“He stopped and leaned away from me, perusing my face with interest.  Words came to my lips, memory again asserted its triumphant declaration that I was the same being as had lived upon the earth, and with it the sudden turbulence of hope that she, your mother, whom we so often expected to regain, might, as I had, have reached this planet, too, and to me, renewed in youth, might come the glory and the joy of knowing her again.

“I turned to him and spoke:  ’Kind friend, I am yet dazed and stricken with the marvellousness of my being here.  It seems but a short time, a lapse of even a day, that I bade good-bye to my son on the death-bed in my home on earth.  I am too tormented with wonder to speak to you much.  I can tell all I know of myself in a little while.  But now as I grow stronger, tell me of this new world, and oh! give me, sir, food.  I feel the quickening fevers of appetite and desire.’

“The man arose and left the room.  In a few moments he returned followed by a boy and a young woman bearing a basket.  They spread a yellow cloth upon a small ivory table and set down two plates of the bright blue metal; upon one they placed a pile of small round cakes and on the other a number of red and yellow gourd shaped fruits.  At a signal from my companion I arose and sat at the table.

“He remained at the window and continued:  ’While you break your long fast, let me tell you what I know about this new world which will now be your home for a long time.  You will learn all, but I am not watching to-night.  In seeing you and hearing the familiar English speech I am moved myself by currents of retrospection; my earth home comes back to me.  I will satisfy your curiosity, and, you in turn, must tell me what has happened in the old home.’

“He paused; from the streets of the city rose a sacred song.  It came like a slowly increasing torrent of sound, soft and low, rising with impetuous fervor until it seemed to engulf us in its melodic tide.  Individual tones were heard in it, but its solidity and mass were most impressive.  I shook and trembled beneath the impact of its vibrations; in its surging glory of sound I became fully reincarnated.  I awoke naked and ashamed.  The man saw my confusion.  He hurried to a niche in the wall and handed me the tunic of the Martians with its girdle of blue cord and its cap and shoes of the blue metal exquisitely wrought and light.  I put them upon me and lifting the cakes and the mellow-soaked pears to my lips, listened.

“‘The Martians,’ he continued, ’are both a natural and supernatural race.  The natural race are largely prehistoric, though many yet exist; the supernatural race are made up of beings from other worlds and a great majority come up from the earth.  How reincarnation first began on Mars is unknown, though the natural people, the Dendas, have traditions about it, vague and contradictory.  It must have been slow.  The supernatural people thus brought to Mars have created its civilization, discovered the phosphori, and established Music, which is so much of their life, and accelerated in the way you have learned the process of materialization.