Every Limanoran of an age to be admitted to Oomalefa resorted several times a day to each of these three kinds of baths. First came a magnetic bath, in which every organ and tissue was stimulated to throw off its débris towards the pores. Then came the swim in one or more of the pools, in order that all this rejected part might be washed off. After this came the solar bath, which penetrated into the superficial channels of the body and swept away all bacterial life that might be nocuous. The last stage was the ethereal bath, which was enjoyed in solitude and could be endured by any but the mature for only a few minutes; the exhilaration and tenuity of atmosphere were too great for unaccustomed lungs, and I could see the heads of the bathers thrust out at short intervals to take a breath. But long practice made the older Limanorans enjoy the buoyancy of the pure medium for hours. It was indeed one of the hopes of the race that they would be able at last to breathe the interstellar ether with greater ease than the air surrounding their own earth. It was in these baths I first came to see the marvellous grace and plasticity of their garments. They were outside of all my previous experiences and conceptions, and seemed so natural that I took them for a part of their material outfit like their hair. It had never entered into my mind to question whether they laid them aside in sleep or not. Perhaps it was owing to the beauty and animation of the countenance, when they spoke or even looked, that I had not paid any attention to their dress except to see how it never impeded their movements either in flight or in work, and how it varied with the individual, and never with the sex or age or profession; it belonged to the childhood of the world to regiment men in the minor details of life. Now I saw in the baths that the vesture did not need to be laid aside in other elements than air. It was made of some fine and flexible stuff woven out of irelium threads, plastic to the shape, yet capable of stiffening out when the wearer sent an electric wave through it from the electro-generator he always bore under his right arm. This process at once shook out every drop of water from it, when he issued from the bath or the sea. It was so porous that it seemed fragile, and yet it could bear great strains. Through its pores passed with ease the water or air or ether that was to influence the body underneath; and along its threads passed with ease any magnetism the wearer wished to feel. In certain lights it was almost transparent, yet with such a play of rainbow colors that it seemed a living fence against lights and shadows. In the darkness it shone with dazzling radiance as soon as the electric current flowed into it. At the will of the wearer it could be, like a magic garment of invisibility, black as midnight, yet in daylight could reveal every grace and tint of the limbs it covered, clinging closely like an outer epidermis to the body. Nor was it ever