t known to man. One
door opened upon an in-door golf-links, upon which the royal family
played whenever they lacked the energy or the disposition to seek out
that on Mars. There were high bunkers, the copse of which was covered
with richest silk plush, stuffed, I was told, with spun silk, while,
in place of sand, tons of powdered sugar and grated nutmegs filled the
bunkers themselves. The eighteen holes were laid out so that no two of
them crossed, and, inasmuch as the turf was constructed of rubber
instead of grass and soil, neither a bad lie nor a dead ball was
possible through the vast extent of the fair green. The water hazards,
four in number, were nothing more nor less than huge tanks of
Burgundy, champagne, iced tea, and Scotch--which I subsequently
learned often resulted in a bad caddie service--and an open brook
along whose dashing descent a constant stream of shandygaff went
merrily bubbling onward to an in-door sea upon which Jupiter exercised
his yacht when sailing was the thing to suit his immediate whim.

This sea was a marvel. Since all the water hazards above described
emptied into it, it was little more than a huge expanse of punch, one
swallow of which, thanks to these ingredients and the sugar and nutmeg
from the bunkers, would make a man forget an eternity of troubles
until he woke up again, if he ever did. Here Jupiter sported every
variety of pleasure craft, and, by an ingenious system of funnels
arranged about its sixty-square-mile area, could at a moment's notice
produce any variety of breeze he chanced to wish; and its submarine
bottom was so designed that if a heavy sea were wanted to make the
yacht pitch and toss, a simple mechanical device would cause it to
hump itself into such corrugations, large or small, as were needed to
bring about the desired conditions.

"Do they allow bathing in that?" I asked, as the Major Domo explained
the peculiar feature of this in-door sea to me.

My companion laughed. "Only one person ever tried it with any degree
of success, and it nearly cost him his reputation. Old Bacchus
undertook to swim on a wager from Chambertin Inlet to Glenlivet Bay,
but he had to give up before he got as far as Pommery Point. It took
him a year to get rid of his headache, and it actually required
three-quarters of the Treasury Reserve to provide gold enough to cure
him."

"It must be a terrible place to fall overboard in," I suggested.

"It is, if you fall head first," said th