The skies were unclouded, the air delightfully bracing, the atmosphere so clear and pure that I wondered if some strange change had not occurred to my eyesight, since I could see miles and miles of fair country, lovely villages, and populous towns, whichever way I looked.
Smoke was an imponderable quantity here, by virtue of the smoke-consuming apparati fixed in every dwelling, which permitted not even the destruction by fire of the household refuse which was daily committed to the furnace, to sully the purity of the atmosphere.
I enquired if fires were frequent here, and was told that in the manufacture or adaption of every material in use, either for building purposes, or for decorative and personal application, there was incorporated a substance which rendered it impervious to fire, and practically indestructible.
There was not the slightest noise of traffic in the streets, such as I had always been accustomed to hear in either large or small towns. On each side of every street there was a double means of locomotion provided. Water cars abounded, and by way of proving their comfort and efficiency to me, the two women who escorted me took their seats in one of them, and, somewhat nervously, I followed their example.
In another moment I noticed houses and streets fly past us with magical rapidity, but this phenomenon ceased almost immediately, and I looked through the glass sides of the car upon a totally new scene. Dublin Bay, in all its glorious beauty, lay unfolded to my vision. But I was hardly able to appreciate it at that moment, for I was possessed by the idea that I was under the influence of magic.
The magic subsequently resolved itself into a marvellous adaptation of hydraulic force. It was our car, not the houses, which had been flying with electric speed. Yet so noiseless, and so apparently motionless had we been that the illusion was perfect, and I seemed not to have moved. The pressure of an electric button stopped a car instantaneously, and at the same time prevented any succeeding car from passing a given point until all obstruction ahead was removed.
These stoppages lasted only an infinitesimally short time, for all the cars, whether for passenger or goods traffic, were pulled up to the inner barrier of the double roadway, leaving a clear course for all cars which were still pursuing their journey.