h a fine pencil of some
chemical material on a prepared surface, textile or metallic. The
characters of the latter are, like ours wholly arbitrary; but the
contractions and abbreviations are so numerous that the mastery of the
mere alphabet, the forty or fifty single letters employed, is but a
single step in the first stage of the hard task of learning to read.
In no country on Earth, except China, is this task half so severe as
in Mars. On the other hand, when it is once mastered, a far superior
instrument has been gained; the Martial writing being a most terse but
perfectly legible shorthand. Every Martial can write at least as
quickly as he can speak, and can read the written character more
rapidly than the quickest eye can peruse the best Terrestrial print.
Copies, whether of the phonographic or stylographic writing, are
multiplied with extreme facility and perfection. The original, once
inscribed in either manner upon the above-mentioned _tafroo_ or
gold-leaf, is placed upon a sheet of a species of linen, smoother than
paper, called _difra_. A current of electricity sent through the
former reproduces the writing exactly upon the latter, which has been
previously steeped in some chemical composition; the effect apparently
depending on the passage of the electricity through the untouched
metal, and its absolute interception by the ink, if I may so call it,
of the writing, which bites deeply into the leaf. This process can be
repeated almost _ad libitum_; and it is equally easy to take at any
time a fresh copy upon _tafroo_, which serves again for the
reproduction of any number of _difra_ copies. The book, for the
convenience of this mode of reproduction, consists of a single sheet,
generally from four to eight inches in breadth and of any length
required. The writing intended to be thus copied is always minute, and
is read for the most part through magnifying spectacles. A roller is
attached to each end of the sheet, and when not in use the latter is
wound round that attached to the conclusion. When required for
reading, both rollers are fixed in a stand, and slowly moved by
clockwork, which spreads before the eyes of the reader a length of
about four inches at once. The motion is slackened or quickened at the
reader's pleasure, and can be stopped altogether, by touching a
spring. Another means of reproducing, not merely writings or drawings,
but natural objects, consists in a simple adaptation of the _camera
obscura