"I went up four of them," said Ned. "I wanted to know how it felt."
"Well," said Uncle Jack, "how did you feel?"
"I held my breath," replied Ned, "and I held on to the seat. I was glad to get out, though, top and bottom. I suppose a fellow can get used to it—"
"Ned," interrupted his uncle, "wait here a minute. I want to have a little talk with a friend of mine in Chicago. What they won't do next, with electricity and some things, I don't know."
They were in front of a long-distance telephone office, and Uncle Jack went in. His conversation with his neighbour, a thousand miles away, turned out a long one, and it was half an hour before he and his nephew reached the patch of cleared land which still remains around the City Hall.
"There!" suddenly exclaimed Ned. "Hurrah! We're having first-rate luck, Uncle Jack! That's the very thing I've been wanting to see!"
It was not another building, this time, and it was not altogether an innovation. It was something warlike and terrible; for a battery of the Fourth Regular Artillery, guns, ammunition wagons, all, was passing through the city, down Broadway, on its journey to some new post of duty.
"Those are three-inch calibre, long range guns," said Uncle Jack. "They send shells ten miles or so, to split things. The gun-barrels are longer than a fence-rail. For my part, I don't like 'em. They shoot too far."
"They're the right thing to have," said Ned. "If I were going to conquer England I'd want plenty of those guns."