"This animal, the Rimondi, could be seen in scampering herds over these plains, its horns making an hour glass form above its head, as they bent to each other, touched, and then curved outward again to reunite a second time. "We were rapidly moving northward, and just as it would be on the earth, the changing vegetation gave visible notice of our advance. "But more interesting than nature were the scenes of life along our way, and the custom of public worship filled me with wonder. Amphitheatres of stone built high above the ground, and approached by encircling terraces of steps dotted the country at long intervals. These, Chapman explained, were the churches of the people. Here they gathered from long distances around, and, even as he described their meaning, the congregations were seen assembling, while later we heard the music flung in waves of sound from these houses of song and worship. "Chapman did not understand the Martian faith. There seemed little to understand about it. It was one national expression of the love of goodness and of beauty, but it was all directed to a source of infallible wisdom, power and justice. "Thus considering the country and its customs we fell again into a long colloquy: "'Dodd,' said Chapman, musingly, 'we should all become as these people about us, and do the same things, and believe and act as they do. You will, but I think I remain a little strange. I seem a spectator that a caprice has cast upon this globe, and though I live here, I must succumb to a certain alienation, a lack of mediation between their life and my former existence, and because of this subtle estrangement, I shall contract disease, or meet with accident, or waste in age, while you shall stay young, and living, sink into the Martian life and yield to it a spiritual, a mental acquiescence. You will become absorbed, and, with your love realized, the whole rhapsodic life of this world will mingle you forever in its tide of song and science and labor.' "'Yes,' I answered, 'I am sure I shall. For whatever period of time I stay here, I am one with this beautiful and strange life. I respond naturally to all this serenity and joy, this precision of power over inanimate things; this flooded being and the dawning sense that through the stepping stone of Mars, I approach yet higher beatitudes of living. At least in Mars the sordid taint of suffering, of ignominious physical torture and privation, which spoiled the Earth, is almost unknown.'