Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/327

 day. So far was such an employment from being regarded as derogatory, that this one was specially affected by men of the highest intellectual eminence, whose other pursuits tended to confine them within doors. It was, in fact, through the agency of an eminent scientist, to whom I received a note of introduction from Hulmar, that I obtained a post in the section in which he himself worked during the early morning hours. It must be remembered, too, that the work was done almost entirely by the ingenious machines we merely directed.

Besides these four hours, and the five regularly spent in the library, I found time for many an interesting excursion. At one time I would indulge in a long stretch in my curricle over the extensive prairies that surrounded the city. Again, from the deck of one of the swift electric boats, I would view with admiration the verdant banks of the Mississippi, now an orderly stream, long since broken of its lawless freaks.

Less than a hundred miles away, about an hour's journey by rail, was one of the immense reservoirs that, storing up the superabundant waters of one season, at another gave them forth to maintain the average level of the mighty river. All that the Nile was to Egypt, the "Father of Waters" had become to a region compared with which Egypt was as insignificant in extent as its boasted civilization was inferior to that of the ninetysixth century. Scattered along its fertilizing banks, and throughout its basin, were numerous and famous cities, that had possessed a name and place during more than double the number of years denoting the present age of Damascus, most venerable of existing cities.