about the jungle alone for fear that they might become the prey for other wild animals, so they killed them also; and filled their stomachs with them. And after they were through, a flock of vultures descended and finished the work. Men and vultures are somewhat alike in this respect; they both eat the flesh of carcasses. But a good word can be said for the vultures, however; they never kill. CHAPTER IX It is not my intention to give a full descriptive account of my peculiar journey around the world with Arletta, nor to recount the many strange things witnessed. Suffice it to mention that we visited nearly every country on the globe through the power of mind sight, and I was enabled to see any terrestrial occurrence as well as if having been on the spot in person. In fact, being under the direct influence of Arletta's perception, conditions appeared much more comprehensive to me than ever before and I felt like some great judge looking down upon the earth and its inhabitants with an impartial eye. And somehow these inhabitants did not seem to impress me as being in such a high state of intelligence as I had formerly been led to believe they were. Everywhere human beings were fighting and snarling amongst themselves like ferocious beasts. Their universal law granted the right of the strong to victimize the weak either through the power of physical or mental force. In fact it was considered a divine right for men of superior intellects to receive more of the fruits of the earth than those of smaller mental capacity. One-half of the world was over-fed while the other half was under-fed. Aside from a slight difference in political and religious theories, the characteristics of all the peoples of the world were the same; the predominant features being greed, vanity, egotism, intemperance, gluttony, fraud, theft, bribery, deceit, brutality, murder, superstition and filth. Even America, the much boasted land of the free, the country which God in his infinite wisdom had taken from the bad English and given to the good Americans, contained people with these traits, and the so-called great men of this country appeared like a lot of silly little pigmies engaged in an eternal quarrel over a few trinkets. Few of them could see further than their own noses unless it was to see something that would increase their own selfish desires. Equality, of which these people boasted so much, existed merely in their imaginations. The actual meaning of equality, as the Americans understood it, was that the physical and mental gladiators and weaklings alike were put into one great prize ring and given an opportunity to fight for their lives and nature's gifts. Those who were capable of battering down and trampling upon their adversaries were legally entitled to all the luxuries the earth provided and more than they could use, but those who were unfortunate enough to have been born weaklings and were unfit to cope