But what would you do—you beefsteak-eating bull of a Briton, yes, what would you do? You would don your lounge suit or your morning coat, or your tuxedo, as your great grandfathers did right back in 1825. You would become thoroughly traditional and would say: “Why, this man is mad—a raving lunatic! Send me to Lake Chad?... Good God, man, what is he thinking about ... Lock him up!” Then the storm would burst. The leading engineers, “eminent” as they are called by every newspaper, would say it was contrary to etheric law; Harley Street would be thoroughly up in arms, for all their old lady friends might suddenly betake themselves in a second to Madeira and get cured of their ailments; the physicians would say the human frame cannot stand this rush; the bath-chairmen would say that their occupation was gone; the lawyers would say it was illegal and that it would lead to the Cocos Islands becoming a refuge for criminals; the soldiers would say, how could they be expected to protect this dash dashed land, why, it did not fit their strategy, therefore it _must_ be wrong. And what would the clergy say? Heaven alone knows, for whilst antiquity and things antiquated separate the Churches, any novelty of a progressive nature is apt to bring them together with amazing unanimity. The reader may be beginning to think that I, the writer, am off my head, but I am not. So far, all I have done is to reveal protean possibilities, now I will turn to actualities of the same psychological order. I will imagine that this genius Mr. Smith has, in disgust, removed himself to Aldebaran, and that we are about to get back to the Brusselton Incline. ERICHTHONIUS, WHEELWRIGHT I must have missed the Incline in my haste to get back to Brusselton, for I find myself in Athens in the Minoan age, or thereabouts, for the year is 1486 B.C. Everyone seems very excited; porters have thrown down their baskets and are yelling unintelligible words, yet of a pronounced and universal meaning; shoemakers are beating at a house door with their lasts. Whatever is up? A dainty little creature, some now far away Doris, approaches me and says: “Do you know what that old blighter (my Attic is weak) has done? Why, he has invented a thing called a chariot, and all these poor people have lost their jobs.”