_First Voice_.
“But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?”
_Second Voice_.
“The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.”
—_The Ancient Mariner_.
This is the exact principle of the atmospheric railroad, and it is,
perhaps, worthy of note as a curious fact that such a means of locomotion
should have occurred to Coleridge so long ago.
W. Y. Bernhard Smith, in _Notes and Queries_.