Chapter 8 - Page 2

its possibilities. I do not see how any man can fail to be
interested in the subject, particularly when he considers the great
strides science has made in the last twenty years."

"I fail to see," said the School-Master, "what the strides of science
have to do with it."

"You fail to see so often, Mr. Pedagog," returned the Idiot, "that I
would advise your eyes to make an assignment in favor of your pupils."

"I must confess," put in Mr. Whitechoker, blandly, "that I too am
somewhat--er--somewhat--"

"Somewhat up a tree as to science's connection with the future?" queried
the Idiot.

"You have my meaning, but hardly the phraseology I should have chosen,"
replied the minister.

"My style is rather epigrammatic," said the Idiot, suavely. "I appreciate
the flattery implied by your noticing it. But science has everything to
do with it. It is science that is going to make the future great. It is
science that has annihilated distance, and the annihilation has just
begun. Twenty years ago it was hardly possible for a man standing on one
side of the street to make himself heard on the other, the acoustic
properties of the atmosphere not being what they should be. To-day
you can stand in the pulpit of your church, and by means of certain
scientific apparatus make yourself heard in Boston, New Orleans, or San
Francisco. Has this no bearing on the future? The time will come, Mr.
Whitechoker, when your missionaries will be able to sit in their
comfortable rectories, and ring up the heathen in foreign climes, and
convert them over the telephone, without running the slightest danger of
falling into the soup, which expression I use in its literal rather than
in its metaphorical sense."

[Illustration: "YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"]

"But--" interrupted Mr. Whitechoker.

"Now wait, please," said the Idiot. "If science can annihilate degrees of
distance, who shall say that before many days science may not annihilate
degrees of time? If San Francisco, thousands of miles distant, can be
brought within range of the ear, why cannot 1990 be brought before the
mind's eye? And if 1990 can be brought before the mind's eye, what is to
prevent the invention of a prophetograph which shall enable us to cast a
horoscope which shall reach all around eternity and half-way back, if not
further?"

[Illustration: THE PROPHETOGRAPH]

"You do not understand me," said Mr. Whitechoker. "When I speak of the
future, I do not mean the temporal future."

"I know exactly what you mean," said the Idiot. "I've