o Glasgow.

"Previous to the time I speak of, the Americans had beaten the
Australians and Canadians, and were considered by their own friends
invincible even to the extent of a couple of goals. The Canadians, by
the aid of the Electric Express Line's fast steamers, had been able to
leave Montreal in the morning and return in the evening from New York,
defeated but not disgraced. The Australians were a little longer on the
way, as the improved appliances for driving ships had not yet attained
that perfection there which had been shown in most of the ports and
rivers of the British Isles. They were experimenting, however, and some
good in that direction was looked for daily, and a new Express Company
floated. The Americans had also beaten the Englishmen the previous year
at New York, and, as their own newspapers had it, 'came over to crow in
the Land o' Cakes.' The great shipping trade of the Clyde ere this was,
so to speak, causing a new order of things to arise all over the world.
Large and beautifully-built steel and bronze vessels left the Clyde
every day for all parts of the earth.

"They had annihilated space and bridged the Atlantic in earnest, and the
'electrics' (once called steamers) could go from Glasgow to New York in
little over twenty-four hours. Yes. 'Daily to New York, Montreal,
California, and New Mexico. Splendid accommodation for first-class
passengers: 120 knots per hour, and no vibration.' So read the
advertisement in the leading Glasgow newspapers. Why! what did it all
mean? One hundred knots per hour--3000 in twenty-four hours! To New York
in a day! I had certainly heard of the swallow taking an early breakfast
at the uttermost part of England and picking up a late dinner on the
shores of Africa, all in one day; but 120 knots an hour with an
'electric,'--it was just enough for flesh and blood to comprehend at
once.

"'Well,' said a friend of mine with some experience in the marine
engineering line, 'I have long thought on electricity as the great
motive power of the future, provided it could be properly stored, and
now you see what it has come to.'

"In fact, our coal supply--one of the sources of Britain's
greatness--was getting exhausted, and electrical appliances had become
an absolute necessity. The strain could no longer be borne of one huge
vessel consuming 500 tons of coal in twenty-four hours, and those
blessed electrics were not introduced a moment too soon.

"The learned men of Fran