Mr. Smith sat silently up to this point in the debate. "Boys," said he, at last, "the world is goin' ahead. Talkin' of science, let me tell you a dream I had last night." But, if the reader will permit me, I will give the substance of Smith's dream in my own language. It may detract from its point, but it will be more connected and intelligible.
"I dreamed, boys," said Smith, "that I was in the great Patent Office, at Washington. I looked, and its ceiling was raised to an enormous height, while through open doors and passages I saw room after room groaning with thousands of models, until it appeared as though I was in a wilderness of machinery. Very soon a pert little gentleman, with a quick black eye, and a 'pussy' body, arrayed in the queerest costume I ever saw, came bustling up to me, and asked me for my ticket. I involuntarily thrust my hand into the depths of my breeches-pocket, and pulling out a card, delivered it to him. After looking at the card, and then at me, and then at the card again, he burst out into a loud guffaw, that made the old Patent-Office ring. 'Why, sir,' said he, 'this is no ticket. It is the business card of one John Smith, advertising a patent dog-churn, of which he here says he is the real inventor, and it bears date in the year 1840—two hundred years ago! The churn may be found in room marked "Inventions of Year 1840," but the man John Smith we haven't got. I don't much think he is around above ground, just at this time," said the little man, chuckling. 'But,' said I, 'who are you, if I am not John Smith? Were you not appointed by Polk, Secretary of the Interior, and did I not put a word in his ear favorable to you?' 'Polk, a Secretary of the Interior!' exclaimed he; 'I appointed by Polk! Why, my dear sir, I was appointed only two years ago—not two hundred!—"Chief of the Great Central Department," as the office is now called.'
"While we were talking, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Fulton, walked in and took seats. I knew Uncle Ben the moment I cast my eyes upon him. He was dressed in good old '76 style;—shoe-buckles, short breeches, queue, and all; and that same jolly, round face, and double chin, that tranquil countenance just touched, without being destroyed, by comedy—were all there. Adams and Jefferson I had before seen, and they were a little more modern in dress, but they both looked care-worn. Fulton sat apart, and eyed the other three as though he had seen them somewhere, but yet could not call them by name.
"The rather unexpected arrival of these gentlemen broke up the comments of my bustling interrogator, and one of those pauses occurred which frequently do upon the appearance of strangers. Uncle Ben asked Jefferson if he would 'not like to move up to the fire and warm his feet?' 'Fire!' said I, 'fire. Why, Uncle Ben, there is no fireplace now-a-days. Stoves and hot-air furnaces are all the go. This building is warmed by a great furnace, and two miles of pipe that conducts the heat to every room in it.' 'Not by a long way,' said my bustling friend—'not by a long way, Mr. John Smith. This trumpery is all piled away among the inventions of the years that were. These things belong to the age of your dog-churn. Why, gentlemen,' continued he, 'have you never heard of the Great Southern Hot-Air Company, chartered in 1960, whose business it is to furnish warm air from the South to persons at the North; price to families three dollars a year; all done by a gigantic underground tunnel, and branches, worked at the other end by an air-pump! Have you never heard of this, gentlemen? Here we get the natural heat of the South, warmed by the sun; none of your stinking coal and wood gases to corrupt and destroy it. And then the principle of reciprocity is kept up; for we send back our cold air in the same way; and so we keep up an equilibrium, for the South are just as strenuous as ever to keep up the equilibrium of the Union. Why, gentlemen, those stoves required constant care. As often as every week it was necessary to replenish them with wood or coal. No! no!—those improvements belonged to the dark ages."
"Bless me!" exclaimed Uncle Ben. "Impossible!" repeated Fulton. "And so you don't use the old 'Franklin' stove any more?" said Uncle Ben. "Perhaps," he continued, a quiet smile playing over his face, as if he intended a comical shot, "perhaps you don't use lightning now-a-days either, and my lightning-rods, of course, belong to the dark ages too!"
"We have the lightning, and use it too, but only one rod, built by the state, near its centre, which is so colossal and powerful that it protects everything around it." And then the little fellow rattled on about the use of lightning; how it wrote all over the world the English language, until I verily believe that Uncle Ben, Fulton, and all, set him down as the most unscrupulous liar that they had ever met with.
"I think," said Uncle Ben, "that I could convince myself of the truth of your assertions, if I could go to Boston; but as my time is very limited, I cannot."
"Send you there in five minutes by the watch!" answered the little man; "or, if that's too soon, in twenty-four hours. It requires powerful lungs to go by balloon—time five minutes—departure every half hour. The magnetic railway train will take you through in four hours, or on the old-fashioned railroad in twenty-four." "What," said Uncle Ben, "is the old stage company entirely broken up?" "Don't know what you mean by stages," said the little man, "but I will look for the word in the big dictionary." "Go by steamboat," said Fulton. "Steamboat!" repeated the little man,—"steamboat! too everlasting slow—not over twenty-five miles an hour—well enough for freight, but passengers cannot endure them; they go laboring and splashing along at a snail's pace, and they are enough to wear out any man's patience. Yet the steamboat was the greatest stride ever made at any one time in the way of locomotion, and was very creditable to Fulton and the age in which he lived." "That is admitting something," burst out Fulton, who had sat like a statue, watching the little man's volubility. "But," said Uncle Ben, "all this talk don't get me on my way to Boston. That is my birthplace. I was there for the last time in 1763, and you know that, according to the provisions of my will, there is more than four million pounds sterling of my money which has by this time been disposed of by the state somehow." Uncle Ben was always a shrewd fellow in the way of dollars and cents, and I could see he was very anxious about that money. "Oho! oho!" said the little man; "so you are Ben Franklin, and you are the old gentleman who left that legacy. We've got a portrait of you up-stairs, more than two hundred years old, and it does look like you. Glad to see you! You said something in your life-time about immersing yourself in a cask of Madeira wine with a few friends, and coming to the world in a hundred years again. These are your friends, I suppose?" "These gentlemen," replied Uncle Ben, "are John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, signers of the Declaration of Independence." "The other gentleman," continued I, "is Robert Fulton, whom you have spoken of." "Well, I declare!" ejaculated the little man, "this is a meeting! But about that legacy, Uncle Ben, of yours; two million sterling of it has gone to build the Gutta Percha Magnetic Telegraph line, connecting Boston with London and Paris, two of the largest cities in the Eastern Republic of Europe." "Gutta Percha!—Magnetic telegraph!—Republic of Europe!"—repeated all of them. "All built under water, and sustained by buoys," continued the little man, "and it works to a charm—plan up-stairs in room 204—and can be seen in a moment; and, as I told you before, it writes the English language as fast as my deputy." "Republic of Europe!" exclaimed Jefferson, again. "Yes, sir," said the little man, "for more than a century. No more thrones; no more rulers by divine right; no more governments sustained by powder and ball; no lords nor nobles; man is man, not merely one of a class of men, but individually man, with rights as perfect and powers as great as any other man. The principles, Jefferson, of your Declaration, which you did not create, but only asserted, have prostrated every arbitrary government on the globe. Even the Jews, since their return to Jerusalem, have organized a republican form of government, and have just elected Mr. Noah President." "Well," thinks I to myself, "that can't be Mordecia M. Noah, anyhow, for politics must have used up his constitution before this." But the little man chattered away, and declared that Europe was divided into two republics, the Eastern and Western; that Constantinople was the capital of the Western; that Africa and Asia were also republican; until the three signers of the Declaration, perfectly wrought up to a frenzy of joy, rose up from their seats, took off their hats, and swinging them round, gave "Three cheers for '76, and the old Army of the Revolution!"—and I verily believe Uncle Ben forgot all about that money, and about going to Boston, for he did not allude to it any more in my presence.
"Great changes these!" continued the little man, "from your days. But you must not think, gentlemen, that we have forgotten you or your services, while we have improved in wisdom and strength. Look here, gentlemen," and he motioned us away, and, leading on, he conducted us to an observatory on the top of the building. Such a prospect I never before beheld. Away, around, on every side, stretched a mighty city, whose limits the eye could not reach. Towers, temples, spires, and masts succeeded towers, temples, spires, and masts, until they were lost in the distant haze. Canals traversed every street, and boats of merchandise were loading and unloading their freights. Steam-carriages were puffing along the roads that ran by the canal, some filled with pleasure parties, and some laden with goods. Turning my eye to an elevation, I saw fifty-six gigantic monuments, whose peaks were nearly lost in the sky, ranged in a line, all alike in form and sculpture. "These," said the little man, "were erected to the Signers of the Declaration of Independence;" and, taking out his telescope, he handed it to Uncle Ben, who read aloud among the inscriptions the names, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams. "But let us know what this city is called?" inquired Jefferson. "This, sir, is called Columbiana; it lies on the west bank of the Mississippi, population five millions, according to the last census." "But what supports it?" "Supports it! The great East India trade. That vessel down there is direct from Canton, by ship canal across the Isthmus. All Europe is secondary to us now. No doubling capes, as was done in your day. Yonder stands the Capitol; and the whole North American continent is annually represented there. The city of San Francisco alone sends forty-four members. There," continued he, pointing his finger, "that balloon rising slowly in the sky has just started for that place, and the passengers will take their dinner there to-morrow."
Jefferson asked the little man "whether the Federalists or Democrats were in power?"—and I saw that Adams waked up when he heard the question. "Don't know any such division," replied he. "The great measure of the day, upon which parties are divided, is the purchase of the South American continent at five hundred millions of dollars. I go for it; and before another year the bargain will be consummated. We must have more territory—we haven't got half enough. Extent of territory gives a nation dignity and importance. The old thirteen states of your day, gentlemen, were a mere cabbage patch, and should have been consolidated into one state. Ten or twenty days' sail ran you plump into a hostile port, and then you had a demand for duty. Besides, conflicting interests always brew up difficulties; and then come treaties, and finally war, and then debt, and at last oppressive taxation. A nation should own all the territory that joins it. The ocean is the only natural boundary for a people." Thinks I, "You have been a politician in your day, and I'll just engage you to correspond with a certain New York editor, who shall be nameless; you strike off the doctrine boldly!"