st distinguished men and
women in the United States experienced the novel sensation of sitting
quietly in deck-chairs while they were being hurled at the rate of a
hundred and fifty miles an hour through the atmosphere.

They ran up to Niagara, dropped to within a few feet of the surface of
the Falls, passed over them, fell to the Rapids, and drifted down them
within a couple of yards of the raging waters. Then in an instant they
leapt up into the clouds, dropped again, and took a slanting course for
Washington at a speed incredible, but to them quite imperceptible, save
for the blurred rush of the half-visible earth behind them.

That night the _Astronef_ rested again in front of the steps of the
White House, and Lord and Lady Redgrave were the guests at a
semi-official banquet given by the newly re-elected President. The
speech of the evening was made by the President himself in proposing the
health of the bride and bridegroom, and this is the way he ended:

"There is something more in the ceremony which we have been privileged
to witness than the union of a man and a woman in the bonds of holy
matrimony. Lord Redgrave, as you know, is the descendant of one of the
noblest and most ancient families in the Motherland of New Nations. Lady
Redgrave is the daughter of the oldest and, I hope I may be allowed to
say without offence, the greatest of those nations. It is, perhaps,
early days to talk about a formal federation of the Anglo-Saxon people,
but I think I am only voicing the sentiments of every good American when
I say that, if the rumours which have drifted over and under the
Atlantic, rumours of a determined attempt on the part of certain
European powers to assault and, if possible, destroy that magnificent
fortress of individual liberty and collective equity which we call the
British Empire should unhappily prove to be true, then it may be that
the rest of the world will find that America does not speak English for
nothing.

"But I must also remind you that a few yards from the doors of the White
House there lies the greatest marvel, I had almost said the greatest
miracle, that has ever been accomplished by human genius and human
industry. That wonderful vessel in which some of us have been privileged
to take the most marvellous journey in the history of mechanical
locomotion was thought out by an American man of science, the man whose
daughter sits on my right hand to-night. In her concrete material form
this