Some of the more educated, seeing that I was peacefully inclined, ventured close to my knees and then looked the more intently into my face, all of which was agreeable, as it enabled me to get a still closer view of their faces.

I saw that the whole city was turning out, and I wondered how the alarm could have been given so speedily.  Upon inquiry, a fine artist at my side tremblingly explained that the Bizen wires had been touched for block six.  This meant that every house in the city had received notice of an unusual occurrence in that section.  I resolved to learn more of this system and how it was operated without the aid of electricity.

Now I was besieged by a pressing host.  At once I commenced to speak in Moon dialect.  I told them whence I came, pointing to the large wagon-wheel that hung in their heavens.  After a short discourse, I invited questions.

One of their leaders stepped nearer to me and acted as the spokesman of the crowd.  His language and voice were of excellent quality and although visibly agitated, he bore himself with commendable dignity.  Let me here translate our conversation into English.

“How came you here?” asked he.

“That I cannot explain.”

“Did you walk or run?”

“I did neither.”

Surrendering this line of inquiry, he went on to ask the following questions: 

“Are there more creatures than you where you came from?”

“Large cities full of them.”

“Are they smaller than you?”

“Their average height equals mine.”

“It must be a ponderous world of immense giants beyond the comprehension of any inhabitant of our whole globe.”

“But just as I appear large to you, you appear unnaturally small to me,” I calmly added.

“How came that lump in the middle of your face?”

I knew the questioner referred to my nose.  I took a good wholesome laugh, and the large concourse of people watched my wrinkling face with strange delight.  The Moonites express all their emotions by exclamations and almost infinite variations of the lower lip in conjunction with their three eyes.

I told the spokesman that the lump on my face was called “nose,” using our pronunciation, and that it grew there by nature and not by accident.  I also informed him that each person in our world had such a nose, at which much merriment ensued.  Lips twitched and quivered, as their eyes blinked and rolled.  It seemed to me like a hideous way to laugh, but no doubt my nose seemed just as hideous to them.

Then I explained all about our dense atmosphere, the part that air played in our life, and what a fine convenience the nose is during eating and speaking.  Of course all this was unintelligible to them.