FullReads

Right was Solomon when he said that there was nothing new under the sun. Sardanapalus or Semiramis herself would not have been at all startled to hear a human voice proclaim the hour. The phonographic clock had but replaced the slave whose business, standing by the noiseless water-clock, it was to keep tale of the moments as they dropped, ages before they had been taught to tick.

In the morning, on descending, I went first to the clerk’s office to inquire for letters, thinking Hamage, who knew I would go to that hotel if any, might have addressed me there. The clerk handed me a small oblong box. I suppose I stared at it in a rather helpless way, for presently he said: “I beg your pardon, but I see you are a stranger. If you will permit me, I will show you how to read your letter.”

I gave him the box, from which he took a device of spindles and cylinders, and placed it deftly within another small box which stood on the desk. Attached to this was one of the two-pronged ear-trumpets I already knew the use of. As I placed it in position, the clerk touched a spring in the box, which set some sort of motor going, and at once the familiar tones of Dick Haulage’s voice expressed his regret that an accident had prevented his meeting me the night before, and informed me that he would be at the hotel by the time I had breakfasted.

The letter ended, the obliging clerk removed the cylinders from the box on the desk, replaced them in that they had come in, and returned it to me.

“Is n’t it rather tantalizing,” said I, “to receive one of these letters when there is no little machine like this at hand to make it speak?”

“It does n’t often happen,” replied the clerk, “that anybody is caught without his indispensable, or at least where he cannot borrow one.”

“His indispensable!” I exclaimed: “What may that be?”

In reply the clerk directed my attention to a little box, not wholly unlike a case for a binocular glass, which, now that he spoke of it, I saw was carried, slung at the side, by every person in sight.

“We call it the indispensable because it is indispensable, as, no doubt, you will soon find for yourself.”

In the breakfast-room a number of ladies and gentlemen were engaged as they sat at table in reading, or rather in listening to, their morning’s correspondence. A greater or smaller pile of little boxes lay beside their plates, and one after another they took from each its cylinders, placed them in their indispensables, and held the latter to their ears. The expression of the face in reading is so largely affected by the necessary fixity of the eyes that intelligence is absorbed from the printed or written page with scarcely a change of countenance, which when communicated by the voice evokes a responsive play of features. I had never been struck so forcibly by this obvious reflection as I was in observing the expression of the faces of these people as they listened to their correspondents. Disappointment, pleased surprise, chagrin, disgust, indignation, and amusement were alternately so legible on their faces that it was perfectly easy for one to be sure in most cases what the tenor at least of the letter was. It occurred to me that while in the old time the pleasure of receiving letters had been so far balanced by this drudgery of writing them as to keep correspondence within some bounds, nothing less than freight trains could suffice for the mail service in these days, when to write was but to speak, and to listen was to read.

After I had given my order, the waiter brought a curious-looking oblong case, with an ear-trumpet attached, and, placing it before me, went away. I foresaw that I should have to ask a good many questions before I got through, and, if I did not mean to be a bore, I had best ask as few as necessary. I determined to find ont what this trap was without assistance. The words “Daily Morning Herald” sufficiently indicated that it was a newspaper. I suspected that a certain big knob, if pushed, would set it going. But, for all I knew, it might start in the middle of the advertisements. I looked closer. There were a number of printed slips upon the face of the machine, arranged about a circle like the numbers on a dial. They were evidently the headings of news articles. In the middle of the circle was a little pointer, like the hand of a clock, moving on a pivot. I pushed this pointer around to a certain caption, and then, with the air of being perfectly familiar with the machine, I put the pronged trumpet to my ears and pressed the big knob. Precisely! It worked like a charm; so much like a charm, indeed, that I should certainly have allowed my breakfast to cool had I been obliged to choose between that and my newspaper. The inventor of the apparatus had, however, provided against so painful a dilemma by a simple attachment to the trumpet, which held it securely in position upon the shoulders behind the head, while the hands were left free for knife and fork. Having slyly noted the manner in which my neighbors had effected the adjustments, I imitated their example with a careless air, and presently, like them, was absorbing physical and mental aliment simultaneously.