de by those loquacious instruments was worse than the chatter
of monkeys in the cocoanut groves of New Guinea.

Electric heaters warmed the rooms. Electric paper lighted them with a
suffused and generous glow. No one used stairs. Electric elevators did
all the arduous house-climbing. No one made calls any more, for it was
an easy matter to ring your acquaintance up and see her in her
drawing-room while you talked to her. Women made an elaborate toilet for
such interviews. It was soon expected that conversation would be
entirely dispensed with, for with a sensitive galvanoscope attached to
the brain at a certain point, that was to be patented, the minutest
current of thought could be registered upon a cylinder.

Authors would only need to fix their attention upon the plot; the
delicate instrument would record it indelibly for their hearers'
gratification.

The well-appointed electric coupe was always ready. There was no worry
about oats and spavin and glanders. Miss Magnet told of many other new
contrivances that electricity had now to perform. The development of
this power through the new dynamos made it possible for men in Russell
to dispense utterly with work. You went so far as to put five cents in
the slot at any one of a hundred street corners, and your shoes were
electrically polished to a patent leather shine. There was no more
night, for carbon and incandescent lamps had stabbed the night so that
any hovel was brighter than the average day. The girl stopped for breath
and sat down. She was exhausted. Swift cheered her tenderly. But Mr.
Ticks dryly remarked:

"_Better a city without electricity than electricity without a city!_"

The girl smiled at this heresy, and nodded her head emphatically in a
feeble way. She could hardly move.

It was at this stage that Mr. Ticks seemed overcome with uneasiness. He
got up and sat down again. He kicked the earth. He examined the charred
sleepers. He dug for the lost rails. Then he awoke from his occupation
with a sudden start as if rudely shaken from a dream. Swift was used to
his colleague's idiosyncrasies. Besides he did not now notice them. He
was otherwise occupied. But the professor could stand these performances
no longer, and with rude emphasis he burst forth:

"Dang it, man, if you've got anything on your darned mind, jerk it out,
if not--" Professor Ariel's manners had become decadent in proportion to
the time that had elapsed since he and the _High Tariff_ h