IN studying the practical aims and issues of earth science, I was taught to manage their apparatus, and to interpret every tremor in the earth’s crust and every indication of the instruments. I had already been taught to make their apparatus, for my physical discipline had begun several years before I was admitted to Fialume. It was in fact one of their primary maxims that muscular exercises should go on contemporaneously with intellectual and spiritual pursuits, that no citizen should be allowed to neglect for even a day the development of the body, intimately as the soul was interwoven with it. As soon as I was thoroughly tested and put through my course of probation, the training of my muscles was begun, and along with the magnetic moulding of my brain-tissues went the development of the force-tissues of the body and the powers of my senses. But no one was permitted to enter their great practical university or workshop till he had become a certain devotee of the race. The mysteries and arts and crafts which gave the nation its peculiar powers could not be communicated to anyone who might by some change become an alien. It was thus that many years of residence in Limanora passed before I was admitted to one of the marvels of the island, the great valley of Rimla. I well remember the evening of my initiation. The night work was as a rule done by the younger men and women of the community; the elders took their turn at the machinery by day, as they had to husband sleep during the hours of darkness and silence. I had often wondered whither went my proparents at a fixed hour every day; they vanished in the distance as the sun began to wester, and they returned at evening with high colour in their cheeks and the look of having used their muscles with a will. Their physical life seemed to take new impetus from these expeditions. One day on their return they told me that I was to be admitted to Rimla, which they explained to mean the centre of force. The mature judgment of the community had decided that I could now be fully trusted. My practical and muscular education was to begin. I was to set out that evening with a band of young workmen who kept the first watch of the night.