intends to be cremated. He swallows a little pill, lies down upon a
bed, or, if he prefers it, in his coffin; pleasant music is played
for him; he goes to sleep, and wakes up on the other side of the
great line. Every day hundreds of people, men and women, perish in
this way; and they are borne off to the great furnaces for the dead,
and consumed. The authorities assert that it is a marked improvement
over the old-fashioned methods; but to my mind it is a shocking
combination of impiety and mock-philanthropy. The truth is, that, in
this vast, over-crowded city, man is a drug,--a superfluity,--and I
think many men and women end their lives out of an overwhelming sense
of their own insignificance;--in other words, from a mere weariness
of feeling that they are nothing, they become nothing.

I must bring this letter to an end, but before retiring I shall make
a visit to the grand parlors of the hotel. You suppose I will walk
there. Not at all, my dear brother. I shall sit down in a chair;
there is an electric magazine in the seat of it. I touch a spring,
and away it goes. I guide it with my feet. I drive into one of the
great elevators. I descend to the drawing-room floor. I touch the
spring again, and in a few moments I am moving around the grand
salon, steering myself clear of hundreds of similar chairs, occupied
by fine-looking men or the beautiful, keen-eyed, unsympathetic women
I have described. The race has grown in power and loveliness--I fear
it has lost in lovableness.

Good-by. With love to all, I remain your affectionate brotherly

Gabriel Weltstein.

CHAPTER II.