"What is the greatest speed that steamers can make nowadays, with all these improvements?" Frank asked.
"There is much dispute," Doctor Bronson replied, "over the performances of ships at sea, and it is not at all easy to get at the actual facts. Take the great steam lines between New York and Liverpool, and there are two or three of them that claim to have done better than any of their rivals. The managers of the White Star Line can show that their ships have made the voyage quicker than the Inman steamers, and the Inman managers can as readily prove that their ships have surpassed all others. There are several steamers afloat that have made more than four hundred miles in twenty-four hours, but they can only do it when all the circumstances are favorable. There are many men who believe that steamers will be built before the end of this century that will make five hundred miles in a day, and if we judge of the future by the past, I see no reason to doubt that the feat will be accomplished. We may yet come to the speed of a railway train on the water, and more than one inventor believes that he can do so. The prediction that we will yet cross the Atlantic in three days is no wilder than would have been the prediction, at the beginning of this century, that we could travel on land or sea at our present rate, and that intelligence could be flashed along a wire in a few seconds of time from one end of the world to the other. The railway, the ocean steamer, the telegraph, the telephone, and many other things that seem almost commonplace to us, would have been regarded as the emanations of a crazy brain a hundred years ago."
"Perhaps," said Fred, "the year 3000 may find us travelling in the air as freely as we now travel on land."
[Illustration: THE PUBLIC HIGHWAY OF THE FUTURE.]
"Not at all impossible," the Doctor answered. "We, or our descendants, may be able to go through the air at will, and show the birds that we can do as much as they can. Not long ago I was reading a sketch which was supposed to be written a thousand years hence. The writer describes his travels, and gives a picture of the public highway. An omnibus supported by balloons, and drawn by a pair of them--harnessed as we would harness horses--is represented on its way through the air. The driver is on his box and the conductor at the door, while the passengers are looking out of the windows. A bird, who has doubtless become thoroughly familiar with the aërial craft, has seized the hat of a passenger and flies away with it, and the victim of the theft is vainly stretching his hands towards his property. Balloons are sailing through the air, and in one a man is seated, who is evidently out for a day's sport. He has a rod and line, and is industriously occupied in birding, just as one might engage in fishing from the side of a boat. A string of birds hangs from the seat of his conveyance, and he is in the act of taking a fresh prize at the end of his line.