the well-merited recognition by name of the late Mr. Stead as an advocate of the maintenance of Great Britain's naval supremacy. [Illustration: "UNDER THE SEA!" (A Tale for the Submarines in A.D. 2086) "Mr. Nordenfeldt, if he has not actually made a discovery that will revolutionize naval warfare, is on the track of one."--_Daily Paper._] [Sidenote: _Gas v. Electricity_] In 1881 _Punch_ published a cartoon with the title "What will he grow to?" in which King Steam and King Coal are seen sulkily contemplating the new and portentous infant Electricity. The question has only been partially answered in the ensuing forty years, but _Punch_ found ample material for comment and speculation in the achievements of the 'seventies and 'eighties. In his "Ode to the Coming Light" in 1878 delight is expressed at the possibility of a clean substitute for gas. Yet he showed a wise caution as well as true foresight in the verses accompanying the cartoon inspired by the slump in gas shares in the same year. The notion that gas is likely to go utterly to the wall is discouraged, and the panic-stricken share-holders typified by the silly birds clustering round the Electric Lighthouse are advised not to knock their brains out against the "Edison Light." Things would work themselves out right in the end, and they did. Night has not yet been turned into day, though a football match was played by electric light at Sheffield more than forty years ago, and fresh comfort for holders of gas shares was furnished in 1882 when the eminent Dr. Siemens recommended the use of gas stoves for cookery. The Electric Exhibition in 1881 is celebrated in an explosion of jocular optimism; and in a burlesque fantasia on electricity in the house in 1883, _Punch_ anticipates the time when everything will be done by electricity--shaving, boot-cleaning, carpet-beating--down or up to an "Electric Family Prayer Reader," though not without frequent accidents, as when the last-named machine gives the same chapter of Genesis three mornings running. It was in the same year, by the way, that sixpenny telegrams were first introduced--one of the many vanished privileges which inspire envy in the harassed Georgian citizen.