Page:Paine--J Archibauld McKaney collector of whiskers.djvu/81

  my trained artistic eye was busy with admiring the beautiful regularity with which the serried whiskers grew shorter and shorter as they ascended the scale of three octaves.

At length I pressed a key and my fingers were tremulous with excitement. The bellows directly in front of old Captain Rust drove a swift blast of air on his face and his beard played to and fro like a miniature cascade. I waited an instant and again turned on the air current. The bellows next in line responded to an electric impulse and the flowing "Dundrearys" of the Salvation Army derelict waggled perceptibly. I turned to my tuning forks and almost stopped breathing. I had heard the first note struck from the vibrations of Captain Rust's magnificent beard and now I found that the next ascending note was no more than a quarter of a tone off the key. I realized that my fondest dreams were coming true, and my emotions were beyond words.

Step by step my marvelous mechanism stirred the sensitive vibratory impulses of this human scale into sounds too fine to be heard [63