"They had annihilated space and bridged the Atlantic in earnest, and the 'electrics' (once called steamers) could go from Glasgow to New York in little over twenty-four hours. Yes. 'Daily to New York, Montreal, California, and New Mexico. Splendid accommodation for first-class passengers: 120 knots per hour, and no vibration.' So read the advertisement in the leading Glasgow newspapers. Why! what did it all mean? One hundred knots per hour--3000 in twenty-four hours! To New York in a day! I had certainly heard of the swallow taking an early breakfast at the uttermost part of England and picking up a late dinner on the shores of Africa, all in one day; but 120 knots an hour with an 'electric,'--it was just enough for flesh and blood to comprehend at once. "'Well,' said a friend of mine with some experience in the marine engineering line, 'I have long thought on electricity as the great motive power of the future, provided it could be properly stored, and now you see what it has come to.' "In fact, our coal supply--one of the sources of Britain's greatness--was getting exhausted, and electrical appliances had become an absolute necessity. The strain could no longer be borne of one huge vessel consuming 500 tons of coal in twenty-four hours, and those blessed electrics were not introduced a moment too soon. "The learned men of France, who had long been working earnestly to solve the problem of electric economy, were beaten in the race, and a perfect system of stored electricity introduced and successfully applied to the propulsion of ships, patented by Professor Scotland Thomson, nephew of the late Sir William Thomson, of blessed memory. "Lots of other remarkable events had been occurring in our history, but none so marked as the introduction of the 'electrics.' The people of Scotland had very nearly lost their individuality. Old Caledonia was to be simply a name. Englishmen invaded Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, and even _Ultima Thule_, and overran the country with their ideas of social life. They made slow progress at first, but came in hordes, and the invasion was irresistible. They, of course, introduced all their newfangled ideas about games and pastimes, and compelled us to submit. "Parliament had got so mixed up and thoroughly disgusted with the question of Irish Home Rule, which cropped up every session, that in an evil mood it had threatened puir all Scotland with assimilation of the Law of Jurisprudence, but failed. King Albert the First, however, had, out of respect to the great city of Glasgow--the Second City in the Empire--created his third son Duke of Glasgow, for you must know the House of Peers was still extant, but greatly reformed and limited in power. It could only veto a law passed by the Commons once, and there was no more about the matter.