enchanting loveliness.

Among all the women that I met during my stay in Mizora--comprising a
period of fifteen years--I saw not one homely face or ungraceful form.
In my own land the voice of flattery had whispered in my ear praises of
face and figure, but I felt ill-formed and uncouth beside the perfect
symmetry and grace of these lovely beings. Their chief beauty appeared
in a mobility of expression. It was the divine fire of Thought that
illumined every feature, which, while gazing upon the Aphrodite of
Praxitiles, we must think was all that the matchless marble lacked.
Emotion passed over their features like ripples over a stream. Their
eyes were limpid wells of loveliness, where every impulse of their
natures were betrayed without reserve.

"It would be a paradise for man."

I made this observation to myself, and as secretly would I propound the
question:

"Why is he not here in lordly possession?"

In _my_ world man was regarded, or he had made himself regarded, as a
superior being. He had constituted himself the Government, the Law,
Judge, Jury and Executioner. He doled out reward or punishment as his
conscience or judgment dictated. He was active and belligerent always in
obtaining and keeping every good thing for himself. He was
indispensable. Yet here was a nation of fair, exceedingly fair women
doing without him, and practising the arts and sciences far beyond the
imagined pale of human knowledge and skill.

Of their progress in science I will give some accounts hereafter.

It is impossible to describe the feeling that took possession of me as
months rolled by, and I saw the active employments of a prosperous
people move smoothly and quietly along in the absence of masculine
intelligence and wisdom. Cut off from all inquiry by my ignorance of
their language, the singular absence of the male sex began to prey upon
my imagination as a mystery. The more so after visiting a town at some
distance, composed exclusively of schools and colleges for the youth of
the country. Here I saw hundreds of children--_and all of them were
girls_. Is it to be wondered at that the first inquiry I made, was:

"Where are the men?"

CHAPTER IV.

To facilitate my progress in the language of Mizora I was sent to their
National College. It was the greatest favor they could have conferred
upon me, as it opened to me a wide field of knowledge. Their educational
system was a peculiar one, and, as it was the chief inte