ith
the full effect of its quality and the personal equation besides, I was
quite ready to admit that selecting phonographed books for one's library
was as much more difficult as it was incomparably more fascinating than
suiting one's self with printed editions. Indeed, Hamage admitted that
nowadays nobody with any taste for literature--if the word may for
convenience be retained--thought of contenting himself with less than
half a dozen renderings of the great poets and dramatists. "By the
way," he said to the clerk, "won't you just let my friend try the
Booth-Barrett Company's 'Othello'? It is, you understand," he added
to me, "the exact phonographic reproduction of the play as actually
rendered by the company."

Upon his suggestion, the attendant had taken down a phonograph case and
placed it on the counter. The front was an imitation of a theatre with
the curtain down. As I placed the transmitter to my ears, the clerk
touched a spring and the curtain rolled up, displaying a perfect picture
of the stage in the opening scene. Simultaneously the action of the play
began, as if the pictured men upon the stage were talking. Here was no
question of losing half that was said and guessing the rest. Not a word,
not a syllable, not a whispered aside of the actors, was lost; and as
the play proceeded the pictures changed, showing every important change
of attitude on the part of the actors. Of course the figures, being
pictures, did not move, but their presentation in so many successive
attitudes presented the effect of movement, and made it quite possible
to imagine that the voices in my ears were really theirs. I am
exceedingly fond of the drama, but the amount of effort and physical
inconvenience necessary to witness a play has rendered my indulgence in
this pleasure infrequent. Others might not have agreed with me, but I
confess that none of the ingenious applications of the phonograph which
I had seen seemed to be so well worth while as this.

Hamage had left me to make his purchases, and found me on his return
still sitting spellbound.

"Come, come," he said, laughing, "I have Shakespeare complete at home,
and you shall sit up all night, if you choose, hearing plays. But come
along now, I want to take you upstairs before we go."

He had several bundles. One, he told me, was a new novel for his
wife, with some fairy stories for the children,--all, of course,
phonographs. Besides, he had bought an indispensable for his