In looking upon Andersonia I was forcibly reminded of both the cities just mentioned. There were the same large, open squares, revealing broad, avenue-lined streets planned with mathematical exactitude, and the same huge buildings that I had noticed in St. Petersburg. But there was also the same solidity, freedom from glare, and honesty of composition, which roused my admiration when looking upon some of London’s magnificent stone buildings. Here, however, were examples of architecture such as I had never before seen the like of for magnificence, and it was no detriment to their beauty that they were unsullied by smoke or dirt. This seemed a very large city, and must have contained a numerous population, yet not one smoking chimney did I see. The weather was delightfully mild, but of course heat was necessary for cooking. In my ideas, a fire was just as necessarily associated with smoke, and I expressed my surprise at its evident absence. Considerably to my astonishment, I had some difficulty in making myself understood, but, in the end, mutual enlightenment was the result of our confabulations. Electricity was made so thoroughly subservient to human will that it supplied light, heat, and powers of volition, besides being made to perform nearly every conceivable domestic use. So well were the elements analysed and understood here that thunderstorms were unknown, and the force which yearly used to slay numbers of people was now attracted, cooped, and subjugated to human necessities. The skies were unclouded, the air delightfully bracing, the atmosphere so clear and pure that I wondered if some strange change had not occurred to my eyesight, since I could see miles and miles of fair country, lovely villages, and populous towns, whichever way I looked. Smoke was an imponderable quantity here, by virtue of the smoke-consuming apparati fixed in every dwelling, which permitted not even the destruction by fire of the household refuse which was daily committed to the furnace, to sully the purity of the atmosphere. I enquired if fires were frequent here, and was told that in the manufacture or adaption of every material in use, either for building purposes, or for decorative and personal application, there was incorporated a substance which rendered it impervious to fire, and practically indestructible. There was not the slightest noise of traffic in the streets, such as I had always been accustomed to hear in either large or small towns. On each side of every street there was a double means of locomotion provided. Water cars abounded, and by way of proving their comfort and efficiency to me, the two women who escorted me took their seats in one of them, and, somewhat nervously, I followed their example.