"O that I could connect myself in your mind with the shape I wore when I was last a living thing! No shape on earth, not either yours or Leah's or that of any child yet born to you both, is more beautiful to the eye that has learned how to see than the fashion of that lost face and body of mine. "_You_ wore the shape once, and so did your father and mother, for you were Martians. Leah was a Martian, and wore it too; there are many of them here--they are the best on earth, the very salt thereof. I mean to be the best of them all, and one of the happiest. Oh, help me to that! "Barty, when I am a splendid son of yours or a sweet and lovely daughter, all remembrance of what I was before will have been wiped out of me until I die. But _you_ will remember, and so will Leah, and both will love me with such a love as no earthly parents have ever felt for any child of theirs yet. "Think of the poor loving soul, lone, wandering, but not lost, that will so trustfully look up at you out of those gleeful innocent eyes! "How that soul has suffered both here and elsewhere you don't know, and never will, till the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed; and I am going to forget it myself for a few decades--sixty, seventy, eighty years perhaps; such happy years, I hope--with you for my father and Leah for my mother during some of them at least--and sweet grandchildren of yours, I hope, for my sons and daughters! Why, life to me now will be almost a holiday. "Oh, train me up the way I should go! Bring me up to be healthy and chaste and strong and brave--never to know a mean ambition or think an ungenerous thought--never to yield to a base or unworthy temptation. "If I'm a boy--and I want to be a boy very much (although, perhaps, a girl would be dearer to your heart)--don't let me be either a soldier or a sailor, however much I may wish it as a Josselin or a Rohan; don't bring me up to buy or sell like a Gibson, or deal in law like a Bletchley. "Bring me up to invent, or make something useful, if it's only pickles or soap, but not to buy and sell them; bring me up to build or heal or paint or write or make music--to help or teach or please. "If I'm a girl, bring me up to be as much like Leah as you can, and marry me to just such another as yourself, if you can find him. Whether I'm a girl or a boy, call me Marty, that my name may rhyme with yours.