"I must confess," put in Mr. Whitechoker, blandly, "that I too am somewhat—er—somewhat—"
"Somewhat up a tree as to science's connection with the future?" queried the Idiot.
"You have my meaning, but hardly the phraseology I should have chosen," replied the minister.
"My style is rather epigrammatic," said the Idiot, suavely. "I appreciate the flattery implied by your noticing it. But science has everything to do with it. It is science that is going to make the future great. It is science that has annihilated distance, and the annihilation has just begun. Twenty years ago it was hardly possible for a man standing on one side of the street to make himself heard on the other, the acoustic properties of the atmosphere not being what they should be. To-day you can stand in the pulpit of your church, and by means of certain scientific apparatus make yourself heard in Boston, New Orleans, or San Francisco. Has this no bearing on the future? The time will come, Mr. Whitechoker, when your missionaries will be able to sit in their comfortable rectories, and ring up the heathen in foreign climes, and convert them over the telephone, without running the slightest danger of falling into the soup, which expression I use in its literal rather than in its metaphorical sense."
"YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"
"But—" interrupted Mr. Whitechoker.