or recede was the true inferno of the Limanorans. Again I changed my optic glass and a greater sadness came to me through my magnetic sense. I saw men and women such as I used to envy for their respectable life, their serene comfort, and their sure grasp of both worlds trooping into buildings for religious worship. They bowed and sang, they genuflected and prayed, they raised their eyes to the ceiling, they groaned and professed to pity themselves as miserable sinners; yet I could feel they had an inner consciousness that these performances were superfluous on their part, so comfortably worldly, so charitably godly were they. As they rose to leave the temple, they seemed to purr and pat their sleek stomachs in supreme self-content. Yet through the magnetic magnifier I knew that they were in a lower circle of the inferno than the rustic slaves. Their past stood out through many generations of ancestors exactly the same as their present or better. Never a chance had they of progressing; they thought they had reached perfection as far as earthly conditions would allow. They prayed that they might be made better; but that was only as they prayed that their sins might be forgiven when they were certain that they had committed none, or as they prayed for guidance in their daily duties when they knew that no one could manage them better than they. Stagnancy was written on every feature of their faces and of their lives, fatty degeneration of every faculty and organ necessary to development. Their ethics, their religion, their business, their habits of life had all reached a stage that made criticism superfluous and that knew no higher outlook.