Timbuctoo.

In the other palace it appeared that the great American scrapping
process was even yet far from complete. At first sight this other seemed
to resemble the former one, but I was soon instructed that the former
one was as naught to this one, for here the turbine--the "strong, silent
man" among engines--was replacing the racket of cylinder and crank.
Statistics are tiresome and futile to stir the imagination. I disdain
statistics, even when I assimilate them. And yet when my attention was
directed to one trifling block of metal, and I was told that it was the
most powerful "unit" in the world, and that it alone would make
electricity sufficient for the lighting of a city of a quarter of a
million people, I felt that statistics, after all, could knock you a
staggering blow.... In this other palace, too, was the same solitude of
machinery, attending most conscientiously and effectively to itself. A
singularly disconcerting spectacle! And I reflected that, according to
dreams already coming true, the telephone-exchange also would soon be a
solitude of clicking contact-points, functioning in mystic certitude,
instead of a convent of girls requiring sugar and couches, and thirsting
for love. A singularly disconcerting prospect!

But was it necessary to come to America in order to see and describe
telephone-exchanges and electrical power-houses? Do not these wonders
exist in all the cities of earth? They do, but not to quite the same
degree of wondrousness. Hat-shops, and fine hat-shops, exist in New
York, but not to quite the same degree of wondrousness as in Paris.
People sing in New York, but not with quite the same natural lyricism as
in Naples. The great civilizations all present the same features; but it
is just the differences in degree between the same feature in this
civilization and in that--it is just these differences which together