Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/64

 ground travel, by rail or otherwise, have been for centuries of necessity abandoned. And again, as to range of travel, we now launch off into the boundless Ether ocean, on visits to adjacent worlds, with hardly more of time, trouble, or expense than were formerly incurred in visiting adjacent countries within our own little planet. What we now call the Home Trade, is the trade within our own small world, while the Foreign Trade is that with worlds outside.

Anon, with our few traps packed up, we are ready to march, and we open the door of our tidy little home, and emerge upon the street. Homes are very small spaces nowadays, when there are such countless millions to be accommodated with them, and thus most of space, other than house-room, gets the general name of street, seeing that the old variety of empty country areas and green fields has long since disappeared. When Brown senior and I, of a half-holiday Saturday, sally forth, in our old accustomed way, to seek the refreshing change of solitude and quiet, instead of the eternal crowd and noise of these endless streets, we have ever to mount farther and farther into the outer realms of thinnest endurable atmosphere, all the lower and denser air-strata being crammed with locomotive humanity. The spectacle we look down upon from aloft, by-the-by, is not unenjoyable, for every one must prefer to see cold space thus genially filled up with the warmth of human life and movement. At the same time, however, as I always say, although it is all pleasant and comfort-