Their threatened loss comes like
the loss of an old friend; a distant friend whose face one has almost
forgotten and never hopes to see again, from whom one never hopes to
borrow, and to whom one never expects to lend, but who all the more
lives in the mind a remote, impersonal, and gentle influence. I am not
ashamed to admit that I have learned to care more for the Martian
canals than for any canals much closer to us. The Panama Canal will
probably cut in two the distance to China, and give us a monopoly of the
cotton goods trade in the Pacific; but I think cotton goods are
unhealthful, and I don't want to go to China. The Suez Canal may be the
mainstay of the British Empire, but I have no doubt that it would make
just as satisfactory a mainstay for some other empire. My interest in
the Erie Canal is connected entirely with the fact that when it was
opened somebody said, "What hath God wrought!" or "There is no more
North and no more South"--I have forgotten which.
I have always had a softer spot in my heart for the inhabitants of Mars
than for any other alien people. They have always impressed me as more
unassuming than the English, fonder of outdoor exercise than the
Germans, and less addicted to garrulity than the French.
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