The extraordinary character of the story here published, which some peculiar circumstances have fortunately, I think, put into my hands, will excite a curiosity as vivid as the incidents of the narratives are themselves astonishing and unprecedented. To satisfy, as far as I can, a few natural inquiries which must be elicited by its publication, I beg to explain how this unusual posthumous paper came into my possession. It was written by Bradford Torrey Dodd, who died at Christ Church, New Zealan

In the confusion of thought about a future life, the peculiar facts related in the following pages can certainly be regarded as helpful. Spiritualism, with its morbid tendencies, its infatuation and deceit, has not been of any substantial value in this inquiry. It may afford to those who have experienced any positive visitation from another world a very comforting and indisputable proof. To most sane people it is a humiliating and ludicrous vagary. At the conclusion of a life spent rather dilige

As I now know there is a Martian language, if this communication came from that planet, which was my own and my father's deepest conviction, it would be impossible to interpret the foregoing record with any certainty, or indeed, in any way. Absolute ignorance of that language, except the brief mention in my father's communications, received by myself from that body—whose publication before I die is the sole purpose of this manuscript—make it quite certain that it is in the main a vowel language,

"My son," it began, "I am indeed in the red orb of light we have so often looked up to when we were together on the earth, and about which our wondering minds hazarded so many fruitless guesses. I have been here a short time, and now am able to return to you, by that cipher we so fortunately printed upon the tablet of memory, word of my existence. "I can hardly describe to you my occurrence on this planet. I found myself here without any recollection of whence I had come, without a traceable tho

Again for weeks I watched the station. My assistants relieved me, and amongst them was now included Miss Dodan. It was only a few days after the Dodans found me at the register, absorbed in receiving my father's message, that Miss Dodan called. She ran toward me at the open door of the station, her face fixed in an anxious expression of half-alarmed expectation. "Did you really, Mr. Dodd, hear anything? Is it true that something came from your father. Oh, tell me, can it be possible?" I took her

"It was afternoon when Chapman and I, fully equipped and provisioned, moved off from the long granite pier at the Registeries, after an affectionate parting from my guide and friend, who returned sorrowfully to resume his watch for his son, whose coming to Mars seemed to him so assured. "How wonderfully strange and exciting it all seemed! Down the crowded canal we slowly moved, amidst the calling crews, the pleasant cheers, and beckonings of sightseers; and back of us rose on its hills the City

Miss Dodan came more and more frequently to see me. The thought of my physical depression, the revulsion of hopelessness over my changing lineaments made the love I bore her more painful and enervating. I tried hard to conceal my fears over my condition. But Miss Dodan had been observant. Her developing affections became daily more tender and delicate, and her solicitude evinced itself in many charming, thoughtful ways that added only a more poignant sadness to my sufferings. I was, indeed, tort

Many of the first astronomers who studied Mars with the telescope had noted on the outline of its disk two brilliant white spots of rounded form and of variable size. In process of time it was observed that while the ordinary spots upon Mars were displaced rapidly in consequence of its daily rotation, changing in a few hours both their position and their perspective, the two white spots remained sensibly motionless at their posts. It was concluded rightly from this that they must occupy the pole