Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-05-04
A NOTABLE PROPHECY.
It Was Made Fifty Years Ago by the
 Late Bishop Clark.

Late Bishop Clark. Lecture courses flourished fifty years ago and the late Bishop Clark of Rhode Island was one of the favorite speakers. Ignoring the sage advice: Don't prophecy unless you know" he yentured in 1855 to take as topic: The Next Fifty Years"
 At that time there had been no thought of telephone, typewriter, uni form time, electric lighting, under ground wires, beacons at sea. parlor, dining or sleeping cars, great speed in travel, while the Rocky Mountains were deemed to be an impossible bar rier for railroads between the East and West But all of these things were clearly foretold in the following extracts from the lecture, which, at the time was received as humorous extravaganza.
 The bishop said: "We have made wonderful progress in travelling facili- ties during the last half century. but do you think that improvement in this respect will stop at the present point? Posterity will not be content to travel at the rate of only thirty miles an hour. seated in these narrow cars. stifed with dust and distracted by noise It costs no great effort to imagine fifty years hence 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 Francis co in four days"
 "The unsightly telegraph poles which deface the landscape and ob- struct tho street will have disappear ed. and in their place will be net work of vibratory nerves hidden un- derground. quickening the bosom of the earth with messages of intelligence and affection"
 "The language of telegraphic signs will be so improved that thoughts in- stead of syllables will be clicked off by the register and men will communi- cate 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 stceples. may be made at evening to light all of our street lamps at one flash. secure perfect uniformity of time in our public clocks and kindle a beacon on those dreary rocks in the sea. where human beings now endure a melancholy and dangerous solitude"
 There is another invention which I for one would hail with exceeding joy. It may seem absurd to predict that the time ilny come when 1t will not be customary tu teach our childIcn how 10 write. It would have been thought just as absurd fifty years ago 10 have foretold that the boys of this genera ton would grow up not knowing how to make 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 1t Is to make the ink flow as fast as the thoughts How many rare fancies are lost. van ishing before they can be recorded. be cause the writer must slowly chamber LID over the steep ascent of words. syIIables and letters. Why need it re- quire six hours to write what can be spoken in onef
 Now imagine the honored gentle man invited to address your associa- ton in the year 1900 sitting down to prepare his lectures with the last i'm proved chirocraphical instrument on the table before him He opens the keyboard and begins tO think The order of his discourse having been methDIized and his subject duly di- ze$tei. the inspiration comes upon him and he lays his fingers On the ivory kevS. TnconsciOusly as the accom- plished musician strikes the note which the harmony requires does hIs hand sweep the photographic scale. inuressing every thought in legibIe characters on the page. and fast as he can thtnk are his conceptions fmpres- sei upon the paper
 I doubt if an equal number of i'm uorfsnt predictions can be found in znv other passage of equal length
 ]. H. g. in Churehmzn-