THE BOMB FERRY—TRAVEL IN THE 30TH CENTURY.
THE PUBLIC HIGHWAY—TRAVEL IN THE 30TH CENTURY.
I believe the inventor proposes that all parcels going by his route should be tightly packed; consequently, it would be necessary to wrap the passengers and secure them somewhat after the style of an Egyptian mummy, and stow them in their places by means of an hydraulic press. None of this mode of travel for me, if you please.
PROPULSION BY GUNPOWDER.
I have heard of a scheme of locomotion in which the inventor proposed to load his passengers into a large cannon, having a bore of three or four yards, and then shoot them to their destination. The journey could be made fast enough, but such a mode of travel is liable to accidents, both on starting and stopping. If one could get off and be well under way without being singed by the powder, he would run a great risk of being somewhat injured when reaching his stopping-place. “It was not the falling,” said a hod-carrier one day, speaking of a tumble of twenty or thirty feet,—“it was not the falling that hurt me, darling, but the stopping so quick at the end.”