“I haven’t told you half of the wonders performed by this marvelous power. It has long been our chief reliance for rapid traveling. You find us in this ship; but, although navigation is a perfected science, this mode of traveling is tedious, and ships are used only for pleasure and such out-of-the-way trips as this. Journeys from place to place over established routes are made in large tubes, in which the cars are propelled by electricity. These tubes run both on land and water, being suspended in the latter a little way below the surface. Both tubes and cars are air-tight, and the adjustment is so perfect that the cars slide along with the greatest ease. Riding in an air-tight chamber would not be pleasant if much time were to be occupied in that way, but the cars are propelled so swiftly that the time from one station to another is hardly appreciable. At every stop the cars are opened and apparatus set in motion which changes the air completely almost in a moment. Where the tubes run under water shafts for air are put in at the stations. There is always a double line, one tube for each direction. No chance is left for accidents. “Of course we navigate the air, swiftly and safely. If not in too much haste we always take the aerial passage, and often on a pleasant day the sky over a great city will be as full of air ships, or balloons as we still sometimes call them, as its harbor is of pleasure boats. In this department inventors had a fruitful field, the use of aluminum offering abundant opportunity for the greatest variety of devices, and the development of the flying machine was one of the most interesting features in the march toward our present high civilization. Perhaps the presence of so many electrical machines in the air and the utilization of so much electricity on land and water have, after thousands of years, done much toward freeing us from the thunderstorm, with its deadly lightning. We have fairly robbed the clouds of their electricity and taught it to do our work. “Swift and economical as our modern electric cars are, there is one mode of traveling sometimes adopted which is more rapid still, and the cheapest and in some respects the easiest way of getting over the surface of the globe ever dreamed of. It was discovered by accident, just before accidents entirely ceased, in the following manner: