jungles, with their horrible wealth of organic life in its most
objectionable forms. By repeated observations with the necrohistoriograph
I find that the inhabitants of this country, who had always been more or
less dead, were wholly extirpated contemporaneously with the disastrous
events which swept away the Galoots, the Pukes and the Smugwumps. The
agency of their effacement was an endemic disorder known as yellow fever.
The ravages of this frightful disease were of frequent recurrence, every
point of the country being a center of infection; but in some seasons it
was worse than in others. Once in every half century at first, and
afterward every year[4] it broke out somewhere and swept over wide areas
with such fatal effect that there were not enough of the living to plunder
the dead; but at the first frost it would subside. During the ensuing two
or three months of immunity the stupid survivors returned to the infected
homes from which they had fled and were ready for the next outbreak.
Emigration would have saved them all, but although the Californians (over
whose happy and prosperous descendants your Majesty has the goodness to
reign) invited them again and again to their beautiful land, where
sickness and death were hardly known, they would not go, and by the year
1946 the last one of them, may it please your gracious Majesty, was dead
and damned."

[4] At one time it was foolishly believed that the disease had been
eradicated by slapping the mosquitoes which were thought to
produce it; but a few years later it broke out with greater
violence than ever before, although the mosquitoes had left the
country.

Having spoken this into the transmitter of the aerial isochronophone at
the usual hour of 23 o'clock I applied the receiver to my ear, confidently
expecting the customary commendation. Imagine my astonishment and dismay
when my master's well-remembered voice was heard in utterance of the most
awful imprecations on me and my work, followed by appalling threats
against my life!

The Ahkoond had changed his dinner-time to five hours later and I had been
speaking into the ears of an empty stomach!

JOHN SMITH, LIBERATOR

JOHN SMITH, LIBERATOR

(FROM A NEWSPAPER OF THE FAR FUTURE)

At the quiet little village of Smithcester, which certain archaeologists
have professed to "identify" as the ancient London, will be celebrated
to-day the thirtieth centennial anni