temptation to get back to it—set him down where you will, some byway brings him back into the familiar highway. Cleverness will not place him out of risk. Indeed, the cleverer he is, the more likely he is to become, to this extent, the slave of his shop. This is not meant of the man of genius, of course, the many-sided man, but of the busy, practical man of common life. Say that he is of more than average intellect, that he has talent, and, still better, a wise and honest love for his science, his art, or whatever may be the name of his work, he will be at a disadvantage as compared with the man who, failing either in the ability or in the energy necessary for concentration, has been enabled to learn a little plausible ignorance on a good many topics of general interest. Now over-concentration may be damaging to the balance of his mind, and without doubt concentration which is in other respects not over-concentration is detrimental to him as a conversationalist, lessening the superficies over which his tongue can travel. But since the poor fellow is so ill off that there is only one class of topics on which he can enter readily, may there not be something gained for his associates as well as for him in letting him go his own way? If one found oneself in the company of the philosopher who has concentrated his life on the dative case, it might be better to put him to discourse on the dative case than to elicit his dulness on the weather. One might not succeed in achieving even a temporary sympathy with his fervor, but one would at least have learned something about the dative case. And a man must be very stupid indeed—or else his listener is very stupid indeed—who can talk freely and earnestly on a subject which thoroughly interests him without the listener's becoming interested, if not in the subject, at least in the interest it has for its exponent. Nor need the listener's interest be lessened, surely, if he is hearing several men skilled and eager in some special pursuit talking with each other, instead of only one such man talking with him.
BARON MUNCHAUSEN'S FROZEN WORDS .
The telephone is the wonder of the day, but among the inventions to which the investigation of this subject has given rise is one of a kind which to us—accustomed as we now are to the electric telegraph—appears still more marvellous than even the telephone itself, one which would enable us to talk further into the future than the telephone will ever enable us to talk into space. Every one remembers the story of Baron Münchausen hearing the words which had been frozen during the severe cold, melting into speech again, so that all the babble of a past day came floating about his ears. Well, that extravagant piece of nonsense appears to have been realized by modern science, though not precisely by Baron Münchausen's suggested method. Professor Barrett’s interesting lectures on the telephone contained an account of the invention we refer to, which might strictly be called a telephone in the time-sense, since it will so reproduce the tone of words once spoken as to enable those who take the proper measures, to reel them off again in the very same voice as that of the speaker, months—and we may soon, perhaps, be able to say years—after the speaker himself is dead. We do not pretend to describe the talking phonograph minutely, but the principle of it is this. A vibrating metal diaphragm is so arranged as to vibrate in unison with the voice of the speaker, who must be near it, and direct his voice towards it. In connection with this metal diaphragm is a pointer, so adjusted as to dot a piece of tinfoil placed spirally on a revolving drum, with every vibration of the diaphragm. The rate at which the drum revolves must be carefully noted, for in retranslating the effect of the dots on the tinfoil into the vibration of the pointer attached to another vibrating plate, as the drum revolves past it, so as to reproduce in these new plate-vibrations the sound of the original voice, if the revolution were faster than before, the same words would be heard, but in a higher key; while if it were slower, the same words would be heard, but in a lower key. It is, then, quite possible to keep this register of a speech as long as the tin-foil will last without being injured by oxidization. And at present that seems to be only for a few months. Still it is quite conceivable even now, that five or six months after a speech had been uttered, you should hear it reeled off, as it were, from the tin-foil register, by the help of the revolving drum, and a new pointer, pressed by a gentle spring against the tinfoil, so as to enter the dotted apertures previously made in it and excite the old vibrations, as it so enters them, in a new vibrating-plate, so as to form a perfect reproduction both in voice and expression of the words in the original sentence, and indeed so as to make an ignorant person believe that the same lips were repeating what they had
