members of the committee; they therefore listened attentively to the
words of J.T. Maston.

"My dear colleagues," he continued, "I will be brief. I will lay aside
the material projectile--the projectile that kills--in order to take up
the mathematical projectile--the moral projectile. A cannon-ball is to
me the most brilliant manifestation of human power, and by creating it
man has approached nearest to the Creator!"

"Hear, hear!" said Major Elphinstone.

"In fact," cried the orator, "if God has made the stars and the planets,
man has made the cannon-ball--that criterion of terrestrial speed--that
reduction of bodies wandering in space which are really nothing but
projectiles. Let Providence claim the speed of electricity, light, the
stars, comets, planets, satellites, sound, and wind! But ours is the
speed of the cannon-ball--a hundred times greater than that of trains
and the fastest horses!"

J.T. Maston was inspired; his accents became quite lyrical as he chanted
the hymn consecrated to the projectile.

"Would you like figures?" continued he; "here are eloquent ones. Take
the simple 24 pounder; though it moves 80,000 times slower than
electricity, 64,000 times slower than light, 76 times slower than the
earth in her movement of translation round the sun, yet when it leaves
the cannon it goes quicker than sound; it goes at the rate of 14 miles a
minute, 840 miles an hour, 20,100 miles a day--that is to say, at the
speed of the points of the equator in the globe's movement of rotation,
7,336,500 miles a year. It would therefore take 11 days to get to the