Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1888-07-03
a Dream OF the Future.

The following clever bit OF proph-
ecy is from the pen of Col. Charles
Broadway Rouss. The Colonel, of
course, dreams of the time when the
credit system will be abolished and
the spot cash made king; and when
the average citizen will be almost as
happy as he will be in that other mill
lenium when the devil will be chained
for thousand years. Hear the Col
cnel:
IN THE DREAMLAND OF DELiRIUM,
The Wild fight of fancy, in the agony
of malaria, lingering near the great
gates between time and eternity, this
writer stood on Broadway in 1881.
The children of this generation had
been swept away by inspiring time.
Where once stood the Metropolitan
there now lowered colossal glass
and steel concern twenty-one stories
high, with FIVE undergrounds. The
proprietors, Winchester & Duane,
paid q hundred thousand rent, had
two hundred and eighty departments
and two thousand men. Their sales
ran to one hundred million and their
terms cash before delivery. King
Credit had long slept in oblivion
Erial navigation had nearly starved
the iron horse and electricity was the
motor of heaven and earth. Four
intense dazzling suns illuminated the
city as If it were midday. a factory
in 3sth street. away beyond the Spuy-
! SrI
six-acres, n grain elevator at He'll
Gate 500, and the observatory at
Rockaway, upon the 1saac'is estate
all solid steel, stood up 200 feet. or
nearly quarter of mile.
The old five and six stories of iron
and brown stone had been swept from
the rack of relentless and resistless
science. Manners and language, and
people had changed and everything
was grand, massive and stupendous.
Wall street had long ago gone to
Union square, and the new City
Hall, costing twenty-fiye-millions, oc-
cupied the entire square, its flag
floating n thousand feet above in the
blue azure of Heaven. The old New
York Sun was now septuple issued
four times day, with a million cir
culation. Far Rockaway was in east
ern limits of the city, Mount Vernon
the northern, Patterson the western,
and the population sixteen millions.
A pneumatic car whirled to the
points every three minutes, transit
time severty-Gve seconds. Briefly
to the citizen of 1881 (supposed to
have long ago gone to rest beneath
the shadows of the old Cowpens Nor
gan monument in Virginia) the pro-
,,Fi5s n ssEal-e eanipg age 81
the twenty-frst century, when these
pyramids of grandeur and lofty mag
nificcnce would disappear before the
paragons of perfection in the gigau-
tic future. Vast and sweeping
changes had altered the face of the
world a one cent stamp carried
letter to the ends of the earth n cable
message around the world one penny
a word. Spain had followed Italy in
the abolition of monarcy IN 1901. Eng
land and Russia were the last on the
continent to give way to the demands of
the age of progress. The eAmericanlan-
guage was the universal and only one.
/ L rom I've" IbIA " lLOluOu anu laiio
the daily mail outstripped the storm
time, 80 hours. San Francisco had
FIVE millions, and Chicago had reach
nearly two, but was going backward,
powerful rivals in the northwest had
crippled and outranked her. Ma
tional disputes were settled by the
| Worlds Congress and not an armed
soldier stood upon the earth nor an
armed vessel foated the sea. There
was not a bond of the United States
in existence and there was thousand
million in its treasures. The United
States, including Canada, Mexico
and South America, numbered seven
hundred millions and was called
America Navies, armies, debts,
credits, gas and steam had gone BY
forever and belonged to ancient his
tory, and the Indian and Mormon,
the Ethiop, and the Chinee, and the
Teuton, and the Irish, all condensed
into the Miscegen, ran the Republi-
can ticket and the native born the
Democratic American.
The celebrated Belden
whispered in the ear of his patient
that the crisis had passed, and in n
moment I was again back in the semi
civilization of the nineteenth CEN
tury.
Reducing the Surplus.