Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno.djvu/366

338 "Very true," I said, "but how about the pleasure?"

" Why, by taking it quick, you can get so much more into life. It takes you three hours and a half to hear and enjoy an opera. Suppose I can take it in, and enjoy it, in half-an-hour. Why, I can enjoy seven operas, while you are listening to one!"

"Always supposing you have an orchestra capable of playing them," I said. "And that orchestra has yet to be found!"

The old man smiled. "I have heard an air played," he said, "and by no means a short one——played right through, variations and all, in three seconds!"

"When? And how?" I asked eagerly, with a half-notion that I was dreaming again.

"It was done by a little musical-box," he quietly replied. "After It had been wound up, the regulator, or something, broke, and it ran down, as I said, in about three seconds. But it must have played all the notes, you know!"

"Did you enjoy it?" I asked, with all the severity of a cross-examining barrister.