o ring him up and talk with him over the telephone wire as
easily as if you were talking with some one in the next room. The
telephone, as I suppose you know, works by electricity. It is only
another form of the telegraph. The telephone was not invented by Edison,
but by another American named Alexander Bell. But Edison improved it. He
added the "transmitter," which is used in all telephones, and is very
important indeed. So we must give credit first to Bell and second to
Edison for the telephone.

Edison's most wonderful invention is the phonograph. This word means
"sound writer." One of you may talk with a little machine, and the sound
of your voice will make marks on a little roll of gelatine or tinfoil
within. Then when the machine is set going you may hear your own voice
coming back to you. Or by the use of a great trumpet called a megaphone,
it may be heard all over a large room.

The wonderful thing is that the sound of a man's voice may be heard long
after he is dead. If they had possessed the phonograph in old times we
might be able to hear Shakespeare or Julius Caesar speaking to-day. Very
likely many persons who live a hundred or two hundred years from now may
hear Edison's voice coming out of one of his own machines. Does not this
seem like magic?

In every way this is a wonderful age of invention. Look at the trolley
car, shooting along without any one being able to see what makes it
move. Look at the wheels whirling and lights flashing and stoves heating
from electric power. Steam was the most powerful thing which man knew a
century ago. Electricity has taken its place as the most powerful and
marvelous thing we know to-day. More wonderful than anything I have said
is the power we now have of telegraphing without wires, and of
telephoning in the same way. Thus men can now stand on the shore and
talk with their friends hundreds of miles away on the broad sea.

Such are some of the inventions which have been made in recent times. If
you ask for more I might name the steam plow, and the typewriter, and
the printing machine, and the bicycle, and the automobile, and the
air-ship, and a hundred others. But they are too many for me to say
anything about, so I shall have to stop right here.

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW THE CENTURY ENDED FOR THE UNITED STATES

VERY likely many of my young readers live in the city of Philadelphia,
which was founded by William Penn more than two hundred years ago on the
banks o