fotetorg of Electrical Science, 17 



" In other days, along the street, 

 A glimmering lantern led the feet, 



When on a midnight stroll; 

 But now we catch, when night is nigh, 

 A piece of lightning from the sky 



And stick it on a pole. 



" Time was when one must hold his ear 

 Close to a whispering voice to hear, 



Like deaf men nigh and nigher; 

 But now from town to town he talks 

 And puts his nose into a box 



And whispers through a wire." 



So jogs the old world along. We some- 

 times think it is slow, but when we look back 

 a few years and see what has been accom- 

 plished it seems to have had a marvelously 

 rapid development. 



Something like fifty years ago a professor 

 of physics in one of our colleges was giving 

 his class a course in electricity. The electric 

 telegraph was too little known at that time to 

 cut much of a figure in the classroom, so the 

 stock experiments were those made with the 

 frictional electric machine and the Leyden jar. 

 One day the professor had, in one hour's time, 

 taken his class through a course of electricity, 

 and at the end he said : " Gentlemen, you were 

 born too late to witness the development of this 

 great science." I often wonder if the good 

 -or i- i ver allowed to p;irt the veil that 

 separates us from the great beyond and to look 

 d\vn upon this lm-y world of ours in which 

 1. ( tricity plays such an important part in our 



