Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century Read online

thousandsgraze; and I hear once more the echoing Swiss horns of our herdsmenreverberating from the snow-tipped mountains. But my dream is gone.The roar of the mighty city rises around me like the bellow of manycataracts.

  New York contains now ten million inhabitants; it is the largest citythat is, or ever has been, in the world. It is difficult to say whereit begins or ends: for the villas extend, in almost unbrokensuccession, clear to Philadelphia; while east, west and north noblehabitations spread out mile after mile, far beyond the municipallimits.

  But the wonderful city! Let me tell you of it.

  As we approached it in our air-ship, coming from the east, we couldsee, a hundred miles before we reached the continent, the radiance ofits millions of magnetic lights, reflected on the sky, like the glareof a great conflagration. These lights are not fed, as in the oldtime, from electric dynamos, but the magnetism of the planet itselfis harnessed for the use of man. That marvelous earth-force which theIndians called "the dance of the spirits," and civilized mandesignated "the aurora borealis," is now used to illuminate thisgreat metropolis, with a clear, soft, white light, like that of thefull moon, but many times brighter. And the force is so cunninglyconserved that it is returned to the earth, without any loss ofmagnetic power to the planet. Man has simply made a temporary loanfrom nature for which he pays no interest.

  Night and day are all one, for the magnetic light increasesautomatically as the day-light wanes; and the business parts of thecity swarm as much at midnight as at high noon. In the old times, Iam told, part of the streets was reserved for foot-paths for men andwomen, while the middle was given up to horses and wheeled vehicles;and one could not pass from side to side without danger of beingtrampled to death by the horses. But as the city grew it was foundthat the pavements would not hold the mighty, surging multitudes;they were crowded into the streets, and many accidents occurred. Theauthorities were at length compelled to exclude all horses from thestreets, in the business parts of the city, and raise the centralparts to a level with the sidewalks, and give them up to theexclusive use of the pedestrians, erecting stone pillars here andthere to divide the multitude moving in one direction from thoseflowing in another. These streets are covered with roofs of glass,which exclude the rain and snow, but not the air. And then the wonderand glory of the shops! They surpass all description. Below all thebusiness streets are subterranean streets, where vast trains aredrawn, by smokeless and noiseless electric motors, some carryingpassengers, others freight. At every street corner there are electricelevators, by which passengers can ascend or descend to the trains.And high above the house-tops, built on steel pillars, there areother railroads, not like the unsightly elevated trains we sawpictures of in our school books, but crossing diagonally over thecity, at a great height, so as to best economize time and distance.

  The whole territory between Broadway and the Bowery and Broome Streetand Houston Street is occupied by the depot grounds of the greatinter-continental air-lines; and it is an astonishing sight to seethe ships ascending and descending, like monstrous birds, black withswarming masses of passengers, to or from England, Europe, SouthAmerica, the Pacific Coast, Australia, China, India and Japan.

  These air-lines are of two kinds: the anchored and the independent.The former are hung, by revolving wheels, upon great wires suspendedin the air; the wires held in place by metallic balloons,fish-shaped, made of aluminium, and constructed to turn with the windso as to present always the least surface to the air-currents. Theseballoons, where the lines cross the oceans, are secured to hugefloating islands of timber, which are in turn anchored to the bottomof the sea by four immense metallic cables, extending north, south,east and west, and powerful enough to resist any storms. Theseartificial islands contain dwellings, in which men reside, who keepup the supply of gas necessary for the balloons. The independentair-lines are huge cigar-shaped balloons, unattached to the earth,moving by electric power, with such tremendous speed and force as tobe as little affected by the winds as a cannon ball. In fact, unlessthe wind is directly ahead the sails of the craft are so set as totake advantage of it like the sails of a ship; and the balloon risesor falls, as the birds do, by the angle at which it is placed to thewind, the stream of air forcing it up, or pressing it down, as thecase may be. And just as the old-fashioned steam-ships were providedwith boats, in which the passengers were expected to take refuge, ifthe ship was about to sink, so the upper decks of these air-vesselsare supplied with parachutes, from which are suspended boats; and incase of accident two sailors and ten passengers are assigned to eachparachute; and long practice has taught the bold craftsmen to descendgently and alight in the sea, even in stormy weather, with as muchadroitness as a sea-gull. In fact, a whole population of air-sailorshas grown up to manage these ships, never dreamed of by ourancestors. The speed of these aerial vessels is, as you know, verygreat--thirty-six hours suffices to pass from New York to London, inordinary weather. The loss of life has been less than on theold-fashioned steamships; for, as those which go east move at agreater elevation than those going west, there is no danger ofcollisions; and they usually fly above the fogs which add so much tothe dangers of sea-travel. In case of hurricanes they rise at once tothe higher levels, above the storm; and, with our increasedscientific knowledge, the coming of a cyclone is known for many daysin advance; and even the stratum of air in which it will move can beforetold.

  I could spend hours, my dear brother, telling you of the splendor ofthis hotel, called _The Darwin_, in honor of the great Englishphilosopher of the last century. It occupies an entire block fromFifth Avenue to Madison Avenue, and from Forty-sixth Street toForty-seventh. The whole structure consists of an infinite series ofcunning adjustments, for the delight and gratification of the humancreature. One object seems to be to relieve the guests from allnecessity for muscular exertion. The ancient elevator, or "lift," asthey called it in England, has expanded until now whole rooms, filledwith ladies and gentlemen, are bodily carried up from the first storyto the roof; a professional musician playing the while on thepiano--not the old-fashioned thing our grandmothers used, but a hugeinstrument capable of giving forth all sounds of harmony from thetrill of a nightingale to the thunders of an orchestra. And when youreach the roof of the hotel you find yourself in a glass-coveredtropical forest, filled with the perfume of many flowers, and brightwith the scintillating plumage of darting birds; all sounds ofsweetness fill the air, and many glorious, star-eyed maidens, guestsof the hotel, wander half seen amid the foliage, like the houris inthe Mohammedan's heaven.

  But as I found myself growing hungry I descended to the dining-room.It is three hundred feet long: a vast multitude were there eating inperfect silence. It is considered bad form to interrupt digestionwith speech, as such a practice tends to draw the vital powers, it issaid, away from the stomach to the head. Our forefathers wereexpected to shine in conversation, and be wise and witty whilegulping their food between brilliant passages. I sat down at a tableto which I was marshaled by a grave and reverend seignior in animposing uniform. As I took my seat my weight set some machinery inmotion. A few feet in front of me suddenly rose out of the table alarge upright mirror, or such I took it to be; but instantly thereappeared on its surface a grand bill of fare, each article beingnumbered. The whole world had been ransacked to produce the viandsnamed in it; neither the frozen recesses of the north nor thesweltering regions of the south had been spared: every form of food,animal and vegetable, bird, beast, reptile, fish; the foot of anelephant, the hump of a buffalo, the edible bird-nests of China;snails, spiders, shell-fish, the strange and luscious creatureslately found in the extreme depths of the ocean and fished for withdynamite; in fact, every form of food pleasant to the palate of manwas there. For, as you know, there are men who make fortunes now bypreserving and breeding the game animals, like the deer, the moose,the elk, the buffalo, the antelope, the mountain sheep and goat, andmany others, which but for their care would long since have becomeextinct. They select barren regions in mild climates, not fit foragricult
ure, and enclosing large tracts with wire fences, they raisegreat quantities of these valuable game animals, which they sell tothe wealthy gourmands of the great cities, at very high prices.

  I was perplexed, and, turning to the great man who stood near me, Ibegan to name a few of the articles I wanted. He smiled complacentlyat my country ignorance, and called my attention to the fact that thetable immediately before me contained hundreds of little knobs orbuttons, each one numbered; and he told me that these were connectedby electric wires with the kitchen of the hotel, and if I wouldobserve the numbers attached to any articles in the bill of farewhich I desired, and would touch the corresponding numbers of theknobs before me, my dinner would be ordered on a similar mirror inthe kitchen, and speedily served. I did as he directed. In a littlewhile an electric bell near me rang; the bill of fare disappearedfrom the mirror; there was a slight clicking sound; the table partedin front of