ba entered the room and made certain si

he added. "At worst they would only refuse you protection, and I could secure you from danger under my own roof, and in the last extremity effec

er. I bowed low to him, and then remained standing. My host, also saluting his visitor, at once took his seat. The Regent, returning the salute and seating h

e person you declare yourself to have rescued from assault

, Regent," said my

me, which I gave, and addres

r alleged size, so far exceeding anything hitherto known among us

foot taller and some ten inches larger round the waist tha

nderstood to mean that you descended from the sky, in a vesse

t or boundary of the atmospheric depths. I ascended from a world nearer to the Sun, and after

ur host or any members of his family; I shall be attended by one or more of my officers. In the meantime I am to inform you that, until my report has been received and considered, you are under the protection of the law, and need not apprehend any molestation of t

but sufficient fulfilment of the purpose for

y chamber, "is the meaning of the tit

all them, as we do inferior officials, by their name with the title appended. For instance, in the Court of the Sovereign our Regent would be called Endo Zampta. Men of a certain age and so

hat unusual favour. My daughter Eveena, who, like most of our women" (he laid a special emphasis on the pronoun) "has received a better education than is now given in the public academies, has been from the first greatly interested in your narrative and in all you have told us of the world from which you come. She is anxious to see your vessel,

e for a young lady to accompany

y by a husband that a girl can, as a rule, be attended abroad. Our usages render such attendance exceedingly close, and, on the other hand, forbid strangers to interrupt or take notice thereof. In Eveena's presen

t and any one who might accompany him would draw inference

as they will not to-morrow know anything save that she belongs to my household, and certainly will not speak to her-I do not see how their inference can affect her. When I part with her, it will be to some one of my own customs and opinions;

panion more agreeable than the official w

ledge-namely, to avoid betraying more than you can help of that which is not known outside my own household. But on this subject I m

te or difficulty among the children, and particularly in dealing with the half-deformed spoilt infant of which I have spoken. This evening that little brat was more than usually exasperating, and having exhausted the patience or repelled the company of all the rest, found itself alone, and set up a fretful, continuous scream, disagreeable even to me, and torturing to Martial ears, which, adapted to hear in that thin air, are painfully alive to strident, harsh, or even loud sounds. Instantly obeying a sign from her mother, Eveena rose in the

y find in any family like ours a child with so irritable a temper or a disposition so

, hardly underst

icially contrary to the manifest intention, or, as our philosophers would say, the common course of Nature. Those who think with me, therefore, always endeavour, when we hear in time of their approaching fate, to preserve children so doomed. Precautions against undue haste or readiness to destroy lives that might, after all, grow up to health and vigour are provided by law. No single physician or physiologist can sign a death-warrant; and I, though no longer a physician by craft, am among the arbiters, one or more

elfishness," I asked, "genera

e derived from an ancestry who for some hundred generations have certainly never cared for anything or any one but themselves. I thought I had explained to you by what train of circumstances and of reasoning family

meaning of your account. Nor even now do I understand how a society formed of such members can be held together. On Earth we should expect them either to tear one another to pieces, or to relapse into isolation and barbarism lower than that of the lowest tribe

he preservation of social co-operation and social order is very evident and very powerful. Experience and school discipline cure children of the habit of indulging mere temper and spite before they come to be men, and they are

to infants, or do you put out of the world adults whose life is

y benefit which might be derived from the legalised extinction of existences which had become a prolonged misery; and such cases, as I have told you, are very rare among us. A case of hopeless bodily suffering, not terminating very speedily in death, does not occur thrice a year among the whole population of the planet, except through accident. We have means of curing at the outset almost all of those diseases which the observance for hundreds of generations of sound physical conditions of life has not extirpated; and in the worst instances our an?sthetics seldom fail to extinguish the sense of pain without impairing intellect. Of course, any one who is tired of his life is at liberty to put an end to it, and any one else may assist him. But, th

life and prevail over instinct. But what is the most usual cause of de

ironical smile. "That is the chief fata

t is its

hen the materials supplying the electric current are exhausted; and yet here all the was

the sympto

ie out, till the patient cannot be provoked to rate a stupid amba or a negligent wife; finally, there is not energy to dress or undress, to rise up or sit down. Then the patient is allowed to die: if kept alive perforce, he would finally lack the energy to eat or even to breathe. And yet, all this time, the man is alive, the self is there; and I have prolonged life, or rather renewed it, for a time, by so