Hopkinsville Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1889-1918, 1895-02-15

funeral trains, accommodating a mum.
Der OF burial parties and running by
schedule every day, each train consist
ing of half dozen hearses and per-
haps hundred coaches for the friends
of the defunct. These expresses will
run at the rate of 100 miles an hour,
and will deposit the bodies in the large
crematory established somewhere on
the shores of the Atlantic.
A century from now progress in
transit will have almost reached it's
apogee. Before the new born genera
zion has become octooenarian. the
earth will be covered with network OF
railways comparable to the interlaced
ropes which envelop a balloon. The
oceans will be dotted with powerful
boats which will dominate wind and
tide. We may be almost certain that
the problem of aerial navigation will
have been partly or entirely solved.
In order to abandon the odious repe-
ton of the future tense, let us suppose
that the writer of this humble little
sketch has suddenly transported him
self into the year 1905; that he is a
spectator looking back upon accom-
plished facts.
Eyes, indeed gentlemen. he says
proudly and pompously, "a century
ago our fathers, absurd alike in their
skepticism and in ther naivete, would
never have dared to predict the reali-
cation of SO many projects. What
meets our eyes as we look back upon
New York? A miserab BILE provincial
town, badly lighted, with few fine
streets and an innumerable number of
dirty, narrow alleys, badly paved,
lined with unsightly and unwhole-
some tenements, where the seeds of
vice and disease were propagated and
nursed to an evil maturity. Nine
tenths of it's citizens were either inn
moral or ignorant, knowing little
or nothing of neighbor, cities,
ridiculously narrow and jealous
in all their judgments. 1t took six
hours to go to Boston, and twenty-four
to Chicago, while San Francisco and
the now magnificent metropolis of
Helena, Mont, were a long, serious
journey. Take peep into any museum
of antiquities and see what hideous,
uncomfortable cars were used for those
journeys.
Now, gentlemen, look at our
modern New York, emerged from the
limbo in which it was plunged by the
barbarbity and unscientific stupidity
of our predecessors! Let us admire
the efforts which have permitted us to
cover our great city with innumerable
means of communication, with aerial,
terrestrial and subtHrraneous routes
Let us admire our elevated railroads,
raised upon magnificent iron edifces,
which add to rather than substract
from the general elegance. One hour
of to-day is worth year of the past
Don't you think, my dear fellow
progressionists, that in the way of ma
terial needs, we have gained the sum-
NIT of human ambition What of all
the problems left to us by our an
cestors remains to be realized? We
have tanned and domesticated the cleo
trical forces to perfection. Aerial
navigation, which for so long tortured
the brains of inventors and had at last
almost been abandoned as an abso-
lutely Utopian idea, is with us a mat
ter of the most elementary nature.
To employ an old saying of the past,
it has entered definitely into
our manners. The aerial cleo
tro-ca BILE, which in less than
two hours puts us in communication
with any point from Maine TO Florida,
the San Francisco, Chicago and New
York limited aerophagus, which
makes journey across the continent