After dinner, when we were all seated in the parlor, Mr. Uwins asked Mr. Midith about the family-home as it existed on Mars. “We have no home and no family as you know a home and a family,” replied Mr. Midith. “We have no home and no family in which one man and one woman live together with their children as you do here. Our ancient history tells us that long, long ago, we had homes and families just like you have them here now. “It may, at first sight and in your mundane age, seem strange to you to have no family-home like yours; but it is nevertheless a fact. You see society on Mars, as I have told you elsewhere, has had longer time to evolve than it has had on earth. We must expect to find a more advanced state of society and industry there, or we are no believers in evolution, in progress.” “If you have no home and no family like ours on Mars, in what manner _do_ you live there then?” asked Mrs. Uwins, full of interest. [Illustration: Diagram 1. A diagram of a big-house, ground plan.] “I will tell you, ladies and gentlemen,” began Mr. Midith. “Our smallest dwellings accommodate about a thousand men, women and children. These dwellings or Marsian homes are grand, magnificent structures about eight stories high, the main building 150 × 600 feet, with three wings on each side 60 × 300 feet. (See diagram p. 52.) There is an electric engine in every dwelling, which heats every apartment; it lights them with soft brilliant electric lights; it does all the culinary work--cooking, baking, etc.; it pumps the water to all parts of the building; it does all the laundry work--washing, drying and ironing, warms the water for the bath-rooms and for all other apartments; it runs the elevators, heats the conservatories and green-houses; it runs the sewing-machines, dish-washers and all other machinery in the building which I can not mention at present. In the summer it cools departments by creating currents of air. “See how vastly we economize both in wealth and in labor, by co-operating just in this one direction. One thousand, more or less, of us live together in one magnificent building, instead of one husband and one wife and their children, living in a frail, ill-constructed, inconvenient cottage. We have one electric engine do the heating for a thousand or more, instead of having one or more stoves in each little cottage. Instead of every home like here, having one or more lamps to fill and clean, our engine lights every apartment as light as day with an electric light. Instead of each small family having a cook-stove and washing machine, we run all our work with one engine. We need no heating-stoves, no hand washing-machine; the bath-rooms are comfortable and convenient. We do all this and much more with one engine for the accommodation of a thousand or more members of our large Marsian family.