Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/309

 Now these coloured systems are still, in certain respects, a question of hot scientific dispute amongst us, many of the purely white-light systems, such as Sirius, proudly viewing them as the peculiarity, the eccentricity, aye, point blank, the insanity of the heavens. The coloured themselves take, of course, a very different view of their case, and have various theories of the special power and resource of colour, compared, as they would say, with mere cold common white light. Our coloured friends in question approached us, from the first, warmly in that view of the matter, and were ready to be eloquent upon the virtues of yellow, in connection with the slight, but, as they gladly assured us, the still quite appreciable tint of our solar light. We did not, however, quite respond, in the direction indicated, to this brotherly warmth. While not behind in formulating the usual courtesies of intercourse, we rather, in effect, said, on this part of the case, "drop it." In confidence between ourselves, the subject is confessedly a delicate one to those who, as in our own case, may be supposed just upon the borderland of either party. Our overzealous coloured friends, by way of putting our rights beyond question, always remind us, that on our first introducing the pure electric light, we described it as "ghastly," "garish," and by other such bad names, showing quite clearly thereby, that we had been previously unaccustomed to pure cold white light; and that, as they stoutly asserted on our behalf, we were, in common with themselves, of the distinguished coloured race—the true nobility of the heavens, as they would put the matter.

But, again, when we, for our part, discussed this