Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-01-10

l lutely impregnable so far as an assau.. IS concerned, and should need only % men in the fort to do it. This is not guesswork, but matter of absolutely scientific certainty. In fact, 20 men would be very liberal garrison. Some years ago, when the wires loaded with heavy electric charges began to go up everywhere, predicted that there would be danger of the firemen receiving dead ly shocks by the electricity running down the streams of water which might cross the wires. The insurance people laughed at the idea. But tried it on cat, and the cat and found my theory to be true. That is to say, did, and the cat found 1t out if there is another world for cats. He never knew anything about it in this world.
 In each fort l would put an alter hating machine of 10000 volts capac- ity. One wire would be grounded. 4 man would govern q stream of water of about 400 pounds pressure to the square inch, with which the 20, 900 volts alter hating current would be connected. The man would simply move this stream of water back and forth with his hand, playing on the enemy as they advanced and moving them down with absolute precision. Every man touched by the water would complete the circuit, get the full force of the alternating current and never know what happened to him. The men trying to take a fort by assault. though they might come by tens of thousands against handful, would be cut to the ground beyond any hope of escape Foreign soldiers undertaking to whip America could walk around such fort as mine, but they never could go through it. It would not be necessary to deal out absolute death unless the oper- ator felt like it. He could modify the current gently so as simply to stun ev- erybody, then walk outside his fort, pick up the stunned generals and others worth keeping for ransom or exchange. make prisoners also of the others, if convenient, or, if not convenient, turn on the full force of the current, play the hose on them once more and send them to the happy hunting grounds for good.
 ''I am told that an English naval off cer has said that he would need simply to put his men in waterproof coats to make them invulnerable to my electric stream. His idea probably is to have rubber boots as we'll as coats, under the impression that this would prevent the current from taking effect He is wrong. He could not keep his mems faces tight ly covered with rubber, as they would need to breathe. I should only want to touch them just little with the loaded stream, and the rubber boots would be worthless for insulating purposes. The water running down the outside of the rubber suit would make admirable con- nection, and the man would get am pheres enough to make him too tired to fight, even if he were not killed out right. Of course the humane thing would be to gauge the current so as to knock the advancing foe senseless and pick him up prisoner before he should have time to get on his legs.
 This picture of possible modern war fare, with rubber boots for private sol diers, glass soled shoes for officers and rubber umbrellas for generals, is unde- niably entrancing. But it is picture no more fascinating than that which MT. Edison presented as he talked of his plans for making foreign soldiers life unpleasant.
 If you have never seen Edison as he talks in his factory, you have missed America's most interesting sight, no matter how often you may have been to the falls or to the Yellowstone. New | York World.