"'Chapman,' I began, 'you must feel that I have a great deal to ask you.
This new life, with its surprises and the strange incidents of the two
or three days I have already lived here have suggested so many
questions, can we not now talk about these marvels?'
"'Certainly,' replied Chapman, as he lifted a glass of delicate pearl
pink, filled with the pungent and keenly stimulating _Ridinda_, to his
lips. 'Put on your thinking cap, and perforate me with all the puzzles
you can think of. I am a trifle rattled myself in this new ranch--have
not been here long--but I tell you, Dodd, Mars is first class. It suits
me. Never enjoyed living so much, never found it so much a matter of
course, and as to livelihood, when I think of those freezing nights on
the earth in Rutherford's cheesebox shooting at the moon with wet
plates, I can tell you this sort of thing isn't a long call from all I
ever hoped to find in Heaven. Open your batteries. To-morrow will be
full of sight-seeing, and I guess you will forget all you want to know
to-day in trying to remember what you will see then.' He took another
sip of the snapping liquid, drew his chair closer to my own, and while a
sort of musical echo lingered in the air, I began:
"'Chapman, where on Mars are we? I seem to feel neither heat nor cold. I
see these flowers, the palms in the Garden of the Fountains, day passes
into night, and there is no very apparent change of temperature, so far
as feeling goes.
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