as to relieve the
uneventful quiet of our trip back to Earth that I undertook to set down
all our Martian experiences in their proper order. No doubt it was the
changeless monotony of that return journey which made the record appear
to me novel, unusual, and at times exciting. But now, six little months
again on Earth have made the more than three Martian years (equalling
six years of Earth) seem slow, tame, and profitless. If they were
pregnant with adventure, they lacked the real experiences of life which
have been crowded into the half-year since our return.

The very day I reached my old home I found another wheat corner more
wide-spread, if less complete and impregnable, and I set to work to
break it down. Thus the maelstroem of modern commercial life dragged me
into its dizzy whirl before I slept the first night on Earth, and I am
already surfeited with it. I seem to take the Earthly life in too large
and rapid doses. Into the half-year she has put a flattering success and
a dismaying failure. She has given me a month of her sweetest
experiences and another of her bitterest disappointments. As if she knew
I would not remain long at her feast, she has served to me in quick
succession a measure of renown, a taste of fortune, the rapture of
wooing, the bliss of marriage, and the rare delight of loving a soul
created to love me. Then one little drop from the cup of Death
embittered the whole feast and turned me against it all.

In the rush and turmoil of it all I should never have thought of my
crudely written narrative again had not my cousin Ruth, who never tired
of the story, fished it out and sent it to a literary friend in Boston.
It was probably the instant success in the scientific world of Dr.
Anderwelt's scholarly books on _Mars and His Life_, and the new
direction given to modern thought by his _Theory of Parallel Planetary
Life_, which led my literary sponsor to think the world would be
interested in a plain, unscientific narrative of our trip Marsward and
our doings there. In agreeing to look it over and cause it to be a "good
delivery" in the literary world, he exacted a promise from me to make
my recent Earthly experiences and our adventures on Venus join in
producing another story. For before the eyes of the first reader have
reached these words, Dr. Anderwelt and I will have departed sunwards, on
the visit to our brilliant sister planet, where, according to his
theory, life will have run through some