many flowers out of doors ? This is a warm
spring day, as I feel — a trifle too warm, possibly
—but there are bleak days also, at this season.
How do the flowers stand them, and how do
they stand the London smoke !"

"Smoke, my dear Bokins! Smoke! Now!
Look at those tall maypoles, with gorgeous
tropical creepers twining to the top of them.
Don't you see that the Londoners have by this
time adopted my grand scheme for the
solidification of caloric. Turn your turbot's nose to
the pole, sister. There, don't you feel the
balmy tropical air fragrant and warm about you
as we swim towards the pole? My scheme was,
you know—  really I told it you at dinner—that
an immense mass of caloric being solidified into
the firmness of stone, a piece of this solid caloric,
about as big as a seven-pounder cannon-ball, set
up in the midst of London, would disengage
natural warmth enough for the whole town,
melt the snow, turn the rain back into thin
vapour, and give us the summer climate of
Madeira in the sharpest of December weather.
I see that they prefer smaller fragments of the
caloric stone set upon several poles to avoid an
excess of tropical heat in any part of town.
Doubtless, however, there is an extra lump for
the district of the market gardens. But my
sister turns to you."

"Jolly fast turbot this, Miss Bokins, eh?"
said the young lady.

"Miss! I am Mister Bokins, if you please."

"Bosh!" said Clarissa. "Women came to
their rights ages ago, you little fool. By the
treaty of Pardiggle, A.D. two-two-two-two,
women became Misters, and men Missises and
Misses. You'll take my name when I marry you,
and become Mrs. Narrenpossenindiezukunft."

"But if I won't have you?"

"You must. The first act of the first woman's
parliament forbids the refusal of such offers.
What a stick you are! I don't think I will have
you. Brother, there's a division to-night, and I
ought to be in the house, for it's important. I'll
put you down here, and perhaps you'll take a
turn in the town with Miss Bokins. If I want to
see any more of her, I'll look her up. If not,
good-by, and good riddance."

Coming near the ground, she tilted us both
over the tail of her turbot. We fell among long
grass, and when we got up she was far away,
her turbot working his fins with a will as soon
as he had got us off his back.

"A fish is but a slippery sort of horse to
ride," I said to the chevalier.

"Behind a slippery girl, so it is," he said.
"Yet wasn't I right? Didn't you observe the
smoothness of the motion, or rather wasn't it so
smooth that you did not observe anything at all
about it? Nothing could be simpler. People
had only to train the fishes, give them windy
food, diet them into a buoyancy that would enable
them to swim as easily in the ocean of air as in
the ocean of water, saddle them and bridle them,
and there you are! What can be more  commodious
than those whales — with a complete village
of drawing-rooms, and parlours, and even a
library or two on each whale's back — working
what used to be the old omnibus routes. Hi !
hi!"

At the chevalier's cry, the conductor on the
whale's tail unrolled a little flight of stairs to us
as the monster, blown out to fourfold size by
the lightening of his texture, hovered over the
tree-lops. We went up, and found passengers
chatting in the drawing-rooms, drinking tea in
the parlours, reading and writing in luxurious
and well filled libraries.

"A great improvement upon the old lumbering
omnibuses, is it not?" said the chevalier.

"Certainly," I answered. "But it appears
odd to me that when there were already birds
in the air, men should have added all these
fishes."

"They are more commodious, you see. We
couldn't get all this public accommodation laid
on the back of a London sparrow. But the
birds have all been utilised. Every peer in the
House of Ladies keeps her stud of condors in
the country. Eagles are good riding among the
hills. But, on the whole, these riding birds are
used only for crossing to the continent, or short
runs over water, where even a well-trained fish
might be tempted to take an awkward plunge
in his old native element. As for the small
birds, they all work for their living. The tom-
tits, for example, have been all turned into
printers' devils, and the jackdaws into beadles.
But here is Cheapside."

As we had taken one of the halfpenny whales,
we paid only a halfpenny apiece when we got
out at the Cheapside landing-stage: a terrace of
gay flowers that had once been rare, but that
had been acclimatised to London since the
introduction of solidified caloric. We descended
to the greensward of Cheapside itself. The
middle of the road was laid out in lawn and
parterre. Fragrant rows of blossoming orange-
trees made shady walks on either side, and
beyond these the lines of houses shone with all
the colours of the rainbow, like colossal prisms.
Under the orange-trees, ladies were singing, now
and then by aid of their balloon skirts rising
like birds to the tree branches, here and there
like swallows chasing each other through the
air, as they flew always close to the ground.
There was a faint trembling of the earth and
rumble under ground.

"Now," said my guide, "tread boldly. That
is not earthquake. It's the traffic. And those
girls are not lifted by the agency of spirits.
When hydrogen gas superseded the old hoops
as a means of petticoat distension, it was not
long before it occurred to the new scientific race
of milliners that a small generator, set in action
by a touch, and a dainty gold escape valve that
might be worn as a waist-buckle, would enable
ladies to enjoy, in a moderate degree, ballooning
as a new domestic pleasure."

"But," I asked, "is not a gas petticoat
horribly dangerous wear near fire."

"Fire, my good Bokens. Have you already
forgotten the solidified caloric? One difficulty
there was. The old barbarous way of taking