be easily traced.

"Dear me?" exclaimed _Mr. Punch_. "Why, I declare if there is not
something written upon it!" and he put up his binoculars, "Why, it is
nothing more nor less than a big advertisement. Looks like humbug," he
continued. "What's the name of the Planet, eh?"

"Mercury," replied Father TIME, with cheery spirit; "and with that
device they try to catch the eye of a passing Comet."

"Hum--they won't catch me!" observed the Sage, brightly. "I brought
my truth-compeller with me--a little, patent, electrical hypnotic
arrangement, in the shape of this ring"--he showed it as he spoke. "I
have only to turn it on my finger, and it obliges anyone who may be
addressing me instantly to speak the truth."

They suddenly found themselves deposited in the centre of a vast
square, surrounded by large palatial-looking buildings, public
offices, stores, shops, picture-galleries, gigantic blocks of
private residences, in flats five-and-twenty storeys high, and
other architectural developments of the latest constructive crazes,
fashioned, apparently, after the same models, and on similar lines,
to those at present so much in vogue in that now distant planet, the
Earth. There was a profusion of advertisement-boards, these, in many
instances, entirely covering the whole façade of the building with
large-lettered announcements of the nature of the trade or business
conducted within. An eager and excited crowd thronging the pavements,
and hustling each other, without any apparent purpose or aim, was
pushing in all directions.