But “the course of true love never did run smooth.” Listen to my tale of woe. An absent-minded old bachelor once fell in love with a beautiful girl and instantly prepared for battle with the flounced and powdered enemy. At first his plans worked well, and he was about to win a great victory over all the swells in town; but an accident happened which changed his destiny and wrecked his hopes of conquest and happiness. The church bell rang one bright Sabbath morning, and he knew that his idol would be there; and he diked himself in faultless style and curled his sorrel moustache till it looked like the tail of a pug. The excitement of the occasion made him more absent-minded than ever, and he waited until the worshipers had assembled, and then walked down the aisle in triumph, the observed of all observers, with his overcoat hanging on his arm; but the maiden looked at his overcoat and blushed; the preacher looked at it and smiled, and the congregation looked at it and broke into laughter; and the old bachelor looked down, and it was his every-day pantaloons. His hope exploded like a bubble in the air, and he dropped the garment and flew.
We have stepped over the threshold of the twentieth century. What greater wonders will it unfold to us? It may be that another magician, greater even than Edison, the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” will rise up and coax the very laws of nature into easy compliance with his unheard-of dreams. I think he will construct an electric railway in the form of a huge tube, and call it the “electro-scoot,” and passengers will enter it in New York and touch a button and arrive in San Francisco two hours before they started!
I think a new discovery will be made by which the young man of the future may stand at his “kiss-o-phone” in New York and kiss his sweetheart in Chicago with all the delightful sensations of the “aforesaid and the same.”
I think some Liebig will reduce foods to their last analyses, and, by an ultimate concentration of their elements, will enable the man of the future to carry a year’s provisions in his vest pocket. The dude will store his rations in the head of his cane, and the commissary department of a whole army will consist of a mule and a pair of saddlebags. A trainload of cabbage will be transported in a sardine box and a thousand fat Texas cattle in an oyster can.
Power will be condensed from a forty-horse engine to a quart cup. Wagons will roll by the power in their axles, and the cushions of our buggies will cover the force that propels them. The armies of the future will fight with chain lightning, and the battlefields will be in the air.
Some dreaming Icarus will perfect the flying machine, and upon the aluminum wings of the swift Pegasus of the air social, civic and military parades will be held.
The rainbow will be converted into a Ferris wheel; all men will be bald-headed; the women will run the government—and then I think the end of time will be near at hand!
A great many youths think that if a man has brain-power he can accomplish anything. So he can, but a study of the men who are failures, the men who fill our penitentiaries and our sanitariums, will show that unless ability is ballasted with character, its possessor is unstable and untrustworthy. There is a tremendous power in ability, boys, when added to character.