Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A revolution has in fact taken place. The coming of industrialism, attended by all the roar and rattle of affairs, the shrill cries of millions of new voices that have come among us from overseas, the going and coming of trains, the growth of cities, the building of the inter-urban car lines that weave in and out of towns and past farmhouses, and now in these later days the coming of the automobiles has worked a tremendous change in the lives and in the habits of thought of our people of Mid-America.
Sunday becomes for country people a day of visiting the town and in great numbers they gather at the inter-urban stations. The city and town on Sunday is filled with careless, hurrying groups of visitors, sight-seers and callers, who have no such fixed interest as that to be expressed in church-going or in substantial social processes.
"These little things we have won't be any trouble at all, no matter how many times we have to change." They started in heavy inter-urban cars which rode as solidly as railroad cars and enabled them to be but very little tired at the end of the first "leg" of the journey.
"You are to wait until five o'clock in my reception room and then take the inter-urban car," he said, locking the inner office when they passed out. "I am leaving a little early to-night." Before he left he stepped into a little closet which led out of the reception room and changed his office clothes. Glen's eyes sparkled. His problem was solved.
Another requirement of our twentieth-century civilization is rapid transit, either urban or inter-urban, and this is afforded by various systems of electric street railways or electric traction generally, including electric locomotives and electric automobiles.
In annual town-meeting Smyrna and Vienna had voted to change over the inter-urban highway so that it would skirt Rattledown Hill instead of climbing straight over it, as the fathers had laid it out in the old days for the sake of directness; forgetting that a pail bail upright is just as long as a pail bail lying horizontal.
At five o'clock Glen Mason rode down in the elevator to the ground floor and asked the elevator man how he could identify the inter-urban car. But instead of leaving the building he dodged back to the stairway as soon as the elevator had started on its return trip and ran stealthily up the stairs and again entered the dentist's reception room. It was empty.
And she shuddered, and went indoors. Dad Keller looked after her thoughtfully. Then he went in, washed his hands, and sat down at table with Ivy and her mother. "Just a sliver for me," said Ivy, "and no onions." Her father put down his knife and fork, cleared his throat, and spake, thus: "You get on your hat and meet me at the 2:45 inter-urban. You're going to the ball game with me."
Already a Caproni triplane will carry thirty-five passengers beside guns say, fifty passengers if all other load be excluded, and has flown with a lighter load from Newport News to New York. It is easily imaginable that by 1920 the airplane capable of carrying eighty persons or the normal number now accommodated on an inter-urban trolley car will be an accomplished fact.
In a little while heating and lighting and the supply of power for domestic and industrial purposes and for urban and inter-urban communications will all be managed electrically from common generating stations.
Word Of The Day