“The interior of the building is elegantly finished and richly furnished; each individual, young and old, has a private apartment. (See page 55.) Then we have public apartments--grand public parlors of all sizes; a public dining-room; a public hall for games, exercises and amusements of all kinds; a large, fine library; nurseries with plenty of toys for children of all ages; public and private baths, an elegant barber shop, a large, well-filled store, a grand restaurant, a large, clean, well-ventilated kitchen with plenty of good, handsome, tidy cooks and helpers--both men and women; public reading and writing rooms, a scientific department for philosophical apparatus and a well-filled laboratory including drugs, a tailor and milliner shop, a vehicle department, etc. The dwellings, notwithstanding their size, are so well ventilated and cooled in summer, and so uniformly warmed in winter that an inmate can scarcely tell whether it is winter or summer. “Let us now leave the interior of the ‘Big-House’ for a few moments and give a brief description of the surroundings. I shall hereafter call the Marsian dwelling a ‘_big-house_’ so as to distinguish it from your family home here. Let me say right here that there are a few general facts of which I would like to inform you, before I attempt a more detailed description of the exterior surroundings of our ‘big-house.’ [Illustration: Diagram 2. One of the wings of the “big-house” with private apartments.] “You want to bear in mind that we have a family; but that the family consists of a thousand or more men, women and children, instead of consisting like your family of from one to six or more. That we have no cities and towns, and no country; that our day’s manual labor consists in an average of less than two hours; this you will readily see as soon as you clearly understand how vastly we economize both wealth and labor in all directions by voluntary co-operative individualism. Years ago we had cities and towns, and a country similar to yours of the present time; but experience gradually taught us that it is not healthful to live in a crowded, smoky city and town, and also that we have no particular use for cities and towns, that they are detrimental to an orderly, well-regulated society. We also found that a family of husband and wife and their children, living alone in a country home, are largely wasting their lives socially and economically.” “You said, Mr. Midith, that you have no cities and towns and no country either. I should like to know where you live then?” asked Rev. Dudley. “All the houses here on earth are either in cities and towns, or they are in the country. I can see no other place for them. You do not live on rafts and boats, do you? You seem to have so many strange notions on Mars that a person can not tell what you might do until you have told us.”