l and struck a sharp blow on the table. "There you have
a single blow," he said, "just one isolated noise. Now if I strike
this tuning fork you have a vibrating note. In other words, a
succession of blows or wave vibrations of a certain kind affects
the ear and we call it sound, just as a succession of other wave
vibrations affects the retina and we have sight. If a moving picture
moves slower than a certain number of pictures a minute you see the
separate pictures; faster it is one moving picture.

"Now as we increase the rapidity of wave vibration and decrease the
wave length we pass from, sound waves to heat waves or what are known
as the infra-red waves, those which lie below the red in the spectrum
of light. Next we come to light, which is composed of the seven colors
as you know from seeing them resolved in a prism. After that are what
are known as the ultra-violet rays, which lie beyond the violet of
white light. We also have electric waves, the waves of the alternating
current, and shorter still we find the Hertzian waves, which are used
in wireless. We have only begun to know of X-rays and the alpha, beta,
and gamma rays from them, of radium, radioactivity, and finally of
this new force which I have discovered and call 'protodyne,' the
original force.

"In short, we find in the universe Matter, Force, and Ether. Matter
is simply ether in motion, is composed of corpuscles, electrically
charged ions, or electrons, moving units of negative electricity about
one one-thousandth part of the hydrogen atom. Matter is made up of
electricity and nothing but electricity. Let us see what that leads
to. You are acquainted with Mendeleeff's periodic table?"

He drew forth a huge chart on which all the eighty or so elements were
arranged in eight groups or octaves and twelve series. Selecting one,
he placed his finger on the letters "Au," Under which was written the
number, 197.2. I wondered what the mystic letters and figures meant.

"That," he explained, "is the scientific name for the element gold and
the figure is its atomic weight. You will see," he added, pointing
down the second vertical column on the chart, "that gold belongs to
the hydrogen group--hydrogen, lithium, sodium, potassium, copper,
rubidium, silver, caesium, then two blank spaces for elements yet
to be discovered to science, then gold, and finally another unknown
element."

Running his finger along the eleventh, horizontal series, he
continued: "The