and
appreciation of delicate harmonies in color is evidence of a superior
and refined mentality. If you will notice it, the illiterate of your
own land have no taste for or idea of the harmony of color. It is the
same with sound. The higher we rise in culture, the more difficult we
are to please in music. Our taste becomes critical."

I had been revolving some things in my mind while the Preceptress was
speaking, and I now ventured to express them. I said:

"You tell me that generations will come and go before a marked change
can occur in a people. What good then would it do me or mine to study
and labor and investigate in or to teach my people how to improve? They
can not comprehend progress. They have not learned by contact, as I have
in Mizora, how to appreciate it. I should only waste life and happiness
in trying to persuade them to get out of the ruts they have traveled so
long; they think there are no other roads. I should be reviled, and
perhaps persecuted. My doctrines would be called visionary and
impracticable. I think I had better use my knowledge for my own kindred,
and let the rest of the world find out the best way it can."

The Preceptress looked at me with mild severity. I never before had seen
so near an approach to rebuke in her grand eyes.

"What a barbarous, barbarous idea!" she exclaimed. "Your country will
never rise above its ignorance and degradation, until out of its mental
agony shall be evolved a nature kindled with an ambition that burns for
Humanity instead of self. It will be the nucleus round which will gather
the timid but anxious, and _then_ will be lighted that fire which no
waters can quench. It burns for the liberty of thought. Let human nature
once feel the warmth of its beacon fires, and it will march onward,
defying all obstacles, braving all perils till it be won. Human nature
is ever reaching for the unattained. It is that little spark within us
that has an undying life. When we can no longer use it, it flies
elsewhere."

CHAPTER V.

I had long contemplated a trip to the extreme southern boundary of
Mizora. I had often inquired about it, and had always been answered that
it was defined by an impassable ocean. I had asked them to describe it
to me, for the Mizora people have a happy faculty of employing tersely
expressive language when necessary; but I was always met with the
surprising answer that no tongue in Mizora was eloquent enough to
portray the wonders that