sured five feet and five inches in height, and
with the greatest effort I could not make my lungs receive more than two
hundred cubic inches of air. In my own country I had been called an
unusually robust girl, and knew, by comparison, that I had a much larger
and fuller chest than the average among women.

I noticed with greater surprise than anything else had excited in me,
the marked absence of men. I wandered about the magnificent building
without hindrance or surveillance. There was not a lock or bolt on any
door in it. I frequented a vast gallery filled with paintings and
statues of women, noble looking, beautiful women, but still--nothing but
women. The fact that they were all blondes, singular as it might appear,
did not so much impress me. Strangers came and went, but among the
multitude of faces I met, I never saw a man's.

In my own country I had been accustomed to regard man as a vital
necessity. He occupied all governmental offices, and was the arbitrator
of domestic life. It seemed, therefore, impossible to me for a country
or government to survive without his assistance and advice. Besides, it
was a country over which the heart of any man must yearn, however
insensible he might be to beauty or female loveliness. Wealth was
everywhere and abundant. The climate as delightful as the most
fastidious could desire. The products of the orchards and gardens
surpassed description. Bread came from the laboratory, and not from the
soil by the sweat of the brow. Toil was unknown; the toil that we know,
menial, degrading and harassing. Science had been the magician that had
done away all that. Science, so formidable and austere to our untutored
minds, had been gracious to these fair beings and opened the door to
nature's most occult secrets. The beauty of those women it is not in my
power to describe. The Greeks, in their highest art, never rivalled it,
for here was a beauty of mind that no art can represent. They enhanced
their physical charms with attractive costumes, often of extreme
elegance. They wore gems that flashed a fortune as they passed. The
rarest was of a pale rose color, translucent as the clearest water, and
of a brilliancy exceeding the finest diamond. Their voices, in song,
could only be equaled by a celestial choir. No dryad queen ever floated
through the leafy aisles of her forest with more grace than they
displayed in every movement. And all this was for feminine eyes
alone--and they of the most