“I wish,” I. said, “you could get him to order me a dozen roasted larks instead of the mere smell of them.  I should like to taste some solid food just for a change.”

He spoke to the doctor, and at a sign from him, our host took a gun and led me into his garden.

“Are those the kind of birds you mean?” he said, pointing to a great swarm of larks singing high up in the sky.

I replied that they were, and he shot at them, and thirty larks tumbled over at our feet, not merely dead, but plucked, seasoned, and roasted.

“You see,” said my host, “we mix with our gunpowder and shot a certain composition which cooks as well as kills.”

I picked up one of the birds and ate it.  In sober truth, I have never tasted on Earth anything so deliciously roasted.

When I had finished my repast, I was conducted to a little room, the floor of which was strewn with fine orange blossoms about three feet deep.  The Men of the Moon always sleep on these thick, soft heaps of fragrant flowers, which are chosen for them every day by their doctors.  Four servants came and undressed me, and gently rubbed my limbs and my body, and in a few moments I was fast asleep.

Early next morning I was awakened by the Man of the Sun, who said to me: 

“I know you are anxious to return to your Earth and relate the story of all the strange and wonderful things you have seen on the Moon.  If you care to while away an hour or two over this book, I will prepare for your return voyage.”

The book which he put into my hand was an extraordinary object.  It was a kind of machine, full of delicate springs, and it looked like a new kind of clock.  In order to read it, you had to use, not your eyes, but your ears.  For on touching one of the springs, it began to speak like a man.  It was a history of the Sun, and I was still listening to it when my companion arrived.

“I am now ready,” he said.  “On what part of the Earth would you like to land?”

“In Italy,” I replied.  “That will save me the cost and trouble of travelling to Rome—­a city I have always longed to see.”

Taking me in his arms, the Man of the Sun rose swiftly up from the Moon and carried me across the intervening space, and dropped me rather roughly on a hill near Rome.  When I turned to expostulate with him, I found that he had disappeared.

* * * * *

BJOERNSTJERNE BJOERNSON

Arne

Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson, one of the greatest Scandinavian writers, was born at Kvikne, in the wild region of the Dovre Mountains, Norway, Dec. 8, 1832.  His father was the village pastor.  Six years later the family removed to Naesset, on the west coast of Norway.  From the grammar school at Molde young Bjoernson went to the University of Christiania, and it was then that he began to write verses and newspaper articles.  At Upsala,