Life — June 6, 1907 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Norway, Spitzbergen and Iceland AND ALSO TO EUROPEAN SEASIDE RESORTS Pleasure, Health, Novelty Relaxation, Comfort can be enjoyed on the cruises visiting the above places during the months of June, July August and September arranged by the Hamburg-American Line ‘Twelve cruises on the luxuriously appointed twin screw steamers, Oceana, Bluecher, Kronprinzessin, Cecilie and Meteor, &art from Hamburg — Duration from 13 to 24 days. Cost from $62.50 to $175.00 and upwards including stateroom accommodations and meals Excellent connedions from America by Company's transatlantic @eamers. Write for Beautiful Illustrated Booklet and Full Particulars to HAMBURG-AMERICAN LINE 35-37 Broadway, New York Sate Se z= > Bimton 91 Olive St. > + St La Randslbh Su.“ Chicago 1229 Walout St. - Phiadlpsa WHERE TO SPEND THIS SUMMER John Munroe @ Co. FEAL IM| The Lackawanna Rail NEW YORK: 30 Pine St. BOSTON: 4 P. 0. Sq. road's booklet * Mountain and Lake Resorts” will MUNROE & CO. tell you, how you can go, where you can stay, PARIS what you can'see, and how mucia it will cost. 144 pages, profusely illustrated. In addition it ., contains a clever little love story, entitled: Letters of Credit for Travelers “A Chase for an Heiress” Providing Funds tn all parts of tho It will be sent for 10 cents in stamps. Address Money transferred by Cable GEO. A. CULLEN, General Passenger Agent Drafts on Foreign Countries 26 Exchange Place (Dept. 7) New York City W'! it is not deliberately fantastic, the imaginaticn of the novelist equipped with a scientific training some- times takes on the nature of prophecy—the prophecy that, according to our modem understanding, is no wise supematural, but is simply a perception of the truth, raised to the nth power. Such a seer, along material lines, was Jules Verne, who, as everybody knows, foretold in his fictions such marvels as the submarine boat. We seem to recall that Bulwer Lytton, “‘a kind of splendid charlatan,” did something of the same sort in “The Coming Race.” And now comes H. G. Wells, who, two years ago, in his remarkatle work, “A Modern Utopia,” anticipated the amazing an- nouncement, recently catled from London, that Louis Brennan, with the aid of the gyroscope, has perfected a new system of locomotion whereby railway trains of great width may attain an incredible speed. Had the Herald’s special cable conveyed this news, the sophisticated readers of that journal's pseudoscientific “teats” might have passed the salt and sought the sober- ing effect of the ‘‘society” column. But it was set forth on the first page of the Sun, and fortified by the “auspices of the Royal Society.” Hence, though we rubked our eyes and read again, we knew it must be so. x * * ND now let us compare prophecy with the facts in hand. “It has been de- cided,” says Mr. Brennan, “to make the experimental wagon twelve feet wide, or one and a half times as wide as usual.” Again: ‘‘Mr. Brennan’s confident dream,” says the London correspondent, “is of a transcontinental line furnished with a traveling hotel with rooms fifteen or twenty feet wide that will carry passengers in per- fect comfort and safety at a speed of one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty miles an hour.” What did Mr. Wells say ?—‘A Utopian train is just a peculiar kind of hotel corridor that flies about the earth while one sleeps.” To read his chapter of an imaginary trip to London from some distant foint on the Continent is like reading a newsaccountof what we are now assured is really to happen in the near future. The autor and his companion, the botanist, reach the railway station, with its books and comforts, and, exchanging their shoes for slippers, sit down at ease like men in a club. A bell tinkles, they sce the label “London” on the doorway, and presently they pass into an equally comfortable gallery. And when comicbooks.com