But still greater marvels were to follow. These two beings or automata or moving shadows of beings, or whatever they might be, enacted a scene, the significance of which I comprehended only after many days’ thought. My immediate impressions and my subsequent conclusions and knowledge have so amalgamated that it is difficult to separate the two elements. These two beings were chosen friends, the complements of each other, with tendencies and tastes and loves all in unison. Such perfect fitting of nature to nature was not as yet to be found even in Limanora. Thought sprang to thought, and emotion to emotion, and yet there was a spontaneity and origination in both that made each a separate fountain of life and action. How independent the characters and powers, and yet how mutually adapted! The scene was meant to picture a friendship that was a true and perfect marriage. The two had grown year by year closer in harmony till at last the mutual sympathy had culminated in a yearning to see an individuality that would combine the best peculiarities of each and perpetuate the combination. We could see the thought flame into a passion in the two systems, and then we could hear the friends talk around the longing till it grew definite, into a common project. We saw them gather the materials needed for the formation of the body. With intricacies of furnace and crucible and machinery they moulded these into the skeleton of a man, flawless and strong in every part. They tried every bone with numberless tests, till they found it all to their satisfaction. Then they started on the cartilages that kept the bones in place or moved them, giving permanence and life to each, as they made it, by the magnetism they communicated to it. Tissue by tissue they built up the internal organs, modelling them with loving care on those they saw at play beneath their own eyes, and testing them to see that they performed their functions perfectly. What delicate artistic energy they spent upon the upper tissues of the body, upon the brain and ear and eye! Each created and developed the quality loved and admired in the other. There was nothing they omitted to make the new being complete and happy in all his functions. On the minute nerves and tissues they worked under powerful microscopes, and the minutiæ of every sense and organ and function were examined and tested again and again with the same magnifying power turned on them. The figure they made most noble and symmetrical in proportions and outlines, the face they made as beautiful as human face could look. The stuff in which they worked was ethereal in its texture and constituents. It was difficult to discern it with our senses even under the great magnifying globe. It seemed to be of air or some product of the ether; for it flowed underneath their guiding fingers almost invisible. And the result was a body more transparent than their own. It was a marvel of refinement and strength