the time has come when mere food and shelter and similar sordid things shall be automatic, as free and easy and involuntary of access as the air.  I shall make them automatic, what of my discovery and the power that discovery gives me.  And with food and shelter automatic, the incentive of material gain passes away from the world for ever.  With food and shelter automatic, the higher incentives will universally obtain—­the spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual incentives that will tend to develop and make beautiful and noble body, mind, and spirit.  Then all the world will be dominated by happiness and laughter.  It will be the reign of universal laughter.

“Yours for that day,

“Goliah.”

Still the world would not believe.  The ten politicians were at Washington, so that they did not have the opportunity of being convinced that Bassett had had, and not one of them took the trouble to journey out to San Francisco to make the opportunity.  As for Goliah, he was hailed by the newspapers as another Tom Lawson with a panacea; and there were specialists in mental disease who, by analysis of Goliah’s letters, proved conclusively that he was a lunatic.

The yacht Energon arrived in the harbour of San Francisco on the afternoon of April 5, and Bassett came ashore.  But the Energon did not sail next day, for not one of the ten summoned politicians had elected to make the journey to Palgrave Island.  The newsboys, however, called “Extra” that day in all the cities.  The ten politicians were dead.  The yacht, lying peacefully at anchor in the harbour, became the centre of excited interest.  She was surrounded by a flotilla of launches and rowboats, and many tugs and steamboats ran excursions to her.  While the rabble was firmly kept off, the proper authorities and even reporters were permitted to board her.  The mayor of San Francisco and the chief of police reported that nothing suspicious was to be seen upon her, and the port authorities announced that her papers were correct and in order in every detail.  Many photographs and columns of descriptive matter were run in the newspapers.

The crew was reported to be composed principally of Scandinavians—­ fair-haired, blue-eyed Swedes, Norwegians afflicted with the temperamental melancholy of their race, stolid Russian Finns, and a slight sprinkling of Americans and English.  It was noted that there was nothing mercurial and flyaway about them.  They seemed weighty men, oppressed by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity.  A sober seriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them.  They appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand.  The captain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was cartooned in the papers as “Gloomy Gus” (the pessimistic hero of the comic supplement).