Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/72

 cheaply and conveniently indulge in the latter, while entirely free from the other when not for the time and occasion wanted. And, again, most of our life is now subterranean, the world's outer surface being already utterly inadequate in area for more than a fraction of the crowd of present human life; while throughout this vast subterranean we have imitation suns which, for all practical purposes, are quite as good as the one original article outside, together with atmospheres free from all the said noise and light-obscuration of upper surface life. So you may see that this outside surface life has, after all, its disadvantages as well as its attractions, and it is by no means much preferred by most people, house rents being just as stiff almost, down even to third and fourth subterranean stages, as upon the uppermost or even the outside level.

We arrived safely at Atalanta, and just about the usual early dinner hour, as we had planned, in order to catch our friends more at their leisure. This is an old business trick of making such business leisure out of the dinner hour. But if this be reprehensible, we have, on the other hand, kept to, or come back to, simpler ways in both food and dress in these busy modern times; for how else can we get through all we have to do in the science and progress of the time? The particular spot of our destination is the main entrance to the Atalanta Great Consolidated Subterranean. This vast concern is usually called, in stockexchange abbreviation, the Great Consols Sub, and