Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/110

 serves almost as a second memory. Its introduction into legislative balls, and similar places, in the course of the twentieth century, led to many and beneficent changes. There ensued an enormous curtailment in the length of speeches, simultaneously with great improvement both in matter and manner. Orators found in this a reporter that could neither be bullied nor bribed. Bad grammar, vulgar pronunciation, disjointed logic,—all were reproduced with pitiless accuracy.

"Would-be legislators soon found that it would be needful, both to have really something to say, and to know how to say it, if they would escape deserved ridicule. With wits sharpened by alarm and disgust, they were not. long in discovering grave constitutional objections to the presence of the phonograph in the legislative chamber. They held it up to reprobation as an aristocratic device of 'literary fellers and Sunday-school politicians,'—phrases by which they expressed their loathing of any standard of knowledge or decency beyond their own. But for once the 'practical pollertishuns,' as they styled themselves, found they had made a serious mistake. The people were decidedly of different opinion from them, and let them know it. The attempt to remove the phonograph led to the political extinction of the party that tried to interfere with free audience. The instrument, and the metallic sheets containing the records, were placed under special constitutional safeguards.

"The effect upon oratory at first resembled, in some degree, that produced upon epistolary correspondence by the general use of the telegraph. To the one extreme of careless verbosity succeeded the opposite one of a dry