Steam is a crudity of the past century. Pneumatic and electric railways carry people and freight with swiftness and safety, in all directions and at trifling rates. To every house and from every store, of any importance, pneumatic tubes radiate from central stations, so that packages and messages can be sent from any dwelling or establishment in the system to any other by simply having connection made through the central office, as in the old-fashioned way of telephoning. Great air-ships hover over city and country, and a weekly line of dirigible balloons, under the auspices of the General Government, is in preparation. Ocean navigation is rendered both safe and swift. Great floating palaces ply daily between Montauk Point and Bristol, making the Atlantic transit in three days. Seasickness has been banished by medical science, and indeed the motion of the great electrically-driven argosies is so smooth that there would be little danger of sickness even without the remedies. Storms are allayed by the use of oil discharged from these vessels, which now ride the waves in defiance of their strength. New models of vessels, taken from the marine division of the animal kingdom, have been introduced, and the rivalry between “deep-keel” and “centreboard” vessels, which in the latter quarter of the nineteenth century caused such absorbing discussion, is as nothing to the interest manifested by the advocates of the various models--the “pike,” the “swordfish,” and so on. Across all great isthmuses there are canals and ship railways; and projects are under way for a transcontinental ship railway from New York to San Francisco. The bottoms of all great rivers are paved smoothly and kept clean, so that navigation is never interfered with by bars; and these rivers are sources of health and strength rather than of danger to the cities through or by which they flow. In every great city there are upon all but the minor streets steel plate-ways carrying electric currents, and upon which the ordinary vehicles run without noise or jolting; although the excellent condition of the pavements would seem to render this unnecessary. The street paving is monolithic (that is, all in one piece), of an artificial stone as hard as good limestone; giving a surface sufficiently gritty to ensure good hold for the feet of the few horses which are employed, and yet leaving the surface smooth, in order that it may be kept clean and give good traction for the short space of time in which vehicles (which ordinarily take the tracks on the plate-ways) are running over it.