Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/98

 conveying air, sit when we choose in the silence of very death. And this void or vacuum we usually make, not by the wasteful method of rushing out all the elastic precious breathing element, by the discharge-tap into space, but by the almost equally prompt cross-electric solidification of the air components, which are thus made handy, in small cakes or bars on the shelf, ready to be reconverted into air at will as required. We have also convenient dress and other arrangements by which we pass and repass between the main cabin and these small separate berths, without permitting air into the desired vacuum. And again, when sitting in the vacuum, in the absence of accustomed air-pressure, we substitute for our outer man a certain pressure of elastic clothing, while the inner is regulated by the separate breathing apparatus. Every passenger is precautionarily supplied with this separate and independent apparatus, in case of any unforeseen fracture, either from within or from without, by which all our cabin air-supply might suddenly vanish like a whiff of smoke.

Practice, as well as necessity, makes us wonderfully efficient in all these complex artificial arrangements of our advanced modern civilized and scientific life. I soon got to be quite charmed with this perfect quiet of vacuum, which was often, in fact, of a very striking character—as when groups of passengers, only a few inches away from me, and separated only by the thinnest of sheet-diamond partition, would seem to be carrying on a perfectly mute show of animated talk or still more animated laughter; and I was presently making very fair progress with my projected historical retrospect.