"Yes, they have already gone considerably faster," replied her son. "I was reading only last night that back in 1880 when Thomas Edison first began his experiments with electricity as a motive power on his own private track at Menlo Park, he drove his little electric train more than twice as fast. In June 1880, Grosvenor Lowry wrote, 'Have spent part of a day at Menlo, and all is glorious. I have ridden at forty miles an hour on Mr. Edison's electric railway--and we ran off the track.'" "It is dangerous after all, isn't it?" commented Grandma. "Most people do not think so. That was when they were experimenting and of course accidents were bound to happen. In the three years since Richmond introduced the system of electric cars more than a hundred other cities have introduced it; and a hundred more are putting it in, I suppose, at this present moment." "We'll ride to-morrow in one of the new cars, Harriet," said Grandma. "Goody," said Harriet, "I love to ride in them. I'd like to ride on Mr. Edison's own electric railway, and go forty miles an hour." "I don't doubt you would, puss," said her father, "but I think he is not using that at all now. He considers the electric railway a success and he is working now on something which his friends say will make it possible to run a horseless carriage without the help of either rails or a trolley." "Oh, surely that never can be, John," said Grandma. "I don't know. I should have said the same thing ten years ago about a horseless street car, I think. Edison's friends remind us that first it was the horse without the carriage, then it was the horse and the carriage, and now they say it is surely going to be the carriage without the horse. Wonders do not seem to cease; it may come true." That night about midnight there was a splintering crash which Grandma thought was only a short distance from her window. Something had certainly happened in the street, but there was no outcry and all was still again in a few minutes after the crash. Grandma could not explain it, but it did not worry her and she went to sleep again. Very early in the morning she was wakened again by unusual noises on her side of the house. Going to the window she was surprised to see an electric car across the gutter, stopped apparently in its course by a broken telegraph pole. How had it come there? It seemed to have come down the track on the hill opposite, and then to have come without any track at all straight across the street at the foot of the hill until it crashed into the pole. The front of the car was considerably broken. It had evidently run into the pole with force enough to snap that off short and spoil the front of the car.