Our life in this cultured home continued to be as pleasant as were these first days. There was always something new to show us or to tell us. We would walk out every day and often step into a carriage and take a long ride. Our friends were famous walkers but were considerate of our feebleness, and still our returning strength, added to the great buoyancy of our bodies on that smaller planet, soon gave us also remarkable walking powers.
Sometimes the children would accompany us on an all-day excursion, and then the house would be left not only unlocked, but with the doors wide open perhaps. When we remarked on this, Zenith told us that if anyone happened along he would be at perfect liberty to go in and help himself to anything in the house. This was always understood, whether the people were at home or not, and one need not even go through the formality of asking, if he could see what he wanted. This referred not merely to bodily refreshment, of which one might be in need, but literally to everything the house contained; and the reason why there was any sort of comfort living under such conditions was, that the members of that society were all and severally of such ripe characters that it was well known one would not deprive another of anything he was using except for a reason which would be satisfactory to both.
“If we could communicate with the people on the earth,” said the doctor to me when we sat alone conversing about these things, “and tell them how the inhabitants here live, they would want to organize an expedition and start for Mars right away.”
“Yes, I think they would,” I assented. “And yet, if what Thorwald says is true, the earth will one day be as good as Mars. Do you believe it?”
“Well, the fact is,” answered the doctor, “I am ready to believe almost anything now.”
“Oh, I wish Thorwald could hear you say that.”
“I should not object,” he continued. “I am sure that some power, not comprehended by our science or philosophy, has operated here to bring these people to the condition in which we find them, and if the same kind forces are at work on the earth, let us hope they will do as much for us, no matter how much time it takes. If a belief in such a power is faith, then perhaps I am beginning to have a little faith.
“I remember I used to hear our preachers in their public prayers ask God that every form of vice and crime might be banished from the earth, and that the time might come when there should be no more sin, but only love and beauty and happiness. I have heard such prayers a hundred times, and never thought much about them. But now I am forced to think, and it seems to me that these prayers would not be made continually unless there were a hope and expectation in the minds of religious people that they would some time be answered. It is not for me to assume that such a hope is unreasonable, drawn as it is from the book which so many believe is the word of God.”
I rejoiced to hear my friend talk in this way, but it seemed very odd that he should be preaching my own doctrine to me. I had had the same thoughts, and had been trying to find the right time to offer them to the doctor. I am sure I was thankful that he was coming to such views without a word from me, for he would probably be much more apt to hold to them.
The foregoing conversation was in the evening, and the next morning we were all sitting comfortably in the music room, when Thorwald said: