It was a long journey in miles, though not in time, we traveled like the wind.
Both Clytia and Calypso were at the station to meet me, with their two children, Freya and Eurydice. I learned that nearly all Caskians are named after the planetoids or other heavenly bodies,--a very appropriate thing, since they live so near the stars!
My heart went out to the children the moment my eyes fell upon their faces.
They were as beautiful as Raphael's cherubs, you could not look upon them without thrills of delight. They were two perfect buds of the highest development humanity has ever attained to,--so far as we know. I felt that it was a wonderful thing to know that in these lovely forms there lurked no germs of evil, over their sweet heads there hung no Adam's curse! They were seated in a pretty pony carriage, with a white canopy top lined with blue silk. Freya held the lines. It appeared that Eurydice had driven down and he was to drive back. The father and mother were on foot. They explained that it was difficult to drive anything but the little carriage up the steep path to their home on the hillside, half a mile distant.
"Who would wish for any other means of locomotion than nature has given him, in a country where the buoyant air makes walking a luxury!" I cried, stretching my legs and filling my lungs, with an unwonted sense of freedom and power.
I had become accustomed to the atmosphere of Paleveria, but here I had the same sensations I had experienced when I first landed there.
"If you would rather, you may take my place, sir?" said the not much more than knee-high Freya, ready to relinquish the lines. I felt disposed to laugh, but not so the wise parents.
"The little ponies could not draw our friend up the hill, he is too heavy," explained Clytia.
"Thank you, my little man, all the same!" I added.
It was midsummer in Paleveria, but here I observed everything had the newness and delightful freshness of spring. A busy, bustling, joyous, tuneful spring. The grass was green and succulent; the sap was in the trees and their bark was sleek and glossy, their leaves just unrolled. Of the wild fruit trees, every branch and twig was loaded with eager buds crowding upon each other as the heads of children crowd at a cottage window when one goes by. Every thicket was full of bird life and music. I heard the roar of a waterfall in the distance, and Calypso told me that a mighty river, the Eudosa, gathered from a hundred mountain streams, was compressed into a deep gorge or canyon and fell in a succession of cataracts just below the city, and finally spread out into a lovely lake, which was a wonder in its way, being many fathoms deep and as transparent as the atmosphere.