s of gods exceedingly dull, and would
long to get back to a world in which they could quarrel with each
other."

Chapter XVI.

I have spoken so much of the Vril Staff that my reader may expect me
to describe it. This I cannot do accurately, for I was never allowed to
handle it for fear of some terrible accident occasioned by my ignorance
of its use; and I have no doubt that it requires much skill and practice
in the exercise of its various powers. It is hollow, and has in the
handle several stops, keys, or springs by which its force can be
altered, modified, or directed--so that by one process it destroys, by
another it heals--by one it can rend the rock, by another disperse the
vapour--by one it affects bodies, by another it can exercise a certain
influence over minds. It is usually carried in the convenient size of
a walking-staff, but it has slides by which it can be lengthened or
shortened at will. When used for special purposes, the upper part rests
in the hollow of the palm with the fore and middle fingers protruded.
I was assured, however, that its power was not equal in all, but
proportioned to the amount of certain vril properties in the wearer in
affinity, or 'rapport' with the purposes to be effected. Some were more
potent to destroy, others to heal, &c.; much also depended on the calm
and steadiness of volition in the manipulator. They assert that the
full exercise of vril power can only be acquired by the constitutional
temperament--i.e., by hereditarily transmitted organisation--and that
a female infant of four years old belonging to the Vril-ya races can
accomplish feats which a life spent in its practice would not enable
the strongest and most skilled mechanician, born out of the pale of the
Vril-ya to achieve. All these wands are not equally complicated; those
intrusted to children are much simpler than those borne by sages of
either sex, and constructed with a view to the special object on which
the children are employed; which as I have before said, is among the
youngest children the most destructive. In the wands of wives and
mothers the correlative destroying force is usually abstracted, the
healing power fully charged. I wish I could say more in detail of this
singular conductor of the vril fluid, but its machinery is as exquisite
as its effects are marvellous.

I should say, however, that this people have invented certain tubes by
which the vril fluid can be conducted towards the object i