en years, at an enormous cost.

Who shall say that the apotheosis of our three heroes was not worthy of
them, or that, had they lived in the old prehistoric times, they would
not have taken the loftiest places among the demi-gods?

As the tremendous whirl of excitement began slowly to die away, the
more thoughtful heads of the Great Republic began asking each other a
few questions:

Can this wonderful journey, unprecedented in the annals of wonderful
journeys, ever lead to any practical result?

Shall we ever live to see direct communication established with the
Moon?

Will any Air Line of space navigation ever undertake to start a system
of locomotion between the different members of the solar system?

Have we any reasonable grounds for ever expecting to see trains running
between planet and planet, as from Mars to Jupiter and, possibly
afterwards, from star to star, as from Polaris to Sirius?

Even to-day these are exceedingly puzzling questions, and, with all our
much vaunted scientific progress, such as "no fellow can make out." But
if we only reflect a moment on the audacious go-a-headiveness of the
Yankee branch of the Anglo Saxon race, we shall easily conclude that the
American people will never rest quietly until they have pushed to its
last result and to every logical consequence the astounding step so
daringly conceived and so wonderfully carried out by their great
countryman Barbican.

In fact, within a very few months after the return of the Club men from
the Continental Banquet, as it was called in the papers, the country was
flooded by a number of little books, like Insurance pamphlets, thrust
into every letter box and pushed under every door, announcing the
formation of a new company called _The Grand Interstellar Communication
Society_. The Capital was to be 100 million dollars, at a thousand
dollars a share: J.P. BARBICAN, ESQ., P.G.C. was to be President;
Colonel JOSHUA D. M'NICHOLL, Vice-President; Hon. J.T. MARSTON,
Secretary; Chevalier MICHAEL ARDAN, General Manager; JOHN MURPHY, ESQ.,
Chief Engineer; H. PHILLIPS COLEMAN, ESQ. (Philadelphia lawyer), Legal
Adviser; and the Astrological Adviser was to be Professor HENRY of
Washington. (Belfast's blunder had injured him so much in public
estimation, his former partisans having become his most merciless
revilers, that it was considered advisable to omit his name altogether
even in the list of the Directors.)

From the very beginning, the mone