Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/142

 MARK TWAIN

and just as I was gasping out what was left of me on my death-bed &quot;

&quot;Wait, I will finish the sentence, &quot; said a member of the household.

&quot;Go on,&quot; said I.

&quot;Somebody should rush in with a document, and say, All the other heirs are dead, and you are the Earl of Durham ! &quot;

That is truly what I was going to say. Yet until that moment the subject had not entered my mind or been referred to in my hearing for months before. A few years ago this thing would have astounded me, but the like could not much surprise me now, though it happened every week; for I think I know now that mind can communicate accurately with mind without the aid of the slow and clumsy vehicle of speech.

This age does seem to have exhausted invention nearly; still, it has one important contract on its hands yet the invention of the phrenophone; that is to say, a method whereby the communicating of mind with mind may be brought under command and reduced to certainty and system. The tele graph and the telephone are going to become too slow and wordy for our needs. We must have the thought itself shot into our minds from a distance; then, if we need to put it into words, we can do that tedious work at our leisure. Doubtless the something which conveys our thoughts through the air from brain to brain is a finer and subtler form of electricity, and all we need do is to find out how to capture it and how to force it to do its work, as

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