it. What struck me at once was the deadness of everything I looked upon.
Dead, uniform color of surface and surrounding atmosphere. Dead
complexion of all the inhabitants. Dead-looking trees, dead-looking
grass, no flowers to be seen anywhere.

"What is the meaning of all this?" I said to my guide.

She smiled good-naturedly, and replied, "It is a forlorn home for
anything above a lichen or a toadstool; but that is no wonder, when you
know what the air is which they breathe. It is pure nitrogen."

The Professor spoke up. "That can't be, madam," he said. "The
spectroscope shows the atmosphere of Saturn to be--no matter, I have
forgotten what; but it was not pure nitrogen, at any rate."

Number Five is never disconcerted. "Will you tell me," she said, "where
you have found any account of the bands and lines in the spectrum of
dream-nitrogen? I should be so pleased to become acquainted with them."

The Professor winced a little, and asked Delilah, the handmaiden, to pass
a plate of muffins to him. The dream had carried him away, and he
thought for the moment that he was listening to a scientific paper.

Of course, my companion went on to say, the bodily constitution of the
Saturnians is wholly different from that of air-breathing, that is
oxygen-breathing, human beings. They are the dullest, slowest, most
torpid of mortal creatures.

All this is not to be wondered at when you remember the inert
characteristics of nitrogen. There are in some localities natural