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who control the operations of industry. There is no rea- 

 *on to suppose that both science and the arts will not make as 

 it advances in the future as in the past. Each generation 

 glories in discoveries and inventions that were unknown to the 

 preceding. Who dreamed, fifty years ago, that we of to-day 

 would receive, with our morning coffee, the last evening's n w- 

 from London and St. Petersburg ? or that our country, with all 

 its vastness, would be, to-day, through the shrinking efficacy 

 of railroads, virtually smaller, in respect to accessibility and 

 ease of government, than was the State of New York, or 

 omitting the territories on the Pacific than was even the 

 State of Connecticut, in the days of the Revolution? Who 

 dreamed that by the aid of light and a few chemicals, we 

 should take instantaneous pictures, not only of the " human 

 face divine," but of flying cannon balls, and volcanoes in the 

 moon, and world-systems so far away, that the picture we get 

 shows not their aspect now, but that of years or centuries ago, 

 when the imprinting rays first left their distant source ? Who 

 dreamed of our Great-Easterns, and Dictators, and Dunder- 

 U-rgs our terrible repeating rifles our lightning printing- 

 (irrss our mechanism for setting and distributing types, and 

 even for printing without setting and distributing types, by 

 electrotyping a matrix, into which, letter by letter, the " copy" 

 has been struck, by the simple fingering of an alphabetical 

 key-board, an American invention now attracting attention at 

 the Great Exhibition in Paris ? ' Who dreamed of our marvelous 

 automatic machinery for making pins, needles, and fish-hooks 

 < ur busy sewing-machines in every family our reaping, mow- 

 ing, raking, binding, threshing, winnowing, and other agricul- 

 tural machinery for lightening and accelerating labor ? 



And why may not the next half-century note progress as great 

 :is the last, or even greater ? Nature's secrets are not yet all 



