remarkable, and
with a larger audience I do not doubt that it would make its mark as an
original production wrought out with thoughtful care and literary skill,
and take high rank.

Yours very truly,

Murat Halstead.

_Nov. 14th, 1889._

PART FIRST

CHAPTER I.

Having little knowledge of rhetorical art, and possessing but a limited
imagination, it is only a strong sense of the duty I owe to Science and
the progressive minds of the age, that induces me to come before the
public in the character of an author. True, I have only a simple
narration of facts to deal with, and am, therefore, not expected to
present artistic effects, and poetical imagery, nor any of those flights
of imagination that are the trial and test of genius.

Yet my task is not a light one. I may fail to satisfy my own mind that
the true merits of the wonderful and mysterious people I discovered,
have been justly described. I may fail to interest the public; which is
the one difficulty most likely to occur, and most to be regretted--not
for my own sake, but theirs. It is so hard to get human nature out of
the ruts it has moved in for ages. To tear away their present faith, is
like undermining their existence. Yet others who come after me will be
more aggressive than I. I have this consolation: whatever reception may
be given my narrative by the public, I know that it has been written
solely for its good. That wonderful civilization I met with in Mizora, I
may not be able to more than faintly shadow forth here, yet from it, the
present age may form some idea of that grand, that ideal life that is
possible for our remote posterity. Again and again has religious
enthusiasm pictured a life to be eliminated from the grossness and
imperfections of our material existence. The Spirit--the Mind--that
mental gift, by or through which we think, reason, and suffer, is by one
tragic and awful struggle to free itself from temporal blemishes and
difficulties, and become spiritual and perfect. Yet, who, sweeping the
limitless fields of space with a telescope, glancing at myriads of
worlds that a lifetime could not count, or gazing through a microscope
at a tiny world in a drop of water, has dreamed that patient Science
and practice could evolve for the living human race, the ideal life of
exalted knowledge: the life that I found in Mizora; that Science had
made real and practicab