St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-03-10

''In eighteen hundred and eighty-one
The world unto an end shall come"
Of all the marvellous predictions of
good Mother Shipton, whose prophe-
cies and very existence have been,
since the days of Bluff King Hal,
the subject of much doubt and Curl
Gus interest, none but the above
can be accounted an absolute fail
ure. Whenever and by whomsoever
written, these representations were
intended to tax incredulity to the ut
most. Everything impossible was
foretold as probable, and the mighty
laws of the universe were recognized
only in their violation. Yet, while
the pen of the would-be prophecies
gives to airy nothing a local hab-
itation and name" not the frances
of the whole prophetic line, not the
dreamings of all the poets since the
blind bard first struck the far
descending Tyre, have more than
dimly outlined the glowing tableauX
of modern discovery.
The curate and the barber had
reason to mistrust the balance of
Don Quixote's intellect, but would
they have apologiZed to the annihi-
lator of windmills, would they have
mourned the burning of his literary
authorities, had he SubmiSSively ac-
knowledged that Dulcinea was not
a princess, Barataria not an island,
but yet insisted that, with the aid of
a long wire, he intended, neverthe-
less, to talk with the duke in Mad
rid, and that he had a scheme in
mind by which the sun would paint
his niece's picture? Not alone are
there marvelS in the telephone and
the photograph. What more incred-
ibIe once than the steam engine, the
locomotive, the telegraph, the phono-
graph, the electric railway? The
same men who, as children, laughed
at the absurdities of Jules Verne
now object to a submarine vessel
which can remain but an hour under
water 1t is casually announced in
a scientific journal that still an
other method has been found of
photographing in colorS. NeVerthe-
less, struggling Nature, now almost
helpless, still refuses to submit to
a final shackle. Allowing herself to
be entrapped of late at many unex-
pected points, here, long forewarned
and long forearmed, she has concen-
trated her resistance.
Mastery of the air has been at
tempted, at intervals, from the ear
lest times. It's vast and revolu-
tionary prospects were SO manifest;
it appealed so overwhelmingly to
the independence, the freedom of all
great minds; it was allied so closely
to the soul-uplifting mysteries of
other worlds of limitless space,
of heaven and of eternity,
that the very immensely of
it's results has long made it
the impersonation of the impossible.
Here alone have the feeblest of the
animal kingdom-mere ornaments or
trif1ing surplusage of creation,
the jeweled humming bird and the
tiny gnat-triumphantly rebuked,
through all the centuries, the help
lessness of him who aspires to lord
ship of the universe
AT length, however, man seems
about to achieve that natural tri-
umph which has grown grander in
proportion as it has seemed more
unattainable. Even at the last SEES
sion OF. congress a resolution was Sc
riously introduced setting forth, in
effect, that aerial navigation, no
longer the puerile fancy of giddy
romance, had become the grave
problem of prudent science, and that
the approaching solution of this
problem deserved the pecuniary en-
enlargement Of progressive nations.
Whatever our proximity may actu-
ally be to the age of flying, we seem
at least sufficiently near to justify
the following predictions, half in
earnest, half in jest, of those whose
occupations and professions may be
supposed to be among those most
radically affected by the new dis
penSation.