one? Or without Marconi should we have had the wireless, or
without Morse, the telegraph? Or, to go back still farther, without
Franklin should we ever have known the identity of lightning and
electricity? Who taught us how to control electricity and make it do
our work? One of the questions of Job was, "Canst thou send
lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?" Yes, we
can. "We are ready to do your bidding," they seem to say, "to run your
errands, to carry your burdens, to grind your grist, to light your
houses, to destroy your enemies."

The new inventions that the future holds for us wait upon the new man.
The discovery of radium--what a secret that was! But in all
probability had not Curie and his wife discovered it, some other
investigator would.

Shall we ever learn how to use the atomic energy that is locked up in
matter? Or how to use the uniform temperature of the globe? Or the
secret of the glow-worm and firefly--light without heat?

The laws of the conservation of energy and of the correlation of
forces were discoveries. The art of aviation was both an invention and
a discovery. The soaring hawks and eagles we have always been familiar
with; the Wright brothers invented the machine that could do the
trick.

"Necessity is the mother of invention." As our wants increase, new
devices to meet them appear. How the diving-bell answered a real need!
The motor-car also, and the flying-machine. The sewing-machine is a
great time-saver; the little hooks in our shoes in place of eyelets
are great time-savers; pins, and friction matches, and rubber
overshoes, and scores on scores of other inventions answer to real
needs. Necessity did not call the phonograph into being, nor the
incandescent light, but the high explosives, dynamite and T. N. T.
(trinitrotoluol) met real wants.

The Great War with its submarines stimulated inventors to devise
weapons to cope with them. Always as man's hand and eyes and ears have
needed reenforcing or extending, his wit has come to his rescue. In
fact, his progress has been contingent upon this very fact. His
necessities and his power of invention react upon one another; the
more he invents, the more he wants, and the more he wants, the more he
invents.

TOWN AND COUNTRY

I was saying to myself, why do not all literary men go to the country
to do their work, where they can have health, peace, and solitude?
Then it occurred to me that there are many men of many