electric trains that run in the belly of the earth. The rider has no need to buy a ticket for the journey; it is enough for him to drop the appointed coin into a slot beside the barring arm, whereupon he pushes the arm and it gives way. And as he passes, another arm at the outlet locks behind him, and it will not yield to the following rider until the fare has been collected in the manner described.
Among the things with enchanted doors is the voting apparatus. The voter, after establishing his identity, enters a booth resembling a telephone booth, and the door closes behind him by a mechanical motion. There he sits at a small table and writes the names of his candidates on a card, then inserts the card into a box before him and turns a knob at his right. At once the card disappears inside the box and the door of the voting booth opens of itself, announcing that the act of voting is finished. In this way the freedom of election is safeguarded and its results kept exact. Moreover, in many offices of the great companies there are doors that open of themselves before the passerby and close behind him, merely upon his crossing an electric beam that spans the corridor. These doors have been enchanted by the electric current, and they have become more wondrous than the "Sesame, open; Sesame, shut" of the "Thousand and One Nights."
The Cap of Invisibility:
This wondrous cap appears most
often in the mechanical saleswomen: the seller of refreshments, the seller of cigarettes, the seller of postage stamps, the seller of roasted seeds and sweets. These are metal boxes behind whose glass fronts appear samples of the goods, and on the right-hand side is a slot the size of the coin equal in value to the goods. The purchase is completed when the buyer feeds the box the coin, then presses a knob, and the machine casts out the desired article. The strange thing about these devices
is that they are so exact that they reject counterfeit coins, and so upright that they return the money when the goods have run out. And besides all this, they neither cheat nor haggle nor hoard. Some of them will change a large coin and return to the buyer the balance of his account, whole and undiminished. These devices undertake to deliver the goods to the buyer once the price is collected — but the real seller has put on the cap of invisibility.
The Ring of "At Your Service":
"At your service — your slave stands before you." Such is the language of certain mechanical devices: the fare-collecting telephone and telegraph, and the corrector of examinations. The coin telephone is an automatic telephone apparatus fixed to a small box in which are three
slots for three different coins: five cents, ten, and a quarter dollar. If the call is within the city, the speaker need only drop in the appointed coin and register the desired number in the manner familiar from the automatic telephone, and he is connected at once with the other party. If the connection cannot be made, the coin is returned immediately. If the call is with another city, the speaker connects with the exchange office and asks the clerk to connect him with a certain number in the other city. If the connection can be made, the clerk asks the speaker to drop in the appointed fee, and he drops it in full: quarters and tens and fives; and then the connection is made and the conversation proceeds.
As for the mechanical correction of examinations,
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