ing from insulator to
insulator. One of the party pointed at these green dots of glass and
murmured a question, and the leader's wife laid her small hand softly
upon his arm to check the energy of his utterance as he said, audibly
to all on the platform, and with a strong French accent:

"They?--are there lest the heat of the telegraph fluid inflame the
post-es!" He laid his own hand tenderly upon his wife's in response to
its warning pressure, yet turned to the sugar-planter and asked:

"Sir, pardon; do I not explain truly?"

The planter, with restrained smile, was about to reply, when some one
called, "There she comes!" and every eye was turned to the east.

"Truly!" exclaimed the inquirer, in a voice made rich with emotion.
"Truly, she comes! She comes! The iron horse, though they call him
'she'!" He turned to the planter--"Ah! sir, why say they thus many or
thus many horse-power, when truly"--his finger-tip pattered upon his
temple--"truly it is mind-power!"

The planter, smiling decorously, turned away, and the speaker looked
again down the long vacant track to where the small dark focus of
every one's attention was growing on the sight. He spoke again, in
lower voice but with larger emotion.

"Mind-power! thought-power! knowledge-power! learning and thinking
power!" He caught his wife's arm. "See! see, Sidonie, my dear! See her
enhancing in magnitude so fastly approaching!" As he spoke a puff of
white vapor lifted from the object and spread out against the blue,
the sunbeams turned it to silver and pearl, and a moment later came
the far-away, long, wild scream of the locomotive.

"Retire!" exclaimed the husband, drawing back all his gazing
companions at once. "Retire! retire! the whisttel is to signify
warning to retire from too close the edge of the galerie! There! rest
at this point. 'Tis far enough. Now, each and all resolve to stand and
shrink not whilst that iron mare, eating coal, drinking hot water, and
spitting fire, shall seem, but falsely, threatening to come on the
platform. Ah! Claude!" he cried to the youngest of the group, "now
shall you behold what I have told you--that vast am-azement of
civilize-ation anni-_high_-lating space and also time at the tune of
twenty miles the hour!" He wheeled upon the planter--"Sir, do I
exaggerate?"

"Forty miles," replied the planter; "sometimes fifty."

"Friends,--confirmated! more than twicefold confirmated. Forty,
sometimes fifty! Thou heardest it, Max