, an organisation and a centre of discussion and council,
issues at intervals books containing collected facts, essays, reports
of experiments, and lectures. Every man who cares to communicate his
passing ideas to the public does so by means of the phonograph. When
he has a graver work, which is, in his view at least, of permanent
importance to publish, it is written in the stylographic character,
and sold at the telegraphic centres. The extreme complication and
compression employed in this character had, as I have already said,
rendered it very difficult to me; and though I had learnt to decipher
it as a child spells out the words which a few years later it will
read unconsciously by the eye, the only manner in which I could
quickly gather the sense of such books was by desiring one or other of
the ladies to read them aloud. Strangely enough, next to Eveena, Eive
was by far the best reader. Eunane understood infinitely better what
she was perusing; but the art of reading aloud is useless, and
therefore never taught, in schools whose every pupil learns to read
with the usual facility a character which the practised eye can
interpret incomparably faster than the voice could possibly utter it.
This reading might have afforded many opportunities of private
converse with Eveena, but that Eive, whose knowledge was by no means
proportionate to her intelligence, entreated permission to listen to
the books I selected; and Eveena, though not partial to her childish
companion and admirer, persuaded me not to refuse.

The story of my voyage and reports of my first audience at Court were,
of course, widely circulated and extensively canvassed. Though
regarded with no favour, especially by the professed philosophers and
scientists, my adventures and myself were naturally an object of great
curiosity; and I was not surprised when a civil if cold request was
preferred, on behalf of what I may call the Martial Academy, that I
would deliver in their hall a series of lectures, or rather a
connected oral account of the world from which I professed to have
come, and of the manner in which my voyage had been accomplished.
After consulting Eveena and Davilo, I accepted the invitation, and
intended to take the former with me. She objected, however, that while
she had heard much in her father's house and during our travels of
what I had to tell, her companions, scarcely less interested, were
comparatively ignorant. Indiscreetly, because somewh