e outskirts of Philadelphia, leap across
the Susquehanna, zigzag up and down the Alleghenies into the murk
of Pittsburg, cross the Ohio at Wheeling, glance past Columbus and
Indianapolis, over the Wabash at Terre Haute, into St. Louis by the Eads
bridge, through Kansas City, across the Missouri, along the corn-fields
of Kansas, and then on--on--on with the Sante Fe Railway, across vast
plains and past the brink of the Grand Canyon, to Pueblo and the lofty
city of Denver. Twenty-five hundred miles along a thousand tons of
copper wire! From Bunker Hill to Pike's Peak IN A SECOND!

Herbert Spencer, in his autobiography, alludes to the impressive fact
that while the eye is reading a single line of type, the earth has
travelled thirty miles through space. But this, in telephony, would be
slow travelling. It is simple everyday truth to say that while your eye
is reading this dash,--, a telephone sound can be carried from New York
to Chicago.

There are many reasons to believe that for the practical idealists of
the future, the supreme study will be the force that makes such miracles
possible. Six thousand million dollars--one-twentieth of our national
wealth--is at the present time invested in electrical development. The
Electrical Age has not yet arrived; but it is at hand; and no one can
tell how brilliant the result may be, when the creative minds of a
nation are focussed upon the subdual of this mysterious force, which has
more power and more delicacy than any other force that man has been able
to harness.

As a tame and tractable energy, Electricity is new. It has no past and
no pedigree. It is younger than many people who are now alive. Among the
wise men of Greece and Rome, few knew its existence, and none put it to
any practical use. The wisest knew that a piece of amber, when rubbed,
will attract feathery substances. But they regarded this as poetry
rather than science. There was a pretty legend among the Phoenicians
that the pieces of amber were the petrified tears of maidens who had
thrown themselves into the sea because of unrequited love, and each bead
of amber was highly prized. It was worn as an amulet and a symbol of
purity. Not for two thousand years did any one dream that within its
golden heart lay hidden the secret of a new electrical civilization.

Not even in 1752, when Benjamin Franklin flew his famous kite on the
banks of the Schuylkill River, and captured the first CANNED LIGHTNING,
was there any