I studied the social life of the refined villagers and learned, with much interest, that the word they use for soil, is used in the same esteemed connection in which we use the word gold or diamond.

Preachers, teachers and orators make endless references to the soil.  Finally I approached, in a visible form, a few professors who were engaged in a special discussion.

They were alarmed at my sudden appearance, not knowing whence I came nor what sort of an animal I might be.  I quickly calmed their troubled minds by using language they easily understood, and explained that I was neither a ghost nor a spirit, but a mere citizen of another world, having, for a limited period, a free excursion ticket to a thousand worlds, and that I chose their planet as one whereon to spend a fleeting period.

Not having been accustomed to such visitants, they were at first skeptical and thoroughly overawed at my presence.

I purposely became as familiar as possible and cautioned them to remain in the selfsame room and spread no notice of my presence.  To this request they reluctantly consented.

After my nonplused auditors gained their senses somewhat they ventured to reply to my coaxing questions; these finally led to the following interrogations on their part: 

“How large is your world?” came a question from one.

“Not quite so large as this one,” I replied.

“Have you much soil there?”

“A million times more than you have here.”

“What a wonderfully rich world!  The people must be gloriously happy with such fabulous wealth around them.”

“The bulk of my fellow-men there are not happy,” I sighed.  “So many spend their lives looking for diamonds and gold, the most of whom are doomed to disappointment.”

An incredulous smile crept over the faces of my newly-made friends, and by it I read the doubt that was arising in their hearts as to the truth of my utterance.

“My words are sincere,” I insisted.  “If you could take one bushel of your diamonds to the world where I live, you could get more soil for them than you have on your whole globe.”

“That world is heaven,” exclaimed a few of my hearers at once.  “A world of such abundant soil cannot be any other place.”  Then I learned that their conception of Heaven is not a place of gold-paved streets, but a place where soil is freely distributed even on the sides of the streets.

I continued speaking, telling them how diamonds were considered in our world.  These professors were astonished beyond measure at my description, and each one seemed to crave for the knowledge to transport a large consignment of their diamonds to our Earth and return with acres of soil to the Diamond World.

I spent a felicitous period with these queer-shaped scholars of the Diamond World.  They prayed and begged that I should remain and appear before the corporations.  Their spirits drooped when I told them that if I had any more time to spend visibly on their world I would prefer to comfort the laborers and their suffering families who had been so long deprived of the fair treatment they deserved.