e
related of it, and for the rest, after the air-brakes, the steam heat,
the electric lights and annunciators, the vestibuled cars, and other
delightful novelties I had just been admiring, almost anything seemed
likely in the way of railway conveniences. Accordingly, when the boy
proceeded to rattle off a list of the latest novels, I stopped him with
the name of one which I had heard favorable mention of, and told him I
would try that.

He was good enough to commend my choice. "That's a good one," he said.
"It's all the rage. Half the train's on it this trip. Where 'll you
begin?"

"Where? Why, at the beginning. Where else?" I replied.

"All right. Did n't know but you might have partly read it. Put you on
at any chapter or page, you know. Put you on at first chapter with next
batch in five minutes, soon as the batch that's on now gets through."

He unlocked a little box at the side of my seat, collected the price of
three hours' reading at five cents an hour, and went on down the
aisle. Presently I heard the tinkle of a bell from the box which he had
unlocked. Following the example of others around me, I took from it a
sort of two-pronged fork with the tines spread in the similitude of a
chicken's wishbone. This contrivance, which was attached to the side of
the car by a cord, I proceeded to apply to my ears, as I saw the others
doing.

For the next three hours I scarcely altered my position, so completely
was I enthralled by my novel experience. Few persons can fail to have
made the observation that if the tones of the human voice did not have
a charm for us in themselves apart from the ideas they convey,
conversation to a great extent would soon be given up, so little is
the real intellectual interest of the topics with which it is chiefly
concerned. When, then, the sympathetic influence of the voice is lent to
the enhancement of matter of high intrinsic interest, it is not
strange that the attention should be enchained. A good story is highly
entertaining even when we have to get at it by the roundabout means
of spelling out the signs that stand for the words, and imagining them
uttered, and then imagining what they would mean if uttered. What, then,
shall be said of the delight of sitting at one's ease, with closed eyes,
listening to the same story poured into one's ears in the strong, sweet,
musical tones of a perfect mistress of the art of story-telling, and of
the expression and excitation by means of the