wn to the outside world.

The standard of an ordinary education was to me astonishingly high. The
reason for it was easily understood when informed that the only
aristocracy of the country was that of intellect. Scholars, artists,
scientists, literateurs, all those excelling in intellectual gifts or
attainments, were alone regarded as superiors by the masses.

In all the houses that I had visited I had never seen a portrait hung in
a room thrown open to visitors. On inquiry, I was informed that it was a
lack of taste to make a portrait conspicuous.

"You meet faces at all times," said my informant, "but you cannot at all
times have a variety of scenery before you. How monotonous it would be
with a drawing-room full of women, and the walls filled with their
painted representatives. We never do it."

"Then where do you keep your family portraits?"

"Ours is in a gallery upstairs."

I requested to be shown this, and was conducted to a very long apartment
on the third floor, devoted exclusively to relics and portraits of
family ancestry. There were over three thousand portraits of blond
women, which my hostess' daughter informed me represented her
grandmothers for ages back. Not one word did she say about her
grandfathers.

I may mention here that no word existed in their dictionaries that was
equivalent to the word "man." I had made myself acquainted with this
fact as soon as I had acquired sufficient knowledge of their language.
My astonishment at it cannot be described. It was a mystery that became
more and more perplexing. Never in the closest intimacy that I could
secure could I obtain the slightest clue, the least suggestion relating
to the presence of man. My friend's infant, scarcely two years old,
prattled of everything but a father.

I cannot explain a certain impressive dignity about the women of Mizora
that, in spite of their amiability and winning gentleness, forbade a
close questioning into private affairs. My hostess never spoke of her
business. It would have been a breach of etiquette to have questioned
her about it. I could not bring myself to intrude the question of the
marked absence of men, when not the slightest allusion was ever made to
them by any citizen.

So time passed on, confirming my high opinion of them, and yet I knew
and felt and believed that some strange and incomprehensible mystery
surrounded them, and when I had abandoned all hope of a solution to it,
it solved itself in the mo