wd
its sufferings out of existence and, in time, memory?"

I had never thought of my country having a claim upon me other than what
I owed to my relatives and society. But in Mizora, where the very
atmosphere seemed to feed one's brain with grander and nobler ideas of
life and humanity, my nature had drank the inspiration of good deeds and
impulses, and had given the desire to work for something beside myself
and my own kindred. I resolved that if I should ever again behold my
native country, I would seek the good of all its people along with that
of my nearest and dearest of kin. But how to do it was a matter I could
not arrange. I felt reluctant to ask either Wauna or her mother. The
guileless frankness of Wauna's nature was an impassable barrier to the
confidence of crimes and wretchedness. One glance of horror from her
dark, sweet eyes, would have chilled me into painful silence and
sorrowful regret.

The mystery that had ever surrounded these lovely and noble blonde women
had driven me into an unnatural reserve in regard to my own people and
country. I had always perceived the utter absence of my allusion to the
masculine gender, and conceiving that it must be occasioned by some more
than ordinary circumstances, I refrained from intruding my curiosity.

That the singular absence of men was connected with nothing criminal or
ignoble on their part I felt certain; but that it was associated with
something weird and mysterious I had now become convinced. My efforts to
discover their whereabouts had been earnest and untiring. I had visited
a number of their large cities, and had enjoyed the hospitality of many
private homes. I had examined every nook and corner of private and
public buildings, (for in Mizora nothing ever has locks) and in no place
had I ever discovered a trace or suggestion of man.

Women and girls were everywhere. Their fair faces and golden heads
greeted me in every town and city. Sometimes a pair of unusually dark
blue eyes, like the color of a velvet-leaved pansy, looked out from an
exquisitely tinted face framed in flossy golden hair, startling me with
its unnatural loveliness, and then I would wonder anew:

"Why is such a paradise for man so entirely devoid of him?"

I even endeavored to discover from the conversation of young girls some
allusion to the male sex. But listen as attentively and discreetly as I
could, not one allusion did I hear made to the mysteriously absent
beings. I was ast