Part 3

Arrived at my hotel, I was at once struck with its extreme quietness, more so as the apartments were all but taken by some thousands of travellers. The cause of this, however, I soon discovered on entering the elegant and spacious conversation room. Methought I heard a kind of music, feeble, yet melodious in the extreme. The sound approached as near as possible that of the human voice; but still the quality was altogether different. Besides, no artist, male or female, was to be seen in the room. The only clue that I could get to the mystery was through a box of small dimensions; this instrument was placed on a table right in the centre of the room, and thence the sound appeared to proceed. Taking the affair to be an ordinary musical-box, worked in the usual way, I gazed with no little contempt and surprise upon the crowd of serious-looking, enthusiastic men and women who had clustered round the table. As soon as the music ceased, I ventured to approach the spectators, at the same time asking one among the crowd for some information with regard to the musical instrument in which they all seemed to be so much interested.

Oh the number of pairs of eyes that stared at me, full of amazement, if not of indignation! At last one of the enthusiasts condescended to break the silence, "What, sir, a musical instrument! where did you ever know such tones to proceed from a musical instrument? Surely, sir, as a gentleman you must have heard of the telephon?"

I now remembered that a machine bearing that name, and answering that description, had been invented as far back as 1861 by a certain Reis; also that it was based upon the following law, as discovered and laid down by Page; namely, that when an electric current passes through a wire coiled round an iron bar, and the current is continually interrupted, there arises a sound or a tone, the height or depth of which is entirely dependent on the number of vibrations produced by the interruptions of the current, according to their succeeding each other with more or less velocity. This recurring to my mind, I now replied that the telephon was indeed not quite unfamiliar to me, in proof of which I went back to the history of its first invention; I also gave a description of Reis' little instrument, by which the sound of the human voice could be transmitted through very great distances; and finally, I added my surmise or natural conviction that such an instrument must have been considerably improved upon in the course of more than two centuries. [10] I was happy to notice the excellent impression visibly produced by my words; there now arose a tolerably general murmur of "whoever now would have taken the telephon to be so old an affair?" As for me, I was complimented on my antiquarian knowledge, and, thanks to the amiable disposition of the visitors towards me, I was not long in discovering what had been going on. That which every one now was so anxious to explain to me amounted, in a few words, to this. The North-American papers had of late been indulging in the most extravagant terms of praise with regard to a lady singer who, according to the Yankee critics, was possessed of a voice such as no mortal had ever yet heard of, surpassing in compass and quality everything that could be imagined; a talent whereby all the artists of former ages--if history could be relied on--ladies like Catalani, Malibran, Henriette Sonntag, Jenny Lind, or the Pattis, were really no more in comparison than a cricket to a nightingale.

Of course, as might be imagined, these reports from across the Atlantic had created an immense stir in the musical world of Londinia. From all directions the managers of concerts and operas had been induced to negotiate with this marvellous talent, so that it should no longer be hidden from the musical inhabitants of Londinia. But, then, all these reports emanated from the States, the fons et origo of humbug; and, probably taught by experience, the managers had all clubbed together, and, at their joint expense, despatched a telegram to the gifted artist, requesting her to allow her marvellous power to be tested by means of the telephon. That would, at all events, enable them to judge of the compass and quality of her voice. To this the lady had consented, and thereupon the managers had hired one of the transatlantic telegraph cables, on which the experiment had been made.

As a clear indication of the compass of the voice, I was shown sundry slips of black paper on which could be seen numerous curved white lines; the latter had been traced upon the paper by the phonautographer standing behind the telephon, and were supposed to mark the musical scales within compass of the lady's voice. An impression of these slips of paper was to appear, on the following morning, in the musical journal, Panharmonia, in order that "the eyes of the inhabitants of Londinia might anticipate the glorious treat in store for the musical ears of the great metropolis." "For," added the editor of the Panharmonia, "all connoisseurs in music know the meaning of these little waves. Won't they be astonished when they see a tone like this!" Saying this, he pointed with his finger to the very extreme line where the little curves met as near as possible.

Of course I was longing to examine the construction of the telephon. I was just about to ask one of the gentlemen present to give me some explanation on the subject, when there was a general demand for silence. The American lady was to afford us another treat. This time she sang an air from Mozart's Don Giovanni, and I was delighted to find that this masterpiece of the great maestro was not forgotten even three centuries after the composer's death.

At the close of her examination, the lady was unanimously declared worthy to appear before the critical public of Londinia, and she received what we might term a musical ovation by means of another telephon working in opposite direction. And here the matter was allowed to rest, it being left to the different managers to endeavour to engage her services. All and each of these gentlemen looked as if they were in possession of some secret or other wherewith to outvie their competitors. They parted, however, on the best of terms, and I retired to my room.

The following morning I was down very early, and, having enjoyed my breakfast, I walked slowly towards the place where I expected to meet my companions of the preceding day. No guide was required in this apparently immense labyrinth, for nothing indeed was easier than to find one's way. All the streets, squares, etc., were namely marked, not by names as formerly, but by a particular set of figures, which, with the assistance of a map, directed me to any given spot; all that was required to know was two figures, indicating the point of destination pretty much as with the latitude and longitude at sea.

I was still at a considerable distance away from it when I caught sight of a vast building, on which I read an inscription in gigantic characters:

General Balloon Company.

I had expected to find our starting-point in some open space, or at least in one of the squares, and was therefore not a little surprised to see that this building was situated in one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods. Perhaps, thought I, this is merely the office where the tickets have to be taken. But when I got nearer, I perceived that the building differed essentially from other houses in this respect, that it had an entirely flat roof, which contained a kind of conveyance, not unlike a ship, but the precise outline of which I could not discover, owing to the glass vault over the street.

Bacon and Miss Phantasia were already on the spot, and after the customary morning greetings we entered to secure our seats. The first thing now was to be weighed; for the price of the passage naturally depended on the volume of our bodily organization. It need not be said that the young lady came off cheapest. We then passed through a door into a small parlour, or waiting-room, where we found a few more passengers. In the centre of the room I noticed a staircase, and up at the ceiling a kind of trap. Against the walls were several cushioned seats, as in a first-class railway carriage. After a short time the whole apartment seemed to move. I heard a gentle rustling along the walls, as if something were sliding down the paper-hangings. But even before I had time to think on the subject there was a lowering of the trap in the ceiling, and a cheerful greeting of "Welcome a-high, ladies and gentlemen!"

We got upstairs through the aperture, and found ourselves on the flat roof of the building, but precisely underneath the air-ship; we entered, however, the open trap constructed in the latter, for we soon found out that the weather was bitterly cold. This, unfortunately, prevented me from becoming more intimately acquainted with the outward appearance of the balloon, and with its locomotive powers. On the other hand, ample opportunity was afforded us for examining its internal arrangements. As soon as we came into what I can but term the "hold" of the vessel, Bacon called my attention to a long narrow cylinder which ran across the whole length of the ship. "Therein lies," said he, "the whole secret of aëronautics. In order that I may explain this to you, I must remind you of this, that it was formerly impossible to steer any balloon except before the wind. An ordinary vessel, when the keel cuts through the water, can sail half or quarter-wind, because she moves in the two intermediate matters of air and water, the latter offering a greater resistance than the former, and thereby supporting the vessel in her movements; to which must be added that the resistance operates in a definite direction, namely, in that of the motion of the ship, so that by supplying the craft with a rudder or helm one is able to turn her at pleasure to the right or the left.

"But," continued Bacon, "this becomes quite a different matter when a vessel is merely surrounded by air. Driven onward by the wind, which means carried along by the atmospheric current, she meets with no resistance, and therefore lacks every point of support whereby to turn herself. She will always offer the largest of her sides to the wind, which falls upon it at right angles, just the same as on a light piece of paper or cloth whirled round by the wind.

"In order, then, to render such balloon voyages possible at all, it was necessary, in the first place, to afford the machine its required support, its resistance, and this was accomplished in the following manner: The long cylinder which runs along the whole of the ship is a bar of malleable iron, surrounded by a spiral copper wire which has been coated with an insulating substance. If, now, a voltaic current is made to pass along that wire, the bar becomes a most powerful electro-magnet, which, when free in its movements, like the needle of a compass, adopts a direction from south to north, with a slight easterly deviation, and also a certain inclination. When driven out of its natural direction by another power, the needle will endeavour to resume its original inclination. As, now, the magnet and the vessel are so joined together as virtually to form but one body, the balloon, or rather the ship, is in itself a gigantic compass. The inclination is removed just the same as with the needle of the compass. One has merely to alter the centre of gravity, and this can be done in several ways. Thus, all that remains is the direction in the magnetic meridian.

"If, now, the wind blows in the same direction that one wishes to travel, then the apparatus is not worked; that is to say, no current is passed through the wire. Should the wind, however, be unpropitious, then the ship is at once changed into a magnet. For example, suppose the wind to be due west, and the sails to be placed at right angles with the wind, then the vessel will be driven neither east nor northward, but towards a point intermediate; just as a vessel at sea when pushed north by the current of the water, and westward by the wind, does not follow either of these directions exclusively, but an intermediate one. It is not difficult, therefore, to perceive that the aëronaut, by the proper joint working of his sails and of the electro-magnetic apparatus, is enabled to turn his ship into any direction he chooses. Nor is that all. The apparatus also serves as a helm or rudder; for as soon as I press this knob the current is at once reversed; the north pole becomes the south pole, and vice versâ. It stands to reason that the vessel must turn under the circumstances, and, of course, according to pleasure; for at any moment the helmsman may interrupt the current, whereby the ship ceases to be a magnet.

"Now, as indeed at sea, the case may be that the wind is too strong, and the power of the magnet insufficient to properly govern the air-ship. In that case we have recourse to those energeiathecs of which I spoke yesterday; these tend to set in circular motion the four-winged screws which you see here and there peeping out of the sides, and this is always done as near as possible at right angles with the direction in which the vessel has a tendency to deviate.

"Thus it is usually possible to keep the ship in the direction required; but should the aëronaut fail in his attempt to do so, even then he has another resource left him which the seaman lacks. He rises or descends with his air-ship in search of a more favourable wind; nor does he do so at hap-hazard, for the meteorological institute has long since issued charts upon which are marked the directions of all the air-currents that will probably be found at any given altitude for any given time. These charts are arranged in the same manner as those formerly published by the institute, which, however, merely showed the probable direction of the wind in the immediate vicinity of the earth's surface.

"With regard to the modes of ascent and descent, they differ somewhat according to the nature of the various apparatuses, and for these, to explain them to you in detail--by which alone you would understand the differences--we should have to go on deck, and it is so bitterly cold there, that we are better where we are. Suffice it to say that the old clumsy process of throwing out ballast for the purpose of rising has long been dispensed with, since it was found that the measure was merely a partial or momentary one, and slightly unacceptable to the denizens of the earth below. The most appropriate method we have learned from nature; it consists, namely, of an imitation of the operation of the swim-bladder in fishes. The latter accomplish their ascent and descent in the water by a greater or lesser compression of that bladder, or of the air contained in it; some of them having even special compression apparatuses for that object. From this you will easily conclude the application of the aquatic locomotion to that of the navigation in the air."

This, I must confess, I did not quite see; but many other points in Bacon's explanation remained to be cleared up. Not a few questions were on the tip of my tongue, but I asked no more. I felt that I was a child of the nineteenth century, too little au courant of the science of modern times to understand all that had been accomplished during the last two hundred years; moreover, I feared that by putting more silly questions I should lower myself in the estimation of my friend.

Travelling Dialect.

Miss Phantasia was of too mercurial a temperament to listen to lengthy descriptions; she had already ascended the steps that led to the saloon, and we now followed her. The compartment looked neat enough, though not comfortable. Everything pointed to the endeavours of rendering all the furniture as light as possible, and this, of course, applied to the whole affair whenever it did not interfere with the necessary solidity. Bamboo canes cut thin and twisted together appeared to be the chief material, and of the metals aluminium was the only one to be seen.

On our entering the waiting-room, I had already noticed that all the passengers conversed with one another in the same tongue, in a dialect of which I certainly recognised a word or two, but yet a foreign idiom to me. On asking my companion what countrymen those gentlemen were, I received the following reply:

"They belong to all sorts of nations. That burly-looking gentleman yonder is a Russian; that ridiculous little man playing with his moustache and ogling all the ladies can only be a Frenchman; the other trunculant figure, who has paid the highest fare, is one of your own countrymen--a Dutchman; those two blue-eyed, flaxen-haired youngsters are Germans, and all the rest are English."

"But how, then, is it that they all speak the same language?"

"They speak the travelling dialect. In our modern days, when many people spend the greater portion of their time in travelling, and all nationalities continually mingle together, such an idiom was created almost spontaneously. True, it is as yet but a language in its infancy; but it will probably, at no great distance of time, become the universal tongue."

I listened as attentively as I dared and could, and I observed very soon that the so-called travelling dialect was a mixture of various tongues, English though preponderating; and this I ascribed to the fact of the majority of the travelling public being generally Englishmen.

No more War!

As I looked about me, it so happened that my eye fell upon some wide tubes peeping out from the sides and the hold of the vessel. I first thought that these were a new kind of cannon; so I asked whether we were on board of a man-of-war? Miss Phantasia smiled, but her smile was a bitter one immediately followed by a sigh. "War!" she echoed, "those chivalrous times we only know from history; our modern men are manufacturers, merchants, engineers, scholars, legislators, and so forth; but as for soldiers--well, you may see them on the stage occasionally, but our numerous force of constables is the only approach to soldiery we have."

"Is it possible?" cried I; "no more war, and no more standing armies! At last then the idea has triumphed of the peace-men, Cobden, Bright, and their followers; at last the present generation has acknowledged that war was an eternal disgrace to humanity, reducing reasoning men to the level of the unreasoning brute, and causing them to destroy each other's lives in the blindest fury, instead, alas! of dwelling together on this beautiful earth in unity, peace, and concord, for the promotion of mutual happiness!"

"I doubt very much indeed," muttered Bacon in his teeth, "whether any such considerations as those have brought about the reign of peace. Mankind, my dear sir, is still swayed by passion; quite as much, I venture to say, as in bygone days. Men still deserve the epithet once served upon them by a foreign poet: 'angel half, half brute!' and so it will be in the future, although it can never be denied that society, as a whole, progresses in a moral sense. But for this, that 'circumstances alter cases,' I am afraid there would be war still. Only circumstances are altered, and war has become an impossibility.

"In the first place, our present condition of peace has been chiefly brought about by the universal state-bankruptcy at the close of the nineteenth century, when the combined debts of the would-be civilised nations (in consequence of the immense expense involved in the large standing armies) had become to surpass the joint national capitals.

"In the second place, the present state of affairs is due to the marvellous improvements lately made in the weapons of attack and defence.

"When, in the last war, now about a century ago, the navies of England, France, Russia, and America had mutually destroyed one another; when, through a bombardment from both sides of the channel, the capitals of England and France had simultaneously been set on fire; when the losses on both sides had become incalculable, not to say irreparable, then, but not until then, people began to ask themselves whether even a victory was worth such enormous sacrifices. And it finally dawned in the public mind that in all wars the conqueror is likewise the loser.

"But that which has mainly contributed to render war gradually a matter of rare occurrence, and which, we trust, will ultimately lead to its complete abolition, is the vastly increased intercourse between the peoples of various nationalities, by which all those silly inherited national antipathies have slowly become absorbed; then again, we have had the application of the principles of free trade, the removal of all those barriers that separated nations from nations, an universal system of coinage and weights and measures, an increase in the means of locomotion and communication, and the fusion of the individual interests of particular nations into one great universal 'public weal.' Nations have ceased to stand opposite, against one another, they flourish side by side; by thousands and thousands of bonds they are joined and held together; and if the nineteenth century has witnessed the introduction of the principle of nationality, ours has made another step in the right direction, and produced the recognition of the principle of humanism." [11]

Free Trade; Universal Locomotion.

I was much impressed with the justness of the last words of my companion. It now became clear to me how every new railroad, every new telegraph line, the removal of every obstacle in the process of exportation and importation, does not only directly promote the general interest and welfare, but that they are as many links in the great chain by which men are united together in brotherhood as members of one and the same household. And yet methought I perceived a threatening cloud at this bright horizon. "If then," said I, "all wars have ceased to be, and if in consequence thereof, as well as through other propitious circumstances of various kinds, commerce and industry have been constantly progressing, surely you must have witnessed an alarming increase of population; and the production of the necessary food can hardly have kept pace with its consumption."