nnyworth of the mysteries of time and
space! How long will Edison's latest magic toy survive this
popularisation, I wonder? For a little moment it awakens the sense of
wonder in the idly curious, who set the demon tube to their ears; but if
they make any remarks at all, it is of the cleverness of Mr. Edison,
the probable profits of the invention--and not a word of the wonder of
the world! So it would be with the undiscovered country. I was blamed
the other day as being cheaply smart because I said that if 'one
traveller returned,' his resurrection would soon be as commonplace as
the telephone, and that enterprising firms would be interviewing him as
to the prospects of opening branch establishments in Hades. Yet it is a
perfectly serious, and, I think, true remark; for who that knows the
modern man, with his small knowingness, and his utter incapacity for
reverence, would doubt that were Mr. Edison actually to be the Columbus
of the Unseen, it would soon be as overrun with gaping tourists as
Switzerland, and that within a year railway companies would be
advertising 'Bank-holidays in Eternity'?

No! let us keep the Unseen--or, if it must be discovered, let the key
thereof be given only to true-lovers and poets.

A SEAPORT IN THE MOON

No one is so hopelessly wrong about the stars as the astronomer, and I
trust that you never pay any attention to his remarks on the moon. He
knows as much about the moon as a coiffeur knows of the dreams of the
fair lady whose beautiful neck he makes still more beautiful. There is
but one opinion upon the moon--namely, our own. And if you think that
science is thus wronged, reflect a moment upon what science makes of
things near at hand. Love, it says, is merely a play of pistil and
stamen, our most fascinating poetry and art is 'degeneration,' and human
life, generally speaking, is sufficiently explained by the 'carbon
compounds'--God-a-mercy! If science makes such grotesque blunders about
radiant matters right under its nose, how can one think of taking its
opinion upon matters so remote as the stars--or even the moon, which is
comparatively near at hand?

Science says that the moon is a dead world, a cosmic ship littered with
the skeletons of its crew, and from which every rat of vitality has long
since escaped. It is the ghost that rises from its tomb every night, to
haunt its faithless lover, the world. It is a country of ancient
silver-mines, unworked for centuries. You ma