I always search for an electrician and listen to his stories of
the mysterious power with which he deals. One of the greatest of them
said to me last year:
"No, we really know nothing about it, after all. We have managed to do
a great many things with it. We have learned some of its properties,
but it holds fast its inner secrets. The great universe of electrical
discovery has hardly been entered." But electricity is not the only
modern mystery.
Take photography, that wizard-like science. The man who, fifty years
ago, would have predicted the moving picture which has already become
commonplace to us, would have been rejected as a madman.
Tele-photography is almost as remarkable as the moving picture.
Color-photography will yet be reduced to perfection. The chemists are
constantly astounding us with suggestions so remarkable that they are
weird.
Luther Burbank creating new species of plant life, Max Standfuss doing
the like with insects, make the Arabian Nights commonplace and dull.
Think of the Roentgen rays! Think of the achievement of the wonderful
young Italian! Marconi's invention seems uncanny, so impossible does
it appear even when you watch his magic instrument at work.
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