“FIFTY YEARS HENCE.”
Warwick:—There is a history in all men’s lives
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life; which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time:
... Henry IV., Part II, iii, 1.
With my feet planted on the one thousand eight hundred and ninety-third step in that part of time’s imperishable edifice which has risen since the birth of Jesus, the Blessed Nazarene, and my head above the clouds of five decades which hover above it, I, Roger Brathwaite, read as upon a printed scroll the yet-unwritten records of the year 1943. These I have reduced to writing as an earnest of what may come when my system of verifying and completing history and of anticipating the future shall have been carried out as fully for five hundred years as for fifty years to come.
I see around me the millions of this year 1943 as people of the time in which I live—or rather find myself so transported mentally that the events of fifty years from 1893 onwards are as of the past. I see the households and the nations of 1943, and with them hold plain converse in the universal tongue of the Electric Age; for the language written, and to a great extent spoken all over the civilized world, is everywhere the same; having been prepared by a committee of philologists of all countries, and formally adopted at a congress held in Paris in 1915. It combines the soft liquid beauty of the Italian, the dignity of the Spanish, and the majesty of the Greek; the adaptability to new ideas of the German, the delicate shadings of the French, and the business-like exactness of the English. Its spelling is phonetic; and phonetic printing is as common as phonographic writing.
The written language has been greatly enriched by characters to represent signs which in the year 1900 could not be expressed in writing or in printing; as, for instance, whistling, clucking and kissing, barking, howling, groaning, laughter, etc. In fact, every sound which can be imitated by the human voice may be so recorded upon paper that it can be read and reproduced by any one (not dumb) who can read and write.
The theatre is the great preservative of the purity of spoken language, both in grammar and in pronunciation; each great actor being an arbiter elegantiarum in matters of speech. Censors hold all public speakers to a high standard of pronunciation and diction; and the study of grammar, while pursued by the more highly educated, has been largely done away with by reason of purity of speech being attained by force of example and criticism.
The use of the typewriting machine is universal, the machines printing phonetic characters exactly the same as those used in book and newspaper work, with variable spacing, and justifying perfectly. These machines are so arranged that they may be connected with the telegraphic system; so that a letter may be written in New York or in Paris by a person in Chicago and Melbourne; and all books of record are written in by machine only.
Writing is phonographic or phonetic, only; each word being composed of as many characters as there are sounds therein; no two sounds having the same character, and each sound having but one letter.
Printing has become one of the most noble of the fine arts. Photographs in half tones are printed by every daily, and printing in natural colors (for many years a common feature of the book trade), is beginning to be adopted by the more enterprising. The boundaries between lithographic and relief printing have been largely broken down by zincographic and other processes; the speed of impression more than quadrupled, while the sharpness of fine lines and the blackness of masses are as perfect as formerly in etching and line engraving. In these latter branches great progress has been made, both in speed of production of the plate and in the rapidity of printing therefrom.
There is wonderful advancement in telegraphing, pictures and fac-simile documents being sent over the wires, when wires are required; although in most cases wires are not needed; and what few there are, lie hidden from public view. There are, indeed, some inventors so expert that they can telegraph pictures in natural colors, taking advantage of the great improvements in photography, by which any object can, at one exposure, be photographed permanently in its proper colors.
By the new system of telegraphic printing, news is set up in several cities simultaneously, in column width, all ready to be worked off on the great hourly papers, which with their beautiful colored illustrations, are a marvel as well as a convenience.
A newly-discovered process transmits from the scene of any great event, as a conflagration, convention, or battle, an accurate photograph in colors, which is reproduced in one or a hundred cities, there to be printed in the local journals, which latter have become, in fact, hourly bulletins of the on-goings of the neighborhood and of the world at large.
Telegraphic and telephonic communication with moving railway trains has been for forty years an accomplished fact, so that the business man, desiring to keep up his correspondence from and with his office, while travelling, can readily do so; and may, in fact, from time to time, talk with those at home; while a statesman may from his seat in a pneumatic or electric railway car, address his fellow-legislators in session assembled.
Vessels at sea may be communicated with by both telegraph and telephone, no wire being employed. Soundings are automatically indicated and recorded as the vessel moves along, so that the log not only is made up as the voyage progresses, but serves as a chart to guide the course.
In the homes of the masses as well as in those of the millionaires, there is little of comfort or convenience to be desired. The luxuries of 1893 are the necessities of 1943; while to these have been added refinements undreamed of fifty years before.
Houses made of concrete in one piece, without joint, defy wind, storm and the intrusion of “rats and mice and such small deer.”
In every house, there is a system of piping and wiring by which heating-gas, lighting-gas and oxygen; hot and cold, salt and fresh water, steam and electric lighting and telephone service are laid on; while thorough ventilation is effected by a system of exhaust operated from a central station. The sanitary appliances are under control of the municipal authorities; and disinfecting solutions are as necessary a part thereof, as the supply of fresh or salt water which flushes out the waste-pipes.
The law, which is the conservator of health as well as of morals and of peace, compels every house to have bathtubs in proportion to the number of people living therein; and bathing is practically made compulsory. Public baths in which, as in the days of the ancient Romans, men meet for social converse and the transaction of business, are maintained in every town of any importance; medicated and electrified plunges and showers being under the management of experts in hydropathic sanitation.
In the houses of the wealthy, and in the clubs, the opera is “wired on,” just as hot and cold water, warm and cold air, electricity, and other conveniences are in the same way “laid on.” In fact, the celebrated preachers are heard by those who prefer to stay at home; every one may sit in his or her chair and get the utterances of the most distinguished orators as well as of the most celebrated singers and musicians.
As noted under another head, law-givers and public officials listen to and address their confrères, their colleagues and their constituents, at all times and in all places; from their homes, from public baths and from public conveyances; so that the Senator from Oregon may address at the same moment both Houses in the Capitol at Washington, while preparing in the intervals of his private business and local political matters, to make a campaign speech in the Mississippi Valley, without leaving the shores of the Pacific.
All new houses are monolithic and must be built from plans approved by the General Council of Architects. The law requires, under heavy penalties, that every building shall have a liberal and specified window-area, and be properly warmed and ventilated.
The new system of diffused daylight is by most preferred to electricity. The panels with which the walls and ceilings are covered, have a power of absorbing sunlight all day and giving it out at night, thus making the rooms pleasantly bright by night. All beds are enclosed in beautiful cabinets (connected with the general system of ventilation), so that one steps from a bright chamber into his comfortable sleeping-compartment, and there, lulled by sweet music, if he so wish it, sleeps the sleep of the happy dweller of 1943.
The compartments are warmed, as the occupants prefer, by warm air from the general supply, by electricity from the common central station, or by heating-gas manufactured at a distance from the city, and pumped through long miles of pipes to where it is needed.
The streets are lighted with a soft, well-diffused illumination, bright enough to enable reading from ordinary print, at any point. The electric wires which carry currents to supply the lamps, are invisible. Each house contributes its quota to the illumination, by electric glow-lamps over its doors and windows, so that the effect, upon a moonless night, is fairy-like.
The sea-board cities have salt water “laid on” for bathing purposes, street-washing and use at fires; although the methods of fire extinguishment have greatly changed for the better. Few fires are possible, and those are generally put out by chemical vapors, automatically discharged from pipes placed in every room and passage.
The results of paternal oversight as carried out by republican institutions, are most gratifying; the annual death-rate being reduced to about 7 per thousand in sections favored by Nature, and never exceeding 10, in the most crowded districts and those least blessed in climate.
Medical science and art no longer work blindly; no longer act hap-hazard.
The average life of man (largely, let it be said, due to the efforts of the life insurance companies in enforcing sanitary improvements and in fostering medical and surgical research), has been about doubled. Surgical operations which fifty years before were deemed chimerical or impossible are now, thanks to the improved anaesthetics and antiseptics at command, performed most frequently; so that laparotomy, the Caesarian operation, bone-grafting, removal of diseased portions of the brain and extirpation of the kidneys, and their replacement by those of the sheep or calf, are common and successful.
Acute disease is treated almost exclusively by heat, cold and electricity. The subcutaneous injections discovered, or rather foreshadowed, by Brown-Sequard, have been brought to such pitch of perfection that by their use the vigor of forty is maintained until eighty or even ninety years. The noble work of Koch in subjugating pulmonary consumption has rendered that dread disease no longer contagious, while brighter light upon the mode of living, and improvements in comfort at home and when travelling, have made safe for consumptives many climates in which formerly no one with predisposition to lung trouble could live. The sanitary precautions enforced by local and National bodies have completely stopped and prevented the ravages of typhoid and other filth diseases; while the terrible effects of such epidemics as the grippe are made impossible in the face of the medical knowledge of the twentieth century.
Transfusion of blood is accomplished, in case of wounds by accident, without inconvenience to the one supplying the life-fluid, or danger to the recipient, while effective tonics bring about the rapid replacement of the amount of blood abstracted in the emergency.
The triumphs of electricians in their wonderful science have caused the twentieth century to be named the Age of Electricity.
The power of great rivers, such as Niagara, is utilized by being converted into electricity and transmitted where desired; also stored up at convenient distributing places, to be used when wanted. Wave force has been taken hold of and similarly carried to great distances and used in quantities, or at times, to suit.
The wind and the lightning are in the same way harnessed to do man’s bidding; so that each storm contributes to public wealth to an extent greater than the damage it works.
Lightning is no longer a source of danger. The electric and other connections of the building render an injurious shock impossible; and where it does strike any building in the protected circuit, the charge is stored to be used for domestic purposes, such as driving the passenger and goods elevators in the house, or furnishing light and heat.
Welding is accomplished by electricity, on a large scale. Not only are ordinary masses of steel so made one, but the hulls, masts and yards of steel vessels are thus welded together electrically, so that there is no possibility of a seam “giving,” nor of a leak taking place. Steel bridge-members being similarly electrically welded together, the danger from such bridges giving way is reduced to an insignificant minimum.
Primary batteries generate an electric current by chemical action upon coal, without the production of heat or odor; so that the steam engine is seldom needed, and, indeed, in many places as rarely seen as the wind-mill was in 1893.
Horology, as of old, is one of the exact sciences; but we find upon every street, electrically-driven clocks telling to the tenth of a second the time of day or night; the twenty-four hour system having come into general use about 1900, and London time being kept in every city in the civilized world.
The central stations of the telephone and other conveniences are worked by the subscribers themselves; the apparatus in each house enabling the subscriber to ascertain whether or not the person with whom he wishes to communicate is at liberty; and to connect with him if he is.
All cities on the Continent are connected in a universal telegraphic and telephonic exchange, so that San Francisco can write, print or talk in New Orleans or Montreal. The telephone is so improved that it can be worked across the Atlantic, although the Pacific as yet defies all attempts of inventors to produce a system that will work without fail under all conditions. By this wonderful improvement Patti, from her castle at Craig-y-Nos; Campanini, from his beloved Italy, and other celebrated artists, could have delighted those who heard them in New York, by taking part in a concert together; but those great artists are but memories, and have been supplanted by others, with voices improved by surgery and special nurture until their range, delicacy and power have been brought to a degree of perfection of which the nineteenth century never dreamed.
The chemists have not been far behind the electricians in their triumphs and successes.
The subject of special plant foods has been, during the past forty years, taken up by agricultural chemists with such results that not only can any special plant be given its special food, but special portions of it can be developed in disproportion to the rest; thus, oranges and lemons can be grown without seeds, and dwarf wheat practically without any straw. New varieties of food-plants have been developed from wild plants, while fertilizers are employed to dissolve the rocks that are in the soil and render them at once absorbable by the plant roots.
In metallurgy, surprising progress has been made. Several new noble metals have been discovered in the Ural Mountains and in Africa, giving scientists and jewellers a variety in color, hardness and weight, as surprising as pleasing. The manufacture of steel direct from the ore has become un fait accompli. Iron is used for few purposes, steel being cheaper and better. Aluminum, which is plentifully extracted from common clay, has taken the place of steel and bronze for many uses, in fact for all places where great mass is not practically a requisite.
The chemist is even more ingenious and more of a benefactor than his predecessor of the nineteenth century. He has produced from coal oil, in paying quantities, both sugar and vinegar; and has also solved the problem of making sugar from starch.
The majority of fabrics are rendered, by chemical processes, proof against fire and mildew; and the law renders the use of such fireproof substances compulsory where wood, cloth or paper is used in building construction.
Medical and chemical science has so far advanced that special foods are devised for particular parts of the body. The man who uses his brain employs certain condiments; he who gains his living by the sweat of his brow others, and so on.
Foods are concentrated to a degree once deemed absolutely impossible. A vessel can carry in a small chest, which two men can lift, a week’s supply of nourishment for five hundred people.
Antiseptics of pleasant taste and non-poisonous character permit the preservation to almost illimitable extent, of heretofore perishable foods.
The profusion of new dyes is so great that industrial chemists have, by common consent, restricted the output of shades to enable buyers and manufacturers to keep up with the pace. The shades for each year are announced in advance two to five years ahead. Among these dyes are many which have a sheen truly metallic, thus producing effects never before dreamed of outside of Nature’s laboratory. The butterfly and the peacock are out-rivaled; the gorgeous beauties with which Brazil abounded before her more complete settlement and civilization, cast into the shade. Truly “Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like unto one of these” might the on-looker say on beholding a bevy of young girls, clad in the latest spring fashions.
There have been produced numberless new alkaloids having-medicinal effects of character as various as the sources and methods of production of the drugs themselves.
The four haloids, iodine, bromine, chlorine and fluorine, have long been discovered to be allotropic forms of one and the same simple element; and the relations between carbon and boron, and carbon and silicon, have been traced to such a degree as to render possible the production of new steels and other alloys, comprising a range of properties undreamed of in 1893.
Diamonds are no longer precious stones, since they are electrically deposited in great quantities at trifling expense; as are, of course, all other stones once styled precious.
The dead are disposed of by cremation in gas furnaces, or by dessication; and the establishments for performing these operations, and for disposing of the remains, are under strictest governmental supervision.
The use of explosives—confined to peaceful operations since war has been voted too expensive—has largely increased; and there are numbers of them which, while explosible only by electricity applied in a particular way—thus preventing possibility of accident—have a force which throws into the shade all the dynamite and other explosives of the preceding century.
The clothing worn by men is very little changed from that of the century previous, except in texture and materials. Numberless plants of Mexican and African origin have been brought into use as bearing textile fibres; and improvements in spinning and weaving have enabled the production of fabrics of most surprising fineness and strength. The silk hat, which was the pest of civilized men in the previous century, has given place to a modification of what was once known as the Alpine, save that the new head-covering is lighter and more graceful, and those employed in winter are warmer than the others. In summer, straw has been superseded by paper. The women have decided upon a dress in external appearance not dissimilar to that which for so many centuries made Japanese women so picturesque. Corsets have been abolished, and pictures bearing date of the preceding century, in which the bustle is a prominent feature, have been tabooed as suggestive if not indecent.
The manufacture of paper has so greatly been improved, that sheets are now used of only one-half the thickness formerly rendered necessary for any purpose; and of finish as marvellous as their strength. Leather possesses a suppleness, a resistance to wear, and a beauty and variety of grain, as surprising as desirable, while it is not only waterproof, but permeable by the perspiration of the foot.
Iron and steel may be cast into the thinnest sections and the most complicated forms.
Flour-making is accomplished by air blasts to perform the disintegration of the wheat grains, with electrical separation of the various useful by and waste products. But the new-process bread is made directly from the decorticated wheat berry, without ever grinding it into flour; the baker taking the wheat and doughing it up directly without ferment.
Timber is dyed of any desired color before felling, and bent into any shape by steaming, so that the most complex outlines may be given it without weakening it.
Umbrella covers and other textile objects of irregular shape, formerly made up of gored sections, are now woven in one piece and of any desired fineness. Rugs and seamless carpets an inch thick and of infinite variety in pattern are produced with any wished-for outline, to fit the projections and recesses of the apartment for which they may be ordered.
Flexible and malleable glass are no longer scientific curiosities; and toughened glass bells break the night’s silence with their sweet chiming of the hours as they fly.
In porcelain and other ceramic wares the long-lost arts of the ancients have been rivalled or revived; and the most exquisite productions of the Land of the Rising Sun duplicated or excelled.
In brewing and wine-making all hurtful compounds are eliminated, and none but the health-giving and gladdening retained.
In mechanics an entirely new principle has been applied; the cold of winter, as well as the heat of summer, being harnessed to do man’s work. The scientific engineers of 1925 recognized the fact that in any motor it was the difference between the initial and final temperatures of the steam, gas, or other medium employed, that did the work; this work being the utilizable percentage of that difference in temperature; and acting upon this idea, by 1935 there were engines which ran by cold as well as those driven by heat. The snow-fields of winter then, as well as the great arid plains of summer, have for some time been used to make and store up power, which is used only as wanted.
A striking landscape feature is the great number of windmills, stately, picturesque and beautiful, which lazily flap their sails or merrily spin with the brisk breeze, generating and storing up power for the houses upon which they are perched. These mills are let run full speed in the fiercest storms; the surplus of power going to the owner’s storage system, to be used when wanted, or contributed to the common stock in case of need.
Railway cars are made very largely of aluminum and paper, thus possessing great stiffness, lightness and strength.
Many new varieties of steel have made their appearance; boron and silicon being used indifferently with carbon in forming combinations with iron, which possesses properties never before seen in steels of any kind.
The hardening of copper has been rediscovered, and for twenty-five or more years this metal has been tempered and worked just as steel was in the century preceding.
The manufacture of anti-friction metals has been so far advanced that the use of lubricants is rendered unnecessary.
Transportation of the person and of goods, large and small, is as greatly advanced as that of ideas and images.
Steam is a crudity of the past century. Pneumatic and electric railways carry people and freight with swiftness and safety, in all directions and at trifling rates. To every house and from every store, of any importance, pneumatic tubes radiate from central stations, so that packages and messages can be sent from any dwelling or establishment in the system to any other by simply having connection made through the central office, as in the old-fashioned way of telephoning.
Great air-ships hover over city and country, and a weekly line of dirigible balloons, under the auspices of the General Government, is in preparation.
Ocean navigation is rendered both safe and swift. Great floating palaces ply daily between Montauk Point and Bristol, making the Atlantic transit in three days. Seasickness has been banished by medical science, and indeed the motion of the great electrically-driven argosies is so smooth that there would be little danger of sickness even without the remedies. Storms are allayed by the use of oil discharged from these vessels, which now ride the waves in defiance of their strength.
New models of vessels, taken from the marine division of the animal kingdom, have been introduced, and the rivalry between “deep-keel” and “centreboard” vessels, which in the latter quarter of the nineteenth century caused such absorbing discussion, is as nothing to the interest manifested by the advocates of the various models—the “pike,” the “swordfish,” and so on.
Across all great isthmuses there are canals and ship railways; and projects are under way for a transcontinental ship railway from New York to San Francisco.
The bottoms of all great rivers are paved smoothly and kept clean, so that navigation is never interfered with by bars; and these rivers are sources of health and strength rather than of danger to the cities through or by which they flow.
In every great city there are upon all but the minor streets steel plate-ways carrying electric currents, and upon which the ordinary vehicles run without noise or jolting; although the excellent condition of the pavements would seem to render this unnecessary.
The street paving is monolithic (that is, all in one piece), of an artificial stone as hard as good limestone; giving a surface sufficiently gritty to ensure good hold for the feet of the few horses which are employed, and yet leaving the surface smooth, in order that it may be kept clean and give good traction for the short space of time in which vehicles (which ordinarily take the tracks on the plate-ways) are running over it.
In New York City, Arcade railways, with various ramifications, extend along the main arteries of travel, and give rapid transit to citizens and visitors alike. Double tracks in each direction insure absolute safety, while the express trains, stopping only at principal stations, have their separate way; the local trains, stopping at every block, taking the outer one of each pair of tracks. The motive power here employed is electricity, partly brought on from Niagara and other power-producing stations, and partly carried along the Jersey and Long Island coasts, where the waves are busy night and day, doing the work of New York and other cities.
The vehicles upon the street are driven by electric power, and the same current which drives them affords light at night to occupant and passer-by.
The plate-ways carry an electric current which may be taken off by those vehicles provided with necessary motors and connecting appliances; so that the horses have little traction to do; and in fact some private vehicles, never going off the streets supplied with plate-ways, have no horses at all.
Other private vehicles are supplied with motors deriving their current from overhead wires, not through trollies as once done in electric railways, but by induction.
Storage batteries that are light and compact have been invented and are already in use for driving carriages along roads which have neither plate-ways nor overhead conductors by which the current can be carried by induction to the motors within the vehicles. The motors for such private carriages are no larger than a man’s hat, and are turned out by the thousand just as Waterbury watches were made in 1893.
In other divisions of the broad domain of science, than those referred to in detail, the past fifty years have been laurel-crowned.
Astronomers have not been idle during the last sixty years or so. They have reached out into space, and discovered enough asteroids to account for the lost planet between Mars and Jupiter; and have supplied the missing link between Mercury and the sun. With the spectroscope they have found in the sun and various planets, several new metals, for which, by analogy they have searched on earth, and many of which they have found.
The geologists, delving into the crust of the earth, have mapped out its entire surface, so that the location of every considerable quantity of gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, coal, oil, etc., is known and recorded, and useless prospecting done away with. The Arctic and Antarctic zones have been thoroughly worked, the open Polar Sea discovered and regularly traversed, and the mines of the Polar regions worked regularly and with profit for metals and minerals used every day in the world’s industrial pursuits.
Scarcity of rain in any one place is promptly counteracted by each local government by consent of the others concerned; great fires being started to attract the clouds, which will bring in their arms the friendly drops.
The fine arts of 1943 have kept pace with other branches of culture.
Sculpture and painting, instead of having been thrown into the shade by the wonderful achievements in photography and engraving, have received a great impetus. Leading citizens vie with each other in purchasing (sometimes even in making) statues to adorn their own homes and gardens, and public streets and parks. In the same way painting is taught as a science as well as an art; to be a fair painter being more common than to be a fair performer upon the instrument once known as “pianoforte.” The pipe organ has become the national musical instrument, and its glorious tones are heard from houses of far less than palatial pretensions.
The public buildings of this country, no longer laughing-stocks for foreigners, are at once spacious, beautiful, substantial and convenient. In them the new American style of architecture, in which proportions are of more value than arrangement, finds fitting types on every hand.
In every town of any magnitude or importance, are free museums of science and art, visits to which are as common as to the beautiful parks laid out as breathing places in the larger cities.
Color-masters vie with each other in great kaleidoscopic exhibitions, which out-rival in beauty of rapid combinations and successions of color, the most brilliant pyrotechnic displays of the generations past.
The art of perfumery has been carried to a point never even dreamed of by those of the preceding century. The law steps in and prevents any one from using, or permitting the use of, any odor (like musk) which is prejudicial to health or general comfort. The gamut of odor has been discovered, and harmonies of perfumes are made just like those of colors, or of musical tones. Concerts are given at which, the great perfume-masters of the day produce chords and pleasing successions of odors, which draw great crowds of the most refined, fully appreciative of the delights there offered.
Flower-culture is a national pastime. Where there are no large gardens, small patches are devoted to floriculture; and in the most crowded city, window-boxes hold the latest new hybrid plants and make the most frequented thoroughfares a garden of beauty. Dwarfing and aggrandizing plants, by electric currents passed around their roots, has been practiced for twenty years upon a large scale; so that in the great conservatories, one may find tiny plants grown from the cones of the Yosemite great trees, and may also see what have sprung from tiny fungi but are now as large as the old-fashioned cabbages of the days of President Harrison. The dyeing of plants and of their flowers by substances introduced in solution at their roots, is a fine art most successful and pleasing in its application.
Banking is much more simple and much more safe, both for the banker and for the dealer, than in the old risky days. Panics are impossible. The wise action of the Bank of England, in connection with other monetary institutions, in averting a financial crash in November, 1890, by coming to the rescue of Baring Brothers with $55,000,000, began most auspiciously an eminently successful era of mutual help. Every bank is guaranteed by Government, and the notes of any bank in any one Government are good in any country on the globe; the various Governments having treaties to the effect that each shall guarantee to the common banking fund a certain percentage of its revenues, and the amount of money issued in each country being in proportion to the net revenue of the year preceding.
All currency is decimal, and uniform over the whole civilized globe, greatly facilitating travel and commerce.
By an ingenious system the great clearing-houses of each country are united in a National Clearing-house which serves weekly for all those in each city the same purpose as the local establishments do daily for the banks which are members thereof. Similarly, there is in London an International Clearing-house through which the National Clearing-houses all over the world effect monthly clearances. Each city bank takes an equal quantity of certificates in its local clearing-house, so that when aid is extended, no unfavorable inference is drawn; and the same arrangement exists up to the International establishment in London.
The new noble metals Columbium, Africum, Asium and Australium furnish coins ten times as light as those of fifty years previous, while very far exceeding them in wearing power. The paper money extant being of equal value with coin, is in universal circulation, while its cleanliness and general good condition are insured by frequent renewals; every bank of issue and deposit being compelled by law since 1910 to accept torn and soiled notes at par and replace them with others, new, clean and whole.
In most mercantile and manufacturing establishments, profit-sharing is the rule rather than the exception.
Naturally a country so blessed in material and moral wealth, would be the objective point of the oppressed and unhappy from all over the world; but there is in the immigration laws a strict clause, carried out most rigidly, rendering the possession of a certain degree of intelligence and education absolutely a sine qua non for all who wish to set foot upon our shores. The old law by which contracting for labor abroad was a punishable offense has been so far changed that no one is permitted to land unless possessed of means enough to support him for three months without work, or having from a responsible party a contract for his labor for half a year ahead. Thus no paupers are thrown upon the community, to be supported by either the working or the leisure class.
The Government takes it upon itself, first to prevent idleness, and second to furnish work to the unemployed; so that there is no vagrancy.
In every city of importance, as well as in the minor towns, the planting of trees on the streets is compulsory; and if a lot-holder does not plant and maintain on his street line the kind and number of trees for which the laws call, they are planted there by the local authorities, at his charge.
Trial by jury was abolished in 1910 with scarcely a dissenting vote; and instead of ignorant or prejudiced juries, learned judges, who hold their office during life or until impeached by their peers, decide questions of law and evidence. The statute law has been greatly amended, and the common law superseded by principles of equity.
The enactments concerning marriage and divorce are the same in all civilized nations, and their enforcement most strict.
Only the physically perfect are permitted to marry, and stirpiculture is made a common and honored study. The local government being responsible for the maintenance of cripples and others physically as well as mentally ill, keeps strict watch over health and morals. Surgical and other hospitals are kept up at great expense, and any one meeting with an accident, or becoming ill, is treated at the hospital instead of at home.
Elections are held in a quiet and orderly manner; and the cumulative system having been universally adopted in 1904, the minority has a voice in proceedings of local, as well as National bodies.
Female suffrage has taken the place of female suffering. The education of the young is largely confided to the direction of intelligent and refined ladies, who consider their educational duties as on a par with those which they owe to religion proper.
The new generations, better educated and better looked after than those which preceded them, find at once fewer inducements to crime, and more reasons for not committing it; so that imprisonment is not so common as formerly, and execution is far more rare. Asphyxiation by carbonic acid gas is the kindly and unrevolting method chosen.
Trades unions flourish, but their basis is most praiseworthy. The cardinal quality which every member must possess is competence in his trade. No one is admitted to membership in any “degree” of the guild, unless he has been properly instructed and proved capable and competent to do what is called for by that degree of advancement in his craft; and those of the highest proficiency receive pay according to the value of their services. Thus there is confidence in and respect for the trade organizations; and their members have some inducement to excel in their chosen crafts.
In religion, there has been a fusion of the various sects into a vast Church in which Charity in its broadest sense is the leading principle, and the golden rule inscribed upon the mental tablets of all good people. A man’s religion is deemed as of his inmost private life; as bearing upon his confidential personal relations with his God, and no more to be inquired into nor discussed than his most sacred domestic life. Rancor and hatred engendered by religious differences are of the unregretted past, and mission-work, begun at home, and thoroughly prosecuted with a view to physical improvement and mental advancement, as well as spiritual enlightenment, is carried to the heathen on the wings of mercy and healing.
In these blessed days of 1943 each dweller in a progressive community recognizes his duties towards himself, his fellows and his Maker—acknowledges his obligation to be charitable and to contribute to the advancement of all about him. They are halcyon days; they have brought man nearer to himself, to his brethren—who are all the world—and to his Maker, who is everywhere and forever. They point, they surely point, to further steps; to onward steps, to upward steps; to steps which through swift-succeeding centuries shall bring mankind nearer and still nearer to divine knowledge, and make him in each generation more and more nearly the worthy, perfect image of an all-wise and beneficent God.
Roger Brathwaite.
I read this prophecy through without stopping; then gave myself up to the idea of the great possibilities about to present themselves to me. To be sole heir and executor of a property so valuable as this arduous life-work must be, should elate any struggling youth of twenty-two; but to be the mouthpiece of prophecies more wonderful, more far-reaching, more detailed, yet more universal, than any ever before given to the world, be they inspired or uninspired, was enough to turn his head completely. I drew mental pictures, far into the night, limning myself as famous and rich; and incidentally, the husband of Estelle; the father of her children; the founder of a family which should be known throughout the world as that of him who unlocked the gates of time to come; who pierced the depths of futurity; who controlled that knowledge for the right to purchase which the kings of finance jostled each other.
I am ashamed to say that gratitude to Brathwaite, and thorough appreciation of the fact that he was the first to conceive and the first to carry out, even in part, the idea of scientific prophecy through graphical construction, took in my mind second place to the ideas of that fame and fortune which were to be mine through his industry and generosity.
“Midnight brought on the dusky hour
Friendliest to sleep and silence,”
but still I thought on, thought on. At last, tired Nature asserted herself; I fell asleep in the big chair from which I had in imagination seen the magnates of the monetary world feverishly awaiting, in my ante-room, my pleasure as to how much information I would accord them, on my own terms. I slept, to dream of dictatorship of two continents, compelled by my exclusive knowledge of the things to come; but while I ruled as with a rod of iron the doings and the comings and goings of both hemispheres, it seemed as though war’s alarms sounded in my ears—the rebellion of a nation from tyranny, be it ever so mild, from dictation, be it ever so wise. The clang of the multitude seeking relief from the oppression of ignorance by knowledge, rang in my ears; I started to my feet to wake and find the fire-brigade jangling and rumbling past my dwelling—the sparks from the steamer’s stack streaming upwards and backwards in the black night as the great engine thundered by.
To the west, a ruddy glow extended up through the murky midnight sky, while lurid flashes rose and fell in horrid alternation. From time to time an angry flame arose, while the harsh clangor of more engines speeding through the almost deserted streets, gave greater terror to the scene.
Fear filled my mind—I knew not why—lest that awful holocaust should be the pyre of my hopes and fortunes. Rushing from my room, and spurred by anxious fears, I soon traversed the distance between my home and the quiet street in which for so many years Brathwaite had labored in the accomplishment of his end and aim—and for my great and ultimate benefit. Hot though the pace, my heart thumped high and hard against my chest, less from the unwonted exercise than from anxiety lest the cup of prosperity had been dashed from my lips before I had tasted its contents.
My fears were but too well grounded. Tearing past the blue-coated guardian of the peace who sought to restrain me, I rushed to a spot where without actual danger, I could best see the ruin which the fire-fiend was working to me—and of course to Brathwaite—but how can man, born of woman, feel more for his fellows than for himself? Why affect a nobility not of the nineteenth century? Why lay claim to emotions which may belong to those to come—which may have belonged to those gone by—but not of the genius of this eager, selfish present? True, I felt for Brathwaite; but for Ainsworth—for Ainsworth again—and for Ainsworth still again, the pity, the regret, the mad sense of baffled ambition, rose ever up and obscured the finer feelings.
The fire had gained the mastery over the great building, before my arrival, and the principal efforts of the firemen were directed to saving the piano factory, with its stock of kiln-dried lumber, of costly veneers, and of inflammable varnishes. From that repository of so many almost priceless volumes, so many absolutely priceless charts, and of that Key which should enable the possessor to avail himself of half a century’s work by another—great sheets of flame arose from beds of fire. Red sullen gusts, “fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,” bore on their hurtling wings the treasures of a lifetime—bright, upward-pouring golden torrents, wasting mind and matter at furious rate.
Fierce though the heat, which seemed to crisp my skin even at the distance at which I was stationed, it was nothing to the hot welling passions which assailed my inner self and drove me to despair. That fury of a woman scorned, than which hell no greater hath indeed, was as nothing to a man so baffled in ambition, which
“hath one heel nail’d in hell,
Though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.”
Demoniac rage possessed my soul—I was frenzied to the verge of insanity, and as the crash of that roof-tree which had shielded the light of prophecy and covered my hopes, if but for so short a time, sent scintillations up and out, far and wide, I rushed from the excited scene, I knew not whither.
When I next recognized my surroundings, I found myself in a small, neat room, white-walled and curtained—and Estelle’s anxious face was bending over me. I had been ill a month, and my gaunt limbs and haggard features, which I insisted on seeing in a mirror, gave no reminiscence of my once plump face and rounded form. My voice, the mere ghost of a sound, was hardly the semblance of its former resonant self.
At first I was not permitted to excite myself by too eager inquiry, but as I gained strength, those about me, who of course had known nothing about my intended collaboration with Brathwaite, set to work to ascertain something concerning the events of that September night in which I had been so swiftly snatched up to the seventh heaven of expectancy, and as suddenly dropped to earth again.
There was nothing reassuring in the tidings of a month ago. The enthusiast, roused from slumber by the shrill cry of fire, sought to save his papers rather than his person; traversed passage after passage claimed by the invading flames; and bore treasure after treasure to the lower hall. But in penetrating to some distant stairway, which gave way under his daring footsteps, he inhaled flame, and although rescued by the bravery of the firemen, was borne from the seething, roaring furnace—only to die.
So, then, the manuscript which the noble soul had entrusted to me, as an earnest of what was to come, was all that remained of a life of work, a fortune of expenditure.
“Then black despair,
The shadow of a starless night was thrown
Over the world in which I moved alone”—
I could without a sigh “let the dead past bury its dead,” but the future which promised so much for me and mine—how could I bear to give it up?
The attending physician, who gathered that I had met with some sudden business reverse, said soothingly: “Remember this line of Shakespeare:
“‘Sweet are the uses of adversity,’
and this which Beaumont and Fletcher borrowed from Seneca:
“‘Calamity is man’s true touchstone.’
This trouble, great though it be, may be like the heating in molten lead and quenching in cold brine which gives to steel its greatest hardness and most exquisite temper. Everything is for the best.”
With this I could not agree. I am not sure that I agree with it yet. I replied, peevishly: “It is very easy for you to console me; to patch grief with proverbs. But I can quote you Shakespeare against himself:
“‘’Tis all men’s office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man’s virtue, nor sufficiency,
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself.’”
Pope says, ‘I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes like a Christian.’ While I do believe that I should make the best of everything, I do not believe that everything is for the best.
“‘Yet I argue not
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward.’”
Estelle said, half-reprovingly, “‘If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy faith is small.’”
“I never pretended to have faith. I never thought that I had any, except perhaps when none was needed. Faith is like courage; it must be born in one, or be cultivated by contact with danger. When there is no danger to test one’s faith, there is no means of knowing whether or not any has been born with one. Then when faith is most needed, it may be found entirely lacking.”
With such thoughts and words our conversation continued until the physician, mindful of his patient’s physical welfare, signed to Estelle to leave me—which she did, pressing on my pallid forehead a soft, tender kiss that meant hope and love, confidence and reassurance.
A soothing draught composed me to dreamless sleep, and when again I woke it was to see the love-light in my dear one’s eyes, patiently watching my restful slumber and awaiting my return to consciousness.
Her gentle ministrations, as much as the doctor’s skill, restored health and strength to my enfeebled mind and body. We tacitly avoided the subject of my so-suddenly blasted ambitions, and talked of love and happy life together, in a pleasant uneventful future, such as had often engrossed our conversation before my eyes had seen from afar that promised land which I was never to enter.
With returning vigor, I renewed my former plans for my future and Estelle’s; but as my steps increased in firmness, my thoughts still reverted to Brathwaite’s wonderful prophetic manuscript, some of the details of which I set about to make realities of the present, rather than of a generation hence. The hope of realizing for myself and Estelle an early return from my mental labors in their development and embodiment, lent new strength, suppleness and deftness to my touch, and seemed to make my insight keener, my inventive powers more fertile, more promptly responsive to the demands upon them. Festina lente became my motto. I doubted as I hoped; I criticised relentlessly as I solved method after method, and produced result after result. At each new step I felt the ground firmly before trusting to it; I looked at each production as though it were that of some hated rival whom I had in my power to thrust down, keep down, by savage search for faults and merciless exposure of each weakness in design, construction or operation.
The news of the dramatic death of Brathwaite and some inkling of the fact that he had for so many years been engaged in scientific research, every vestige of result from which was believed to have perished with “the old Professor”—as the journals of the day styled him—had startled the city; and gave three-column stories, spread headed, sub-headed and padded ad nauseam; no two agreeing, save that in all “the fire-fiend” was rampant; “holocaust” and “pyre,” “cremation” and “conflagration,” vied with each other in harrowing up the reader’s nerves. The suburban press took up the strain in more subdued tones and in less space, although no more grammatically—while the far-away sheets of Boom City or Dead Man’s Gulch paragraphed it as the shocking self-destruction of Robert Batterman, an eccentric metropolitan hermit who had a mania for collecting old almanacs and back numbers of periodicals. “Such is fame,” said Byron, “to have one’s name misspelled in the ‘Gazette.’”
The Masonic body of which Brathwaite had been for so many years an unobtrusive member announced a Lodge of Sorrow in memory of the deceased brother; and most imposing were the ceremonies, most impressive were the addresses upon that occasion. From the pamphlet account of this function, printed by resolution of the Lodge, I excerpt the remarks of M. W. Past Master Ashley, as showing in some degree the respect in which Brathwaite was held by those who knew him, and the veneration which his upright life, his charitable although retiring disposition, and his many and varied accomplishments, inspired.