h a picturesque section of
the country. The latter part of the drive took me past settlements that
looked as though they might be in about the same stage of progress as
they had been during the American Revolution. The city of my destination
was back in the hills, and very much isolated. During the last ten miles
we met no traffic at all, and I was the only passenger left in the bus.
Suddenly the vehicle stopped.

"Far as we go!" the driver shouted.

I looked about in consternation. All around were low, wild-looking
hills. The road went on ahead through a narrow pass.

"They'll pick you up in a little bit," the driver said as he turned
around and drove off, leaving me standing there with my bag, very much
astonished at it all.

* * * * *

He was right. A small, neat-looking bus drove through the pass and
stopped for me. As I got in, the driver mechanically turned around and
drove into the hills again.

"They took up my ticket on the other bus," I said to the driver. "What
do I owe you?"

"Nothing," he said curtly. "Fill that out." He handed me a card.

An impertinent thing, that card was. Besides asking for my name,
address, nationality, vocation, and position, it requested that I state
whom I was visiting in the Science Community, the purpose of my visit,
the nature of my business, how long I intended to stay, did I have a
place to stay arranged for, and if so, where and through whom. It looked
for all the world as though they had something to conceal; Czarist
Russia couldn't beat that for keeping track of people and prying into
their business. Sign here, the card said.

It annoyed me, but I filled it out, and, by the time I was through, the
bus was out of the hills, traveling up the valley of a small river; I am
not familiar enough with northern Virginia to say which river it was.
There was much machinery and a few people in the broad fields. In the
distance ahead was a mass of chimneys and the cupolas of iron-works, but
no smoke.

There were power-line towers with high-tension insulators, and, far
ahead, the masses of huge elevators and big, square buildings. Soon I
came in sight of a veritable forest of huge windmills.

In a few moments, the huge buildings loomed up over me; the bus entered
a street of the city abruptly from the country. One moment on a country
road, the next moment among towering buildings. We sped along swiftly
through a busy metropolis, bright, airy, e