Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/79

 rooms of a thousand years ago, more especially as ventilation questions are now all disposed of by our carbon-absorbents, and other self-acting maintenants of atmospheric purity.

The elegant platform of the third stage, on which we had just been landed, belongs to four separate towns or districts, each being a great square, all filled with a busy multitude, and each communicating in common, at the four conjoining angles, with the common lift. Each of these separate subs had a handsome entrance gateway, and we at once entered the one in particular to which our introductions directed us. Here a pleasant and varied landscape confronted us. Although, as I have said, natural green fields and such-like have been long banished from our earth, yet that does not necessarily prevent the most select and beautiful artificial and imitation substitutes. And so a pretty gurgling stream of pure water first saluted our eye, and ran, sparkling in the bright mid-day sunshine, and coursing and tumbling through the entire area, as though we had got back to the old Scotch Highlands. The narrow bank on either side the stream, with its pretty winding walk, had still room for the most brilliant tropical vegetation, whose great expanding leaves spread a grateful shelter, and whose fragrant perfume was already in our nostrils as we crossed the entrance gateway.

In these advanced times, let us here remark, all this resplendent scenery of apparent vegetation is rapidly and cheaply woven out of parti-coloured glass