o me not an hour ago, this
morning, looking over the city, here. We've got a finger on everything
but the atmosphere, the most important thing of all. If we could control
_that_--"

"Of course, I understand," interrupted the other, blowing a ring of
smoke. "Unlimited power and so on. Looks very nice, and all. Only, it
can't be done. Air's too big, too fluid, too universal. Human powers
can't control it, any more than the ocean. Talk about monopolizing the
Atlantic, if you will, Flint. But for heaven's sake, drop--"

"Can't be done, eh?" exclaimed Flint, warmly, sitting down on the
desk-top and levelling a big-jointed forefinger at his partner. "That's
what every new idea has had to meet. It's no argument! People scoffed at
the idea of gas lighting when it was new. Called it 'burning smoke,' and
made merry over it. That was as recently as 1832. But ten years later,
gas-illumination was in full sway.

"Electric lighting met the same objection. And remember the objection to
the telephone? When Congress, in 1843, granted Morse an appropriation of
$30,000 to run the first telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington,
one would-be humorist in that supremely intelligent body tried to
introduce an amendment that part of the sum should be spent in surveying
a railroad to the moon! And--"

[Illustration: "Can't be done, Eh?" said Flint.]

"Granted," put in Waldron, "that my objection is futile, just what's
your idea?"

"This!" And Flint stabbed at him with his forefinger, while the other
financier regarded him with a fishily amused eye. "Every human being in
this world--and there are 1,900,000,000 of them now!--is breathing, on
the average, 16 cubic feet of air every hour, or about 400 a day. The
total amount of oxygen actually absorbed in the 24 hours by each person,
is about 17 cubic feet, or _over 30 billions of cubic feet of oxygen_,
each day, in the entire world. Get that?"

"Well?" drawled the other.

"Don't you see?" snapped Flint, irritably. "Imagine that we extract
oxygen from the air. Then--"

"You might as well try to dip up the ocean with a spoon," said Waldron,
"as try to vitiate the atmosphere of the whole world, by any means
whatsoever! But even if you could, what then?"

"Look here!" exclaimed the Billionaire. "It only needs a reduction of 10
per cent. in the atmospheric oxygen to make the air so bad that nobody
can breathe it without discomfort and pain. Take out any more and people
will die! We don't