neighborhood. However, this electric shock strips us of our bodies forever,
unless, like the watchman, we happen to be wearing the galoshes of
Fortune.
In a few seconds the watchman took in his stride the two hundred and
sixty thousand miles to the moon. As we know, this satellite is made of
much lighter material than the earth, and is as soft as freshly fallen snow.
The watchman landed in one of the numerous mountain rings which we all
know from Doctor Maedler's large map of the moon. Within the ring was a
great bowl, fully four miles deep. At the bottom of this bowl lay a town. We
may get some idea of what it looked like by pouring the white of an egg
into a glass of water. The town was made of stuff as soft as the egg
albumen, and its form was similar, with translucent towers, cupolas, and
terraces, all floating in thin air.
Over the watchman's head hung our earth, like a huge dull red ball.
Around him he noticed crowds of beings who doubtless corresponded to
men and women of the earth, but their appearance was quite different from
ours. They also had their own way of speaking, but no one could expect that
the soul of a watchman would understand them. Nevertheless he did
understand the language of the people in the moon very well. They were
disputing about our earth, and doubting whether it could be inhabited. The
air on the earth, they contended, must be too thick for any intelligent moon-
man to live there. Only the moon was inhabited, they agreed, for it was the
original sphere on which the people of the Old World lived.
Now let us go back down to East Street, to see how the watchman's body
was making out. Lifeless it lay, there on the steps. His morning star, that
spiked club which watchmen carry, had fallen from his hands, and his eyes
were turned toward the moon that his honest soul was exploring.
“What's the hour, watchman?” asked a passer-by. But never an answer
did he get. He gave the watchman a very slight tweak of the nose, and over
he toppled. There lay the body at full length, stretched on the pavement.
The man was dead. It gave the one who had tweaked him a terrible fright,
