in the
flesh could see it as I saw or seemed to see it. No ear of any mortal
being could bear the sounds that came from it as I heard or seemed
to hear them. The broad oceans unrolled themselves before me. I could
recognize the calm Pacific and the stormy Atlantic,--the ships that
dotted them, the white lines where the waves broke on the shore,--frills
on the robes of the continents,--so they looked to my woman's
perception; the--vast South American forests; the glittering icebergs
about the poles; the snowy mountain ranges, here and there a summit
sending up fire and smoke; mighty rivers, dividing provinces within
sight of each other, and making neighbors of realms thousands of miles
apart; cities; light-houses to insure the safety of sea-going vessels,
and war-ships to knock them to pieces and sink them. All this, and
infinitely more, showed itself to me during a single revolution of the
sphere: twenty-four hours it would have been, if reckoned by earthly
measurements of time. I have not spoken of the sounds I heard while the
earth was revolving under us. The howl of storms, the roar and clash of
waves, the crack and crash of the falling thunderbolt,--these of course
made themselves heard as they do to mortal ears. But there were other
sounds which enchained my attention more than these voices of nature.
As the skilled leader of an orchestra hears every single sound from each
member of the mob of stringed and wind instruments, and above all the
screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what
would have been for common mortals a confused murmur audible to me as
compounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. Above them
all arose one continued, unbroken, agonizing cry. It was the voice of
suffering womanhood, a sound that goes up day and night, one long chorus
of tortured victims.

"Let us get out of reach of this," I said; and we left our planet, with
its blank, desolate moon staring at it, as if it had turned pale at the
sights and sounds it had to witness.

Presently the gilded dome of the State House, which marked our
starting-point, came into view for the second time, and I knew that
this side-show was over. I bade farewell to the Common with its Cogswell
fountain, and the Garden with its last awe-inspiring monument.

"Oh, if I could sometimes revisit these beloved scenes!" I exclaimed.

"There is nothing to hinder that I know of," said my companion. "Memory
and imagination as you