Page:Melbourne and Mars.djvu/82

80 a happy woman. I do not know by what dispensation I am allowed to have two bodies and two lives. How one soul animates two bodies I cannot tell; my mental faculties are equally on the alert in both spheres. On Earth I worship in the Church of Scotland; here I attend Thanksgiving every Sabbath morning. I am equally happy in the two kinds of worship. I might have married here; have had to refuse several offers, but for the fact that my earth life is so present and real that I should feel as if guilty of bigamy. My husband in Edinbro' is a good man, but he is not a Martial, or if he is, he knows nothing about it. It seems as if there is something more in man than body and soul. John Wesley was perhaps right in speaking of body spirit and soul.'

'This difference in height and size must involve a number of differences. A given number of Martials will consume far less food than the same number of Earth dwellers, and I have previously known that they will consume less fluid?'

'Yes,' said Martha, 'the Earth man will eat three times as much food, and in many cases five times as much, and he has to take more fluid to make up for fluid waste. Sometimes, indeed, he drinks for the sake of drinking, and dies a victim to what is unknown here, the vice of drunkenness. We may say that, on the average, what will support one earth man would support four of our people. We have to remember that the earth man has to lift a body twice as cumbrous and to stand the pull of twice as much gravitation, so that in making any movement he has four times the work to do that we have. He has also to stand the pressure of a much heavier atmosphere.'

'You, being conscious on both sides, see all this, I suppose?'

'Indeed, no, I do not,' said Martha. 'I have had to learn it. In coming from one planet to the other I perceive none of these differences. Everything is in proportion in both, so that nothing strikes us as different. We must, however, in reading and writing about the two planets, remember that there are several differences, or we may make mistakes. They could not be serious ones after all. A few errors of size and distance would not invalidate the general truth of what we write and say. Our central avenue is a thousand miles to us, and if an earth man came it would be the same to him if he came as we came, the only way possible, but if he could bring his earth faculties it would be about three hundred and forty miles, still a fairly long street. He might find out that our foot is not twelve inches, but only eight; but before he could live our life with us it would be a foot again. We have only four-ninths of the heat and light of the sun that the earth people have, but here we are used to what we have and should not be able to stand a change to earth conditions any more than an earth man could stand a change to ours. Our Maker has wisely adapted us to the circumstances and surroundings of our life, and we have been wise enough to make the best of these