278 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



These are utilitarian days. The days of the super- 

 natural have passed, and the natural of today is more 

 wonderful than the supernatural of two hundred years 

 ago. No longer do our people look for the spooks, the 

 witch, and the fairies. 



At Delphi in Greece the natural gas was used to intox- 

 icate the Pythian priestess and led her to make portents 

 and prophecies. The natural gas at Kokomo is used in 

 manufacturing glass. It is a far distance in time from 

 Delphi to Kokomo, but one represents the ancient and the 

 mysterious, the other the modern and the practical. 



A few hundred years ago the splendid babbling spring 

 at Guadaloupe, Mexico, was placed within the portico of 

 a church, and made holy to the converted Mexican as it 

 had been a sacred place to his pagan ancestry. At Man- 

 itou the sacred springs became the fountains of health, 

 and hotels, not churches or temples, were built near at 

 hand. 



These are, indeed, the days of the practical. The in- 

 genuity of man was formerly exhausted in the construc- 

 tion of armor and Toledo and Damascus blades. Now 

 the inventor burns his midnight incandescent lamp or 

 Welsbach burner in the search of new and improved 

 methods for the construction of steel railways and steam- 

 ships. 



Witches and wizards have disappeared, and we have in 

 their places the wizards of science. An Edison or a Gray 

 produces marvels that would have made the witch of En- 

 dor hide her head in wonder. . . . 



Godfrey and Eichard the Lion Hearted could now go 

 to the Holy City on a steamship and railway line, and if 

 inclined to take life easy, could find the Holy Sepulchre 

 with a personally conducted party from London or Kal- 

 amazoo. Not long will it be until the traveler from the 



