those I had
known. I had once seen and tasted a preparation called artificial cream
that had been prepared by a friend of my fathers, an eminent English
chemist. It was simply a combination of the known properties of cream
united in the presence of gentle heat. But in Mizora they took certain
chemicals and converted them into milk, and cream, and cheese, and
butter, and every variety of meat, in a vessel that admitted neither air
nor light. They claimed that the elements of air and light exercised a
material influence upon the chemical production of foods, that they
could not be made successfully by artificial processes when exposed to
those two agents. Their earliest efforts had been unsuccessful of exact
imitation, and a perfect result had only been obtained by closely
counterfeiting the processes of nature.

The cream prepared artificially that I had tasted in London, was the
same color and consistency as natural cream, but it lacked its relish.
The cream manufactured in Mizora was a perfect imitation of the finest
dairy product.

It was the same with meats; they combined the elements, and the article
produced possessed no detrimental flavor. It was a more economical way
of obtaining meat than by fattening animals.

They were equally fortunate in the manufacture of clothing. Every
mountain was a cultivated forest, from which they obtained every variety
of fabric; silks, satins, velvets, laces, woolen goods, and the richest
articles of beauty and luxury, in which to array themselves, were put
upon the market at a trifling cost, compared to what they were
manufactured at in my own country. Pallid and haggard women and
children, working incessantly for a pittance that barely sustained
existence, was the ultimatum that the search after the cause of cheap
prices arrived at in my world, but here it traveled from one bevy of
beautiful workwoman to another until it ended at the Laboratory where
Science sat throned, the grand, majestic, humane Queen of this thrice
happy land.

CHAPTER IX.

Whenever I inquired:

"From whence comes the heat that is so evenly distributed throughout the
dwellings and public buildings of Mizora?" they invariably pointed to
the river. I asked in astonishment:

"From water comes fire?"

And they answered: "Yes."

I had long before this time discovered that Mizora was a nation of very
wonderful people, individually and collectively; and as every revelation
of their genius occurr