It was thus too I came to understand the passion they had for Firlalain, as this section of Oomalefa was called. The young were not allowed to enter it, lest it should act as a narcotic on their sense of duty to the ultimate aim of their civilisation. Not till they had gained full mastery of themselves, and especially of their appetites and passions, were they admitted, and even then it was with a caution which showed the greatness of the risk they incurred. The delights of the new sense were apt to grow intoxicating, and there had been at one time a fear of some becoming magnetic drunkards, who would spend their days in Firlalain besotted with indolent enjoyment of the exhilarating flight through the realms of fancy, and heedless of the health and interests of their other tissues. Once they had reached maturity, there was no such fear; and no curb was then set upon their liberty to enter these halls of electric harmony. After they had come to that stage of life when the walls of their blood-vessels began to lose flexibility, it became almost a duty to frequent Firlalain. The stimulus given to the currents of life by the mere physical influence of the electricity was enough to overcome the growing rigidity of cell and tissue; but the rush of thought and fancy gave the whole nature such impetus that the torrent of the blood through its channels induced the plasticity of youth again. They had other methods of postponing the approach of old age; they could withdraw from the walls of the various vessels of the body the accumulation of lime and other hardening elements; there were several chambers of diet the atmosphere of which neutralised the increase of salts and carbons in the body, and other medicinal chambers which could bring off by the pores any deleterious or obstructive matters forming in any of the tissues; but Firlalain was the most effective postponer of that stage of life when yearnings come into the heart for final and complete rest, for it flooded the whole being with new impulse and new energy. Most of all was the great stellar arcade frequented by the old in order to drive off the ennui of existence; a feeling which indicated the gradual calcarescence or induration of the brain and heart-tissues. Here any region of the starry night they chose could be made to concentrate its magnetic influence upon their firla. A man might take a new tract and new blending of imaginative impulse every day of life for centuries and yet not exhaust the limit of variety; for the stars moved through infinite space as the earth moved, but in different directions, and ever new universes or worlds were coming within the range of the Limanoran electric sense.