"As the night settled down the light grew more intense, more beautiful.
I could discern the opalescent glasses in the houses sending out their
parti-colored rays, patching the trees with quilts of changing colors,
and far away there came, still unsubdued by the night, the continuous
elation of music.
"All night, all day, the choruses kept on with intermissions, but the
singers change. This musical facility is the mental or emotional
characteristic of the Martian. There is more in music than you
earthlings know or dream of. It is a part of the immortal fiber of men,
and in Mars it _creates_ matter, for the slow assumption of material
parts, as I have said, is propagated and accomplished by music, and the
parts thus made are the most perfect expression of matter the divine
form of man or woman can know, I think. They are tuned to health, to
beauty, to inspiration, but all of this you shall know.
"So I went down the steps into the city. I was with a group of spirits
who noticed me, and whom I noticed, but as yet the listless, strange,
doomed expression was on our faces, and though memory was beginning to
light its fires within us, though the transmission of viewless particles
of matter into our fluent bodies of spirit had begun, though mind and
desire were awakened, not a word passed our shining lips, and we moved
on in silence.
"The City of Light is often called in the Martian language also the City
of Occupation, for here the forming spirits work.
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