TRANSPORTATION.

The methods of traveling are so contrary to our conceptions and practices that I almost forbear to attempt any description.  Yet I was entertained and instructed as I witnessed the moving of humanity along a street of a busy city.  Have you ever noticed how quarters of beef are carried from a car to an elevator or refrigerator on steel rods connected with wheels running in a groove or on a specially prepared track?  In a city of Brief, overhead tracks after such an order run along all business streets and certain residence streets.  Spare me a detailed description of this peculiar traveling system.  Suffice it to say that a person, in lightning rapidity of motion, rushes from a store, springs upon a passing seat and is hurled away by the power of an overhead cable system.  When an exchange of seats is necessary, it is all done so easily and so quickly that you would wonder why we tolerate trolley cars.

In traveling from city to city, a system is in use that I will call the Toboggan Slide System, although the cars run on wheels.  The car is raised in a shaft about one hundred feet and then by gravity it dashes two or more miles according to the lay of the land traversed.  Then another rise more or less than one hundred feet is experienced, and then another wild dash.  I have no words of praise for this system, although the Briefites can cover considerable territory in an hour.  They look upon this gravity system as a wonderful achievement, for it has not been in operation for more than three hundred years.

The power of steam has never been utilized.  No genius of all this active world of Brief ever conceived the idea that almost unlimited power lies wrapped up in thin vapory water.  But they have discovered what we would call gaseous oil, and have learned to put it to work, so that it is the main force employed in hoisting and all other purposes where power is required.

Nothing like a traveling locomotive has ever been made, although I learned that a bright wizard was experimenting and that he prophesied great changes when his gas-propelled vehicle was perfected.

Think of how much value an ordinary citizen of our world would be to these Briefites, if he could step upon their world and communicate with them concerning the magic wonders of steam and the manner of constructing stationary and movable engines, to say nothing of the hidden wonders of electricity.  Quadrupeds that take the place of our horses are used for drayage, although nothing except the two-wheeled class of vehicles was ever used until some eighty-seven years ago.

PUBLIC HIGHWAYS.

These interesting people excel us in their style and manner of home-building, fencing and making public highways.  We are heathenish in our progress along the line of road making especially.  In all my vast journey among the worlds I found only a few, comparatively, whereon the roads were inferior to ours.