Note by Mr. August Bixby Dodan.
Mr. Dodd died January 20, 1895. He never recovered from the severe shockcaused by hemorrhage, after receiving the second message from his fatherand recorded above. He appreciated the imminence of death acutely, andstruggled to complete, as he has, the narrative of his life. My daughterwas not again seen by Mr. Dodd, though he received several letters fromher, which were found beneath his pillow after his demise.
I was with Mr. Dodd constantly during the latter days of his illness,and then promised him that I should secure the publication of hisremarkable story.
I am not willing to hazard any conjecture as to the more extraordinaryfeatures of this narrative. I can very positively, however, affirm mycomplete confidence in Mr. Dodd's honesty. I knew both his father andhimself very well, and through a long intimacy found them bothconsistently conforming to a very high type of character, courage, andintellectual integrity.
The MS. of Mr. Dodd was handed to me by himself, and I recall with apathetic interest his smile of appreciative gratitude as I received it,and gave him my earnest assurance that it should be printed, and thatthe world would be made acquainted with his experiments and theirresults.
Mr. Dodd was the residuary legatee of his father, and his own will madeduring his last sickness, appointed me as his executor. My daughter wasmade his sole heir, with two exceptions; small amounts in favor of hisassistants--Jeb Jobson and Andrew Clarke were mentioned in his will--andthese sums have been paid by myself to each.
A series of extraordinary misfortunes, for which I am myself measurablyto blame, resulted in the complete disappearance of the fortuneinherited by my daughter. Her own death and that of my wife, followingupon this disaster, though in no way connected with it, obliterated--andhere again I admit a very grievous culpability--the remembrance of theMS. of Mr. Dodd and my own promises as to its publication.
I found the MS. of Mr. Dodd carefully wrapped up at the bottom of atrunk of papers, and confess that I opened the package it formed with abitter sense of self-reproach. Mr. Dodd had expected to publish thispaper in New York, and had requested that it should be forwarded to thatcity. I have at last complied with his wishes, and the MS. leaves myhands, absolutely unchanged, consigned through the kind intervention ofa friend, to a publishing house in that western metropolis. I am unableto add anything more to this statement, which, in itself, I fear conveysconsiderable censure to the undersigned.
August Bixby Dodan.
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Note by the Editor.
The MS. alluded to by Mr. Dodan in the preceding paragraphs was safelybrought to New York in 1900, and after a very careful examination,repeatedly rejected by the prominent publishers to whom it wassubmitted.
Through a peculiar accident connected with some negotiations pertainingto a scientific work, contemplated by the writer, the MS. came into hishands, and he has been encouraged to publish it, influenced by thefavorable comments of friends upon its intrinsic interest. He also hasadded to the work as an appendix, which cannot fail to attract theattention of many, the views of the great astronomer Schiaparelli uponthe present physical condition of Mars, being the reproduction of anarticle by that distinguished observer translated from _Nature et Arte_for February, 1893, by Prof. William H. Pickering and published in theAnnual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institutionfor 1894, published here by permission of "Astronomy and Astro-Physics,"in which journal it first appeared in Vol. XIII., numbers 8 and 9, forOctober and November, 1894. In this report also appeared Schiaparelli'sMap of Mars in 1888, which the Editor has not reproduced in thisconnection.
The introduction to-day of the wireless telegraphy, assuming a dailyincreasing importance, furnishes some reasonable hope that themarvellous statements given in Mr. Dodd's narrative may be more widelyverified in the future, and point the way to a realization of the daringand thrilling conception of interplanetary communication.
THE PLANET MARS.
BY GIOVANNI SCHIAPARELLI.
Certainty of a Future Life in Mars Page 7