inks be distributed in the same way as water and
gas?"

"Please don't interrupt me. These are really serious considerations.
Why, Jack, we haven't begun to guess at the wonderful changes that are
to be made in all our housekeeping affairs, as well as in everything
else by electricity. In a few years we shall find our present cooking
arrangements as much out of date as the old turnspit and tin ovens and
the great wood fires on the hearth. And light! Our houses will be as
light as day all the time, unless we choose darkness in order to sleep
more comfortably."

"Or because our deeds be evil, or for the better accommodation of
burglars. No self-respecting burglar would think of 'burgling' without
a dark lantern."

"And heat; do you remember how something more than twenty-five years
ago a French scientist proposed to supply all the heat needed for human
comfort in cold climates directly from the sun's rays?"

"I can't say that I do remember that particular philosopher, but I have
a notion that the sun was considered a fair sort of furnace a good many
years before the first Frenchman was born."

"Yes, yes; but he was going to gather the sun's heat into such shape
that it would warm our houses in winter, do all the cooking, take the
place of all the steam boilers and furnaces. I never heard that his
theories were reduced to practice, but we have found another source of
light and heat that is already under our control. There is no more
doubt that all the warmth, illumination and mechanical power that we
can use are within our reach, when we have learned how to take
possession of them, than there is of gravitation. It is all waiting at
the door, we have only to clap our hands and the potent spirit is ready
to do our bidding."

"Without money and without price?"

"No, not quite that, there are too many incorporated monopolies in the
way. But it is coming nearer and nearer, and with the unlimited power
of wind and waves and waterfalls, all these things will soon be as
cheap as anything really worth having ought to be."

"Say, Jill, do you suppose we shall live to see all our necessities
supplied, gratis, and have nothing to work for except the luxuries?"

"We have lived long enough to find that for most people in our day and
generation, even for those who think they have to work very hard 'just
to get a living,' their most serious toil is to provide, what might be
called, not the 'bare' necessities of life, but the wel