907 soirees; that
celebrated demonstration-room was all too small for its exhibition.
Brave soldiers, leading Zionists, deserving novelists, noble ladies,
congested the narrow passage and thrust distinguished elbows into ribs
the world would not willingly let break, deeming themselves fortunate
if they could see "just a little bit of the rail." Inaudible, but
convincing, the great inventor expounded his discovery, and sent his
obedient little model of the trains of the future up gradients, round
curves, and across a sagging wire. It ran along its single rail, on its
single wheels, simple and sufficient; it stopped, reversed stood still,
balancing perfectly. It maintained its astounding equilibrium amidst a
thunder of applause. The audience dispersed at last, discussing how
far they would enjoy crossing an abyss on a wire cable. "Suppose the
gyroscope stopped!" Few of them anticipated a tithe of what the Brennan
mono-rail would do for their railway securities and the face of the
world.

In a few, years they realised better. In a little while no one
thought anything of crossing an abyss on a wire, and the mono-rail was
superseding the tram-lines, railways: and indeed every form of track
for mechanical locomotion. Where land was cheap the rail ran along
the ground, where it was dear the rail lifted up on iron standards and
passed overhead; its swift, convenient cars went everywhere and did
everything that had once been done along made tracks upon the ground.

When old Smallways died, Tom could think of nothing more striking to say
of him than that, "When he was a boy, there wasn't nothing higher than
your chimbleys--there wasn't a wire nor a cable in the sky!"

Old Smallways went to his grave under an intricate network of wires and
cables, for Bun Hill became not only a sort of minor centre of power
distribution--the Home Counties Power Distribution Company set
up transformers and a generating station close beside the old
gas-works--but, also a junction on the suburban mono-rail system.
Moreover, every tradesman in the place, and indeed nearly every house,
had its own telephone.

The mono-rail cable standard became a striking fact in urban landscape,
for the most part stout iron erections rather like tapering trestles,
and painted a bright bluish green. One, it happened, bestrode Tom's
house, which looked still more retiring and apologetic beneath its
immensity; and another giant stood just inside the corner of his gar