maginable to see Lord Kelvin,
dressed in his air-tight suit, making tremendous jumps into empty
space. It reminded me forcibly of what Lord Kelvin, then plain William
Thompson, and Professor Blackburn had done when spending a Summer
vacation at the seaside, while they were undergraduates of Cambridge
University. They had spent all their time, to the surprise of onlookers,
in spinning rounded stones on the beach, their object being to obtain
a practical solution of the mathematical problem of "precession."

Immediately Lord Kelvin was imitated by a dozen others. With what seemed
very slight effort they projected themselves straight upward, rising
to a height of four hundred feet or more, and then slowly settling back
again to the surface of the asteroid. The time of rise and fall combined
was between three and four minutes.

On this little planet the acceleration of gravity or the velocity
acquired by a falling body in one second was only four-fifths of an
inch. A body required an entire minute to fall a distance of only 120
feet. Consequently, it was more like gradually settling than falling. The
figures of these men of science, rising and sinking in this manner,
appeared like so many gigantic marionettes bobbing up and down in a
pneumatic bottle.

"Let us try that," said Mr. Edison, very much interested in the
experiments.

A Delightful Experience.

Both of us jumped together. At first, with great swiftness, but gradually
losing speed, we rose to an immense height straight from the ground. When
we had reached the utmost limit of our flight we seemed to come to rest
for a moment, and then began slowly, but with accelerated velocity,
to sink back again to the planet. It was not only a peculiar but a
delicious sensation, and but for strict orders which were issued that
the electrical ships should be immediately prepared for departure, our
entire company might have remained for an indefinite period enjoying
this new kind of athletic exercise in a world where gravitation had
become so humble that it could be trifled with.

While the final preparations for departure were being made, Lord
Kelvin instituted other experiments that were no less unique in their
results. The experience of those who had taken unpremeditated flights in
elliptical orbits when they had run from the vicinity of the Martians
suggested the throwing of solid objects in various directions from the
surface of the planet in order to determine the di