J. G. Batterson.
Asbury Park, N. J.
A Wonderful Look Ahead.
My uncle is an electrical engineer, and he told me to-day something of the future, so wonderful that I send it to the Table. May I call it a prophecy?
"The young person of to-day," said my relative, "who reaches the age of forty-three years—just my present age—will see, in that year of grace which will be 1925, a very different state of things from what I see at the same age. We talk of our own wonderful progress, but you, my young man, are destined to see changes in the next twenty-eight years that bring you from fifteen to forty-three beside which past changes are modest indeed.
"To begin with, you will see people flying through the air—that is, there will be mechanical flying-machines, under perfect control, that will carry passengers and packages through from place to place by the 'air route.' There is no doubt of this. Flying is solved.
"In the second place, you will see light not the expensive thing it now is, but as cheap as water, and turned on in every house at will, as water now is in towns and cities. It will be vacuum light.
"In the third place, you will witness the passing away of the steam-boiler, the furnace, and the coal-dealer. In your city of 1925 there will be no trolley poles, and, more startling still, no horses—or at least very few horses. The horse is doomed. Neither will there be screeching locomotives on the railways. Compressed air and electricity will take the place of steam and horses. People will not order coal delivered at their houses, nor will any ash man come around to make his morning litter. Your city of 1925, and your country, too, will be rather more desirable places to live in than they are to-day. I envy you your youth. I shall be, if alive, past eighty, and too old to enjoy such novelties."
What does the Table think of this wonderful look ahead?
Ashbel P. Johnson.
Buffalo. N. Y.
Kinks.
No. 7.—Poetical Pictures.—Birds.
Fill the blanks with the names of birds answering to the description, and find out the author's name. Answers will be published soon.
"O *****, that dost wing
Thy flight from the far away!
Thou hast brought us the signs of the spring,
Thou hast made our sad hearts gay." (1)