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WALTER WELLMAN TIME—Year of 1999. SCENE—Subway station cf the Chicago and North Pole Consolidated lines, located 215 feet beneath the ethereal sta tion of the Fort Wayne, Duluth and Polar Aerial Transportation Company. CAST — Airship chauffeurs, subway molormtn, passengers, aerocabmen, automatic news boys, poiar bears, Eskimos, wireless telephone linemen, etc. LI, ABO-ARR-D,” yelled the phonographic train crier. "Train on the third level leaves in five mlnits for th«' pole. Only one stop between Medicine Hat and Arctic Circle city. Eskimos, polar bears and hunters in the second story of the third car forwarr-d. \w-l-l abo-a-r-rd." Gee. but I was glud to yet into the polai bear section and away from that automatic instrument for rendering sane persons mentally incompetent. I had been reading a copy of the North Pole Friday night Post when, with a noise like till the air coming out of a balloon all at once, the C. & N. P. train started. It was all strange to me, of the year 1909. 1 must have slept an awful long time to wake up here in the year of—yes, the date line on the publication I was scanning said February 1, 1999. It was printed in white Ink and the words were all spelled phonetically. Medicine Hat," yelled a voice in tit's ear a minute or two after the train had started. I looked quickly around, ready to punch the rude brakeman who had given vent to those rasping notes. As 1 did so I humped my nose against tin*—well, it looked like a phonograph sticking out from the wall of the ear. Then it dawned upon me. It "asn'i the hrakeman at till, in fact, looking around I could see no em ployes. As we reached the chunk of darkness, which I took to he the al bged Medicine Hat. the coach door opened without any human assistance, a man at my side punched a button anu promptly disappeared through a chute which appeared at bis feet. Two minutes for liquid air re freshments," came the same rasping, phonographic voice through the in strument at my right. 1 hunted for tlie button my disappearing friend h id usi d to disappear by and in an in stant I was looking down Medicine Hat's main street, i didn't try to puzzle out that phenomenon. I didn't care if I ever saw the pole, if it had to he seen via the cold, clammy sub way route. Nearly every place of business on the main strict was labeled "private weather bureau.” I glanced upward to see if it looked like rain. Far to the south 1 spied what looked strangely like the pictures 1 scanned in 190!) when i used to read about Count Zeppelin and his airship. As the big bird like machine came closer, 1 managed to read the sign on the aide, it read: ROUTE NO. :U. Fort Wayne, Duluth and Polar Aerial Trans portation Company. That was pretty near tlie last straw. I wanted to look at something ancient. 1 couldn't stand this much longer. It was get •iag on mv nerves—these ahead-of-tlie-minute contrivances. The airship drew nearer. ! could see a roof garden party of young people sitting among the palms on the dome of the big machine. Around them were electric heat era, which radiated heat clear to the earth. Carelessly one young man emptied the con tents of his glass over his shoulder in mj di rection. I tried to dodge the cloudburst of umber beverage, but. alas, too late. It caught me s'luarely In the face and I WOKE UP' And still when one comes to think it over, cunsidering the progress which the year tons saw in the way of airship navigation and polar efforts, that dream is within the realm of pos sibilities of the twentieth century. Less than an years ago the man who talked of saying ‘ howdy" to a friend 1,500 miles away would he deported. To-day the telephone carries one’s words as clearly as if spoken to parties in the same room. So If an American should fall asleep in the veer 1909 and awoke 1*0 years hence, the things . _ « // £AI-Z>w/N<s P&OJPSCT/VE £X&?&/T/OA/ which would greet his eyes would make him the envy of Rip Van Winkle. Discovery of the norm pole will doubtless be made within tin lifetimes of many citizens of to-day. Anyhow that is what the scientists de ckin'. They say the mere discovery of the pole is simple. It is the conquering of the de tails which must be surmounted that require the thought and efforts. Most novel of all plans to plant the American flag or for that matter any other country’s flag on top of the pole, is that which some time ago was proposed by Evelyn Hriggs Hald win, who is now working out details of his scheme. This Intrepid explorer aims to float to the pole and take plenty of time getting there. He laid out the plan in detail before the Harvard union at Cambridge, Mass., some time ago and while some blase persons were skeptical, oth ers said they liked the plan. Here's the way Mr. lialdwin would do it: pedition must face are known only to the man who lias made such attempts before. That has been the great trouble with polar expe ditions, it is said. They are too oft en planned with the conveniences of a great city within reach of the hand. Perhaps the most sane polar expedition which a n y o n o h a s sprung for years has been that of Walter Wellman, A C/)PT 3QW*S£&'J "Give me a cargo of logs, another of casks partly filled with emergency supplies and a single vessel, specifically constructed, and I can go from Behring strait to the pole light across the Arctic ocean. Scatter the logs, port able houses and casks upon a group of heavy ice floes, surrounding tbe ship, shifting the sup plies if necessary by windlasses, motors or dogs, and we'll succeed. A single1 crew can handle the three cargoes. Had the Jeannette expedition adopted this plan it would have won. In support of my plan Hear Admiral Mel villi' stated to me ihai a small house erected mi the ice at the beginning of the drift of the .leannettc having blown away before it bad I,(eii fastened down, was found two years later less than two miles from the ship, ilms proving thai the ship and ice proceed just as a balloon moves with the atmosphere In which it floats. With portable studios and laboratories, our ar lists and scientists may work with tranquillity. With balloons we will view a wide stretch of territory and as did the Baldwin-Zeigler expe dition frequently, dispatch messengers home ward. With our logs as fuel we ll barbecue the walrus seal and polar bear. With the casks emptied we'll form a flotilla filled with dupli cates of our collections.” That's the way Mr. Baldwin would do it. With your feet planted on the home hearth stone. the domicile good and warm, plenty to eat for each meal and no worries, it looks easy, doesn't it? But the obstacles which any ex CQnS10D0&£. i . V5 ^A the newspaper man. who two 'ears ago was assigned by his paper to find the north pole. The assignment was given him when politics, which he hud been covering, had sort of died down in Washington. So Mr. Wellman went way up north, fa; away front Sweden, and after spending a long time in the construction of his aerial polo lindor, in set sail In his airship in a snowstorm. The snow was thick high up in that cold cli mate and it got into the pilot's eyes. Conso tpiently the expedition was abandoned for the time. Xext .June, however, Mr. Wellman will again set sail for the pole with the assurance that his machine will perform at least part of the journey satisfactorily. On ethereal subjects Wellman has become an expert. Me has also had real polar experience. Mr. Wellman not long ago declared that his airship is. for his own purpose of finding the polo, more efficient than that of Count Zeppelin, which can sail all day long without dropping to earth for more gasoline. Commodore Peary is today scrutinizing arc tie regions for signs of the location of the polo. Ho will go as far north as is possible on liis polar ship Theodore Roosevelt, and dogs and sledges will take him the rest of the distance. It will he several years, probably, before the real fruits of this expedition become known to newspaper readers of America. Many lives have been lost in the quest for the pole. That and the south pole, located somewhere in the Antarctic, arc the only un discovered parts of this wide world, and the na tion which plants its (lag on either of the poles will be lucky, for then it will own the end of the earth. //v<4 rJWOU/ JTOJ2./V The most novel and perhaps the most insane project which was ever sprung for finding the pole ,was that of (’apt. Howser. a Chicagoan, who was a martyr to his scheme. Ife, too, was firm in his belief that lie could find the pole in his especial, private way. lie aimed to roll to the pole in a round ball with small holes at each end. He got as far as South Haven, Mich., which is a summer resort, lie reached South Haven in the winter and lie v. us found frozen on the beach. The wind and waves carried Cnpt. Howser 75 miles across Lake Michigan Irom Chicago, but the indications were that his death occurred half way across the lake. Inside of his round shell he lay upon a hoard around which the object revolved, it being hollow. Wowser received a Christian burial, which is less than lots of unfortunate explor ers ha' e received for their efforts. The north pole is a peculiar thing. It shifts about from day to day and not over a year ago a Swedish scientist allowed to escape his sys tem the assertion that the pole was moving towards Siberia. Of course if the north polo keeps on moving like that, how can it < x pert to be discovered? ask skeptical perrons. The reason the north pole is said to be play ing bide and seek is said to la* this: The earth revolves on its axis from west to east. Hence centrifugal forces tend to pull the regions of the equator outward, tints giv ing the tendency to flatten at the poles. 'Ibis flattening process is irregular and as a conse quence the "top" and "bottom" of the earth tend to flit about from place to place. Tr\ this scheme with a rubber hall. Soft rubber is best; it shows the flattening better than hard rubber. Push a nail through the bull, making it an axis, and then tie strings to each end of the nail. Hold the strings in your right baud and twirl them over your head. During the twirling you notice that the ball becomes flatter at each end and bulges slightly on the sides. That’s why the poles are shift ing. The earth moves at a rate of lit miles a minute around its axis. Kadi day in revolv ing it lias a journey of 25,000 miles, its cir cumference. to accomplish. It moves about 20 times as fast as the Chicago-New York IS hour special. Is it any wonder it is flattening? The dream above, which transplanted a citi zen of the t'nited States of the year 1009 1o the year 1999, hence furnishes an ordinary ex ample of things which may transpire when Peary, Baldwin or Wellman discover the north pole. Nobody lias yet tried to discover the pole by the subway route, but somebody will, some day, and soon after they'll convict him of insanity. Toe Common Strata. The stress of iife may touch some lightly, may appear to pass other* by, but most men whom we meet, with whom we deal, who work for ns or for whom ,ve work, know well the common st »*ss of humanity, if in all our human relations this thought could be k pt before us it would revolutionize life We would be humanized—ennobled. We would care for men as men. We could not escape the transforming realiza tion of an actual brotherhood if we recalled and thought upon the un deniable fact of our own part in the universal brotherhood of the com mon strain. Schuyler C Woouhull, in The Heilman. 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