Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/67

 few centuries ago, under the preferent wants and claims of human beings, these useful vehicles were sent up aloft, in perpendicular succession, above our heads, in all sorts of shifty ways possible to their conveniently slight structure, which was mainly of thin extra-tough sheet diamond, until by the grand discovery of the reduplication of the cross-electric, as we shall see further on, the cross-electric current could be made to lift up and suspend material bodies, and thus enable us to have our present far greater convenience of long perpendicular lines of cab-stands, stretching unrestrictedly upwards towards old cloudland. Thus a whole cab-stand of thousands is upheld at a comparatively small cost of cross-electric energy; while each cab may have an accustomed place on the wire, or, as is found most workable and convenient, cabs are taken from the lowest in regular succession. The cab system nowadays would certainly astonish the quiet old fogies of a thousand years ago.

This particular cab-stand was one of the specials, in which each cab was booked to its own place. Our usual cabby happened to be "at home," and although five hundred feet aloft, unhooked his charge, upon our signalling him by his own electric bell beneath, and was with us in a trice.

We were soon whizzing through the air, and at a height and speed proportioned to the distance of our journey. The rules of the road, in air travel, have gradually become of necessity more and more strict; and it is alike creditable and wonderful, through this extreme care, how few accidents, comparatively speaking at least, do occur. They do occur at times, however; and most ugly and uncomfortable things they