"How long will the earth continue fit for life?"
"Perhaps five or ten million years. The entire solar system is gradually losing its internal heat, and must inevitably die of sheer inanition. The time is coming when the sun will drift through space, a black star in the midst of dead worlds. Perhaps the system will fall together, perhaps it will run against a star. In either case there would probably be a 'new heaven and a new earth.'"
"Born like a phoenix from the ashes of the old," said I, feeling the justice of the well-worn simile.
"I daresay the process goes on to all eternity."
The sublime idea, with its prospect of the infinite, held us for a time in silence. At length my thoughts reverted to the original question which had been forgotten.
"Now, whether should I go to Mars or Venus?" I enquired, fixing my eyes on these planets and trying to estimate their relative distances from the earth.
Gazen made a mental computation, and replied with decision,
"All right," I responded. "Venus let it be."
I was playing a game of chess with an old acquaintance, Viscount ----, after dinner, one evening, in the luxurious smoking-room of a fashionable club in the West End of London.
Having got his queen into a very tight corner, I sipped a glass of wine, lit a Turkish cigarette, and leaned back in my chair with an agreeable sense of triumph.
My companion, on the other hand, puffed rapidly at his cigar, and took a long drink of hot whiskey and water, then fixed his attention on the board, and stroked his beard with an air of the deepest gravity. Had you only seen his face at that moment you would have supposed that all the care of a mighty empire weighed upon his shoulders. The countenance of a grand vizier, engaged in considering an ultimatum of Lord Salisbury, were frivolous in comparison. There is little doubt that if Lord ---- had applied to the serious business of life as much earnest deliberation as he gave to the movement of a pawn, he would have made a very different figure in Society. But having been born without any effort of his own to all that most men covet--rank, wealth, and title--he showed a rare spirit of contentment, and did his best to make the world happier by enjoying himself.