“Fellow citizens,” she declared, while a hush came over the assemblage, and all strained forward so as to lose not a syllable, “fellow citizens, for this year’s celebration we have decided to present a historical pageant. Imagine yourselves borne backward almost thirty-one hundred years, to those days when the Submergence was not yet an accomplished fact, and Agripides stood before the old National Assembly urging the Good Destruction. Agripides shall now appear before you, as he appeared to your forefathers in the lands above the sea; you shall be the National Assembly before which he speaks; and he shall present his views to you as he presented them to our ancestors, and depict for you, as he depicted for them, the reasons why Atlantis should become a sunken continent. Behold, here comes Agripides!” With a wide-sweeping bow the speaker ceased, retreating from view through some unseen door; and at the same instant some invisible instrument sent forth a sound like a trumpet blast, and from the rear of the stage a tall figure appeared, walking slowly and with head bent low as though in thought. “Agripides! Agripides!” came one or two indistinct murmurs from behind me, but there was no such tumult of applause as I might have expected. Yet all eyes were directed eagerly toward the newcomer, and I found myself a partner in the tense excitement of the multitude. Even had I not heard the name Agripides, I should have recognized the advancing figure from the bust shown me by Aelios--there was the same bearded countenance, the same broad and noble brow, the same furrowed and sympathetic features. But one characteristic there was which the bust could not show, and which, while merely incidental, struck me with peculiar force. The garments of Agripides were not gay-hued, like those of modern Atlanteans, but were of a deep and somber brown; and they clung to his body so closely as apparently to interfere with his walking, and to make him look disquietingly like an animated corpse. But I forgot all such irrelevant impressions the moment that Agripides--or, rather, his living representative--had uttered his first word. “Fellow members of the National Assembly,” said he, with a low bow, while in the audience an awed silence held sway, “for the hundredth time I address you on the subject of the proposed Submergence. And for the hundredth time I remind you that we have no choice in the matter: it is a question of the submergence either of the land of Atlantis or of its soul. Let me prove this to you, Members of the Assembly; let me show you how near the soul of Atlantis already is to submergence. Watch carefully as a stream of typical present-day men and women passes by.”