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 moon, 12 years to get to the sun, 360 years to reach Neptune, at the limits of the solar world.

That is what this modest cannon-ball, the work of our hands, can do! What will it be, therefore, when, with twenty times that speed, we shall hurl it with a rapidity of seven miles a second?
Ah! splendid shot! superb projectile! I like to think you will be received up there with the honours due to a terrestrial ambassador!" Cheers greeted this brilliant peroration, and J.T.Maston, overcome with emotion, sat down amidst the felicitations of his colleagues.
"And now," said Barbicane, "that we have given some time to poetry, let us proceed to facts." "We are ready," answered the members of the committee as they each demolished half-a-dozen sandwiches.
"You know what problem it is we have to solve," continued the president; "it is that of endowing a projectile with a speed of 12,000 yards per second.