[15] Brick & Clay Magazine, Feb. 1947 issue, p. 29.
[16] Reno Evening Gazette, Dec. 30, 1947.
[17] Reprinted by special permission from the April Ladies' Home Journal, copyright 1947, The Curtis Publishing Co., p. 40 and p. 113.
CHAPTER IV
Old Age Dependents
For more than a month the Lieutenant was absent from his parkway bench, but he corresponded with me from different cities. One day, after his return, I met him by appointment at the usual place. I found him dejected.
Greeting me, he said, "I am sorry for this delay. I tried to persuade my local board to change my classification. I wanted to get back into the service, but they refused me. I went to Washington. There I am classified as harmless but incurably insane, and my request was refused.
"Since then I have been traveling from city to city, observing our manner of living from a different perspective. Prior to my trip to Mars, my attitude toward the misery of life here was the same as that of all us Earth people, apathetic, or calloused, stone-hearted. I looked upon misery without pity, accepting it as a matter of course and feeling fortunate that I was better off. I am now intensely suffering an extreme living change contrast reaction, of our world against the one on Mars, and I can't adapt myself to our conditions.
"I cannot help comparing our shameful existence here with the happy way of living on Mars. I am sad and miserable when I see and read here everywhere, every day, of the unhappy existence of our fellow man." Then he handed me his diary with the notes he had entered while roaming around in our eastern cities.
"One day on the sidewalk of a busy shopping district, in front of a large store in one of the cities, a legless man sitting on a platform about six inches above the sidewalk level was propelling himself with one hand and holding a rope leading to a small monkey with the other. He was trying to sell shoelaces and pencils, which he carried in a cigar box on his platform. Passersby were handing their contribution to the monkey without taking his merchandise.