You know how certain kinds of music will beat everything out of your consciousness except a wild delirium of joy; how love of a woman will take up every cranny of space in your being,—and fill the universe beside,—so that people who are not en rapport with the strains that delight you, or with the beauty that enthralls you, seem pitiable creatures, not in touch with the Divine Harmony, with Supreme Loveliness.
So it was with me, when I set my feet on Mars! My soul leaped to its highest altitude and I had but one vast thought,—“I have triumphed; I am here! And I am alone; Earth is unconscious of the glory that is mine!”
I shall not weary you with an account of my voyage, since you are more interested in the story of my sojourn on the red planet than in the manner of my getting there.
It is not literally red, by the way; that which makes it appear so at this distance is its atmosphere,—its “sky,”—which is of a soft roseate color, instead of being blue like ours. It is as beautiful as a blush.
I will just say, that the time consumed in making the journey was incredibly brief. Having launched my aeroplane on the current of attraction which flows uninterruptedly between this world and that, traveling was as swift as thought. My impression is that my speed was constantly accelerated until I neared my journey’s end, when the planet’s pink envelope interposed its soft resistance to prevent a destructive landing.
I settled down as gently as a dove alights, and the sensation was the most ecstatic I have ever experienced.
When I could distinguish trees, flowers, green fields, streams of water, and people moving about in the streets of a beautiful city, it was as if some hitherto unsuspected chambers of my soul were flung open to let in new tides of feeling.
My coming had been discovered. A college of astronomers in an observatory which stands on an elevation just outside the city, had their great telescope directed toward the Earth,—just as our telescopes were directed to Mars at that time,—and they saw me and made me out when I was yet a great way off. ( )