Esmo carried on a conversation of some length, the
instrument being so arranged that while the mouth is applied to one
tube another may be held to the ear to receive the reply. In the
meantime I fell in with one of the officers, apparently very young,
who was strongly interested at the sight of the much-canvassed
stranger, and, perhaps on this account, far more obliging than is
common among his countrymen. From him I learnt that this, with another
method I will presently describe, is the sole means of distant
communication employed in Mars. Those who have not leisure or do not
care to visit one of the offices, never more than twelve-miles distant
from one another, in which the public instruments are kept, can have a
wire conveyed to their own house. Almost every house of any pretension
possesses such a wire. Leading me into the next apartment, my friend
pointed out an immense number of instruments of a box-like shape, with
a slit in which a leaf of about four inches by two was placed. These
were constantly ejected and on the instant mechanically replaced. The
fallen leaves were collected and sorted by the officers present, and
at once placed in one or other of another set of exactly similar
instruments. Any one possessing a private wire can write at his own
desk in the manual character a letter or message on one of these
slips. Placing it in his own instrument, it at once reproduces itself
exactly in his autograph, and with every peculiarity, blot, or
erasure, at the nearest office. Here the copy is placed in the proper
box, and at once reproduced in the office nearest the residence of the
person to whom it is addressed, and forwarded in the same manner to
him. A letter, therefore, covering one of these slips, and saying as
much as we could write in an average hand upon a large sheet of
letter-paper, is delivered within five minutes at most from the time
of despatch, no matter how great the distance.

I remarked that this method of communication made privacy impossible.

"But," replied the official, "how could we possibly have time to
indulge in curiosity? We have to sort hundreds of these papers in an
hour. We have just time to look at the address, place them in the
proper box, and touch the spring which sets the electric current at
work. If secrecy were needed a cipher would easily secure it, for you
will observe that by this telegraph whatever is inscribed on the sheet
is mechanically reproduced; and it would be as