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batteries, coast down the aerial slope at a rate that sometimes

touches five hundred miles an hour. When near the ground the

helmsman directs the prow upward, and, again turning on full

current, rushes up the slope at a speed that far exceeds the

eagle's, each drop of two miles serving to take the machine

twenty or thirty; though, if the pilot does not wish to soar, or

if there is a fair wind at a given height, he can remain in that

stratum of the atmosphere by moving horizontally. He can also

maintain his elevation when moving very slowly, and though the

headway be entirely stopped, the descent is gradual on account of

the aeroplane's great spread, the batteries and motors being

secured to the under side of the deck.

"The motors are so light that they develop two horse power for

every pound of their weight; while, to keep the frames thin, the

necessary power is obtained by terrific speed of the moving

parts, as though a steam engine, to avoid great pressure in its

cylinders, had a long stroke and ran at great piston speed,

which, however, is no disadvantage to the rotary motion of the

electric motor, there being no reciprocating cranks, etc., that

must be started and stopped at each revolution.

"To obviate the necessity of gearing to reduce the number of

revolutions to those possible for a large screw, this member is

made very small, and allowed to revolve three thousand times a

minute, so that the requisite power is obtained with great

simplicity of mechanism, which further decreases friction. The

shafts, and even the wires connecting the batteries with the

motors, are made large and hollow. Though the primary battery

pure and simple, as the result of great recent advances in

chemistry, seems to be again coming up, the best aeroplane

batteries are still of the combination- storage type. These have

been so perfected that eight ounces of battery yield one horse

power for six hours, so that two pounds of battery will supply a

horse power for twenty-four hours; a small fifty-horse-power

aeroplane being therefore able to fly four days with a battery

weight of but four hundred pounds.

"Limestone and clarified acid are the principal parts of these

batteries. It was known long ago that there was about as much

imprisoned solar energy in limestone as in coal, but it was only

recently that we discovered this way of releasing and using it.

"Common salt plays an important part in many of our chemical

reactions. By combining it with limestone, and treating this

with acid jelly, we also get good results on raising to the

boiling-point.

"However enjoyable the manly sport of yachting is on water, how

vastly more interesting and fascinating it is for a man to have a

yacht in which he can fly to Europe in one day, and with which

the exploration of tropical Africa or the regions about the poles

is mere child's play, while giving him so magnificent a

bird's-eye view! Many seemingly insoluble problems are solved by

the advent of these birds. Having as their halo the enforcement

of peace, they have in truth taken us a long step towards heaven,

and to the co-operation and higher civilization that followed we

shall owe much of the success of the great experiment on Mother

Earth now about to be tried.

"Another change that came in with a rush upon the discovery of a

battery with insignificant weight, compact form, and great

capacity, was the substitution of electricity for animal power

for the movement of all vehicles. This, of necessity brought in

good roads, the results obtainable on such being so much greater

than on bad ones that a universal demand for them arose. This

was in a sense cumulative, since the better the streets and roads

became, the greater the inducement to have an electric carriage.

The work of opening up the country far and near, by straightening

and improving existing roads, and laying out new ones that

combine the solidity of the Appian Way with the smoothness of

modern asphalt, was largely done by convicts, working under the

direction of State and Government engineers. Every State

contained a horde of these unprofitable boarders, who, as they

formerly worked, interfered with honest labour, and when idle got

into trouble. City streets had been paved by the municipality;

country roads attended to by the farmers, usually very

unscientifically. Here was a field in which convict labour would

not compete, and an important work could be done. When once this

was made the law, every year showed improvement, while the

convicts had useful and healthful occupation.

"The electric phaetons, as those for high speed are called, have

three and four wheels, and weigh, including battery and motor,

five hundred to four thousand pounds. With hollow but immensely

strong galvanically treated aluminum frames and pneumatic or

cushion tires, they run at thirty-five and forty miles an hour on

country roads, and attain a speed over forty on city streets, and

can maintain this rate without recharging for several days. They

can therefore roam over the roads of the entire hemisphere, from

the fertile valley of the Peace and grey shores of Hudson Bay, to

beautiful Lake Nicaragua, the River Plate, and Patagonia,

improving man by bringing him close to Nature, while they combine

the sensations of coasting with the interest of seeing the

country well.

"To recharge the batteries, which can be done in almost every

town and village, two copper pins attached to insulated copper

wires are shoved into smooth-bored holes. These drop out of

themselves by fusing a small lead ribbon, owing to the increased

resistance, when the acid in the batteries begins to 'boil,'

though there is, of course, but little heat in this, the function

of charging being merely to bring about the condition in which

part of the limestone can be consumed, the batteries themselves,

when in constant use, requiring to be renewed about once a month.

A handle at the box seat turns on any part of the attainable

current, for either going ahead or reversing, there being six or

eight degrees of speed for both directions, while the steering is

done with a small wheel.

"Light but powerful batteries and motors have also been fitted on

bicycles, which can act either as auxiliaries for hill-climbing

or in case of head wind, or they can propel the machine

altogether.

"Gradually the width of the streets became insufficient for the

traffic, although the elimination of horses and the consequent

increase in speed greatly augmented their carrying capacity,

until recently a new system came in. The whole width of the

avenues and streets in the business parts of the city, including

the former sidewalks, is given up to wheel traffic, an iron ridge

extending along the exact centre to compel vehicles to keep to

the right. Strips of nickel painted white, and showing a bright

phosphorescence at night, are let into the metal pavement flush

with the surface, and run parallel to this ridge at distances of

ten to fifteen feet, dividing each half of the avenue into four

or five sections, their width increasing as they approach the

middle. All trucks or drays moving at less than seven miles an

hour are obliged to keep in the section nearest the building

line, those running between seven and fifteen in the next,

fifteen to twenty-five in the third, twenty-five to thirty-five

in the fourth, and everything faster than that in the section

next the ridge, unless the avenue or street is wide enough for

further subdivisions. If it is wide enough for only four or

less, the fastest vehicles must keep next the middle, and limit

their speed to the rate allowed in that section, which is marked

at every crossing in white letters sufficiently large for him

that runs to read. It is therefore only in the wide

thoroughfares that very high speed can be attained. In addition

to the crank that corresponds to a throttle, there is a gauge on

every vehicle, which shows its exact speed in miles per hour, by

gearing operated by the revolutions of the wheels.

"The policemen on duty also have instantaneous kodaks mounted on

tripods, which show the position of any carriage at half- and

quarter-second intervals, by which it is easy to ascertain the

exact speed, should the officers be unable to judge it by the

eye; so there is no danger of a vehicle's speed exceeding that

allowed in the section in which it happens to be; neither can a

slow one remain on the fast lines.

"Of course, to make such high speed for ordinary carriages

possible, a perfect pavement became a sine qua non. We have

secured this by the half-inch sheet of steel spread over a

carefully laid surface of asphalt, with but little bevel; and

though this might be slippery for horses' feet, it never

seriously affects our wheels. There being nothing harder than

the rubber ties of comparatively light drays upon it--for the

heavy traffic is carried by electric railways under ground--it

will practically never wear out.

"With the application of steel to the entire surface, car-tracks

became unnecessary, ordinary wheels answering as well as those

with flanges, so that no new tracks were laid, and finally the

car companies tore up the existing ones, selling them in many

instances to the municipalities as old iron. Our streets also

need but little cleaning; neither is the surface continually

indented, as the old cobble-stones and Belgian blocks were, by

the pounding of the horses' feet, so that the substitution of

electricity for animal power has done much to solve the problem

of attractive streets.

"Scarcely a ton of coal comes to Manhattan Island or its vicinity

in a year. Very little of it leaves the mines, at the mouths of

which it is converted into electricity and sent to the points of

consumption by wire, where it is employed for all uses to which

fuel was put, and many others. Consequently there is no smoke,

and the streets are not encumbered with coal-carts; the entire

width being given up to carriages, etc. The ground floors in the

business parts are used for large warehouses, trucks running in

to load and unload. Pedestrians therefore have sidewalks level

with the second story, consisting of glass floors let into

aluminum frames, while all street crossings are made on bridges.

Private houses have a front door opening on the sidewalk, and

another on the ground level, so that ladies paying visits or

leaving cards can do so in carriages. In business streets the

second story is used for shops. In place of steel covering,

country roads have a thick coating of cement and asphalt over a

foundation of crushed stone, giving a capital surface, and have a

width of thirty-three feet (two rods) in thinly settled

districts, to sixty-six feet (four rods) where the population is

greater. All are planted with shade and fruit trees, while the

wide driveways have one or two broad sidewalks. The same rule of

making the slow-moving vehicles keep near the outside prevails,

though the rate of increase in speed on approaching the middle is

more rapid than in cities, and there is usually no dividing

ridge. On reaching the top of a long and steep hill, if we do

not wish to coast, we convert the motors into dynamos, while

running at full speed, and so change the kinetic energy of the

descent into potential in our batteries. This twentieth-century

stage-coaching is one of the delights to which we are heirs,

though horses are still used by those that prefer them.

We have been much aided in our material progress by the facility

with which we obtain the metals. It was observed, some time ago,

that when artesian and oil wells had reached a considerable

depth, what appeared to be drops of lead and antimony came up

with the stream. It finally occurred to a well-borer that if he

could make his drill hard enough and get it down far enough,

keeping it cool by solidified carbonic acid during the

proceeding, he would reach a point at which most of the metals

would be viscous, if not actually molten, and on being freed from

the pressure of the crust they would expand, and reach the

surface in a stream. This experiment he performed near the hot

geysers in Yellowstone Park, and what was his delight, on

reaching a depth scarcely half a mile beyond his usual stopping-

place, to be rewarded by a stream of metal that heralded its

approach by a loud explosion and a great rush of superheated

steam! It ran for a month, completely filling the bed of a

small, dried-up river, and when it did stop there were ten

million tons in sight. This proved the feasibility of the

scheme, and, though many subsequent attempts were less

successful, we have learned by experience where it is best to

drill, and can now obtain almost any metal we wish.

"'Magnetic eyes' are of great use to miners and Civil engineers.

These instruments are something like the mariner's compass, with

the sensitiveness enormously increased by galvanic currents. The

'eye,' as it were, sees what substances are underground, and at

what distances. It also shows how many people are in an

adjoining room--through the magnetic properties of the iron in

their blood--whether they are moving, and in what directions and

at what speed they go. In connection with the phonograph and

concealed by draperies, it is useful to detectives, who, through

a registering attachment, can obtain a record of everything said

and done.

"Our political system remains with but little change. Each State

has still two United States Senators, though the population

represented by each representative has been greatly increased, so

that the Senate has grown numerically much more than the House.

It is the duty of each member of Congress to understand the

conditions existing in every other member's State or district,

and the country's interest always precedes that of party. We

have a comprehensive examination system in the civil service, and