to "take shape," as they say here, and then they are closely examined,
and their origin, if it can be traced, is written down and kept in great
registers.

"The groups were moving in streams toward the higher ground, and as my
companions were gradually separated from me and were lost like wisps of
moving light here and there, I went on alone. I came up long, wonderful
avenues between walls of light, regularly punctuated by the dark squares
of trees, and the spherical radiations of the Plenitudes above the
houses.

"The people about me seemed all young, or scarcely more than, as we say,
in middle life. They speak less than the earth folk, and when they speak
they utter very simple sentences, and seem very sincere. I often stood
by little groups gathered at the corners of cross streets, and listened
to their musical intonations. The language is vocalic and monosyllabic.
It sometimes suggests a Mongolian tongue, but without the guttural
clicks and coughs. The Martians are all gifted in music. It fills their
lives.

"From point to point crowds were assembled about platforms where singing
was in progress, and every now and then a man or woman in the street
would sing loudly and passionately with such power and beauty that the
impressionable Martians would follow the refrain of the song and the
whole street for blocks and blocks would resound in waves of delightful
melody. There are no mechanical modes of propulsion in the streets of
the City of Light. _The Martians all walk_.

"I approached the top of the broad hill on which the City is built, and
came suddenly out into a square filled again in its park-like center
with trees. From amid these trees rose a massive building, which I
instantly recognized as an observatory; the many round domes, as on
earth, were unmistakable.

"I passed up the walks of the square to the building and entered it.

"It was illuminated by balls of phosphori in glass globes, and its cool,
broad halls and stairways were, in the soft light, very beautiful. But
their wonderfulness consisted in the insertion upon the walls of
illuminated plans and maps of the heavens. These miniature firmaments
were all afire, so that each opening, carefully graded in size to
represent stars of the first or second or third magni