Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/350

 ever crowded in thousands, by way of holiday trips, as well as for the magnificent views they thus got of their own comparatively huge revolving world, whose vastly surpassing mass, as thus seen, was already the subject of much arousing Marsian poetry. This again gave rise to large business in the artificial breathing apparatus, as neither of the moons had other than the veriest ghost of a thin atmosphere. All this apparatus business, as well as that of the extensive Marsian phosphate diggings, together with the general interplanetary energy trade, belonged to young Brown's hardware section, and kept him as busy as a bee during our stay upon Mars.

The New Party were, as I have said, specially jubilant on the occasion of this visit, and were fain, on this particular opportunity, to make political capital out of my presence, as it happened most timely for their coming struggle to get rid of the ancient lottery-box system. They had now, in fact, some good hope of at last completely accomplishing this great result during the approaching session of the great Pobb-Likk. I could not, of course, but side here with the New Party; and they, for their part, were by no means tender in coercing me, whenever they had the chance, to declare for their views on this and other questions. Thus, when challenged on the subject, I must needs assert that Accident was inadmissible to the higher life, where only Principle could live and reign. Statements and admissions of this kind were not at all to the mind of the Old Party, even although