"No, none; a rule once given is always preserved. In the old languages corruptions and exceptions did exist, in the new none."
As soon as we could thus converse together easily, my instructor asked me many thousands of questions about my world, and also (when he learnt I had been on Earth) about yours. He seemed of a most inquisitive mind, and anxious to learn all I could teach him about our worlds. It seemed that the first elements of astronomy were as well understood by him, as by your best astronomers. Observations had been systematically carried on for ages, and instruments had been perfected. The Martians evidently wished, as far as they could, mentally to soar above the little world to which they had been bound, and on which they lived. They had measured the distances of their sister worlds from their own, and from the mighty Sun; they had examined their elements in the spectroscope, they had watched their movements.
I asked him once about the history of his world, and what was its past.
"There was a time," he said, "when war raged in our world most terribly. Each of our four great continents were separate nations. Each struggled for supremacy. Each strove
