has compelled my gratitude at the same
time, since it saves me the labor of stating my own long-cherished
opinions & reflections & resentments by doing it lucidly & fervently
& irascibly for me.

There is one thing that always puzzles me: as inheritors of the
mentality of our reptile ancestors we have improved the inheritance
by a thousand grades; but in the matter of the morals which they
left us we have gone backward as many grades. That evolution is
strange & to me unaccountable & unnatural. Necessarily we started
equipped with their perfect and blemishless morals; now we are
wholly destitute; we have no real morals, but only artificial ones
--morals created and preserved by the forced suppression of natural
& healthy instincts. Yes, we are a sufficiently comical invention,
we humans.

Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

CCLIII

AN EVENING WITH HELEN KELLER

I recall two pleasant social events of that winter: one a little party
given at the Clemenses' home on New-Year's Eve, with charades and
story-telling and music. It was the music feature of this party that was
distinctive; it was supplied by wire through an invention known as the
telharmonium which, it was believed, would revolutionize musical
entertainment in such places as hotels, and to some extent in private
houses. The music came over the regular telephone wire, and was
delivered through a series of horns or megaphones--similar to those used
for phonographs--the playing being done, meanwhile, by skilled performers
at the central station. Just why the telharmonium has not made good its
promises of popularity I do not know. Clemens was filled with enthusiasm
over the idea. He made a speech a little before midnight, in which he
told how he had generally been enthusiastic about inventions which had
turned out more or less well in about equal proportions. He did not
dwell on the failures, but he told how he had been the first to use a
typewriter for manuscript work; how he had been one of the earliest users
of the fountain-pen; how he had installed the first telephone ever used
in a private house, and how the audience now would have a demonstration
of the first telharmonium music so employed. It was just about the
stroke of midnight when he finished, and a moment later the horns began
to play chimes and "Auld Lang Syne" and "America."

The other pleasant