Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/140

 sional, or artistic, pursuit. Yet, meantime, their mental training was by no means neglected. Without leaving his native village, a young man could, by means of the phonograph, be brought in contact with the master-minds of the age.

I was once present when, in the lecture-hall of the village academy, a lecture was delivered on a certain point of physics. The scene was to me novel and instructive. On a table near the upper end of the hall stood the wonderful instrument that was to reproduce the utterances of the great scientist, a Tyndall of the period. Beside the instrument stood the expositor, pointer in hand, in order to indicate, at the appropriate moment, the points referred to in the diagram displayed close by. Even this diagram had been transmitted by electricity, an exact reproduction of that described by the lecturer on his prepared plane two thousand miles away.

When the audience was duly seated, the expositor had only to move a small lever on the table before him in order to open the lecture. The hall was admirably adapted in acoustic properties to the purpose for which it was intended. The utterance from the phonograph was so natural and distinct, that I had difficulty in realizing that it was not the voice of the expositor. The lecture was first listened to without interruption. Then the expositor invited questions from the audience. Having made a note of these, he again set the instrument going, till he caused it to cease at the point on which some question bore. This satisfactorily elucidated, he again set it going, and so on to the end.

From the nature of their questions, I could perceive