" It is often asked in your intercourse with the world of spirits: What are the employments of spirits? what are they about ? what do they do ? etc. It is pertinent to inquire, What are the employments of the people of Mars still embodied ? What do they do since we have discovered that they do not now toil for the acquisition of riches, because they have no possible use for them; no taxes to pay, no governmental machinery to support, no lawyers to annoy, no preachers to vex, torture, and maintain, no doctors to nauseate with their drugs, no politicians to hoodwink the people and feed at the public crib, no grocery bills to look after and liquidate, etc. Before we answer these and many other important queries, we shall see what the people do for raiment with which to clothe themselves, and what they do for shelter, if, indeed, shelter is necessary. If we shall discover that these are free gifts from the father, then the employments of the embodied Marsians becomes a question of very interesting and pressing importance.

" May 4. I suspect that you already anticipate the tenor of what we have to tell you in regard to the clothing of the people of Mars, what texture, how derived, etc. Your keen perceptions and astute comprehension enables you to see at a glance that if this law of progression, as applied to the material, whereby the lowest forms are reached and operated upon, lifting with its strong arms into higher and still higher conditions, be true, it must be true and in regard to all material things—the soil, rock, wood, water, etc., animal and vegetable life, and as we shall have occasion to show further on, to the mundane atmosphere surrounding the planet. All things progress and advance in like and equal ratio, leaving nothing behind or unaffected by the law. This advancing march of matter from the crude and gross into the more refined and sublimated is seemingly slow, but nevertheless sure and unerringly, indiscriminate, and precise. Therefore the raiment worn by the denizens of Mars has reached the same altitude of refinement as all other material things.

"The seasons, once resembling yours, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, have nearly merged, that is to say, have nearly blended into one perpetual season of summer loveliness. The austerity of winter, with its stormy blasts and cold, piercing wind waves has long since ceased to be; no frosts to nip and blight the fruits and flowers; no chilling autumns, with withering leaf, to inspire with melancholy and sadness. What will surprise you in this connection is, that, while the cold temperature has wrought its work in the development of the past, and is only known to have once existed by historic relation, the intense heat of summer has also disappeared. When you have severely cold winters, almost unendurable even in your temperate zones, your wise philosophers theorize that your ultimate destiny is to freeze out; that the icebergs and ice glaziers of the north are ultimately either to roll over the now fair portions of the earth, destroying all things animate, or that their freezing breath will sweep over the globe involving in death all the fair and lovely forms of nature's productions, including godlike man, the apex of crowning glory of creation. But lo ! when the earth straightens up on her axis and the cold waves retreat and sink away in their northern hiding place, and the genial and vernal season with its pleasant temperature returns, these same philosophers take a breathing spell, rest awhile, and conclude that it has not been so very cold after all; and when the summer comes, if it happens to be unusual in the intensity of its heat, and the solar rays seem to almost melt into molten ruin all things, and to scorch the forest leaves and wilt the waving harvests, these same philosophical wiseacres change tactics, reverse their position, and with one heroic bound jump to a directly opposite conclusion, namely: that we are all destined ultimately to burn up and become annihilated in a general conflagration by solar heat igniting the combustible material of the planet and its surrounding atmosphere. Oh, how impotent in philosophy! A simple and humble inquiry settles the question. Why destroy this fair earth, daily and hourly becoming still fairer ? Does God do any thing without an all wise and beneficent purpose ? Is it possible for Him to do a silly, foolish thing? He would certainly not destroy the earth unless there was thereby some noble and beneficent purpose to subserve. What grand purpose, good and wise, can be accomplished by ending the existence of a planet that has as yet scarcely begun to live ? To assume that He will do such a thing is to assume that He has become disappointed and disgusted with his own creation, which annuls His wisdom and foresight, or that He delights in folly, making a world and then destroying it because He can, or for any other silly and insufficient reason. To thus assume is to dishonor Him as a God, and to invest Him with the attributes of a devil.

"Wonderful changes do occur marking epochs, or cycles, in the history of all planets. Where you live to-day, thousands upon thousands of years ago another race of human beings lived, attaining a certain degree of development in science and art, but upon the fulfillment of their mission they passed away from the face of the earth. Where you now live was once swept over by old ocean, and where the deep waters and angry billows of the Atlantic now roll and revel once lived a race of people called the Atlantians, but their land with its embellishments of art and progressive development became submerged by the changes of the mighty waters, and now lies buried beneath its rolling deep and lashing waves. But observe in all this that the globe goes on, and succeeding developments of man and material things come forth far in advance of the formed order of things. What, if in the womb of time it is reserved for Atlantis to arise from her watery entombment and to flourish again with renewed and increased grandeur, involving the submersion of other portions of the earth's surface, including your own ? This would not be death to any portion of the planet in any high and exalted sense, but a progressive change, a revivifying of life, a quickening and impulsion of being in the grand advancing march of development and sublimation. As we write, the theme expands and enlarges, and as the power begins to wane we find we have not discoursed minutely on the subject of raiment, and beg your indulgence for a resume of the subject in our next.