Repository: UIHistories Project: Sophograph - 1891 [PAGE 30]

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onsiderable height and struck upon H rocky place. This Beemed, to me, too absurd for belief; hut I remembered thai I was in a strange place and must accustom myself to strange sights and ideas. I further gathered that the H Idenl had been occasioned by the explo•n of gas in the reservoir overhead, no one knowing exactly how. This lasi decided me in the suspicion thai I was listening to the story of the sad end of an air-ship experiment." •\Mv friends having finished eating and having exhausted the possibilities of the cause of

th< xplosion. rose from t h e i r table and walked

dollars were almoe t exl incl too, I 101 11 accepted. "Righl ly t hinking me a -t ran r, he I me to several parte of t In;it (it;, howin me many t riumphe oi cience and ari. Tie were t;ill tower-, different from anything! fa ever seen, some of them Burrounded with slender columns of exqu te de ign; th • • massive buildii 9 which mv friend i red me were factories although 1 could no tall chimnevs nor tin- dark lines of smoke nonvmoiis with factories in mv i perience; thi were bicycles and t ricycles Bashing through the

streets here ami there, and they, togel ber with r t h e heavy locomotives and their lonu t r a i n - o!

toward a small counter.over which were numbers corresponding to others on the tables, where it 8i emed to be the custom to settle with the clerk.'' "As I had become interested in the young men I determined to speak to them; sol walked

t<> the c o u n t e r , and. t h r o w i n g a dollar in front of tie- clerk, t u r n e d to t h e m , t h i n k i n g to m a k e

freight, were the only things I could 'hat had not almost entirely changed. Tie- fi »ries. J presume, were run \)Y i el ric en gin .

ome remark while the clerk was making bange. Think of my surprise when one of them snatched up my dollar and examined it with more than sufficient attention to see if it wen>od, and then excitedly turned to me and offered me fifty dollars for it. J calmly

ret d his money and told him t h a t if my dollar v. of B much value to him he m u s t O

ept it as a present. He did not seem to comprehend ne- al firs! lmt Baid that, as thedesign and date had become nearly extinct: to coin ollectors, it would he quite an acquisition. I ed him thai he w; welcome to it which JO delighted him that he offered to show me bis collections of coin- and antiquities, if I add meel him at the club-rooms of his sov that evening. He would pay for my

inm nd. more t h a n t h a t , he invited me to

pend the afternoon and take -upper with him. A- thin invitation savoured of more delicacies, .hich. to B half-famished student, is of itself

aim ! too m u c h , and also, since mv ;imimif

but electricity had not been altogether a success in the case of the locomol ive, BO that earn was still the power that transported the I ivj 11 articles of commerce. "I tried to make my friend understand mv predicament, but it must have seemed as absurd to him as it did to me for he onlj smiled a what I presume he took for some weakness "£ mind." "We were standing on an elevated platform viewing the beautiful streets as they bretched away, vanishing in persj .for they seemed interminable, when I noticed an objecl in the sky which resembled somewha a cigar and was growing momentarily larger. I called my friend s attention to it and 1 him to explain. He gave me a searching 1 k to see [f I were playing with him, then smiled at my ignorance and told me it was an air-ship which would stop near where we were so that v if we remained there we could it aiighi and 11 depart again. '•| watched the approach i the s objecl till it became quite large and t na