been worn and fixed for posterity by
bygone ages of ignorance and narrow-mindedness, it would require courage
and resolution, and more eloquence than I possessed, to persuade them
out of these trodden paths. To be considered the privileged class was an
active characteristic of human nature. Wealth, and the powerful grip
upon the people which the organizations of society and governments gave,
made it hereditary. Yet in this country, nothing was hereditary but the
prosperity and happiness of the whole people.

It was not a surprise to me that astronomy was an unknown science in
Mizora, as neither sun, moon, nor stars were visible there. "The moon's
pale beams" never afford material for a blank line in poetry; neither do
scientific discussions rage on the formation of Saturn's rings, or the
spots on the sun. They knew they occupied a hollow sphere, bounded North
and South by impassible oceans. Light was a property of the atmosphere.
A circle of burning mist shot forth long streamers of light from the
North, and a similar phenomena occurred in the South.

The recitation of my geography lesson would have astonished a pupil from
the outer world. They taught that a powerful current of electricity
existed in the upper regions of the atmosphere. It was the origin of
their atmospheric heat and light, and their change of seasons. The
latter appeared to me to coincide with those of the Arctic zone, in one
particular. The light of the sun during the Arctic summer is reflected
by the atmosphere, and produces that mellow, golden, rapturous light
that hangs like a veil of enchantment over the land of Mizora for six
months in the year. It was followed by six months of the shifting
iridescence of the Aurora Borealis.

As the display of the Aurora Borealis originated, and was most brilliant
at what appeared to me to be the terminus of the pole, I believed it was
caused by the meeting at that point of the two great electric currents
of the earth, the one on its surface, and the one known to the
inhabitants of Mizora. The heat produced by the meeting of two such
powerful currents of electricity is, undoubtedly, the cause of the open
Polar Sea. As the point of meeting is below the vision of the
inhabitants of the Arctic regions, they see only the reflection of the
Aurora. Its gorgeous, brilliant, indescribable splendor is known only to
the inhabitants of Mizora.

At the National College, where it is taught as a regular science, I
witnes