inly perfect; for example,
over yonder in that sort of cage is the dispatching clerk. The orders,
as they are taken by the different departments in the store, are sent
by transmitters to him. His assistants sort them and enclose each class
in a carrier-box by itself. The dispatching clerk has a dozen pneumatic
transmitters before him answering to the general classes of goods, each
communicating with the corresponding department at the warehouse. He
drops the box of orders into the tube it calls for, and in a few
moments later it drops on the proper desk in the warehouse, together
with all the orders of the same sort from the other sample stores. The
orders are read off, recorded, and sent to be filled, like lightning.
The filling I thought the most interesting part. Bales of cloth are
placed on spindles and turned by machinery, and the cutter, who also
has a machine, works right through one bale after another till
exhausted, when another man takes his place; and it is the same with
those who fill the orders in any other staple. The packages are then
delivered by larger tubes to the city districts, and thence distributed
to the houses. You may understand how quickly it is all done when I
tell you that my order will probably be at home sooner than I could
have carried it from here."

"How do you manage in the thinly settled rural districts?" I asked.

"The system is the same," Edith explained; "the village sample shops
are connected by transmitters with the central county warehouse, which
may be twenty miles away. The transmission is so swift, though, that
the time lost on the way is trifling. But, to save expense, in many
counties one set of tubes connect several villages with the warehouse,
and then there is time lost waiting for one another. Sometimes it is
two or three hours before goods ordered are received. It was so where I
was staying last summer, and I found it quite inconvenient."[1]

"There must be many other respects also, no doubt, in which the country
stores are inferior to the city stores," I suggested.

"No," Edith answered, "they are otherwise precisely as good. The sample
shop of the smallest village, just like this one, gives you your choice
of all the varieties of goods the nation has, for the county warehouse
draws on the same source as the city warehouse."

As we walked home I commented on the great variety in the size and cost
of the houses. "How is it," I asked, "that this difference is
consis