From St. Petersburg to Vladivostok ..... 10 days
`` Vladivostok to San Francisco ....... 10 ``
`` San Francisco to New York .......... 4<1/2> ``
`` New York to Bremen ................. 7 ``
`` Bremen to St. Petersburg ........... 1<1/2> ``
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Total ............................. 33 days

As for the risks incident to such a tour, it is significant that
for my own journey around the world, a conservative insurance
company, for a consideration of only fifty dollars, guaranteed
for a year to indemnify me in case of incapacitating accident to
the extent of fifty dollars a week and in case of death to pay
my heirs $10,000. And the company made money on the
arrangement, for I met with neither illness nor accident. With
a very few unimportant exceptions, there are now no hermit
nations, for the remotest lands are within quick and easy reach.

And now electricity has ushered in an era more wondrous
still. Trolley cars run through the streets of Seoul and
Bangkok. The Empress Dowager of China wires her decrees
to the Provincial Governors. Telegraph lines belt the globe,
enabling even the provincial journal to print the news of the
entire world during the preceding twenty-four hours. We
know to-day what occurred yesterday in Tokyo and Beirut,
Shanghai and Batanga. The total length of all telegraph
lines in the world is 4,908,921 miles,--the nerves of our
modern civilization. And it is remarkable not only that
Europe has 1,764,790 miles, America 2,516,548 miles and