Page:Life in a thousand worlds.djvu/218

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CHAPTER XIV.

A World of Low Life.

WHEN one witnesses an exhibition he must, of necessity, look upon the poorer parts of it. This was my experience in my universal journey, for on some worlds which I visited I found that human civilization was at a low ebb. One of the most notable of this class is the world next beyond Dore-lyn.

This sphere is one thousand times as large as ours, and the beastly creatures that inhabit it are four times our size.

The toilers in the deep valleys of Mars are favorably intelligent compared with these specimens of humanity. For convenience, I will call this world Scum. Its people are so constituted that their two arms can be used as legs; so it is quite common to see these Scumites travel over their planet like the more graceful of our quadrupeds. Their walking, however, is principally after our fashion, and they can change about at pleas-

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