ctive rivalry upon
it as impossible or improbable. Yet across the gulf of space astral
women, with eyes that are to the eyes of English women as diamonds are
to boot-buttons, astral women, with hearts vast and warm and
sympathetic, were regarding Butterick's with envy, Peter Robinson's with
jealousy, and Whiteley's with insatiable yearning, and slowly and surely
maturing their plans for a grand inter-stellar campaign.

The pale pink planet Wenus, as I need hardly inform the sober reader,
revolves round the sun at a mean distance of [character: Venus sigil]
vermillion miles. More than that, as has been proved by the recent
observations of Puits of Paris, its orbit is steadily but surely
advancing sunward. That is to say, it is rapidly becoming too hot for
clothes to be worn at all; and this, to the Wenuses, was so alarming a
prospect that the immediate problem of life became the discovery of new
quarters notable for a gentler climate and more copious fashions. The
last stage of struggle-for-dress, which is to us still remote, had
embellished their charms, heightened their heels and enlarged their
hearts. Moreover, the population of Wenus consisted exclusively of
Invisible Men--and the Wenuses were about tired of it. Let us, however,
not judge them too harshly. Remember what ruthless havoc our own species
has wrought, not only on animals such as the Moa and the Maori, but upon
its own inferior races such as the Wanishing Lady and the Dodo Bensonii.

The Wenuses seem to have calculated their descent with quite un-feminine
accuracy. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have witnessed
their preparations. Similarly pigs, had they wings, might fly. Men like
Quellen of Dresden watched the pale pink planet--it is odd, by the way,
that for countless centuries Wenus has been the star of Eve--evening by
evening growing alternately paler and pinker than a literary agent, but
failed to interpret the extraordinary phenomena, resembling a series of
powder puffs, which he observed issuing from the cardiac penumbra on the
night of April 1st, 1902. At the same time a great light was remarked by
Idos of Yokohama and Pegadiadis of Athens.

The storm burst upon us six weeks later, about the time of the summer
sales. As Wenus approached opposition, Dr. Jelli of Guava set the wires
of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the intelligence of a huge
explosion of laughing gas moving risibly towards the earth. He compared
it to a col