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By Root 307 0

rising temperature until the softening-point was reached. Gold and silver were obtained by the reaction between volatilized sulphur and iron, in graphite tubes separated by a porous partition, and raised to 7000 degrees of Fahrenheit by superheated gases, and this had brought about a change in the currency system. Platinum was now the standard of value. Its rate of value was very high, and very little of it was ever seen in circulation; but it made a solid basis. The general currency was based upon the value of permanent taxable property; but this value was scientifically measured, and subject to very little fluctuation. It acted, however, as a balance wheel, controlling expenditure and speculation; and speculation, as it used to be practiced, had almost ceased.

With such advantages and improvements — and I may say that during a brief flight through Europe and the Americas, and the regenerated empires of China and Japan, I found much the same state of things prevailing — it would seem that people ought to be contented. Government, too, is now much more satisfactorily conducted, by small, efficient, and responsible committees, though on a republican plan, instead of by parliaments, congresses, and mobs, as of old. The “federation of the world” has been achieved. The nations of Europe and Asia, with Africa, in their several unions, co-operate with us through a world Committee of Twenty; and the fierce light of honor and responsibility and watchfulness that beats upon these Twenty gives them no chance to fool or prevaricate with the race. Besides, they do not want to do so. It is happier and pleasanter to be honest, and is the highest kind of diplomacy.

The general agreement has brought into play the best, the only true free trade. Every country says frankly what industries it wishes to maintain, according to its condition and needs. Every country is self-reliant and so far as possible, self-sustaining; and the various countries work together for the good of the whole of mankind.

Co-operation has taken the place of hostile competition.

War is at an end. A single old hulk, now, mounted with a telescopic gun, can settle an angry dispute from a distance of two score miles. A telescopic cannon sends forth another smaller cannon that is protected by a secondary all-chamber containing a lesser explosive to counteract the first explosive pressure. This cannon, in turn, generates another one, and the final cannon discharges upon the doomed point or city a bursting projectile that destroys more than could be restored in fifty years.

Still, mankind is not satisfied. There are always people now, as formerly, who drop to the rear of the procession, and there are always passionate and criminal impulses.

VII.

THE SUN-TELESCOPE AND DEPARTURE

Graemantle’s Ithacan villa was a vast establishment, adorned with all the magnificence now so easy — diamonds, emeralds, and rubies set in the walls for decoration; beautiful wall paintings, tapestries — with amusement rooms for theatrical performances, and an Odorifer and Coloriscope. These contrivances were something like church-organs, but filled with clever mechanism that produced new effects. The Coloriscope had innumerable opening and closing shutters that revealed different colors in pleasing succession or in union, like that of musical chords; and the Odorifer was provided with a great number of tubes that sent forth delicious and varying perfumes, either singly or in harmonious combination. But I was still more interested in the sun-telescope not far away from the house — which was a scheme originated by Gladwin. The Society of Futurity had kept it up, but had never got any definite results from it.

It was rigged somewhat like the Mars magnetograph, with poles and wires around a large circle, but had a telephone receiver attached to it.

Through this receiver we could hear strange and awful moanings, but no one had ever been able to get a definite message from it. Zorlin insisted that, according to Kurol philosophy, the sun was the abode of lost souls.

“Do you mean to say,” I asked,