"In general they are all fashioned as I am." "No one having wings?" she added with surprise. "Not one." "How can that be true?" "Because we were made without them." "And have you no way of moving through the air at pleasure?" "Not without artificial machinery." "Artificial machinery?" she repeated. "What can you mean by that?" Of course they have no word for balloon or flying machine, and I found it difficult to describe the shape and explain the philosophy of these things. I did the best I could in her language, and after I had finished my description she for the first time smiled and said: "That sort of a construction would be a fine thing for the indolents of our world who, through misuse or lack of use of their wings, have no more ability to fly." This was interesting to me and I closely inquired as to the cause of this loss of the wing power. Plume grew more and more familiar in her address and in a long conversation told me of the many conditions that make people unfit to fly. I deduce from our conversation a few of these causes. 1. Simple neglect. 2. Gluttonous life. 3. Sensuality of a low and heavy life. 4. Pride. Some yield to a superstitious notion that it is honorable to make but little display of themselves, and allow their wings to be bound or partly clipped. 5. Certain kinds of sickness render the wing-chords inoperative. I learned that altogether nearly one-half of the population are unable to fly. How my mind flew back to our own life as I was learning of these sad conditions. There is a sort of a life on wings in our world, although the wings are invisible. But on account of the low, mean lives so many are living, they never rise above the miasmic contagion of the sin and self level. These unseen wings are either paralyzed or clipped. Plume now actually stepped toward me. What a graceful tread. She was indeed the most charming creature I had met outside of my own world. She seated herself near me on the rustic bend of a tree unlike any in our world and hurried her questions at me as if she realized that I would not tarry long. At length she gratefully said: "I am beginning to believe that you are really a son of another world, or else I am reveling in a day dream." "Happy am I that I can learn from you some of the truths after which I am seeking," was my evasive reply. "Tell me, Plume, something about your faith religiously." "I worship the God who made all things and am hoping to live in the wider life after my mortal days are ended." "Do you expect to meet, in that wider life, representatives from other worlds?" "Ah! I have often thought that it might be so," she answered, as her face brightened in poetic fervor, and her eyes sparkled with seraphic luster. "It shall all be so, and much more," I declared. "In that life you can fly without wings and mingle with the pure from the unnumbered worlds of space." "What an incentive to a pure life," she quickly added.