Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/352

 and ably edited Semit Eht, a paper which, as indeed its name indicated, sought to adapt itself always to the times in which it lived. With an Old Party instinct, it was yet, ostensibly, with the New Party, and was ever ready to throw overboard, to the wolves of that party, whatever in social and political progress seemed no longer possible of retention. Thus it was not seldom changing front, in admitting, and even triumphantly arguing for, what it might previously have sternly opposed. The journal was thus at times a source of great irritation to the Old Party, although it might be claiming, all the while, by so wise and prudent a line of policy, to be really their friend. Marvellous, indeed, had been of late the advance of New Party ideas. A popular refrain of the Old Party, which, at the time of our earth's first visit to Mars, might have been enthusiastically chorused at Old Party gatherings, was now sadly in abeyance even there, and, with still worse fate, had assumed only jocular significance with the New Party. The couplet in question might be thus freely translated:—

From the dinner-table young Brown and I made direct for our interplanetary packet, being bound next for the First Jovian moon. Feeling somewhat tired with all our last day's doings, we both went straight to bed; and I, for my part, did not re-awake until we were well-nigh a fourth of the way to the outer edges of the asteroids on their Marsian side. We had