sed the chemical production of bread and a preparation resembling
meat. Agriculture in this wonderful land, was a lost art. No one that I
questioned had any knowledge of it. It had vanished in the dim past of
their barbarism. With the exception of vegetables and fruit, which were
raised in luscious perfection, their food came from the elements. A
famine among such enlightened people was impossible, and scarcity was
unknown. Food for the body and food for the mind were without price. It
was owing to this that poverty was unknown to them, as well as disease.
The absolute purity of all that they ate preserved an activity of vital
power long exceeding our span of life. The length of their year,
measured by the two seasons, was the same as ours, but the women who had
marked a hundred of them in their lifetime, looked younger and fresher,
and were more supple of limb than myself, yet I had barely passed my
twenty-second year.

I wrote out a careful description of the processes by which they
converted food out of the valueless elements--valueless because of their
abundance--and put it carefully away for use in my own country. There
drouth, or excessive rainfalls, produced scarcity, and sometimes famine.
The struggle of the poor was for food, to the exclusion of all other
interests. Many of them knew not what proper and health-giving
nourishment was. But here in Mizora, the daintiest morsels came from the
chemists laboratory, cheap as the earth under her feet.

I now began to enjoy the advantages of conversation, which added greatly
to my happiness and acquirements. I formed an intimate companionship
with the daughter of the Preceptress of the National College, and to her
was addressed the questions I asked about things that impressed me. She
was one of the most beautiful beings that it had been my lot to behold.
Her eyes were dark, almost the purplish blue of a pansy, and her hair
had a darker tinge than is common in Mizora, as if it had stolen the
golden edge of a ripe chestnut. Her beauty was a constant charm to me.

The National College contained a large and well filled gallery. Its
pictures and statuary were varied, not confined to historical portraits
and busts as was the one at the College of Experimental Science. Yet it
possessed a number of portraits of women exclusively of the blonde type.
Many of them were ideal in loveliness. This gallery also contained the
masterpieces of their most celebrated sculptors. They were