Caesars Column | Page 5

before me, my dinner would be ordered on a similar mirror in the
kitchen, and speedily served. I did as he directed. In a little while an electric bell near me
rang; the bill of fare disappeared from the mirror; there was a slight clicking sound; the
table parted in front of me, the electric knobs moving aside; and up through the opening
rose my dinner carefully arranged, as upon a table, which exactly filled the gap caused by
the recession of that part of the original table which contained the electric buttons. I need
not say I was astonished. I commenced to eat, and immediately the same bell, which had
announced the disappearance of the bill of fare, rang again. I looked up, and the mirror
now contained the name of every state in the Republic, from Hudson's Bay to the Isthmus
of Darien; and the names of all the nations of the world; each name being numbered. My
attendant, perceiving my perplexity, called my attention to the fact that the sides of the

table which had brought up my dinner contained another set of electric buttons,
corresponding with the numbers on the mirror; and he explained to me that if I would
select any state or country and touch the corresponding button the news of the day, from
that state or country, would appear in the mirror. He called my attention to, the fact that
every guest in the room had in front of him a similar mirror, and many of them were
reading the news of the day as they ate. I touched the knob corresponding with the name
of the new state of Uganda, in Africa, and immediately there appeared in the mirror all
the doings of the people of that state--its crimes, its accidents, its business, the output of
its mines, the markets, the sayings and doings of its prominent men; in fact, the whole life
of the community was unrolled before me like a panorama. I then touched the button for
another African state, Nyanza; and at once I began to read of new lines of railroad; new
steam-ship fleets upon the great lake; of large colonies of white men, settling new States,
upon the higher lands of the interior; of their colleges, books, newspapers; and
particularly of a dissertation upon the genius of Chaucer, written by a Zulu professor,
which had created considerable interest among the learned societies of the Transvaal. I
touched the button for China and read the important news that the Republican Congress
of that great and highly civilized nation had decreed that English, the universal language
of the rest of the globe, should be hereafter used in the courts of justice and taught in all
the schools. Then came the news that a Manchurian professor, an iconoclast, had written
a learned work, in English, to prove that George Washington's genius and moral
greatness had been much over-rated by the partiality of his countrymen. He was answered
by a learned doctor of Japan who argued that the greatness of all great men consisted
simply in opportunity, and that for every illustrious name that shone in the pages of
history, associated with important events, a hundred abler men had lived and died
unknown. The battle was raging hotly, and all China and Japan were dividing into
contending factions upon this great issue.
Our poor ignorant ancestors of a hundred years ago drank alcohol in various forms, in
quantities which the system could not consume or assimilate, and it destroyed their
organs and shortened their lives. Great agitations arose until the manufacture and sale of
alcoholic beverages was prohibited over nearly all the world. At length the scientists
observed that the craving was based on a natural want of the system; that alcohol was
found in small quantities in nearly every article of food; and that the true course was to so
increase the amount of alcohol in the food, without gratifying the palate, as to meet the
real necessities of the system, and prevent a decrease of the vital powers.
It is laughable to read of those days when men were drugged with pills, boluses and
powders. Now our physic is in our food; and the doctor prescribes a series of articles to
be eaten or avoided, as the case may be. One can see at once by consulting his
"vital-watch," which shows every change in the magnetic and electric forces of the body,
just how his physical strength wanes or increases; and he can modify his diet accordingly;
he can select, for instance, a dish highly charged with quinine or iron, and yet perfectly
palatable; hence, among the wealthier classes, a man of one hundred is as common
now-a-days as a man of seventy was a century ago; and many go