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In! WALTER W&JLLMAN JMh TIME—Year of 1999. SCENE—Subway station of the Chicago and North Pole Consolidated lings, located 215 feet beneath the ethereal sta tion of the Fort Wayne, Duluth and Polar Aerial Transportation Company. CAST Airship chauffeurs, subway motormen, passengers, aerocabmen, automatic news boys, polar bears, Eskimos, wireless telephone linemen, etc. LL ABO-A-R-R-D," yelled the phonographic train crier. "Train on the third level leaves in five minits for the pole. Only one stop between Medicine Hat and Arctic Circle city. Eskimos, polar bears and hunters in the second story of the third car forwa-r-r-d. Aw-1-1 abo-a-r-r-d." Gee, but I was glad to get into the polar 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 all 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. I 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 swelled phonetically. Medicine Hat," yelled a voice in my 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 I did so I bumped my nose against the—well, it looked like a phonograph —sticking out from the wall of the car. Then it dawned upon me. It wasn't the brakeman at all. In fact, looking around I could see no em ployes. As we reached the chunk of darkness, which I took to be the al leged Medicine Hat, the coach door opened without any human assistance, a man at my side punched a button and promptly disappeared through a chute which appeared at his feet. "Two minutes for liquid air re freshments," came the same rasping, phonographic voice through the in strument at my right. I hunted for the button my disappearing friend had used to disappear by and in an in stant I was looking down Mcdicine 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 be seen via the cold, clammy sub way route. Nearly every place of business on the main street was labeled "private weather bureau." I glanced upward to see if it looked like rain. Far to the south I spied what looked strangely like the pictures I scanned in 1909 when I used to read about Count Zeppelin and his airship. As the big bird-like machine came closer, I managed to read the sign on the side. It read: ROUTE NO. 34. Fort Wayne, Duluth and Polar Aerial Trans portation Company. That was pretty near the last straw. I wanted to look at something ancient. I couldn't stand this much longer. It was get ting on my nerves—these ahead-of-the-minute contrivances. The airship drew nearer. I 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 ers, which radiated heat clear to the earth. Carelessly one young man emptied the con tents of his glass over his shoulder in my di rection. I tried to dodge the cloudburst of amber beverage, but, alas, too late. It caught me squarely in the face and— I WOKE UP! And still when one comes to think it over, considering the progress which the year 1908 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 50 years ago the man who talked of saying "howdy" to a friend 1,500 miles away would be 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 year 1909 and awake 90 years hence, the things Old Soldier Thus Derives Title of Orderly to Emperor. The manager of a Paris insurance company was decorated with the Legion of Honor a few days ago, ana the clerks in the employ of the com pany presented him a piece of plate, to which their visiting cards were at tached. DUSTS TOMB OF NAPOLEON Looking oyer these, he was puzsled 'S///^ 3ALDWf/) P/ZOJPECT/VM &CP&&/T/OA/ which would greet his eyes would make him the envy of Rip Van Winkle. Discovery of the north pole will doubtless be made within the lifetimes of many citizens of to-day. Anyhow that is what the scientists de clare. 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 BJvelyn Briggs Bald 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., sonie time ago and while some blase persons were Skeptical, oth ers said they liked the plan. Here's the way Mr. Baldwin would do it: CAPT. ST&THO& "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 right across the Arctic ocean. Scatter the logs, port able houses and casks upon a group of heavy ice floes, surrounding the ship, shifting the sup plies if necessary by windlasses, motors or dogs, and we'll succeed. A single crew can handle the three cargoes. Had the Jeannette expedition adopted this plan it would have won. In support of my plan Roar Admiral Mel ville stated to me that a small house erected on the ice at the beginning of the drift of the Jeannette having blown away before it had been fastened down, was found two years later less than two miles from the ship, thus proving that the ship and ice proceed just as a balloon moves with the atmosphere in which it floats. With portable studios and laboratories, our ar tists and scientists may work with tranquillity. With balloons we will view aWidestretch 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- by the visiting card of the office "boy," an old soldier from the Inval ides, who was employed to open the office doors from nine to four. Under the man's name was the title: "The Emperor's Orderly." Ke sent for the old soldier, who stwnped in and saluted. 'Of what emperor are you the.or derly, and how?" he asked. The old Invalide drew himself up to attention. pedition must face are known only to the man who has 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^iand. "I am the orderly to 'the' emperor," he said. "Napoleon, la petit caporal." "But he is dead." "He has been dead for some time," answered the soldier. "I dust his tomb for him." Photographing the Stars. In measuring the sensitiveness of photographic plat?s at different tem peratures, so as to determine the best temperature for star photography, an English astronomer has discovered the ess- v- vlW"v-^Wi2*^ «•»*, X~ Perhaps the most sane polar expedition which a a sprung for years has been that of Walter Wellman, the newspaper man, who two years ago was assigned by his paper to find the north pole. The assignment was given him when politics, which he had been covering, had sort of died down Washington. ok So Mr. Wellman went way up" north, far away from Sweden, and after spending a long time in the construction of his aerial pole finder, he 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. Conse quently the expedition was abandoned for the time. Next 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. He has also had real polar experience. Mr. Wellman not long ago declared that his airship is, for his own purpose of finding the pole, more efficient than that of Count Zeppelin, which can sail all day long without dropping to earth for mbre gasoline. Commodore Peary is to-day scrutinizing arc tic regions for signs of the location of the pole. He will go as far north as is possible on his polar ship Theodore Roosevelt, and dogs and sledges will take him the rest of the distance. It will be 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, are the only un discovered parts of this wide world, and the na tion which plants its flag on either of the poles will be lucky, for then it will own the end of the earth. curious fact that for some plates the best temperatures for photographing very faint stars and somewhat bright er stars are not the same. Thus be tween 24 and 75 degrees centigrade the plate becomes slower for faint stars when slightly warmed, whereas at the same time it becomes faster for brighter stars. The expert in as tronomical photography will therefore hereafter regulate the temperature of his plates according to the brightness of the particular celestial objects on which lie is working. 01 WS£. PATAU'S S\JfL\SH/P S/VA yfJVOW XJTO&ST The most novel and perhaps the most insane project which was ever sprung for finding the pole was that of Capt. Bowser, a Chicagoan, who was a martyr to his scheme. He, too. was firm in his belief that he could find the pole in his especial, private way. He 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. He reached South Haven in the winter and he was found frozen on the beach. The wind and waves carried Capt. Bowser 75 miles across Lake Michigan from Chicago, but the indications were that his death occurred half way across the lake. Inside of his round shell he lay upon a board around which the object revolved, it being hollow. Bowser received a Christian burial, which is less than lots of unfortunate explor ers have 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 pole keeps on moving like that, how can it ex pect to be discovered? ask skeptical persons. The reason the north pole is said to be play ing hide and seek is said to be this: The earth revolves on its axis from west to east. Hence centrifugal forces tend to pull the regions of the equator outward, thus giv ing the tendency to flatten at the poles. This flattening process is irregular and as a conse quence the "top" and "bottom" of the earth tend to flit about from place to place. Try this scheme with a rubber ball. Soft rubber is best it shows the flattening better than hard rubber. Push a nail through the ball, making it an axis, and then tie strings to each end of the nail. Hold the strings in your right hand 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 19 miles a minute around its axis. Each day in revolv ing it has a journey of 25,000 miles, its cir cumference, to accomplish. It moves about 20 times as fast as the Chicago-New York 18-hour special. Is it any wonder it is flattening? The dream above, which transplanted a citi zen of the United States of the year 1909 to the year 1999, hence furnishes an ordinary ex ample of things which may transpire when Peary, Baldwin or Wellman discover the north pole. Nobody has yet tried to discover the pole by the subway route, but somebody will, some day, and soon after they'll convict him of insanity. In the Millenium. The probability is that, if there were a city composed of none but good men, it would be an object of competition to avoid the possession of power, just as now it is to obtain it ami then it would become clearly evident that it is not the nature of the genuinv ruler to look to his own interest, but to those of his subject so that every ju dicious man would choose to be a re cipient of benefits, rather than to have the trouble of conferring them1 upon others.—riato. While the ship beat up the coast toward Davis strait there was little work to do, and Jedediah could dream and grow solemn in the great new marvel of it all, and then laugh aloud because he was glad, and drag his bed up from below to lie under this new sky and take the swish of the sea and the purr of the wind on the sails into his sleep with him. But when they had entered the straits and the bay was nearing, there was too serious work to be dreaming. There were the long cold days at the masthead that grew suddenly pulsing hot at sight of a spouting whale. Then the great swing of the boat's pull to meet it the craft and cunning of stealth, and the stifled joy in the danger of fight and capture. The ice had come early that year, or, maybe, the whales were shy, for the ship could not get her full cargo and ran down by the Azores to com plete it, and made Amsterdam her market close to the ending of her first year. But Jedediah was afraid of that great strange thing at the end of the quays that was a city, where the sailors rioted at night, and the very children spoke a language he did not know, and he stayed by the ship when the work of the day was over, climb ing the rigging to watch the lights that pricked the blackness into life, and to wonder about the people who drifted up and down the quays. And there he was even the last night be fore the ship dropped down the harbor on her return voyage. The mist was breathing in off the sea and Jedediah was thinking what queer faint trails the lights made in it, when, just below him on the quay, an English voice— a girl's, soft, supple, a little sob in it— laughed out, dimpling the mist. Jede diah gripped the rope with tingling fingers and crouched to listen, for she was saying something, but he could not hear, and those with her cried out: "Oh, Betty!" and she laughed again, and Jedediah's pulses throbbed. He did not know a voice could hold such sound. It was long after they had passed into the city that Jedediah swung down to stand on the quay just where the girl's laugh had rung up to him. "Betty," he whispered to the lights of the harbor. "One day I shall have a ship of my own and her name shall be Betty. "Betty," he said to the wind that was driving the mist away, "Betty." But it was nearly fifteen years be fore Jedediah had a boat of his own— the youngest captain in the fleet then. She was a three-master, schooner rigged and painted black. And because just "Betty" seemed too bold for other men to speak, Jedediah called her "Miss Betty," and had the name done in gold—where all the others were,in white—and knew for the first time that through the years he had thought of gold hair when he thought of the girl who had laughed on the quays at Amsterdam. "Miss Betty's" first voyage was into the straits for Arctic whale and Jede-' diah Mul not seen the headlands of Rowe'^*^lcome since his boyhood cruise. She was the last of the fleet to leave the bay that season, and with MISS BETTY By JUDITH GRAVES WALDO (Copyright, by Shortstory Pub. C,o.) When Jedediah was a baby, Lucia, his mother, used to wrap him away in the dried sea grass of the higher beaches while she worked at the torn nets and watched the blue strip of water beyond the Point for the sweep of a home-spread sail. Even when Caleb's boat had just cleared the har bor and her hands still twitched as she tried to weave the threads, her eyes would dream around the spot where she knew the masts would first loom above the dunes on Long Point. Maybe it was in those long waiting months that Jedediah's eyes began to look like his mother's, a misty revery about them, but seeing every dot that flecked the sea. And with the Octo ber's coming, when the cranberries were red drops in the brown bogs, Lucira would take him across the strip of land that held the sea from the lit tle town, and while she gleaned the bogs he kept on the upper dunes, where he could see the ships standing well out past the bars of Peaked Hills. "Where are you?" Lucia cried out, starting suddenly. And when she turned out he pointed out to sea and laughed down to lier: "I'm in that riggin', reefin' the top sail!" "You shan't! Never—never!" she cried to herself, as she bent to the gleaning again. But if your baby has slept in the dried sea grass and rolled among the nets and comes at last to watch, always, the ships go up and down and is glad when the wind flies strong, and does not know why, there is no use trying to hold him when his time comes. And Jedediah's time came soon enough, for when they came to tell Lucia that Caleb would never come back she just said: "Yes, I know," and in a few weeks she died and left Jede diah to watch the ships alone. He went across the dunes, past the bogs where his mother had gleaned, and wli?n he came to the sea his eyes saw nothing but afar white sail, no greater than his hand. "She's rigged outward bound, but she's making harbor," he said aloud. "She's coming for me!" And he turned to run all the way to the vil lage to wait by the wharf until the boat came in. But when he asked to ship on her the captain of the whaler looked him over slowly with a careful noting of the lithe, boyish figure, and then a long stare into Jedediah's eyes. "Can you keep your head and eyes by you?" "Yes." "Don't look it! "I can." "Sign in, then. I put in here for an other hand. One didn't show up at sailing. Didn't want a boy, but sign in." And Jedediah signed for a two years' cruise. ffi full cargo was running south again, well down the straits, when, in the lurid dawn, the man braced at the helm saw Jedediah slip from the rig ging where he had climbed at mid night on some strange purpose of his own. He came to stand by the helm, but did not speak ior some moments, and when he did his voice was unsteady. "Bring her—about!" "What?" the man cried, and the helm slipped a point. They were run ning before the wind. "Bring her about!" he said with steady voice. "We go back!" But the man jammed the helm down and kept to the course, looking furtive ly about to see if any were near. "I'm not daffy," said Jedediah quiet ly, watching him, "but I've seen that thing that v.ill take her back if she goes with me alone. Will you brihg her about, or—" And cowed by Jede diah's eye, the man slowly shoved the helm over till the sails quivered and slacked and then jarred to the shock of the wind, head on, and the men were scrambling on deck with scared faces. "Get to the ropes!" Jedediah yelled, and every man was in his place. And now she had to beat her way, and it was not until she was rushing free on the backward course that Jedediah called the men to him. His face was white, drawn, stern with big purpose, but over his eyes was the mist of revery that was over Lucia's, and his voice wns full: "Straight above us—maybe nigh Rowe's Welcome—full two days' run— a wreck is pounding on the reefs." "Who spoke us?" some one cried out. "No one spoke us!" Jedediah flung wide his arms. "I heard the slatting of her sails an' saw red. Her' riggin's strewn across decks—her masts are gone, and men are clinging in the ropes and sails, and the wind off the floes is hard over them!" The men were huddled together, white-lipped. Jedediah crossed to the foremast and turned. "I'm not daffy, men bear me out. If we don't find her in two days— three—give me three—the oil is yours, an' your wage—I'll sign it." A man stirred and held up his hand to let it drop again. It was no simple superstition of the sea. Every sailor knew that such things were, and they would not dick er for oil with the man who had been sent the Jedediah climbed slowly to tb& masthead, the men crept back to their places, and Miss Betty rushed on into the north. The days were short in the northern waters, and it was in the dimming light of the third noon that the far headlands of Rowe's Welcome showed off the port bow, and almost at the moment of sighting her, Jedediah's voice rang from the masthead. There were no words, just a great cry that cut the wind and brought the men clambering below him. "Whar away?" "Keep her off! She's broad on the lee bow," and the men swarmed up the ropes and then clung there agap. for across the sea that heaved and swung and dipped below them, lay a battered wreck, her masts gone, the rigging strewn across her decks and the pounding sea against her. But there was no sign of life over her, and Jedediah's orders came in a voice that lashed and bit them into quick ac tion against the sullen weather. They kept of! before the wind and then ran close to the reefs, and the long boat put out with Jedediah and three men, though every one had begged to go and all the way he cautioned them what men became after days without water and food. But when they were close on her, and there was no an swer to otheir shouts, two of the men clambered up boldly by some trailing ropes, and then fell back and cried on God with horrid, distorted faces, and crouched by the gunwale, and Jede diah cursed them out of his way and stood up on the deck. And then he moved across it, without looking at what lay there, toward a tangle of sails and ropes, and the two men, star ing after him, saw a woman creep from the shelter of the sails and lift up her hands to him. She was gaunt with famine, but her eyes were clear and sane, and the great gold of her unbound hair was about her, and when she cried out to him with a lit tle sob in her voice, Jedediah bent down and lifted her. "Betty," he said, "Betty." WHY HE BUILT THE PYRAMID. Cheops Had an Object In View In Marw velous Structure. The distinguished Egyptian King Cheops, builder of the great pyramid, was once discussing human vanity with Dr. Johnson, and the latter ex pressed himself with his usual force on the subject of the other's monu mental work. "Of all existing specimens of human vanity, my dear king," said Johnson, "I consider your pyramid the biggest. Why on earth any man, king of other wise, should want to build a misfit tomb like that, a thousand times too big—765 feet long and 450 feet high— stumps me." The Egyptian king laughed. "I had a most excellent reason, my dear doctor," he said, "for doing pre cisely what I did do, and the wisdom of my course is shown by the fact that that pyramid still stands exactly where I put it./ "What has that got to do with it, pray?" demanded Johnson. "Everything," answered Cheops. "For my prime object was to build for myself a ,tomb so heavy and hig that you EngUsh couldn't lift it and put it in a glass case in the British iff museum. Seems to me I've won my point."