Page:Alerielorvoyaget00lach.djvu/143

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A Martian Instructor.
121

land," he said, "for our winters are very cold. In our early state, ages and ages ago, we Martians used to have but one home, and when the snow came and the cold, we used to huddleup ourselves in our houses and cause artificial heat, and so spend the wretched winter. Hence have arisen our fire customs. Now, as science has progressed, every one, except those who live near the equator, has two homes, one in the northern and the other in the southern hemisphere, and also most have an electric ship and car; so, when the winter comes on, the family enter their ship, and float down to the port of the other home with all their goods, and so it is with each commune. The same friends gather together in the other hemisphere as here, and all home comforts are the same, with the same friends, the same community in the southern as in the northern hemisphere. There, then, we dwell till again autumn comes, when we go back again all together to the old home to find spring once more. We thus live now in constant spring and summer."

"You are like the migratory birds, it seems, of earth, which never stay for winter. Possibly, in ages to come, men may be like this, when modes of transit improve. The rich sometimes