Floating telegraph-offices will buoy the cable. Latitude 40 deg. will
"call" the Equator, and warn Grand Banks that "Sargasso is passing
by." Not only will the march of Morse be _under_ the mountain-wave,
but his home will be on the deep.

[Illustration: BRITISH BUILDINGS.]

The submarine and terrestrial progress of the telegraph was in '67 and
'73 already an old story. At the Centennial it presents itself in
a new role--that of interpreter of the weather and general
storm-detector. This application of its powers is due to American
science. Indeed, the requisites for experiments were not elsewhere at
command. A vast expanse of unbroken territory comprising many climates
and belts of latitude and longitude, and penetrated throughout by the
wire under one and the same control, did not offer itself to European
investigators. These singular advantages have been well employed
by the United States Signal Service within the past five years. Its
efforts were materially aided by the antecedent researches of such men
as Espy and Maury, the latter of whom led European savants into the
recognition of correct theories of both air- and ocean-currents.
Daily observations at a hundred stations scattered over the continent,
exactly synchronized by telegraph, yielded deductions that steadily
grew more and more consistent and reliable, until at length those
particularly fickle instruments, the weather-vane, the thermometer,
the barometer and the magnetic fluid, have formed, in combination,
almost an "arm of precision." The predictions put forth in the "small
hours" each morning by the central office in Washington assume only
the modest title of "Probabilities." Some additional expenditure, with
a doubling of the number of stations, would within a few years make
that heading more of a misnomer. Meanwhile, the saving of life and
property on sea and land already effected is a solid certainty and
no mere "probability." At the station on the exposition grounds the
weather of each day, storm or shine, in most of the cities of the Old
and New Worlds will be bulletined. "Storm in Vlaenderlandt" will be as
surely announced to the Dutch stroller on Belmont Avenue as though he
were within hearing of his cathedral bell. Should such a "cautionary
signal" from beyond the ocean reach him, he may ascertain in what, if
any, danger of submergence his home stands, by stepping into one of
the branch telegraph-offices dispersed over the grounds. Or he may
s