It struck me that, in spite of their boast that they have no paupers, no
thieves, no money, they were a melancholy-looking set of beings.

"What are their amusements?" I asked.

"Intoxication and suicide are their chief recreations. They have a way
of mixing the oxygen which issues in small jets from certain natural
springs with their atmospheric nitrogen in the proportion of about twenty
per cent, which makes very nearly the same thing as the air of your
planet. But to the Saturnians the mixture is highly intoxicating, and is
therefore a relief to the monotony of their every-day life. This mixture
is greatly sought after, but hard to obtain, as the sources of oxygen are
few and scanty. It shortens the lives of those who have recourse to it;
but if it takes too long, they have other ways of escaping from a life
which cuts and dries everything for its miserable subjects, defeats all
the natural instincts, confounds all individual characteristics, and
makes existence such a colossal bore, as your worldly people say, that
self-destruction becomes a luxury."

Number Five stopped here.

Your imaginary wholesale Shakerdom is all very fine, said I. Your
Utopia, your New Atlantis, and the rest are pretty to look at. But your
philosophers are treating the world of living souls as if they were, each
of them, playing a game of solitaire,--all the pegs and all the holes
alike. Life is a very different sort of game. It is a game of chess,
and not of solitaire, nor even of checkers. The men are not all pawns,
but you have your knights, bishops, rooks,--yes, your king and queen,--to
be provided for. Not with these names, of course, but all looking for
their proper places, and having their own laws and modes of action. You