front and
steers the shebang with the forward wheel. I hadn't gone two blocks when
I leaned out of the window and the current struck me in the arm like a
shot. You bet I yelled bloody murder and got out of that trap in two
shakes of a colt's tail."

"How does all that electrical system work otherwise?" asked Mr. Ticks
slowly, after some thought.

"Everybody perfectly wild over it. They won't allow a horse in town, nor
even a ton of coal. Electricity is the big thing of the future. They
fight electrical duels. Feller that stands the greatest number of
alternating volts gets the apology. I saw a dog-fight in the street
stopped by the Humane Society. A man would drop a wet sponge on the
dog's head, another on his back, and turn on the circuit. They generally
both dropped and never knew what struck 'em. Two dead dogs better than
one fight. But they kept it all dark enough. These were jest
experiments, they said. When they were done that they were going to have
an electrical exhibition and invite the hull world. Why, I heard they
were fool enough to put in a bill in the Legislature to have the name of
Russell changed to Electra. As if Russell wasn't good enough for them!"

Mr. Ticks mused over these facts. Why was it that his acquisitive mind
had not roamed over this field before? Perhaps because it was
acquisitive, not imaginative. _He_ could only account for the
unpardonable omission on the ground that there were so many new
competing Western cities, each with its peculiar advantages: and that
there were so many strange electrical inventions new each day, that he
had overlooked Russell and its progressive hobby. Besides, was he not on
the staff of a Democratic paper, which would, perhaps, on the whole,
prefer to ignore the new Republican State and its flourishing capital.

"How was all this power produced if coal was excluded?" asked Mr. Ticks.

"Oh, windmills did that. A half a dozen huge windmills, with wings, each
as big as the _High Tariff_, were the first things you saw. They were
nearly three hundred feet high----"

"Good Heavens! Look, man! Look down there! Don't you see something in
the middle of the lake!" Swift pulled the professor over to his side of
the car, and pointed directly below the balloon.

They had now struck a dead calm and the _High Tariff_ floated motionless
two thousand feet above the lake. Directly below them was something
resting upon the waters. It looked fixed and dead. A log? A wreck? A