“Good!” cried Thorwald. “I am delighted to hear it. If anything could reconcile us to the loss of your society, it is the knowledge that you will both he glad messengers of hope to your promising race. I rejoice that I have had a share in the work of preparing you for your mission.
“And now, suppose we all humor your conceit and give you our parting words, as if the ship were at hand which was to sail the mighty void, and bear you safely to your distant home.
“Come, wife, friends, the day is young and the air delightful. There is nothing to hasten us on our way. Let us ride leisurely along and take a little time to speed these earth-dwellers on their prospective journey with a few words of cheer.
“Foedric, what advice have you to offer them before they take their leave of us?”
Foedric was modest, as we had learned before, but he entered into Thorwald’s plan with evident pleasure, and said, addressing the doctor and me:
“My friends from foreign skies, you do not need advice from me after you have been so long with Thorwald and Zenith, but I will send a message to your unfortunate fellow beings who have never had the pleasure of their acquaintance. When you have related your experiences and told them the condition in which you have found us, ask them to call us no longer Mars, but Pax, the world of peace. Our planet is red, but not with war. Its red is rather the blush of the dawn that ushers in the day of universal love. My word to men is to expect the advent of that day, and, expecting, to prepare for it. Useless, cruel, inhuman war must cease, with all strife and hatred and envy and bitter feeling; and then shall you begin to see the full measure of beauty in the song of the angels of which you have told us, and ‘Peace on earth’ will be a blessed fact and not a prophecy. Thorwald, I have finished.”
“You have spoken well, Foedric,” said Thorwald. “And now, what wise counsel will you give, Proctor?”
“From what I have learned in regard to the people of the earth,” replied Proctor, “it seems to me they will be obliged to have a great deal of war there yet—war against a world of evils, which must be driven out with a strong hand before they can have peace. When each individual has subdued his own spirit, then there will be no more war, and no other enemies to conquer.”
“Study the majesty and power of God as exhibited nightly in the starry sky, and learn to revere a being who holds in his hands a million worlds, and not only guides their movements but directs with a heart of love the minutest affairs of all their inhabitants. Look over the broad field of creation, and think of the earth, grand and beautiful as it is, as only one among the vast number of peopled orbs, all swinging in unison, parts of one plan, every one in its day sending forth a song of praise to its maker. So shall your hearts expand and burst the narrow bounds of selfish desire and trivial occupation, and you will begin to grow into the full stature of the sons of God.”
Proctor spoke with such feeling that the doctor and I now began to think that these people must be in earnest and were really preparing to send us home in some way, but the latter idea was, as will speedily be seen, an unjust suspicion.