Much the same may be said of the drama in Atlantis--a drama almost as popular as the music, and built like the music upon that beauty which reaches beyond time and space. The prose drama seems never to have been introduced; poetry, as the natural vehicle for ecstatic expression, was evidently regarded as the inevitable substance of all plays; and the playwrights were all in a tradition that might have appealed to Sophocles and Euripides, although they had never heard of those master dramatists. Indeed, Atlantis had a score of dramatic writers who in my judgment were in no way inferior to any produced by classical Greece; and the best works of these authors, staged with picturesque simplicity and presented by actors of power, afforded me some of the most absorbing hours I passed during all my years in Atlantis. But if delighted by such performances, I was not less pleased to note that dramatics flourished also on a small scale. In any little social gathering one of the most popular diversions would be the improvisation and acting of short plays; and the proficiency of the Atlanteans in this game seemed almost incredible to me, for the actors would not only originate their own little dramas, but would speak their impromptu lines with feeling and beauty; and so deeply was the spirit of poetry engrained that long fluent passages of exceptional verse would sometimes be delivered spontaneously. Beyond these dramatic exhibitions, the chief private pastime of the Atlanteans was in the art of discussion. To say that discussion was an art is not to exaggerate; it was believed that the mark of the cultured man was his ability to express himself intelligently; and themes for consideration in an Atlantean drawing room varied from the latest poetry and the latest music to the nature of the human personality and the ultimate meaning of life. To the self-respecting citizen, it would have been an insult to suggest that he avoid the boredom of conversation by games of dominoes or cards; and it would have seemed ludicrous to attempt to gossip concerning one’s food or clothes, one’s athletic prowess, one’s neighbor’s idiosyncrasies or bad manners, or any of those hundred and one subjects that might have proved diverting in upper world conversation. * * * * * While Xanocles was introducing me to the social life of Atlantis, much of my time was being taken up by social life of a different type. Now that I had been elevated to the dignity of Atlantean citizenship, I could not forget that I had thirty-eight comrades who aspired to a similar honor. I saw fully as much of my former shipmates as before; indeed, I saw some of them more than ever, and in particular Captain Gavison, who would frequently visit me to exchange reminiscences; and I rubbed shoulders with the whole crew at the regular bi-weekly meetings of the Upper World Club, which were now held in my apartment.