Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1894-05-11

Oelpnla girl Wnen ne was confidently eX-
pected to marry Miss This, That or Other
of New York's Hundred and Fifty Did
he not fail to get the patent for the Grain
making invention which everybody ex-
pected would be his when that wild west
ern craze was on? Has anybody ever had
the qualification of using the safety bicy-
Gle brake which he invented?
Mr.. Astor's book, like his inventions,
disappoints expectation only because ex-
pectation was wrong. When he devoted
his time to the workbench, it was not
with the sole hope Of producing new utili-
tartan things. He was really looking for
what he did not expect to find. As he
sagely puts it in the preface Of his book:
1T is only through investigation and re-
search that inventions come. We may not
find what we are in search of, but may
discover something Of perhaps greater mo-
ment."
Popular anticipation as to his book was
doubtless largely directed and colored by
the recollection of the previous literary cx-
ploits of his cousin, William Waldorf, tho
great expatriated, whose two novels of
Italian life were the pioneer literary ven
lures of the family. Folks rather expected
a glimpse at the actual, or at least the pos
sible, through the rose tinted monocle of a
modern Cresus. Instead they are treated
to a view of an impossible future through
the telescope Of his imagination. The book
is an account in the Jules Verne style of a
journey to Jupiter in the year 1000.
That it contains some clever things al
most goes without saying, for the contem-
porary Astors and some of their kins-
men who do not bear the name have
demonstrated their possession of abili-
tioc that would 1o c,,;+o orol;+oI1o ~
men of smaller wealth and fewer incen-
tives to intellectual Incidence. Lewis
Stuyvesant Chanler, whose mother was an
Aston, has made an enviable reputation
for himself in the criminal courts of New
York by defending INDECENT prisoners
! gratis, and the explorations Of his brother,
William Astor Chanler, in Africa have
added considerable to our knowledge of
the dark continent.
But to return to the clever things In
MI. Astor's book. The journey to Jupiter
is made in an alright projectile of i'm
mense dimensions, which is hurled through
space at the rate Of 1, 900, 900 miles an hour
by a force invented for the occasion by MI.
Aston, and which he calls ''apergy." This
force is the exact opposite of gravitation
and is a neat device from q literary point
of view and really essential to any journey
Of the kind if the unities are to be re-
spected. 1t is much better and more scien-
tifc than the supposititious atmosphere
reaching from the earth's surface to the
point of destination which must lave been
required to float the airships and old time
balloons so often sent on such journeys
by former writers. His Jupiter is q much
younger world than ours, as some astron-
omers really suppose it to be. 1t is inhab-
tied hv wild hooctc of oiportio ci1a Gin 1ou
to those that existed on the earth cons ago,
of which fossil remains have been found.
Many of those beasts are ferocious, and
there are thrilling adventures and hair
breadth escapes enough to excite the envy
Of Aston Chanler, the family lion hunter,
at the ability Of his home biding cousin to
conjure up such sport in the vivid recesses
of his Imagination.
Nor is the Imagination Of Mr.. Astor any
less vivid regarding the actual progress of
affairs upon the earth at the time Of which
he writes. One sits at a telephone then,
he says, and talks hardly above a whisper
with his friend in France or Germany and
sees while talking the reflection of his
friends face in q mirror. The flying ma
chine will be al accomplished fact, and
men will be able to breakfast in New
York, lunch in Paris and return home in
time to dress for dinner.
Perhaps the ~cleverest conceit in the
whole book is the Terrestrial Axis
Strengthening company, in whose interest
the journey to Jupiter is undertaken. The
object Of this corporation is to produce q
more uniform climate on the earth. This
is to be. accomplished by building immense
reservoirs in the polar regions, the water
in which can be turned off or on at pleas.
ure. SO that it's weight will helm nreveni