“The old order changeth, giving place to the new,

And God fulfils himself in many ways."

TENNYSON.

MY conversation with Elodia had the effect of crystallizing my nebulous plans about visiting the Caskians into a sudden resolve. I could not remain longer in her presence without pain to myself; and, to tell the truth, I dreaded lest her astounding lack of the moral sense — which should be the foundation stone of woman’s character — would eventually dull my own. Men are notoriously weak where women are concerned — the women they worship.

As soon as I had communicated with the Caskians and learned that they were still anticipating my coming, with — they were so kind as to say it — the greatest pleasure, I prepared to set forth.

In the meantime, an event occurred which further illustrated the social conditions in Paleveria. Claris, the wife of Massilla, died very suddenly, and I was astonished at the tremendous sensation the circumstance occasioned throughout the city. It seemed to me that the only respect it was possible to pay to the memory of such a woman must be that which is expressed in absolute silence, — even charity could not be expected to do more than keep silent. But I was mistaken, Claris had been a woman of distinction, in many ways; she was beautiful, rich, and talented, and she had wielded an influence in public and social affairs. Immediately, the various periodicals in Thursia, and in neighboring cities, flaunted lengthy eulogistic obituaries headed with more or less well executed portraits of the deceased. It seemed as if the authors of these effusions must have run through dictionaries of complimentary terms, which they culled lavishly and inserted among the acts and facts of her life with a kind of journalistic sleight-of-hand. And private comment took its cue from these authorities. It was said that she was a woman of noble traits, and pretty anecdotes were told of her, illustrating her generous impulses, her wit, her positiveness. She had had great personal magnetism, many had loved her, many had also feared her, for her tongue could cut like a sword. It was stated that her children had worshiped her, and that her death had prostrated her husband with grief. Of the chief blackness of her character none spoke.

Severnius invited me to attend the funeral obsequies which took place in the Auroras’ Temple, where the embalmed body lay in state; with incense burning and innumerable candles casting their pallid light upon the bier. I observed as we drove through the streets that the closed doors of all the business houses exhibited the emblems of respect and sorrow.

The Auroras were assembled in great numbers, having come from distant parts of the country to do honor to the dead. They were in full regalia, with mourning badges, and carried inverted torches. The religious ceremonies and mystic rites of the Order were elaborate and impressive. The dirge which followed, and during which the members of the Order formed in procession and began a slow march, was so unutterably and profoundly sad that I could not keep back the tears. A little sobbing voice directly in front of me wailed out “Mamma! Mamma!” A woman stooped down and whispered, “Do you want to go up and kiss Mamma ‘good-by’ before they take her away?” But the child shrank back, afraid of the pomp and ghostly magnificence surrounding the dead form.

Elodia was of course the chief figure in the procession, and she bore herself with a grave and solemn dignity in keeping with the ceremonies. The sight of her beautiful face, with its subdued but lofty expression, was more than I could bear. I leaned forward and dropped my face in my hands, and let the sorrow-laden requiem rack my soul with its sweet torture as it would.

That was my last day in Thursia.

I had at first thought of taking my aeroplane along with me, reflecting that I might better begin my homeward flight from some mountain top in Caskia; but Severnius would not hear of that.

“No indeed!” said he, “you must return to us again. I wish to get ready a budget for you to carry back to your astronomers, which I think will be of value to them, as I shall make a complete map of the heavens as they appear to us. Then we shall be eager to hear about your visit. And besides, we want to see you again on the ground of friendship, the strongest reason of all!”

“You are too kind!” I responded with much feeling. I knew that he was as sincere as he was polite. This was at the last moment, and Elodia was present to bid me “good-by.” She seconded her brother’s invitation, — “O, yes, of course you must come back!” and turned the whole power of her beautiful face upon me, and for the first time gave me her hand. I had coveted it a hundred times as it lay lissome and white in her lap. I clasped it, palm to palm. It was as smooth as satin, and not moist, — I dislike a moist hand. I felt that up to that moment I had always undervalued the sense of touch, — it was the finest of all the senses! No music, no work of art, no wondrous scene, had ever so thrilled me and set my nerves a-quiver, as did the delicate, firm pressure of those magic fingers. The remembrance of it made my blood tingle as I went on my long journey from Thursia to Lunismar.

It was a long journey in miles, though not in time, we traveled like the wind.

Both Clytia and Calypso were at the station to meet me, with their two children, Freya and Eurydice. I learned that nearly all Caskians are named after the planetoids or other heavenly bodies, — a very appropriate thing, since they live so near the stars!

My heart went out to the children the moment my eyes fell upon their faces.

They were as beautiful as Raphael’s cherubs, you could not look upon them without thrills of delight. They were two perfect buds of the highest development humanity has ever attained to, — so far as we know. I felt that it was a wonderful thing to know that in these lovely forms there lurked no germs of evil, over their sweet heads there hung no Adam’s curse! They were seated in a pretty pony carriage, with a white canopy top lined with blue silk. Freya held the lines. It appeared that Eurydice had driven down and he was to drive back. The father and mother were on foot. They explained that it was difficult to drive anything but the little carriage up the steep path to their home on the hillside, half a mile distant.

“Who would wish for any other means of locomotion than nature has given him, in a country where the buoyant air makes walking a luxury!” I cried, stretching my legs and filling my lungs, with an unwonted sense of freedom and power.

I had become accustomed to the atmosphere of Paleveria, but here I had the same sensations I had experienced when I first landed there.

“If you would rather, you may take my place, sir?” said the not much more than knee-high Freya, ready to relinquish the lines. I felt disposed to laugh, but not so the wise parents.

“The little ponies could not draw our friend up the hill, he is too heavy,” explained Clytia.

“Thank you, my little man, all the same!” I added.

It was midsummer in Paleveria, but here I observed everything had the newness and delightful freshness of spring. A busy, bustling, joyous, tuneful spring. The grass was green and succulent; the sap was in the trees and their bark was sleek and glossy, their leaves just unrolled. Of the wild fruit trees, every branch and twig was loaded with eager buds crowding upon each other as the heads of children crowd at a cottage window when one goes by. Every thicket was full of bird life and music. I heard the roar of a waterfall in the distance, and Calypso told me that a mighty river, the Eudosa, gathered from a hundred mountain streams, was compressed into a deep gorge or canyon and fell in a succession of cataracts just below the city, and finally spread out into a lovely lake, which was a wonder in its way, being many fathoms deep and as transparent as the atmosphere.

We paused to listen, — the children also.

“How loud it is to-day, Mamma,” exclaimed Freya. His mother assented and turned to me with a smile. “The falls of Eudosa constitute a large part of our life up here,” she said; “we note all its moods, which are many. Sometimes it is drowsy, and purrs and murmurs; again it is merry, and sings; or it is sublime, and rises to a thunderous roar. Always it is sound. Do you know, my ears ached with the silence when I was down in Paleveria!”

I have said Clytia’s eyes were black; it was not an opaque blackness, you could look through them down into her soul. I likened them in my mind to the waters of the Eudosa which Calypso had just described.

Every moment something new attracted our attention and the brief journey was full of incident; the children were especially alive to the small happenings about us, and I never before took such an interest in what I should have called insignificant things. Sometimes the conversation between my two friends and myself rose above the understanding of the little ones, but they were never ignored, — nor were they obtrusive; they seemed to know just where to fit their little questions and remarks into the talk. It was quite wonderful. I understood, of course, that the children had been brought down to meet me in order that I might make their acquaintance immediately and establish my relations with them, since I was to be for some time a member of the household. They had their small interests apart from their elders — carefully guarded by their elders — as children should have; but whenever they were permitted to be with us, they were of us. They were never allowed to feel that loneliness in a crowd which is the most desolate loneliness in the world. Clytia especially had the art of enveloping them in her sympathy, though her intellectual faculties were employed elsewhere. And how they loved her! I have seen nothing like it upon the Earth.

Perhaps I adapt myself with unusual readiness to new environments, and assimilate more easily with new persons than most people do. I had, as you know, left Paleveria with deep reluctance, under compulsion of my will — moved by my better judgment; and throughout my journey I had deliberately steeped myself in sweet and bitter memories of my life there, to the exclusion of much that might have been interesting and instructive to me on the way, — a foolish and childish thing to have done. And now, suddenly, Paleveria dropped from me like a garment. Some moral power in these new friends, and perhaps in this city of Lunismar, — a power I could feel but could not define, — raised me to a different, unmistakably a higher, plane. I felt the change as one feels the change from underground to the upper air.

We first walked a little way through the city, which quite filled the valley and crept up onto the hillsides, here and there.

Each building stood alone, with a little space of ground around it, upon which grass and flowers and shrubbery grew, and often trees. Each such space bore evidence that it was as tenderly and scrupulously tended as a Japanese garden.

It was the cleanest city I ever saw; there was not an unsightly place, not a single darksome alley or lurking place for vice, no huddling together of miserable tenements. I remarked upon this and Calypso explained:

“Our towns used to be compact, but since electricity has annihilated distance we have spread ourselves out. We have plenty of ground for our population, enough to give a generous slice all round. Lunismar really extends through three valleys.”

Crystal streams trickled down from the mountains and were utilized for practical and ?sthetic purposes. Small parks, exquisitely pretty, were very numerous, and in them the sparkling water was made to play curious pranks. Each of these spots was an ideal resting place, and I saw many elderly people enjoying them, — people whom I took to be from sixty to seventy years of age, but who, I was astonished to learn, were all upwards of a hundred. Perfect health and longevity are among the rewards of right living practiced from generation to generation. The forms of these old people were erect and their faces were beautiful in intelligence and sweetness of expression.

I remarked, apropos of the general beauty and elegance of the buildings we passed:

“This must be the fine quarter of Lunismar.”

“No, not especially,” returned Calypso, “it is about the same all over.”

“Is it possible! then you must all be rich?” said I.

“We have no very poor,” he replied, “though of course some have larger possessions than others. We have tried, several times in the history of our race, to equalize the wealth of the country, but the experiment has always failed, human nature varies so much.”

“What, even here?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” said he.

“Why, I understand that you Caskians have attained to a most perfect state of development and culture, and — ” I hesitated and he smiled.

“And you think the process eliminates individual traits?” he inquired.

Clytia laughingly added:

“I hope, sir, you did not expect to find us all exactly alike, that would be too tame!”

“You compliment me most highly,” said Calypso, seriously, “but we must not permit you to suppose that we regard our ‘development’ as anywhere near perfect, In fact, the farther we advance, the greater, and the grander, appears the excellence to which we have not yet attained. Though it would be false modesty — and a disrespect to our ancestors — not to admit that we are conscious of having made some progress, as a race. We know what our beginnings were, and what we now are.”

After a moment he went on:

“I suppose the principle of differentiation, as we observe it in plant and animal life, is the same in all life, not only physical, but intellectual, moral, spiritual. Cultivation, though it softens salient traits and peculiarities, may develop infinite variety in every kind and species.”

I understood this better later on, after I had met a greater number of people, and after my perceptions had become more delicate and acute, — or when a kind of initiatory experience had taught me how to see and to value excellence.

A few years ago a border of nasturtiums exhibited no more than a single color tone, the pumpkin yellow; and a bed of pansies resembled a patch of purple heather. Observe now the chromatic variety and beauty produced by intelligent horticulture! A group of commonplace people — moderately disciplined by culture — might be compared to the pansies and nasturtiums of our early recollection, and a group of these highly refined Caskians to the delicious flowers abloom in modern gardens.

We crave variety in people, as we crave condiments in food. For me, this craving was never so satisfied — and at the same time so thoroughly stimulated — as in Caskian society, which had a spiciness of flavor impossible to describe.

Formality was disarmed by perfect breeding, there was nothing that you could call “manner.” The delicate faculty of intuition produced harmony. I never knew a single instance in which the social atmosphere was disagreeably jarred, — a common enough occurrence where we depend upon the machi............