road to the perfection of, a machine which I may be pardoned for calling
a storage think-tank. This will enable a brainy man to sit at home, and,
with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think into a
tin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and a new
style of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft metal,
so that when any one says to him, "A penny for your thoughts," he can go
to his valise and give him a piece of his mind. Thus the man who has
such wild and beautiful thoughts in the night and never can hold on to
them long enough to turn on the gas and get his writing materials, can
set this thing by the head of his bed, and, when the poetic thought
comes to him in the stilly night, he can think into a hopper, and the
genius of Franklin and Edison together will enable him to fire it back
at his friends in the morning while they eat their pancakes and glucose
syrup from Vermont, or he can mail the sheet of tinfoil to absent
friends, who may put it into their phonographs and utilize it. In this
way the world may harness the gray matter of its best men, and it will
be no uncommon thing to see a dozen brainy men tied up in a row in the
back office of an intellectual syndicate, dropping pregnant thoughts
into little electric coffee mills for a couple of hours a day, after
which they can put on their coats, draw their pay, and go home.

All this will reduce the quantity of exercise, both mental and physical.
Two men with good brains could do the thinking for 60,000,000 of people
and feel perfectly fresh and rested the next day. Take four men, we will
say, two to do the day thinking and two more to go on deck at night, and
see how much time the rest of the world would have to go fishing. See
how politics would become simplified. Conventions, primaries, bargains
and sales, campaign bitterness and vituperation--all might be wiped out.
A pair of political thinkers could furnish 100,000,000 of people with
logical conclusions enough to last them through the campaign and put an
unbiased opinion into a man's house each day for less than he now pays
for gas. Just before election you could go into your private office,
throw in a large dose of campaign whisky, light a campaign cigar, fasten
your buttonhole to the wall by an elastic band, so that there would be a
gentle pull on it, and turn the electricity on your mechanical thought
supply. It would save time and money, and the result wo