Page:Meda - a tale of the future.djvu/266

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262
MEDA:

showed them to me, saying, after he replaced them: "A number of generations having lived without food, nature saw that we had no use for teeth, and caused them gradually to disappear. The consequence was that our mouths closed up very much, and we could not speak fluently, so we were obliged to use false teeth. The ladies, strange to say, were the leaders in this fashion, and we now feel obliged to them, as the faculty of speech is of great value to us." I here mentioned that while they were far advanced in many things, I had seen nothing that resembled the phonograph or speech registering: and re-uttering machine.

"No," he said, "we do not wish to encourage such inventions as these, they are only fit for the uneducated who can neither read nor speak themselves. We want our people to be fluent writers, brilliant musicians, and fluent speakers. We have a duty to perform, and that is to keep them occupied and educated. If we were to do away with the art of writing and encouraged such inventions as these, we have proved by