E-text prepared by David Starner, Edna Badalian, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
by
Reprint of the 1898 ed. published by J. W. Arrowsmith
Bristol, Eng.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE INVISIBLE AUTHOR.
(From a Negative by THE SPECTROSCOPIC Co.)]
Translated from the Artesian of H. G. Pozzuoli
Author of The Treadmill, The Isthmus of Dr. Day, The Vanishing
Lady, etc., etc.
by
"Not novels and poetry swipes, but ideas, science, books"The Artilleryman
[Illustration: Arrowsmith colophon]
The Coming of the Wenuses.
The Coming of the Wenuses.
* * * * *
No one would have believed in the first years of the twentieth centurythat men and modistes on this planet were being watched by intelligencesgreater than woman's and yet as ambitious as her own. With infinitecomplacency maids and matrons went to and fro over London, serene in theassurance of their empire over man. It is possible that the mysticetusdoes the same. Not one of them gave a thought to Wenus as a source ofdanger, or thought of it only to dismiss the idea of active rivalry uponit as impossible or improbable. Yet across the gulf of space astralwomen, with eyes that are to the eyes of English women as diamonds areto boot-buttons, astral women, with hearts vast and warm andsympathetic, were regarding Butterick's with envy, Peter Robinson's withjealousy, and Whiteley's with insatiable yearning, and slowly and surelymaturing their plans for a grand inter-stellar campaign.
The pale pink planet Wenus, as I need hardly inform the sober reader,revolves round the sun at a mean distance of [character: Venus sigil]vermillion miles. More than that, as has been proved by the recentobservations of Puits of Paris, its orbit is steadily but surelyadvancing sunward. That is to say, it is rapidly becoming too hot forclothes to be worn at all; and this, to the Wenuses, was so alarming aprospect that the immediate problem of life became the discovery of newquart