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By Root 199 0

and great numbers of private cable lines were in use — it would not be possible for our party to escape indefinitely from vigilant and determined pursuers. A good pursuer, by means of the omnipresent telegraph-wires and signal systems, could tap the whole earth, as a woodpecker taps a tree for his prey; and, moreover, the French Submarine Society for mapping the bottom of the sea had its underwater boats and observers in all parts of the world, liable to bob up to the surface of the deep anywhere; so that, if these were to be utilized, one of them might locate our position on or over the ocean at any instant.

However, we led our friends and enemies a pretty good chase, and kept it up many weeks. On our return from the Antarctic Commonwealth to Patagonia (now an important manufacturing country), we ascertained that Hammerfleet had survived his cyclone wreck — having, in fact, been picked up by a submarine geographical boat, and that he was using the wires, the clouds, and metalized sail telegraph to trace us. We therefore concluded to run quickly over to China and Japan, and were well repaid by the evidences of immense progress that we saw there; the same improvements that I have already described having been introduced in those countries. English, now the universal language, has been pretty well domesticated in China, though it still cuts some pigeon-wings in the dance of rustic lips. What interested Eva and me greatly, among other things, was the simple plan of making ice here, as in India and all hot countries, by hoisting balloons which carry water-tanks 20,000 ft. into the air, freeze the water and bring it down again; a constant relay of balloons steadily renewing the supply.

As we passed on through Turkey — a peaceful, flourishing Christian country through strong and rehabilitated Greece and Italy, to Germany, France, and England, we were pleased to observe the wonderful effects obtained by the particular societies, each devoted to a specific fruit or flower, which now produced fruits of a lusciousness beyond belief, and had so changed flowers that the mysterious something in them, called harmonic grouping; gave us an indescribable sensation of beauty totally wanting in the flowers known to the ancients. In art also the Society of Harmonic Curves has brought about great changes. The human form, in this day, is — through wise cultivation — much more beautiful than the average of old times; besides which, painters and sculptors, owing to an improved knowledge of curveharmony, develop from the living model an ideal of loveliness and perfection formerly approached only by the Greeks, and even by them approached but partially. This development of beauty seems to have come from a radically altered, more restful mode of life, a purer application of supernatural religion to existence, and a better realization of the laws of natural science as in accord with religion.

So, too, and from similar causes, the great changes in manufacturing systems have benefited the race. Owing to systems for the electric distribution of power over great areas, the industrial economy of very early times had been restored. Now, among the countless homes of the people, those of the mechanics are each provided with its little workshop, where only one operation in any particular manufacture is carried out. A single part of any machine is passed from house to house until finished, and is then returned to the great assembling shop to be assembled into the complete machine. The profound change in the moral, mental, and social condition of the working people effected by a return once more to occupation in the home, instead of the promiscuous association in large factories, has been one of the most potent agents in improving the state of the population, lessening crime, drunkenness, and other evils; stimulating true education, and restoring to labor its natural poetry and idyllic character. Thanks to the plastic process of building, even the poorest worker has his own home. With the children of mechanics learning their trade at home from the earliest