Can you not fancy the shout
      of scorn with which my words would be received by our progenitors
      were it possible for them to be now looking over my shoulder? These men, I say, theorize; and their theories are simply
      corrected, reduced, systematized—cleared, little by little, of
      their dross of inconsistency—until, finally, a perfect
      consistency stands apparent which even the most stolid admit,
      because it is a consistency, to be an absolute and an
      unquestionable truth. April 4.—The new gas is doing wonders, in conjunction with the
      new improvement with gutta percha. How very safe, commodious,
      manageable, and in every respect convenient are our modern
      balloons! Here is an immense one approaching us at the rate of at
      least a hundred and fifty miles an hour. It seems to be crowded
      with people—perhaps there are three or four hundred
      passengers—and yet it soars to an elevation of nearly a mile,
      looking down upon poor us with sovereign contempt. Still a
      hundred or even two hundred miles an hour is slow travelling
      after all. Do you remember our flight on the railroad across the
      Kanadaw continent?—fully three hundred miles the hour—that was
      travelling. Nothing to be seen though—nothing to be done but
      flirt, feast and dance in the magnificent saloons. Do you
      remember what an odd sensation was experienced when, by chance,
      we caught a glimpse of external objects while the cars were in
      full flight? Every thing seemed unique—in one mass. For my part,
      I cannot say but that I preferred the travelling by the slow
      train of a hundred miles the hour. Here we were permitted to have
      glass windows—even to have them open—and something like a
      distinct view of the country was attainable.... Pundit says that
      the route for the great Kanadaw railroad must have been in some
      measure marked out about nine hundred years ago! In fact, he goes
      so far as to assert that actual traces of a road are still
      discernible—traces referable to a period quite as remote as that
      mentioned. The track, it appears was double only; ours, you know,
      has twelve paths; and three or four new ones are in preparation. The ancient rails were very slight, and placed so close together
      as to be, according to modern notions, quite frivolous, if not
      dangerous in the extreme. The present width of track—fifty
      feet—is considered, indeed, scarcely secure enough. For my part,
      I make no doubt that a track of some sort must have existed in
      very remote times, as Pundit asserts; for nothing can be clearer,
      to my mind, than that, at some period—not less than seven
      centuries ago, certainly—the Northern and Southern Kanadaw
      continents were united; the Kanawdians, then, would have been
      driven, by necessity, to a great railroad across the continent. April 5.—I am almost devoured by _ennui_. Pundit is the only
      conversible person on board; and he, poor soul! can speak of
      nothing but antiquities. He has been occupied all the day in the
      attempt to convince me that the ancient Amriccans governed
      themselves!—did ever anybody hear of such an absurdity?—that they
      existed in a sort of every-man-for-himself confederacy, after the
      fashion of the “prairie dogs” that we read of in fable. He says
      that they started with the queerest idea conceivable, viz: that
      all men are born free and equal—this in the very teeth of the
      laws of _gradation_ so visibly impressed upon all things both in
      the moral and physical universe. Every man “voted,” as they
      called it—that is to say meddled with public affairs—until at
      length, it was discovered that what is everybody’s business is
      nobody’s, and that the “Republic” (so the absurd thing was
      called) was without a government at all. It is related, however,
      that the first circumstance which disturbed, very particularly,
      the self-complacency of the philosophers who constructed this
      “Republic,” was the startling discovery that universal suffrage
      gave opportunity for fraudulent schemes, by means of which any
      desired number of votes might at any time be polled, without the
      possibility of prevention or even detection, by any party which
      should be merely villainous enough not to be ashamed of the
      fraud. A little reflection upon this discovery sufficed to render
      evident the consequences, which were that rascality must
      predominate—in a word, that a republican government could never
      be any thing but a rascally one. While the philosophers, however,
      were busied in blushing at their stupidity in not having foreseen
      these inevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new
      theories, the matter was put to an abrupt issue by a fellow of
      the name of Mob, who took every thing into his own hands and set
      up a despotism, in comparison with which those of the fabulous
      Zeros and Hellofagabaluses were respectable and delectable. This
      Mob (a foreigner, by-the-by), is said to have been the most
      odious of all men that ever encumbered the earth. He was a giant
      in stature—insolent, rapacious, filthy, had the gall of a bullock
      with the heart of a hyena and the brains of a peacock. He died,
      at length, by dint of his own energies, which exhausted him. Nevertheless, he had his uses, as every thing has, however vile,
      and taught mankind a lesson which to this day it is in no danger
      of forgetting—never to run directly contrary to the natural
      analogies. As for Republicanism, no analogy could be found for it
      upon the face of the earth—unless we except the case of the
      “prairie dogs,” an exception which seems to demonstrate, if
      anything, that democracy is a very admirable form of
      government—for dogs. April 6.—Last night had a fine view of Alpha Lyrae, whose disk,
      through our captain’s spy-glass, subtends an angle of half a
      degree, looking very much as our sun does to the naked eye on a
      misty day. Alpha Lyrae, although so very much larger than our
      sun, by the by, resembles him closely as regards its spots, its
      atmosphere, and in many other particulars. It is only within the
      last century, Pundit tells me, that the binary relation existing
      between these two orbs began even to be suspected. The evident
      motion of our system in the heavens was (strange to say!) referred to an orbit about a prodigious star in the centre of the
      galaxy. About this star, or at all events about a centre of
      gravity common to all the globes of the Milky Way and supposed to
      be near Alcyone in the Pleiades, every one of these globes was
      declared to be revolving, our own performing the circuit in a
      period of 117,000,000 of years!