respond to this
extraordinary salutation, then--my mind still too bewildered properly to
grasp the situation--I mumbled something in English about my great
astonishment at hearing a language of Earth spoken from a distant world.

The sound of my voice seemed to cause the Martian some surprise, but
immediately his voice issued again in clear tones from the instrument.

"I greeted you in what I supposed was your native tongue," he said in
perfect English. "Although now we have but one composite language here,
over a thousand years ago we spoke in many languages, as the people of
your planet do at the present time.

"For more than six hundred years we have been able to observe the
progress of your planet," he went on, "through an instrument by which
light-waves are projected and received, and have found it to be
identical with ours of almost fifteen hundred years ago. By the placards
in the streets of your cities and towns, we discovered that you also
spoke in many tongues, and although the progress was necessarily slow,
our astronomers were, by this means, able to learn the principal
languages of Earth.

"Anxiously we have watched and waited for the discovery of an instrument
that would respond to our projected light-waves and reveal to you the
inhabitants of your neighboring planet. At last this momentous time has
arrived. I congratulate you upon bringing it about."

As he spoke, his voice, coming from the diaphragm of my instrument,
sounded as distinct as if he were in the room, and his image, depicted
life-size, made it hard to believe that he was more than a few feet
away. That my informant was, in reality, millions of miles away, my mind
absolutely refused to grasp.

A thousand questions to put to my Martian acquaintance rushed into my
mind, but alas, in supposing that I could not come in contact with Mars
on account of cloud obscurity, I had lost much of the precious time, and
now the waning light on my instrument warned me that the planet would,
in a few moments, pass out of range. We therefore hastily bade each
other adieu, promising to continue our conversation on the morrow, as
though we had parted at a street corner. The light now faded completely,
and the instrument, that a few moments previously had been animated with
such an exuberance of life and mystery, now stood before me wrapped in
profound darkness and silence.

How impossible, how inconceivable it all seemed! How the outside world
would scoff