We went into a spacious outside court with trees, and close cut lawns.
She led me out of the court through an opening in a beautifully
trimmed hedge which she told me surrounded the five or six courts
forming their community. Beyond the hedge, running east and west, one
hundred fifty feet away, was another hedge. The space between was a
street without sidewalks. Along the hedges on both sides were lines of
beautifully shaped shade trees, at equal distances from each other,
carefully pruned to allow shade as well as sunshine and beauty. There
were comfortable benches under them. Parallel to both hedges were two
twenty-five foot strips of beautiful green lawns in lieu of sidewalks.
Between these strips were two twenty-five foot pathways, paved with
a cork or ocean tree lumber surface, easy and resilient to walk on.
In the center and between these pathways was a fifty foot wide full
length flower bed with passages every 200 feet leading to fountains
and statues in the midst of the flower beds. Happy couples, both young
and old, strolled arm in arm or sat on the comfortable benches. The
sweet scents of beautiful flowers, the freshness of vegetation, and the
pleasant chirping of birds were unspoiled by traffic, and industrial
noises. At the end of these hedges, we came to a very wide cross street
or avenue, lined with pruned and beautifully shaped shade trees. It
seemed as if every street had its own style of trees.
I asked Xora, "I noticed from the air the absence of vehicles on your
streets, and I see none now; don't you use your streets even for
deliveries?"
"No, all our traffic for deliveries and collections is done
underground. To avoid accidents, individuals are forbidden to drive
vehicles on the streets or to walk in our subways. Nor are children
allowed to ride bicycles on the surface as they do on earth. We have
no streets, as you call them. We call them parkways, and they are used
exclusively for our pedestrians, who can walk, rest, and cross in
perfect safety, even in the dark."
"Then you have no street accidents, and even an unattended blind man
can safely at any time cross your parkways in any part of your city?"
"Yes," she answered, "providing he knows directions and carries a blind
man's feeling compass."
It was a relief to cross safely without trying to find traffic
lights, or stopping to look both ways for approaching automobiles.
My precautions in crossing remained with me for some time, to the
merriment of Martians with whom I happened to be walking. However, back
here in New York I have almost been run over several times because of
my forgetfulness. I did not see a street policeman there of any kind; a
fact which impressed me then, and occurred to me later. What a relief
not to have to run across streets dodging automobiles and fire engines!
The indescribable pleasure of children playing and the birds twittering
added to my feeling. I was in a land of enchantment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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