第 7 页

every officeholder, except members of the Cabinet, retains his

office while efficiently performing his duty, without regard to

politics. The President can also be re-elected any number of

times. The Cabinet members, as formerly, usually remain in

office while he does, and appear regularly in Congress to defend

their measures.

"The really rapid transit lines in New York are underground, and

have six tracks, two being used for freight. At all stations the

local tracks rise several feet towards the street and slope off

in both directions, while the express tracks do this only at

stations at which the faster trains stop. This gives the

passengers a shorter distance to descend or rise in the

elevators, and the ascent before the stations aids the brakes in

stopping, while the drop helps the motors to start the trains

quickly in getting away.

"Photography has also made great strides, and there is now no

difficulty in reproducing exactly the colours of the object

taken.

"Telephones have been so improved that one person can speak in

his natural voice with another in any part of the globe, the wire

that enables him to hear also showing him the face of the speaker

though he be at the antipodes. All telephone wires being

underground and kept by themselves, they are not interfered with

by any high-tension electric-light or power wires, thunderstorms,

or anything else.

"Rain-making is another subject removed from the uncertainties,

and has become an absolute science. We produce clouds by

explosions in the atmosphere's heights and by surface air forced

by blowers through large pipes up the side of a mountain or

natural elevation and there discharged through an opening in the

top of a tower built on the highest part. The aeriduct is

incased in a poor heat-conductor, so that the air retains its

warmth until discharged, when it is cooled by expansion and the

surrounding cold air. Condensation takes place and soon serves

to start a rain.

"Yet, until the earth's axis is straightened, we must be more or

less dependent on the eccentricities of the weather, with

extremes of heat and cold, droughts and floods, which last are of

course largely the result of several months' moisture held on the

ground in the form of snow, the congestion being relieved

suddenly by the warm spring rains.

"Medicine and surgery have kept pace with other

improvements--inoculation and antiseptics, as already seen,

rendering most of the germ diseases and formerly dreaded

epidemics impotent; while through the potency of electrical

affinity we form wholesome food-products rapidly, instead of

having to wait for their production by Nature's slow processes.

"The metric system, now universal, superseded the old-fashioned

arbitrary standards, so prolific of mistakes and confusion, about

a century ago.

"English, as we have seen, is already the language of 600,000,000

people, and the number is constantly increasing through its

adoption by the numerous races of India, where, even before the

close of the last century, it was about as important as Latin

during the greatness of Rome, and by the fact that the Spanish

and Portuguese elements in Mexico and Central and South America

show a constant tendency to die out, much as the population of

Spain fell from 30,000,000 to 17,000,000 during the nineteenth

century. As this goes on, in the Western hemisphere, the places

left vacant are gradually filled by the more progressive

Anglo-Saxons, so that it looks as if the study of ethnology in

the future would be very simple.

"The people with cultivation and leisure, whose number is

increasing relatively to the population at each generation, spend

much more of their year in the country than formerly, where they

have large and well-cultivated country seats, parts of which are

also preserved for game. This growing custom on the part of

society, in addition to being of great advantage to the

out-of-town districts, has done much to save the forests and

preserve some forms of game that would otherwise, like the

buffalo, have become extinct.

"In astronomy we have also made tremendous strides. The

old-fashioned double-convex lens used in telescopes became so

heavy as its size grew, that it bent perceptibly from its own

weight, when pointed at the zenith, distorting the vision; while

when it was used upon a star near the horizon, though the glass

on edge kept its shape, there was too much atmosphere between it

and the observed object for successful study. Our recent

telescopes have, therefore, concave plate-glass mirrors, twenty

metres in diameter, like those used for converging the sun's rays

in solar engines, but with curves more mathematically exact,

which collect an immense amount of light and focus it on a

sensitive plate or on the eye of the observer, whose back is

turned to the object he is studying. An electrical field also

plays an important part, the electricity being as great an aid to

light as in the telephone it is to sound. With these placed

generally on high mountain peaks, beyond the reach of clouds, we

have enormously increased the number of visible stars, though

there are still probably boundless regions that we cannot see.

These telescopes have several hundred times the power of the

largest lenses of the nineteenth century, and apparently bring

Mars and Jupiter, when in opposition, within one thousand and ten

thousand miles, respectively, so that we study their physical

geography and topography; and we have good maps of Jupiter, and

even of Saturn, notwithstanding their distance and atmospheric

envelopes, and we are able to see the disks of third-magnitude

stars.

"It seems as if, when we wish any particular discovery or

invention, in whatever field, we had but to turn our efforts in

its direction to obtain our desire. We seem, in fact, to have

awakened in the scenes of the Arabian Nights; yet the mysterious

genius which we control, and which dims Aladdin's lamp, is the

gift of no fairy godmother sustained by the haze of dreams, but

shines as the child of science with fadeless and growing

splendour, and may yet bring us and our little planet much closer

to God.

"We should indeed be happy, living as we do at this apex of

attained civilization, with the boundless possibilities of the

future unfolding before us, on the horizon of which we may fairly

be said to stand.

"We are freed from the rattling granite pavement of only a

century ago, which made the occupant of an omnibus feel like a

fly inside of a drum; from the domination of our local politics

by ignorant foreigners; and from country roads that either filled

the eyes, lungs, and hair of the unfortunates travelling upon

them with dust, or, resembling ploughed and fertilized fields,

saturated and plastered them with mud. These miseries, together

with sea-sickness in ocean travelling, are forever passed, and we

feel that 'Excelsior!' is indeed our motto. Our new and

increasing sources of power have so stimulated production and

manufacturing that poverty or want is scarcely known; while the

development of the popular demand, as a result of the supplied

need, is so great that there is no visible limit to the

diversification of industry or the possibilities of the arts.

"It may seem strange to some that apparently so disproportionate

a number of inventions have been made in the last century. There

are several reasons. Since every discovery or advance in

knowledge increases our chance of obtaining more, it becomes

cumulative, and our progress is in geometric instead of

arithmetical ratio. Public interest and general appreciation of

the value of time have also effectively assisted progress. At

the beginning of each year the President, the Governors of the

States, and the Mayors of cities publish a prospectus of the

great improvements needed, contemplated, and under way within

their jurisdiction--it may be planning a new boulevard, a new

park, or an improved system of sewers; and at the year's end they

issue a resume of everything completed, and the progress in

everything else; and though there is usually a great difference

between the results hoped for and those attained, the effect is

good. The newspapers publish at length the recommendations of

the Executives, and also the results obtained, and keep up public

interest in all important matters.

"Free to delve in the allurement and fascination of science,

emancipated man goes on subduing Nature, as his Maker said he

should, and turning her giant forces to his service in his

constant struggle to rise and become more like Him who gave the

commandments and showed him how he should go.

"Notwithstanding our strides in material progress, we are not

entirely content. As the requirements of the animal become fully

supplied, we feel a need for something else. Some say this is

like a child that cries for the moon, but others believe it the

awakening and craving of our souls. The historian narrates but

the signs of the times, and strives to efface himself; yet there

is clearly a void, becoming yearly more apparent, which

materialism cannot fill. Is it some new subtle force for which

we sigh, or would we commune with spirits? There is, so far as

we can see, no limit to our journey, and I will add, in closing,

that, with the exception of religion, we have most to hope from

science."

CHAPTER VI.

FAR-REACHING PLANS.

Knowing that the rectification of the earth's axis was

satisfactorily begun, and that each year would show an increasing

improvement in climate, many of the delegates, after hearing

Bearwarden's speech, set out for their homes. Those from the

valley of the Amazon and the eastern coast of South America

boarded a lightning express that rushed them to Key West at the

rate of three hundred miles an hour. The railroad had six

tracks, two for through passengers, two for locals, and two for

freight. There they took a "water-spider," six hundred feet long

by three hundred in width, the deck of which was one hundred feet

above the surface, which carried them over the water at the rate

of a mile a minute, around the eastern end of Cuba, through

Windward Passage, and so to the South American mainland, where

they continued their journey by rail.

The Siberian and Russian delegates, who, of course, felt a keen

interest in the company's proceedings, took a magnetic

double-ender car to Bering Strait. It was eighteen feet high,

one hundred and fifty feet long, and had two stories. The upper,

with a toughened glass dome running the entire length, descended

to within three feet of the floor, and afforded an unobstructed

view of the rushing scenery. The rails on which it ran were ten

feet apart, the wheels being beyond the sides, like those of a

carriage, and fitted with ball bearings to ridged axles. The

car's flexibility allowed it to follow slight irregularities in

the track, while the free, independent wheels gave it a great

advantage in rounding curves over cars with wheels and axle in

one casting, in which one must slip while traversing a greater or

smaller arc than the other, except when the slope of the tread

and the centrifugal force happen to correspond exactly. The fact

of having its supports outside instead of underneath, while

increasing its stability, also enabled the lower floor to come

much nearer the ground, while still the wheels were large.

Arriving in just twenty hours, they ran across on an electric

ferry-boat, capable of carrying several dozen cars, to East Cape,

Siberia, and then, by running as far north as possible, had a

short cut to Europe.

The Patagonians went by the all-rail Intercontinental Line,

without change of cars, making the run of ten thousand miles in

forty hours. The Australians entered a flying machine, and were

soon out of sight; while the Central Americans and members from

other States of the Union returned for the most part in their

mechanical phaetons.

"A prospective improvement in travelling," said Bearwarden, as he

and his friends watched the crowd disperse, "will be when we can

rise beyond the limits of the atmosphere, wait till the earth

revolves beneath us, and descend in twelve hours on the other

side."

"True," said Cortlandt, "but then we can travel westward only,

and shall have to make a complete circuit when we wish to go

east."

A few days later there was a knock at President Bearwarden's

door, while he was seated at his desk looking over some papers

and other matters. Taking his foot from a partly opened desk

drawer where it had been resting, he placed it upon the handle of

a handsome brass-mounted bellows, which proved to be

articulating, for, as he pressed, it called lustily, "Come in!"

The door opened, and in walked Secretary of State Stillman,

Secretary of the Navy Deepwaters, who was himself an old sailor,

Dr. Cortlandt, Ayrault. Vice-President Dumby, of the T. A. S.

Co., and two of the company's directors.

"Good-morning," said Bearwarden, as he shook hands with his

visitors. "Charmed to see you."

"That's a great invention," said Secretary Stillman, examining

the bellows. "We must get Congress to make an appropriation for

its introduction in the department buildings in Washington. You

have no idea how it dries my throat to be all the time shouting,

'Come in!'"

"Do you know, Bearwarden," said Secretary Deepwaters, "I'm afraid

when we have this millennium of climate every one will be so well

satisfied that our friend here (pointing to Secretary Stillman

with his thumb) will have nothing to do."

"I have sometimes thought some of the excitement will be gone,

and the struggle of the 'survival of the fittest' will become

less problematical," said Bearwarden.