Whenever I inquired:
"From whence comes the heat that is so evenly distributed throughout the
dwellings and public buildings of Mizora?" they invariably pointed to
the river. I asked in astonishment:
"From water comes fire?"
And they answered: "Yes."
I had long before this time discovered that Mizora was a nation of very
wonderful people, individually and collectively; and as every revelation
of their genius occurred, I would feel as though I could not be
surprised at any marvelous thing that they should claim to do, but I was
really not prepared to believe that they could set the river on fire.
Yet I found that such was, scientifically, the fact. It was one of their
most curious and, at the same time, useful appliances of a philosophical
discovery.
They separated water into its two gases, and then, with their ingenious
chemical skill, converted it into an economical fuel.
Their coal mines had long been exhausted, as had many other of nature's
resources for producing artificial heat. The dense population made it
impracticable to cultivate forests for fuel. Its rapid increase demanded
of Science the discovery of a fuel that could be consumed without loss
to them, both in the matter consumed and in the expense of procuring it.
Nothing seemed to answer their purpose so admirably as water. Water,
when decomposed, becomes gas. Convert the gas into heat and it becomes
water again. A very great heat produces only a small quantity of water:
hence the extreme utility of water as a heat producing agent.
The heating factories were all detached buildings, and generally, if at
all practicable, situated near a river, or other body of water. Every
precaution against accident was stringently observed.
There were several processes for decomposing the water explained to me,
but the one preferred, and almost universally used by the people of
Mizora, was electricity. The gases formed at the opposite poles of the
electrical current, were received in large glass reservoirs, especially
constructed for them.
In preparing the heat that gave such a delightful temperature to the
dwellings and public buildings of their vast cities, glass was always
the material used in the construction of vessels and pipes. Glass pipes
conveyed the separate gases of hydrogen and oxygen into an apartment
especially prepared for the purpose, and united them upon ignited
carbon. The heat produced was intense beyond description, and in the
hands of less experienced and capable chemists, would have proved
destructful to life and property. The hardest rock would melt in its
embrace; yet, in the hands of these wonderful students of Nature, it was
under perfect control and had been converted into one of the most
healthful and agreeable agents of comfort and usefulness known. It was
regulated with the same ease and convenience with which we increase or
diminish the flames of a gas jet. It was conducted, by means of glass
pipes, to every dwelling in the city. One factory supplied sufficient
heat for over half a million inhabitants.
I thought I was not so far behind Mizora in a knowledge of heating with
hot air; yet, when I saw the practical application of their method, I
could see no resemblance to that in use in my own world. In winter,
every house in Mizora had an atmosphere throughout as balmy as the
breath of the young summer. Country-houses and farm dwellings were all
supplied with the same kind of heat.
In point of economy it could not be surpassed. A city residence,
containing twenty rooms of liberal size and an immense conservatory, was
heated entire, at a cost of four hundred centimes a year. One dollar per
annum for fuel.
There was neither smoke, nor soot, nor dust. Instead of entering a room
through a register, as I had always seen heated air supplied, it came
through numerous small apertures in the walls of a room quite close to
the floor, thus rendering its supply imperceptible, and making a draft
of cold air impossible.
The extreme cheapness of artificial heat made a conservatory a necessary
luxury of every dwelling. The same pipes that supplied the dwelling
rooms with warmth, supplied the hot-house also, but it was conveyed to
the plants by a very different process.
They used electricity in their hot-houses to perfect their fruit, but
in what way I could not comprehend; neither could I understand their
method of supplying plants and fruits with carbonic acid gas. They
manufactured it and turned it into their hot-houses during sleeping
hours. No one was permitted to enter until the carbon had been absorbed.
They had an instrument resembling a thermometer which gave the exact
condition of the atmosphere. They were used in every house, as well as
in the conservatories. The people of Mizora were constantly
experimenting with those two chemical agents, electricity and carbonic
acid gas, in their conservatories. They confidently believed that with
their service, they could yet produce fruit from their hot-houses, that
would equal in all respects the season grown article.
They produced very fine hot-house fruit. It was more luscious than any
artificially ripened fruit that I had ever tasted in my own country, yet
it by no means compared with their season grown fruit. Their preserved
fruit I thought much more natural in flavor than their hot-house fruit.
Many of their private greenhouses were on a grand scale and contained
fruit as well as flowers. A family that could not have a hot-house for
fresh vegetables, with a few fruit trees in it, would be poor indeed.
Where a number of families had united in purchasing extensive grounds,
very fine conservatories were erected, their expense being divided among
the property holders, and their luxuries enjoyed in common.
So methodical were all the business plans of the Mizora people, and so
strictly just were they in the observance of all business and social
duties that no ill-feeling or jealousy could arise from a combination of
capital in private luxuries. Such combinations were formed and carried
out upon strictly business principles.
If the admirable economy with which every species of work was carried on
in Mizora could be thoroughly comprehended, the universality of luxuries
need not be wondered at. They were drilled in economy from a very early
period. It was taught them as a virtue.
Machinery, with them, had become the slave of invention. I lived long
enough in Mizora to comprehend that the absence of pauperism, genteel
and otherwise, was largely due to the ingenious application of machinery
to all kinds of physical labor. When the cost of producing luxuries
decreases, the value of the luxuries produced must decrease with it. The
result is they are within reach of the narrowest incomes. A life
surrounded by refinement must absorb some of it.
I had a conversation with the Preceptress upon this subject, and she
said:
"Some natures are so undecided in character that they become only what
their surroundings make them. Others only partially absorb tastes and
sentiments that form the influence about them. They maintain a decided
individuality; yet they are most always noticeably marked with the
general character of their surroundings. It is very, very seldom that a
nature is fixed from infancy in one channel."
I told her that I knew of a people whose minds from infancy to mature
age, never left the grooves they were born in. They belonged to every
nationality, and had palaces built for them, and attendants with
cultivated intelligences employed to wait upon them.
"Are their minds of such vast importance to their nation? You have never
before alluded to intellect so elevated as to command such royal
homage." My friend spoke with awakened interest.
"They are of no importance at all," I answered, humiliated at having
alluded to them. "Some of them have not sufficient intelligence to even
feed themselves."
"And what are they?" she inquired anxiously.
"They are idiots; human vegetables."
"And you build palaces for them, and hire servants to feed and tend
them, while the bright, ambitious children of the poor among you,
struggle and suffer for mental advancement. How deplorably short-sighted
are the wise ones of your world. Truly it were better in your country to
be born an idiot than a poor genius." She sighed and looked grave.
"What should we do with them?" I inquired.
"What do you do with the useless weeds in your garden," she asked
significantly. "Do you carefully tend them, while drouth and frost and
lack of nourishment cause your choice plants to wither and die?"
"We are far behind you," I answered humbly. "But barbarous as you think
we are, no epithet could be too scathing, too comprehensive of all that
was vicious and inhuman, to apply to a person who should dare to assail
the expense of those institutions, or suggest that they be converted to
the cultivation of intellect that _could_ be improved."
My friend looked thoughtful for a long time, then she resumed her
discourse at the point where I had so unfortunately interrupted it.
"No people," she said, "can rise to universal culture as long as they
depend upon hand labor to produce any of the necessities of life. The
absence of a demand for hand labor gives rise to an increasing demand
for brain labor, and the natural and inevitable result is an increased
mental activity. The discovery of a fuel that is furnished at so small a
cost and with really no labor but what machinery performs, marks one
grand era in our mental progress."
In mentioning the numerous uses made of glass in Mizora, I must not
forget to give some notice to their water supply in large cities. Owing
to their cleanly advantages, the filtering and storing of rain-water in
glass-lined cisterns supplied many family uses. But drinking water was
brought to their large cities in a form that did not greatly differ from
those I was already familiar with, excepting in cleanliness. Their
reservoirs were dug in the ground and lined with glass, and a perfectly
fitting cover placed on the top. They were constructed so that the water
that passed through the glass feed pipes to the city should have a
uniform temperature, that of ordinary spring water. The water in the
covered reservoirs was always filtered and tested before passing into
the distributing pipes.
No citizen of Mizora ever hied to the country for pure water and fresh
air. Science supplied both in a densely populated city.