"I awoke when the Martian dawn was coming on. Slumber had given me the
last reassurance of identity of body, and I awoke with a delightful
sense of health and youth. I stood at the wide window near my bed and
gazed out upon the yet luminous City of Occupation. The picture was of
surprising strangeness and beauty. Far off, until melting into the
encroaching edges of an outer blackness, the City extended its folds and
surfaces of light. The streets were empty, the music of the Chorus Halls
stilled. Here and there, a spirit was moving slowly through the streets,
a half-made Martian; a breeze soft and salubrious stirred the thickly
leaved trees and the firmament shone with the larger stars, beginning to
pale before the rising sun. As the sun rose higher, the effulgence of
the City died away, the light of the same great orb which brings the
dawn to you, covered with its rays the white and glorious City, the
music seemed again revived, and from the doorways of the houses I could
see forms issuing, while far off the Hill of the Phosphori raised its
glass domes in the air, where the homogeneous tide of spirit was
undergoing differentiation, as we might say, into separate cognizable,
discreet beings. An unspeakable delight filled me. I felt the power of
mind and with it the radiant energy of manhood."
No more words came. The message ended. Not a motion or sound succeeded
this wonderful trans-abysmal dispatch.
Well, here, at last, was the long expected, impossible, amazing reality.
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