Luxor, or perhaps the Himalayas? Pooh! pooh! my friend: suggest something
better; these are baubles to _them_; they see in other worlds, in their
own, far better toys of the same kind. These, take my word for it, are
nothing. Do you give it up? The finest thing, then, we have to show them
is a scaffold on the morning of execution. I assure you there is a strong
muster in those fair telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of those who
happen to find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a peep
at _us_. Telescopes look up in the market on that morning, and bear a
monstrous premium; for they cheat, probably, in those scientific worlds as
well as we do. How, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world
by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our newspapers,
whose language they have long since deciphered, that the poor victim in the
morning's sacrifice is a woman? How, if it be published on that distant
world that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many, the
garlands of martyrdom? How, if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the
widowed queen, coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the
morning air her head, turned gray prematurely by sorrow, daughter of Cæsars
kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death?
How, if it were the "martyred wife of Roland," uttering impassioned
truth--truth odious to the rulers of her country--with her expiring breath?
How, if it were the noble Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth,
that with the loveliest of persons, that with homage waiting upon her
smiles wherever she turned her face to scatter them--homage that followed
those smiles as surely as the carols of birds, after showers in spring,
follow the re-appearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills--yet
thought all these things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals in
comparison of deliverance from hell for her dear suffering France? Ah!
these were spectacles indeed for those sympathizing people in distant
worlds; and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves,
because they could not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the