that the pavements would not hold the mighty, surging multitudes;
they were crowded into the streets, and many accidents occurred. The
authorities were at length compelled to exclude all horses from the
streets, in the business parts of the city, and raise the central
parts to a level with the sidewalks, and give them up to the
exclusive use of the pedestrians, erecting stone pillars here and
there to divide the multitude moving in one direction from those
flowing in another. These streets are covered with roofs of glass,
which exclude the rain and snow, but not the air. And then the wonder
and glory of the shops! They surpass all description. Below all the
business streets are subterranean streets, where vast trains are
drawn, by smokeless and noiseless electric motors, some carrying
passengers, others freight. At every street corner there are electric
elevators, by which passengers can ascend or descend to the trains.
And high above the house-tops, built on steel pillars, there are
other railroads, not like the unsightly elevated trains we saw
pictures of in our school books, but crossing diagonally over the
city, at a great height, so as to best economize time and distance.

The whole territory between Broadway and the Bowery and Broome Street
and Houston Street is occupied by the depot grounds of the great
inter-continental air-lines; and it is an astonishing sight to see
the ships ascending and descending, like monstrous birds, black with
swarming masses of passengers, to or from England, Europe, South
America, the Pacific Coast, Australia, China, India and Japan.

These air-lines are of two kinds: the anchored and the independent.
The former are hung, by revolving wheels, upon great wires suspended
in the air; the wires held in place by metallic balloons,
fish-shaped, made of aluminium, and constructed to turn with the wind