A CENTURY HENCE. 71 



seek to describe scenes that a world older than tins will be a century 

 hence may afford. Indeed I may be pardoned if I own to a suspi- 

 cion that whoever attempts to pierce into the future beyond the 

 limit I have set myself will see but dimly and through an ever-grow- 

 ing mist. 



"We are in a vast office. Through the dome of colored glass, forty 

 stories above, streams the softened light of midday. Tier upon tier, 

 each marking a floor, are railings of fanciful and quaint designs 

 wrought in brass. The office flooring itself is an extraordinary and 

 beautiful specimen of the inlayer's art. It is composed of stones in the 

 form of tiles, and on this floor every quarter of the earth is represented. 

 The looms of Persia produce no finer fabrics than the carpets that cover 

 the halls which diverge from the offi .ce. Into these halls open suites of 

 rooms with luxurious appointments. You'd like a suite of rooms, gentle 

 reader, and so would I. But your funds are limited, as are mine, 

 wherefore shall we go above via. a pneumatic tube which shoots us 

 and our baggage — two valises — to room No. 3999, with thirty-nine sto- 

 ries of masonry and metal below us and only the roof of the Pavilion 

 Hotel — the third of its name which rears its majestic front on the 

 site of the first — and the cloudless heavens of a perfect June day over 

 our heads. 



Open that window and look eastward. Behold those piers of 

 granite stretching far out into the bay and seizing its commerce as 

 the devil-fish seizes the smaller inhabitants of the deep. See the 

 men, miles in the distance, loading the stately vessels with casks and 

 bales and boxes. To and fro on rails glistening in the sunlight rush 

 the engines propelled by the Keely motor and drawing trains of 

 freight and passenger cars, no train less than half-a-mile in length. 

 The harbor is alive with ships flying the flag of the United States. 

 The Thames at London is as nothing to the forests of masts that cast 

 their shadows upon the waters, which break in spray against the 

 seawall of Tompkins City, for there are we now on our "strange, 

 eventful voyage." 



But look across the Kills and northward. That thriving manu- 

 facturing town a century since was Constable Hook. It is no longer 

 grimy, foul-smelling as it was in the days when our great-grandfathers 

 on the opposite shore, under the management of the Janssens, the 

 Davises and the Tyndales of the S. I. A. C. sculled their way to 



