s the aristocracy of Mizora. With them education
is never at an end. I spoke of having graduated at a renowned school for
young ladies, and when I explained that to graduate meant to finish
one's education, it elicited a peal of silvery mirth.

"_We_ never graduate," said Wauna. "There is my mamma's mother, two
centuries old, and still studying. I paid her a visit the other day and
she took me into her laboratory. She is a manufacturer of lenses, and
has been experimenting on microscopes. She has one now that possesses a
truly wonderful power. The leaf of a pear tree, that she had allowed to
become mouldy, was under the lens, and she told me to look.

"A panorama of life and activity spread out before me in such magnitude
that I can only compare it to the feeling one must possess who could be
suspended in air and look down upon our world for a cycle of time.

"Immense plains were visible with animals grazing upon them, that fought
with and devoured one another. They perished and sank away and immense
forests sprang up like magic. They were inhabited by insects and tiny
creatures resembling birds. A sigh of air moved the leaf and a tiny drop
of water, scarcely discernible to the naked eye rolled over the forests
and plains, and before it passed to the other side of the leaf a great
lake covered the spot. My great-great-grandmother has an acute conductor
of sound that she has invented, so exquisite in mechanism as to reveal
the voice of the tiniest insect. She put it to my ear, and the bellowing
of the animals in battle, the chirp of the insects and the voices of the
feathered mites could be clearly heard, but attenuated like the delicate
note of two threads of spun glass clashed together."

"And what good," I asked, "can all this knowledge do you? Your
great-great-grandmother has condensed the learning of two centuries to
evolve this one discovery. Is it not so?"

"Yes," replied Wauna, and her look and tone were both solemn. "You ask
me what good it can do? Reflect! If the history of a single leaf is so
vast and yet ephemeral, what may not be the history of a single world?
What, after all, are we when such an infinitesimal space can contain
such wonderful transactions in a second of time."

I shuddered at the thought she raised in my mind. But inherited beliefs
are not easily dissipated, so I only sought to change the subject.

"But what is the use of studying _all_ the time. There should be some
period in your liv