Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Steam-power, Domestic Economy, Machinery, Electricity, Spiritualism

People mentioned:

Michael Faraday

    Discusses a Cambridge Chronicle advertisement for a footman 'which' can undertake gardening. Believes this is a request for a 'Garden Engine—endowed with intellectual faculties' and wonders how 'such a domestic could have been constructed'. Considers the extent to which Alfred Smee's connection between electrical action and thought could account for the machine. Suggests that 'the mysterious agency concerned in Table Turning' is 'the animating principle'.