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 mills. Brown and I dabbled in energy-mill speculation a while ago; and it did fairly well at first, until competition, which is the very bane of our day, made the profits not worth the bother. Our modern fiscal system is largely based on the same principle; for by an ingenious spring machinery beneath all our main thoroughfares, every passenger, by his gravitation, and forward impulse, contributes, at every step, to a public energy-fund. The impediment, or the force taken out of him is so small, that he is hardly conscious of the loss. And thus a substantial public revenue is made up; thus in fact we chiefly supply our public messaging energy. That illustrates a happy case of uncompeted profit-making. I only wish I could secure a spell of it!

By far the most curious and interesting of our outside acquaintance was that coloured-sun system to which I lately alluded. It constituted, indeed, the very rare case of a tri-system, all three solar members of which were coloured; one of the suns being bluish, another light greenish, and the third red, and a rather significantly deep red too. In dimensions the last was considerably the greater of the three. They all three effected a complex circuit round each other, each carrying its own varied family of planets with their moons and rings, and of comets and meteorite systems.