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The great world called to him, and every fibre in him answered to the call. He knew that there, where he was going, were wonderful machines contrived to do the work of men. He had never been able to think of such machines as really inanimate things; he longed to see with his own eyes the arms, hands, and fingers they must surely possess. Yet, at the same time, the thought of it made his flesh creep.

Think—to fill a room with light by the mere turning of a switch! And to talk with people through a wire—which he imagined as hollow. And there were places where conjurers worked miracles, and acrobats performed impossible feats; clowns jested and played tricks.... And gardens filled with cages of strange beasts from countries even farther off....

All these and many other things which he had read of, and grown to consider as accessible only to a favoured few, were now to be part of his own surroundings in his daily life. He would live in a city with streets like deep chasms between unscalable cliffs—cave-hollowed cliffs peopled with human beings, instead of giants and goblins. He would go to theatres, where actors seemed to kill one another, and thunder, lightning, and snow could be brought into play within four walls. He would travel endless miles in machine-driven cars that raced along over rails of steel....