of brick of which the wall consisted. Then the energy was turned on,
and a shout of wonder arose from the multitudes which had assembled at
a safe distance to witness the experiment.

Only a Cloud Remained.

The wall did not fall; it did not break asunder; no fragments shot this
way and that and high in the air; there was no explosion; no shock or
noise disturbed the still atmosphere--only a soft whirr, that seemed
to pervade everything and to tingle in the nerves of the spectators;
and--what had been was not! The wall was gone! But high above and all
around the place where it had hung over the street with its threat of
death there appeared, swiftly billowing outward in every direction,
a faint, bluish cloud. It was the scattered atoms of the destroyed wall.

And now the cry "On to Mars!" was heard on all sides. But for such an
enterprise funds were needed--millions upon millions. Yet some of the
fairest and richest portions of the earth had been impoverished by the
frightful ravages of those enemies who had dropped down upon them from
the skies. Still, the money must be had. The salvation of the planet,
as everybody was now convinced, depended upon the successful negotiation
of a gigantic war fund, in comparison with which all the expenditures in
all of the wars that had been waged by the nations for 2,000 years would
be insignificant. The electrical ships and the vibration engines must be
constructed by scores and thousands. Only Mr. Edison's immense resources
and unrivaled equipment had enabled him to make the models whose powers
had been so satisfactorily shown. But to multiply these upon a war scale
was not only beyond the resources of any individual--hardly a nation on
the globe in the period of its greatest prosperity could have undertaken
such a work. All the nations, then, must now conjoin. They must unite
their resources, and, if necessary, exhaust all their hoards, in order
to raise the needed sum.

The Yankees Lead.

Negotiations were at once begun. The United States naturally took the
lead, and their leadership was never for a moment questioned abroad.

Washington was selected as the place of meeting for a great congress
of the nations. Washington, luckily, had been one of the places which
had not been touched by the Martians. But if Washington had been a
city composed of hotels alone, and every hotel so great as to be a
little city in itself, it would have been utterly insufficient for the
accom