“I returned Chapman’s hearty salutation.  I yet retained the human speech of earth and I was struck with the miraculous incident that in the planet Mars, in a populous city, I was addressing a friend in the English tongue.

“But the joy of it was inexpressible.  Oh, the sweetness of old acquaintanceship in strange, and as here, impossible surroundings!  I gazed on him with unspeakable curiosity.  I talked to him just to hear my own voice and his in response, to realize if words were still words with the old meaning, if the intangible mutation I had undergone was a reality, if I was indeed alive, if my lungs and throat, the configuration of my mouth, the vocalic impact of the air, was a fact, a sound, a meaning, or whether it all was some phantasmagoria, beautiful and fair indeed, to be dispelled with a shock of annihilation.

“No! we were breathing, sensate things, were human kin and kind.  The sudden vertigo sent me throbbing, like a stricken animal, against the high pillars of the room we had entered, and a reflex tide of emotion swept over me in a storm that shook me with convulsive sobs.

“My companion handed me a black wafer.  I took it, it dissolved, a fierce acridity seemed formed in my mouth, and in an instant I felt strong and bold.

“The Registeries were offices in the alcove-like openings in the sides of this very long building.  In the same building were the Courts, which are few, and here the rooms for the reception and storage of supplies for the City.  The Hall of Registeries is prolonged into a series of huge buildings extending along the walls of the Canal.

“I was led by my unknown friend and Chapman to one of these recesses on which I recognized a globe of our earth with its continents in relief.  Here upon simple tables were spread great bound books made up of thick creamy leaves of white paper.  These were the Registers.  The original home, planet, world, or star, from which each emigrant spirit had departed was, as far as possible, determined, and appropriately recorded.  The details of their lives were inquired into, the condition and history of the sphere they had left examined, and thus by the revision and comparison of these narratives the history of the various worlds was in a fair way known, almost as accurately as their present inhabitants knew them.

“The alcoves of the Registeries were really ample rooms.  Cases holding voluminous records were ranged upon their walls; maps, charts, even paintings and drawings, as made by the arriving spirits hung upon the walls, and in broad albums were gathered the portraits, in small size, of the incarnated persons.  The Registeries were young men who, from long intercourse with the affairs and occupants of each of the different extra-Martian bodies, whence spirits came, had become familiar with their languages and circumstances and avocations.

“The keeping, indexing, compiling, illustration, of these extraordinary records is a difficult and inexhaustible task.