"My companion led me out of the Hall. Men and women were moving slowly in various directions and as we made our way over the campus and between the many noble buildings I saw many of the lambent spirits half emergent into fleshly shapes accompanied by the watchers, who are in great numbers in the City, carrying over their arms the white and blue dresses with which to clothe them as the spirits fall into solid forms. "Amongst these buildings I easily noted the marvellous observatories where objectives twenty feet in diameter are used with which the astronomers actually discern the life of our earth. The reports they make from week to week of their inspection of the Solar system, and of the commotions, changes, births and demolition of Stars, are the sensations of Mars. These Reports are read aloud in the Halls of Announcement and Recreation. But astounding beyond belief, they photograph the surfaces of these distant bodies, and report in moving pictures the disturbances of the cosmic universe. No wonder that the whole Mind, as it were, of Mars is concentrated on the fabulous results of their cosmic studies. "We descended from Patenta Hill in an avenue that led between the white columned houses with their spheres of Phosphori and their umbrageous squares around them. It was a season of flowers, though I understood that by the use of fertilizing injections the number of flowers in a shrub and even in an herb can be here greatly multiplied. The windows of the houses were open and their sills crowded with blossoms. The use of the red blossoming vine was strangely extravagant. In many cases it had thrown its branches over an entire house, clambering over the roof and encircling the phosphoric cage, so that the white house was dissected by its twigs and tendrils, while the red honeysuckle flowers depended in clusters from the walls, the roof gutters, and the light house globes above them. "The Court of the Registeries was a long low structure made of the prevalent white stone with a roof of what seemed to be red copper. It was built upon one of the canals which here enter the city and formed one side of a long pier or dock to which and from which interesting little boats were constantly approaching and as constantly departing. "A hum of business and everyday work surrounded the place, and it seemed refreshing to note the stir and bustle of affairs. Streams of people were entering the Court as we arrived. They were inhabitants and watchers bringing the new incarnations to the Registeries to have their origin recorded if they could recall it. Indeed many spirits fail utterly to remember their former condition, and happen, as we might say, upon Mars, unexplained and inexplicable. They even are without speech and learn the Martian language as a child learns to talk.