“I saw such forests as these on the star, and saw them with their hot marshes sunken under temporary seas. I began to wonder why was all this. Time became a long sorrow to me. The Earth was a break in its monotony, and when it became the abode of man I could scarce endure my long exile. For each short visit I must away to Saturn’s kingdom out in distance. With farseeing eyes, such as we have, I could look through some years, and see the deeds and also read the hearts of men. “The souls on earth were as a page to me. All schemes in lives or mysteries of nature I could understand. I could recite to you long histories of the pre-Adamites. I saw the glory of Atlantis before the oceans submerged it. Its wisdom was superior to that of the race now on Earth, its achievement beyond all later achievement. So like gods grew those men that the Earth trembled at their power, and the mandate went forth to destroy their wicked brilliance and unpeople almost all the Earth. “As I looked at the burnish of its wealth and saw its miraculous prosperity, I bethought me to fly down and save a few souls from the doomed land. With a great air-ship, such as we used in my world, I gathered from the Earth a few, and these are their descendants. Then there was a removal of oceans, an uplifting of other areas. The learning of ages, the temples of nations slept under the sun as I neared the Earth, and slept under the water as I left. “Then the fragment was too small for us and I bethought me to capture a half-cooled ball of lava not far away. By means of heavy chains and air-ships I hitched my island to this star, and later grafted its roots into the soil. According to the law of my great sphere, the lesser plant began at once to absorb the greater, and then it was revealed to me that when the Sun Island had extended over the entire star, absorbing all the lava substance, transforming all the seas to emerald and flame, I might proceed to realms more fair. “I still watched Earth, through the glory into which the history of Egypt dies, into the progress of moderns where hope of history lives. “More than a thousand souls I influenced from time to time. At last, there was born in an English hamlet a boy, Gregg Dempster. His mother died with a mad prayer on her lips: ‘Let him not worship gold! Oh, take him to another, easier world than this!’ In all the years I had not heard so simple a prayer uttered with so awful power of death. From his cradle I watched the child through friendless youth, loveless manhood, monomaniac age, and saw him in abject poverty, yet ever shielded from the greatest grief of men. Often I urged him on, often I taught him secrets, often I gave him courage. I spoke when he lay upon his bier. It was not he. I stood here to meet him when he came first upon the star. I walled for him the Sun Island.