Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/397

 moving along in her orbit, the mighty living world lay before us; and even while we gazed for a few seconds, we had to keep adjusting the apparatus, so as to move with the restless mass, and maintain it all in our full view. "See, Green," cried Brown, all of a sudden, and in no small excitement, just at this conjuncture, "the bright morning seems just dawning over the ground of Old England; and as the next magnifying is to bring to us the life size, who knows what delicate scenes and questionable sights may open upon us—Mrs. G. herself, perhaps, at her favourite eastern-outlook bedroom window, and just out of bed, in her night-dress, to sniff the fresh morning air." "Bless my heart and soul," said I to myself, as something approaching to a momentary tremor ran through me, "I had not thought about all this!" My fingers instinctively dropped from the regulating knob, and the final trigger remained unsprung.

We now turned back with our friend towards his house, and as he discoursed to us, I nudged Brown, in order to whisper in his ear that we were being treated to no less than actual Ter-Cross science. Poor Brown was sorely awe-struck, and seemed to look in wonder at something of a jaunty aspect I put on. For my part, suspecting, as we're-entered the house, that our opportunities were drawing to a close, and eager to make the most of what were left, I plumped to our instructor a plain question. It was unmistakably evident, I said to him, that his race had attained to Ter-Cross science, an attainment that might be yet very far from our own less advanced position; but what of the Quarto-Cross?