"She is late! Woman's punctuality! Progress everywhere except there!" muttered Mr. Smith as he turned the tap for the first dish. For like all wealthy folk in our day, Mr. Smith has done away with the domestic kitchen and is a subscriber to the Grand Alimentation Company, which sends through a great network of tubes to subscribers' residences all sorts of dishes, as a varied assortment is always in readiness. A subscription costs money, to be sure, but the _cuisine_ is of the best, and the system has this advantage, that it does away with the pestering race of the _cordons-bleus_. Mr. Smith received and ate, all alone, the _hors-d'oeuvre_, _entrées_, _rôti_, and _legumes_ that constituted the repast. He was just finishing the dessert when Mrs. Smith appeared in the mirror of the telephote. "Why, where have you been?" asked Mr. Smith through the telephone. "What! You are already at the dessert? Then I am late," she exclaimed, with a winsome _naïveté_. "Where have I been, you ask? Why, at my dress-maker's. The hats are just lovely this season! I suppose I forgot to note the time, and so am a little late." "Yes, a little," growled Mr. Smith; "so little that I have already quite finished breakfast. Excuse me if I leave you now, but I must be going." "O certainly, my dear; good-by till evening." Smith stepped into his air-coach, which was in waiting for him at a window. "Where do you wish to go, sir?" inquired the coachman. "Let me see; I have three hours," Mr. Smith mused. "Jack, take me to my accumulator works at Niagara." For Mr. Smith has obtained a lease of the great falls of Niagara. For ages the energy developed by the falls went unutilized. Smith, applying Jackson's invention, now collects this energy, and lets or sells it. His visit to the works took more time than he had anticipated. It was four o'clock when he returned home, just in time for the daily audience which he grants to callers. One readily understands how a man situated as Smith is must be beset with requests of all kinds. Now it is an inventor needing capital; again it is some visionary who comes to advocate a brilliant scheme which must surely yield millions of profit. A choice has to be made between these projects, rejecting the worthless, examining the questionable ones, accepting the meritorious. To this work Mr. Smith devotes every day two full hours. The callers were fewer to-day than usual--only twelve of them. Of these, eight had only impracticable schemes to propose. In fact, one of them wanted to revive painting, an art fallen into desuetude owing to the progress made in color-photography. Another, a physician, boasted that he had discovered a cure for nasal catarrh! These impracticables were dismissed in short order. Of the four projects favorably received, the first was that of a young man whose broad forehead betokened his intellectual power. "Sir, I am a chemist," he began, "and as such I come to you." "Well!"