ds. He will make clear how a thought, originating in the
brain, passes along the nerve-wires to the vocal chords, and then in
wireless vibration of air to the disc of the transmitter. At the other
end of the line the second disc re-creates these vibrations, which
impinge upon the nerve-wires of an ear, and are thus carried to the
consciousness of another brain.

And so, notwithstanding all that has been done since Bell opened up
the way, the telephone remains the acme of electrical marvels. No
other thing does so much with so little energy. No other thing is more
enswathed in the unknown. Not even the gray-haired pioneers who have
lived with the telephone since its birth, can understand their protege.
As to the why and the how, there is as yet no answer. It is as true of
telephony to-day as it was in 1876, that a child can use what the wisest
sages cannot comprehend.

Here is a tiny disc of sheet-iron. I speak--it shudders. It has a
different shudder for every sound. It has thousands of millions of
different shudders. There is a second disc many miles away, perhaps
twenty-five hundred miles away. Between the two discs runs a copper
wire. As I speak, a thrill of electricity flits along the wire. This
thrill is moulded by the shudder of the disc. It makes the second disc
shudder. And the shudder of the second disc reproduces my voice. That is
what happens. But how--not all the scientists of the world can tell.

The telephone current is a phenomenon of the ether, say the theorists.
But what is ether? No one knows. Sir Oliver Lodge has guessed that it
is "perhaps the only substantial thing in the material universe"; but no
one knows. There is nothing to guide us in that unknown country except
a sign-post that points upwards and bears the one word--"Perhaps." The
ether of space! Here is an Eldorado for the scientists of the future,
and whoever can first map it out will go far toward discovering the
secret of telephony.

Some day--who knows?--there may come the poetry and grand opera of the
telephone. Artists may come who will portray the marvel of the wires
that quiver with electrified words, and the romance of the switchboards
that tremble with the secrets of a great city. Already Puvis de
Chavannes, by one of his superb panels in the Boston Library, has
admitted the telephone and the telegraph to the world of art. He has
embodied them as two flying figures, poised above the electric wires,
and with the following inscri