East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1905-08-07
A Wonderful Prophecy
Being Realized

Lecture courses flourished 80 years
ago, and the late Bishop Clark, OF
Rhode Island. was Of. Of the flvorlte
speakers. ignoring the sage advice,
Don't prophesy unless you know
he ventured in 1855 to take as
topic, "The Next Fifty Years"
At that time there had oeen no
thought of telephone, typewriter. uni
form time, electric light, underground
wires, beacons at seq, parlor, dinia3
or sleeping cars, great speed in travel,
while the Rocky mountains vera
deemed to he an impossible barrier
for railroads between the east and
west. But all of these thinGs we're
clearly foretod in the following ex-
tracts from the lecture, which, at the
time, was received as a humorous ex-
travaganza.
The bishop said: I'VE nave made
wonderful progress in travelling IA
cilities during the last half century,
but do you think that Improvement
in this respect will stop at the pres
ent point? Posterity will not be con-
tent to travel at the rate of only 80
miles an hour, seated in these narrow
cars, stfled with dust and distracted
by noise. 1t costs no great effort to
imagine so years hence, a splendid
locomotive hotel, with spacious par
lors, dining rooms and dormitories,
moving gently as the bird flies over
road carpeted by turf and bordered
by shade trees and sweet shrubs
through from Boston to San Francisco
| in four days
The unsightly telegraph poles which
deface the landscape and obstruct the
streets will have disappeared, and in
their place there will be d network
of vibratory nerves hidden under
ground, quickening the bosom of the
earth with messages of intelligence
and affection.
"The language uf telegraph signs
will be so improved that thoughts
| instead of syllables will be clicked off
by the register and men will commu-
nicate with the wire as rapidly as
with the tongue.
/ The electric battery, which now in
some of our cities strikes the midnight
alarm in our steeples, may be made at
evening to light all our street lamps
at one flash, secure perfect uniform
ity of time in our public clocks and
kindle beacon on those dreary rocks
in the sea, where human beings now
endure a melancholy and dangerous
solitude.
There is another invention which
/, for one. would hail with exceeding
joy. 1t may seem absurd to predict
that the time will come when ii will
ha n phiId-
rem how to write. 1t would have been
thought just as absurd, so years ago,
to have foretold that the boys of this
generation would grow up not know
ing how to make a pen.
What a tedious and to some of us
painful operation is this slow process
of inscribing with the hand, letter by
letter the impressions of the mind
on paper How difficult it is to make
the ink flow as fast as the thoughts.
How many rare fancies are lost, van
ishing before they can be recorded.
because the writer must slowly clam
Der up the steep ascent of words, syl-
, lables and letters. Why need 1t re-
quire six hours to write what can be
spoken in one?
Now imagine the honored gentle
man invited to address your associa-
tion in the year 1900, sitting down to
prepare his lecture with the last inn
proved chirographical instrument on
the table before him. He opens the
keyboard and begins to think. The
order of his discourse having been
methodized and his subject duly di-
gested, the inspiration comes upon
him and he lays his fingers on the
ivory keys. Unconsciously as the oc-
complshed musician strikes the note
which the harmony requires does his
hand sweep the Photographic scale.
impressing every thought in legible
characters on the page, and fast as
he can think are his conceptions inn
pressed upon the paper"