In the Year 2889 | Page 6

The hats are just lovely this season! I suppose I forgot to
note the time, and so am a little late."
"Yes, a little," growled Mr. Smith; "so little that I have already quite
finished breakfast. Excuse me if I leave you now, but I must be going."
"O certainly, my dear; good-by till evening."
Smith stepped into his air-coach, which was in waiting for him at a
window. "Where do you wish to go, sir?" inquired the coachman.
"Let me see; I have three hours," Mr. Smith mused. "Jack, take me to
my accumulator works at Niagara."
For Mr. Smith has obtained a lease of the great falls of Niagara. For
ages the energy developed by the falls went unutilized. Smith, applying
Jackson's invention, now collects this energy, and lets or sells it. His
visit to the works took more time than he had anticipated. It was four
o'clock when he returned home, just in time for the daily audience
which he grants to callers.
One readily understands how a man situated as Smith is must be beset
with requests of all kinds. Now it is an inventor needing capital; again
it is some visionary who comes to advocate a brilliant scheme which
must surely yield millions of profit. A choice has to be made between
these projects, rejecting the worthless, examining the questionable ones,
accepting the meritorious. To this work Mr. Smith devotes every day
two full hours.
The callers were fewer to-day than usual--only twelve of them. Of

these, eight had only impracticable schemes to propose. In fact, one of
them wanted to revive painting, an art fallen into desuetude owing to
the progress made in color-photography. Another, a physician, boasted
that he had discovered a cure for nasal catarrh! These impracticables
were dismissed in short order. Of the four projects favorably received,
the first was that of a young man whose broad forehead betokened his
intellectual power.
"Sir, I am a chemist," he began, "and as such I come to you."
"Well!"
"Once the elementary bodies," said the young chemist, "were held to be
sixty-two in number; a hundred years ago they were reduced to ten;
now only three remain irresolvable, as you are aware."
"Yes, yes."
"Well, sir, these also I will show to be composite. In a few months, a
few weeks, I shall have succeeded in solving the problem. Indeed, it
may take only a few days."
"And then?"
"Then, sir, I shall simply have determined the absolute. All I want is
money enough to carry my research to a successful issue."
"Very well," said Mr. Smith. "And what will be the practical outcome
of your discovery?"
"The practical outcome? Why, that we shall be able to produce easily
all bodies whatever--stone, wood, metal, fibers--"
"And flesh and blood?" queried Mr. Smith, interrupting him. "Do you
pretend that you expect to manufacture a human being out and out?"
"Why not?"
Mr. Smith advanced $100,000 to the young chemist, and engaged his

services for the Earth Chronicle laboratory.
The second of the four successful applicants, starting from experiments
made so long ago as the nineteenth century and again and again
repeated, had conceived the idea of removing an entire city all at once
from one place to another. His special project had to do with the city of
Granton, situated, as everybody knows, some fifteen miles inland. He
proposes to transport the city on rails and to change it into a
watering-place. The profit, of course, would be enormous. Mr. Smith,
captivated by the scheme, bought a half-interest in it.
"As you are aware, sir," began applicant No. 3, "by the aid of our solar
and terrestrial accumulators and transformers, we are able to make all
the seasons the same. I propose to do something better still. Transform
into heat a portion of the surplus energy at our disposal; send this heat
to the poles; then the polar regions, relieved of their snow-cap, will
become a vast territory available for man's use. What think you of the
scheme?"
"Leave your plans with me, and come back in a week. I will have them
examined in the meantime."
Finally, the fourth announced the early solution of a weighty scientific
problem. Every one will remember the bold experiment made a
hundred years ago by Dr. Nathaniel Faithburn. The doctor, being a firm
believer in human hibernation--in other words, in the possibility of our
suspending our vital functions and of calling them into action again
after a time--resolved to subject the theory to a practical test. To this
end, having first made his last will and pointed out the proper method
of awakening him; having also directed that his sleep was to continue a
hundred years to a day from the date of his apparent death, he
unhesitatingly put