re among you, but if
your novels are faithful pictures of your life, they are at least not
unknown. That these situations are inevitable under the conditions of
earthly life we are well aware, and judge you accordingly; but it is
needless that the minds of our maidens should be pained by the knowledge
that there anywhere exists a world where such travesties upon the
sacredness of marriage are possible.

"There is, however, another reason why we discourage the use of your
books by our young people, and that is the profound effect of sadness,
to a race accustomed to view all things in the morning glow of
the future, of a literature written in the past tense and relating
exclusively to things that are ended."

"And how do you write of things that are past except in the past tense?"
I asked.

"We write of the past when it is still the future, and of course in the
future tense," was the reply. "If our historians were to wait till after
the events to describe them, not alone would nobody care to read about
things already done, but the histories themselves would probably be
inaccurate; for memory, as I have said, is a very slightly developed
faculty with us, and quite too indistinct to be trustworthy. Should the
Earth ever establish communication with us, you will find our histories
of interest; for our planet, being smaller, cooled and was peopled ages
before yours, and our astronomical records contain minute accounts
of the Earth from the time it was a fluid mass. Your geologists and
biologists may yet find a mine of information here."

In the course of our further conversation it came out that, as a
consequence of foresight, some of the commonest emotions of human nature
are unknown on Mars. They for whom the future has no mystery can, of
course, know neither hope nor fear. Moreover, every one being assured
what he shall attain to and what not, there can be no such thing as
rivalship, or emulation, or any sort of competition in any respect; and
therefore all the brood of heart-burnings and hatreds, engendered on
Earth by the strife of man with man, is unknown to the people of Mars,
save from the study of our planet. When I asked if there were not, after
all, a lack of spontaneity, of sense of freedom, in leading lives fixed
in all details beforehand, I was reminded that there was no difference
in that respect between the lives of the people of Earth and of Mars,
both alike being according to God's will in every particul