At the first meeting, the telephone question was on the _tapis_, at the second meeting the whole thing was settled, and a service of telephones was organised in every house. What were dailies, posters, letters, telegrams compared to the very voice which you knew, and which told you the very latest news?
“Ah! my lord,” had again exclaimed Dan, “distance will some day have no signification whatever, between Continents, when telephone brings the Yankee twang close to the Cockney burr.” Lionel and Dan had looked at each other, and for one instant a mist had dimmed the brilliancy of their eyesight. These two had the public’s welfare truly at heart.
“One thing is certain, Dan, that our dream will be realised sooner than we believe. Man will be able to see his fellow-creature, hear his voice who knows? perhaps he will touch his hand from one hemisphere to another; but never will man be able to demonstrate scientifically or ethically the governing right of one class over another, or of one man over millions.”
“Your lordship is running too fast. You will bewilder the British public without persuading it to follow you. Show your fellow-citizens a materially reformed London before you can interest them in a regenerated universe. You have already developed their altruism in teaching them to be their own policemen; you have very nigh persuaded them that honesty is the best policy in replacing self-interest by fair dealing: you may, with your system of telephone, bring them to see that veracity is the only means of communication, now that sensational journalism has disappeared from our civilisation.”
One morning, as Lionel was sitting in his library, he looked up at his father’s portrait, and wondered whether the latter would have approved of all that was going on in London. Perhaps, had he lived to see this social metamorphosis father and son would have understood each other at last. It filled Lionel’s heart with pity to think of the tragic life of past London. Next day he sent his father’s portrait to the In Memoriam Museum with a few others, amongst which was his mother’s portrait in Court dress. He could hardly view this likeness of a past glory without shuddering, while an aching pain gnawed at his heart as he recalled the whole bearing of the model who had sat for the picture. In a few days nearly all the Upper Ten had despatched their family pictures. The In Memoriam Museum was over-crowded with ancestral effigies; so much so that Lionel determined to speak to his architect for the purpose of building, in the suburbs, another Museum. This raised an uproar amongst the fastidious critics of the Vane and Sinclair type.