? Well, then,
look at the plenipotentiaries of all nations and our own ministers
themselves crowding about his door, entreating his counsels, begging for
his approbation, imploring the aid of his all-powerful organ. Reckon up
the number of scientists and artists that he supports, of inventors that
he has under his pay.

Yes, a king is he. And in truth his is a royalty full of burdens. His
labors are incessant, and there is no doubt at all that in earlier times
any man would have succumbed under the overpowering stress of the toil
which Mr. Smith has to perform. Very fortunately for him, thanks to the
progress of hygiene, which, abating all the old sources of
unhealthfulness, has lifted the mean of human life from 37 up to 52
years, men have stronger constitutions now than heretofore. The
discovery of nutritive air is still in the future, but in the meantime
men today consume food that is compounded and prepared according to
scientific principles, and they breathe an atmosphere freed from the
micro-organisms that formerly used to swarm in it; hence they live
longer than their forefathers and know nothing of the innumerable
diseases of olden times.

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding these considerations, Fritz Napoleon
Smith's mode of life may well astonish one. His iron constitution is
taxed to the utmost by the heavy strain that is put upon it. Vain the
attempt to estimate the amount of labor he undergoes; an example alone
can give an idea of it. Let us then go about with him for one day as he
attends to his multifarious concernments. What day? That matters little;
it is the same every day. Let us then take at random September 25th of
this present year 2889.

This morning Mr. Fritz Napoleon Smith awoke in very bad humor. His wife
having left for France eight days ago, he was feeling disconsolate.
Incredible though it seems, in all the ten years since their marriage,
this is the first time that Mrs. Edith Smith, the professional beauty,
has been so long absent from home; two or three days usually suffice for
her frequent trips to Europe. The first thing that Mr. Smith does is to
connect his phonotelephote, the wires of which communicate with his
Paris mansion. The telephote! Here is another of the great triumphs of
science in our time. The transmission of speech is an old story; the
transmission of images by means of sensitive mirrors connected by wires
is a thing but of yesterday. A valuable invention indeed, and Mr.