tobacco-smoke by a weed, with one end in the
mouth, the other end on fire, continued for some
time after the introduction of this light padding
for ladies' dress. The consequence was, that if a
gentleman smoked in a lady's presence, a flying
ash might cause an explosion by which the lady
was blown up, and the gentleman often had his
cigar shot down his throat. The women liked
the risk, and the men didn't. For the last
hundred years, therefore, tobacco has been
generated in great tobaccometers, and its smoke
laid on (as gas used to be) to every house, which
has its tobacco fittings, with elastic pipes and
mouthpieces. Out-of-door pipes from the mains
crop up among the grass and flowers as the old
gas-lamps used to do, and when nobody is
smoking at them, they are often used by ladies for
the fumigation of these rosaries that shroud the
ways down into business London."

"But," said I, "my dear sir, with your
diffused warmth and no fire, how do we — for you
seem miraculously to know all about everything
—how do we in this advanced age cook a
mutton-chop?"

"Wait a bit. The evening grows dusk. Ha,
see! Didn't I tell you so?"

There was a man on a flying-fish, who
lighted five little artificial suns, one over the
middle of the town, one at each corner, and the
daylight seemed to return suddenly.

"Think of the comfort of that," said
Narrenpossenindiezukunft. "No candles, no artificial
light required in any of the houses."

And now the ladies flocked about the rosaries,
and soon there streamed out of the midst of the
rosaries, snuffing eagerly the odour of the
flowers, cohorts of fathers, husbands, brothers,
and sons come up from business, who capered
with the ladies, and ran trundling the hoops they
had left among the bushes, or playing leapfrog
over each other towards the houses. "And this,"
I said, shaking my head for nine minutes, "is
Cheapside. Where is the Mansion House?"

"Mansion House!" echoed my friend. "Why,
the Lord Mayor was happily abolished three
hundred and ninety years ago—very soon after
that obsolete obstruction had conceitedly blocked
up the City, and caused the deaths of several
unfortunate persons in a crowd, which he and
his dismal old — what was it called — Corporation
—wouldn't be helped to arrange. These
people are going in to dinner. Come and see
how they live."

What shall I say? Here I am, thrown back
again on an incredulous past that cannot be got
to think of or believe such changes. I mixed
with these people, entered their radiant houses,
built of massive translucent blocks of solid glass,
jointed by transparent cement, through which a
cool diffused light everywhere penetrated.
"Rather better, this, than the old living in
mud pies?" said my friend.

"Mud pies!"

"Raised crusts, if you will, of baked clay; or
the old stone heaps in Pall-mall."

Within these brilliant houses there were no
joists, beams, nor floorings. Groups of buoyant
furniture were set on floating carpets here and
there, like little islands in air. The use of these
had long been preferred for ease and noiselessness
to walking upon solid wooden floors,
reached by the laborious climbing of hard
stairs. From island to island all the people of
the house passed smoothly on the backs of
silent fish. Or the whole room could be made
to rise or fall gently and softly through the air.

"Again, sir," I said, "let me ask how such a
people cooks its chops?"

"Stand aside," said my friend, "or you will
have the soup in your face. Dinner for this house
is coming up through the pneumatic tube, and
you are standing with your head in front of it."

I turned aside. There was a gurgle, a rush,
and a pop, and out flew a ball of hot soup — slug
soup my friend declared it to be — that was lodged
with amazing accuracy in a tureen upon the
dinner-table, around which the family sat on one
of the gay floating islands.

"Well," said I, "that is a new way of firing
slugs. Whitworth never shot with more
precision."

"It is not the firing," said my friend. "It
is the placing of the tureen. Abstruse study of
mathematics is now so common and necessary
that every respectable house keeps a mathematician
in buttons among its domestic servants.
Buttons knowing the diameter of the pipe, the
propelling force, and the weight and shape of
any object or number of objects ordered from
below, calculates to a hair the direction all the
things will take, and where to place the dishes
to receive them. The soup eaten, a trained
sparrow was sent down to pull a bell, and up
flew a hot jelly-fish, followed by a gush of earwig
sauce, and a volley of boiled yams. The fish
flopped and smoked upon the dish laid ready for
it. Every drop of the sauce fell inside the sauce-
boat. But one of the yams was smashed on the
bald head of an old gentleman who stood up
unexpectedly. He did not seem to be aware of
it, although when he sat down several attendant
sparrows came and perched upon his head to
peck away the crumbs. "It is very seldom,"
said my friend, "that such an accident can
possibly occur. Men-servants, and maid-servants,
who wait at table, are always instructed beforehand
in the lines of fire, and at once warn any
one who puts his head in danger. But here,
except the Buttons who removes and arranges
the dishes, and must give his whole attention
to them, the waiting is all done, as you observe,
by birds and fishes. Ah, in your time, five hundred
years ago, they had tamed nothing, the
barbarians, but the dog and the cat and the — the—
the—what was that other creature called?"

"The horse?"

"The horse, ah yes. Soon after your time,
when there was no other use for him, they ate
him up. He has been extinct three hundred
years. Here's the roast terrier and rat sauce
coming. Mind your head."

"What, are they eating up the dogs too!
But, my good Narren-what's-your-name, where
is the cooking done?"