The exclusion of steam from all railroads in 1999 proved a great boon to travel. Railroad smoke was a drawback to steam roads, while sparks, cinders and live coal were a constant danger to property. When a happy bride and groom took their departure on a train for their honeymoon in 1899 their friends pelted them with rice, while the old fashion steam engine attached to the train rounded the compliment by pelting the newly wedded pair with cinders and soot. Dense volumes of black smoke [Delights of Steam Travel.] poured into the railway coaches, filling every crevice and corner, rendering the human face unrecognizable. Travelers in these old-fashioned cars, clad in the bravery of fashion, in their silks and fine raiment, would journey only a short distance when they would become almost unrecognizable from the torrents of black soft-coal smoke that pierced their cuticle and darkened their lives. It was hard to determine at the end of a brief journey of a thousand miles whether the white man who bought a through ticket in New York was a Caucasian or an Ethiopian when he landed in Chicago, so dense was the smoke through which he had traveled. The delightful atmosphere of a tunnel formed one of the great attractions of steam travel in the good old days of 1899. Our unhappy American travelers while journeying on these steam roads would suddenly be rushed into a black hole, the damp and foul air of which was enough to kill a salamander, filled with smoke and asphyxiating gases. The marvel is that one-half of the people ever pulled through a tunnel alive. In 1999 these monstrosities of steam railroad [The Single Rail is King.] travel were entirely done away with. Not a steam engine was anywhere to be found. The single rail electric railroad was monarch of all it surveyed, and there were none to dispute its sway. It ruled the universe. The new-born electrical power drew its forces from the air. Electricity was greater than light itself. Its rule was felt by day as well as by night. In 1999 when an electric train dashed through a tunnel, its arch was aglow with electric fire, rendering the passage light as at noon time in a blazing sun. A touch of the button turned on every light in the coaches. The air of the tunnel, instead of being black with smoke and noxious vapors, was pure as the open air. Travel was rendered delightful in these swift-speeding trains on the single-rail electric railroads, which easily maintained a speed of two miles per minute. In point of speed they were easily outwinged by the ærodromes, but for all that, grass did not have much time to grow under the gearing of any electric car in 1999.