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A bevy of ghosts sat gloomily around the edges of an extinct volcano's crater, on an undiscovered asteroid. One of them, an old man in form, with long white beard and a bald head that shone like a will-o'-the-wisp, sadly shook the will-o'-the-wisp from side to side and grumbled thus:

"I wish I could die a real death instead of a ghost of one. Soon there will be no place for us to go to. Hardly a day passes but an aerial and ethereal car lights on one of these asteroids and colonizes it with human beings. Look how they have settled and developed Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Saturn and the Moon. When I was alive on Earth, they used to tell me that a man couldn't live in the Moon or on any other planet; but he is doing so, all the same. He accommodates himself to his environment, just as the oysters and monkeys did before him. He is fruitful, and multiplies, and he is gradually taking possession of the solar system."

"When did he first extend his operations beyond his original planet?" asked another lazy old ghost, rubbing his eyes, and wondering in what century he was, anyhow.

"I think it was done just after the Americans conquered the rest of the world that was worth conquering," said the first ghost. "Nobody else would have thought of it. Do you remember when the Great Comet struck an asteroid out between here and Mars, and carried it toward the Earth?"

"Yes."

"Well, when it passed close to the Earth, some American explorers were wandering about the summits of the Himalayas, experimenting with telegraphy by means of upper air currents. As I understand the story, the solid nucleus of the comet struck the side of a peak on which twenty or thirty of them were holding a picnic, and broke it off, carrying it along in the air until it was farther from the Earth's surface than from that of the nucleus. Then it gravitated to the surface of the latter, and the picnic party were borne along the comet's path. The fog was so thick that they didn't know where they were for forty-eight hours. Two or three chemists in the party analyzed the soil, and found in it all the constituents needed to sustain life, animal and vegetable. They had some canned vegetables among their provisions, and they planted the seeds of these in the soil of the comet. The electricity with which the nucleus was charged caused a much more rapid growth of vegetation than takes place in the Earth-you remember how feeble the electricity is there-and they had a truck patch in full productiveness before they got into the neighborhood of the Moon. The comet struck the Moon more directly than it struck the Earth, and stopped there. The party was shaken off and lodged on the Moon's surface, which they at once began to explore. They had provided themselves, for their mountain explorations, with instruments very sensitive to electric currents, and with the aid of these they soon detected a current flowing in the direction of the Earth. Then they determined to try to communicate with the Earth by intercepting the current. They repeated the following message a number of times:

"'We are in the Moon; do you understand us? We are in the Moon; do you understand us?'

"The current reached a wire on the plains of Russia, and the operators at the lonely country station thought some one of their number insane. They tried to find out who the insane operator was, but they could not trace the message to any terrestrial telegraph office. Then they agreed to telegraph: 'Hello, Moon!' simultaneously from a hundred or so offices. Thirty or forty concurred so exactly as to affect the Moon-bound current, and a conversation was opened. The scientists were told that animal life was not impossible, after all, outside of the Earth's atmosphere, for the electricity was so strong that it could be brought into play upon the Moon's surface to make oxygen, nitrogen and carbonic acid gas, by developing, in proper proportions, the rapid cultivation of plants and herbs that give off these gases.

"An American inventor soon improved the ordinary electric air-car, so as to admit of its being steered outside of the Earth's atmosphere, and in a few months the overcrowded plains of Earth were losing population by thousands. The Moon was rapidly settled up, then Venus, then Mars, then Jupiter, then Saturn, and now the asteroids. I don't think they have discovered this one yet, but there's no telling when they will."

A weary groan ran through the conclave of ghosts at the growing spirit of irreverence for old objects of awe.

"Why, when I was a man," said one who wore the aspect of a priest of the middle ages, "they were afraid of the planets-thought they affected the fortune of men. One man was born under a lucky star, another under a malign star, etc."

"What worries me is the question what we are going to do about it," growled a lank ghost who had been silent heretofore.

"How many years have you old chaps been sitting here?" chirped a frisky young ghost, who suddenly made his appearance in the midst of the group, without asking anybody's-beg pardon, any ghost's-leave.

"What else are we to do," asked the ghost of the middle ages.

"Do? why, do as I did; hang around and watch your chances to occupy the bodies of new-born babies."

"Merciful heavens!" said the long-bearded ghost, jumping up. "I never thought of that."

"The more fool you," said the irreverent young ghost. "Why, I am only off on a midnight call. My temple is asleep in Saturn yonder. I have lots of time yet, before morning."

The young ghost's suggestion made a profound impression, and the ghosts' convention adjourned, soon to try the experiment. One ghost took possession of a new born babe that was murdered in ten minutes by its unwedded mother. It found the ten minutes of life so pleasant, that, being of a benevolent disposition, it stationed itself at the gate of the largest cemetery in the United States, and advised every ghost that came out, after bidding farewell to its dead home, to go and get a new one. A few other benevolent ghosts did this elsewhere. Ghosts whose second bodies died early, found their third bodies sometimes more and sometimes less agreeable. Information of general interest spread rapidly among ghosts, and in the course of time every crowd of ghosts instinctively sought bodies of that constitution best suited to its members. For ghosts of a feather flock together.