splashed into the air pocket, but when the air was compressed under it, and squeezed up between the car floor and the walls of the pocket, it would retard the car to such an extent that it would settle down to the ground floor without a serious jar.”
“Has any one ever tried it?” I inquired.
The Read-frame of an aqueduct shaft in Central Park, New York City.
“Oh, yes, it has been tried often enough. The designer of our elevators is going to make the trip himself to prove that everything is all right.”
“Oh, say! could we go with him?” put in Will, excitedly.
“What! with your reputation! Well, I should say not!”
“But there is n’t any danger, is there?”
“No, no danger whatever,” said Mr, Hotchkiss. “Yet you never can tell. A man was fatally injured in a test like that once, and you could n’t guess why.”
We shook our heads.
“Because, instead of standing, he sat in a chair! You think I aim joking, don’t you? but I am perfectly serious, I assure you. I ’ll tell you how it was. If you should drop freely for a hundred feet, and then take twenty-five feet in which to come to a stop, you would have to lose speed four times as fast as you gained it; and so, while you were losing speed, you would he adding four pounds to every pound you weigh. If you weighed one hundred and fifty pounds normally, you would suddenly find yourself weighing six hundred pounds more, at seven hundred and fifty pounds altogether. The weight would be so well distributed that you could stand it if you kept your legs firmly braced, but it would be more than a frail chair could endure. That is how it was in the case I spoke of. The chair was smashed by the suddenly increased load, and the man was fatally injured by one of the splinters.”
“But if that is the only danger,” persisted Will, “I don't see why we could n't take the trip. We would n't think of sitting down. I ’d like to see how it feels to fall five hundred feet in an elevator.”
“You would n't enjoy it, I dropped twenty feet once in an ordinary elevator before the safety-catches stopped the car, and I don’t care to do it again. Why, do you know, that car fell so fast I could n’t catch up to it! 1 must have given a sort of involuntary spring when the car first started, because my feet were a foot off the floor all the way down. Of course 1 was falling all the time, but the car kept ahead of me until it stopped. Then down I went in a heap on the floor. It was all over in an instant, but I lived a lifetime in that instant, wondering whether the safety-catches were going to save me. The elevator man, who was the only other one in the car, had evidently jumped too, because his head was up against the roof all the way down. No, I don't believe you would enjoy the experience, and I assure you that 1 won't let such unlucky scamps as you two try it. Something would surely happen!”
“What is that other elevator you were going to tell us about?”
“I am not going to tell you about it. I am going to let you see it for yourselves.”
He took out his card, wrote an address on the back of it, and a word of introduction to a “Mr. Williams.” “Now show that to Mr. Williams, and he will let you see something that will interest you, I think. Don't forget to come back and report any adventures you may experience.”
When we reached the address to which Mr. Hotchkiss sent us, we were surprised to find, instead of a finished building, a fenced-in lot in which they were still at work upon the foundations.
“This can’t be the place,” said Will. “They824
