There are certain emergencies when the storage batteries fail to work or when the power is exhausted; this happens when there is a very slight wind for several days or a heavy drain of power.  In such cases fuel is used for heating and lighting.

PALACES OF PLOID.

The palaces of Ploid are dreams of beauty and convenience, outshining and surpassing by far the finest mansions on the face of our globe.  In these abodes the sum total of glory and convenience converges, flowing from almost numberless discoveries during the last one hundred years.  In round numbers, there have been five hundred thousand patents issued in the United States in the nineteenth century, but the Ploidites excel us by double that number for a similar territorial limit.

THE REWARD OF INVENTORS.

Patents are not issued in Ploid.  The government gives liberal rewards to each inventor or discoverer.  The applicant appears personally before the District Committee on Inventions.  If this Committee considers the invention worthy of a reward, the applicant is recommended to one of the Central Committees at the seat of the government.

This Central Committee carefully considers the invention or discovery, places on it an estimate as to its local or governmental value, and fills out papers in accordance with its findings.  This paper must be signed by the Chief Inventor, and the applicant at once receives his first installment which is continued, in some instances, during natural life.  In the case of some extraordinary invention, the immediate relatives of the inventor are pensioned for five or ten years in his honor.

Naturally, under this system, the government owns all inventions, and reaps a heavy return from them, enough to pay all the installments to the inventors and the officers employed to carry on this branch of the government work.

SOME PARTICULAR INVENTIONS.

One of the most convenient inventions I saw on this planet of Ploid was the carrying of a photograph or image along a wire.  The people of Ploid cannot only talk to one another many miles apart, but they can also see each other while they are talking.

This wonderful attachment to their telephones, by which the human face is also carried over the wire, was perfected over one thousand years ago.  I herewith give a few uses to which this invention is applied.

1.  Office men have photograph wires connected with their homes, and they can thus talk to and see any one of the family at their pleasure.

2.  It can be so arranged that the wife in the home can, by touching a little knob, see into her husband’s office with which the wire is connected, or the husband in the office can see into the room of the house with which the connection is made.  At either end of the wire, the vision can be obstructed by drawing a curtain over the sensitive plate.