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 o