LETTERS FROM OUR YOUNG FRIENDS.

DEAR EDITOR: 

I have been taking THE GREAT ROUND WORLD for two weeks,
and think it fine.

I thought I would ask you a few questions, as I knew you would
be glad to answer them.  Is England in favor of Turkey or Greece?
and will United States ever help Cuba?

Yours respectfully,
LEONARD O.
SOMERVILLE, MASS.

DEAR LEONARD: 

You have asked us the two questions that are puzzling the wisest heads of Europe and America.

Europe wants to know what England will do, and with whom she is siding; and all America wants to know whether we are going to help Cuba.

THE GREAT ROUND WORLD only claims to tell its readers what has happened.  The Editor does not profess to be a prophet, and able to foretell events.

We are glad to answer any questions that we can, but you have given us two difficult conundrums that we cannot solve.  Better luck next time.

THE EDITOR.

INVENTION AND DISCOVERY.

NEW ROAD TO ELECTRICITY.—­A paper was read recently before the New York Electrical Society on the subject of a new method of producing electricity.

[Illustration]

The discoverer of this process is Mr. Willard E. Case.  He has been working for ten years on this subject, and recently showed the results of his labors to the scientific men assembled to hear him.

Mr. Case claims that his discovery, when it is worked out to its conclusion, will mean a new motor or driving force to do the world’s work, in place of steam, and he insists that the new force will be much cheaper than any now in use.

Mr. Case has found a means of generating electricity without the use of heat.  It has long been known that there was a terrible waste of electrical energy through the use of heat.  The method of producing it by galvanic batteries was impossible for large electric plants, because the zinc that had to be used was too expensive.

The great point of Mr. Case’s discovery lies in the fact that he has succeeded in doing with carbon, and without heat, what the galvanic battery does with zinc.

He is very modest about his invention, and says that at the present moment it has no practical value whatever; but that to scientists a way has been opened which will lead them into a new field of thought; and that, when his discovery has been worked out, and applied to practical methods, tremendous results will be achieved.

* * * * *

A BIG PYTHON.—­A story comes from St. Augustine, Fla., of the capture of a huge python by Walter Ralston, a young man who was employed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Some weeks ago a story was told of the wreck of a ship carrying a circus, and that the big python had escaped, and was in Rock Key, off the Florida coast.